Every Postcommunion (and secret) corresponds to a collect. These are the three fundamental prayers of any given Proper Mass. The Postcommunion is said or chanted exactly like the Collect. First comes that of the Mass celebrated; then, if other Masses are commemorated, their Postcommunions follow in the same order and with the same final conclusion as the collects. [1]
After the Communion, when the celebrant has arranged the chalice, he goes to the epistle side and reads the Communion antiphon. He then comes to the middle and says or sings "Dominus Vobiscum" ("The Lord be with you"; in the early Middle Ages he did not turn to the people this time), goes back to the Epistle side, and says or sings one or more Postcommunions, exactly as the collects. [1]
At ferial Masses in Lent the Oratio super populum follows the last Postcommunion. The celebrant sings Oremus; the deacon turning towards the people chants: Humiliate capita vestra Deo, on do with the cadence la, do, si, si, do for the last five syllables. Meanwhile, everyone, including the celebrant, bows the head. The deacon turns towards the altar and the celebrant chants the prayer appointed in the Mass. At low Mass the celebrant himself says the same text and does not turn towards the people. The deacon's exclamation apparently was introduced when this prayer became a speciality of Lent (Durandus mentions it). [1]
History
The prayer after communion was mentioned in the first century Didache document.
The Communion act finishes the essential Eucharistic service, and early Masses, as described by Justin Martyr, did not have anything afterward. However, prayers were later added. The earliest complete liturgy extant, that of the "Apostolic Constitutions", contains two such prayers, a thanksgiving and a blessing. [1]
A significant resemblance between the Roman Rite and that of the "Apostolic Constitutions" is that at Rome, too, there were formerly at every Mass two prayers of the same nature. In the "Leonine Sacramentary" they have no title; but their character is obvious. The Gelasian Sacramentary calls the first postcommunio, the second ad populum. [1]
In both sacramentaries these two prayers form part of the normal Mass said throughout the year, though not every Mass has both; the prayers "ad populum" in the latter book are comparatively rare. They also begin to change their character. The formerly constant terms tuere, protege, etc. are rarer; many are ordinary collects with no pronounced idea of prayers for blessing and protection. [1]
In the "Gregorian Sacramentary" the second prayer, now called Super populum, occurs almost only from Septuagesima to Easter; the first, Ad complendum, continues throughout the year, but both have lost much of their original character. The Ad complendum prayer (which became the post-communion) has become a collect formed on the model of the collect at the beginning of Mass, though generally it keeps some allusion to the Communion just received. That is still the state of these prayers after the Communion. [1]
The second, Oratio super populum, is said only in ferial Masses in Lent. This restriction apparently results from the shortening of the Mass (which explains many omissions and abbreviations) and the tendency of Lent to keep longer forms, such as more than two lessons. Medieval commentators [2] [1] explain this mystically; Honorius thinks the prayer to be a substitute for the Eastern blessed bread ( antidoron ). [1]
The Oratio super populum is now always the prayer at vespers on the same day. It has been suggested that its use at Mass in Lent may be a remnant of a custom, now kept only on Holy Saturday, of singing vespers at the end of Mass. The first prayer, called Ad complendum in the "Gregorian Sacramentary", became the modern Postcommunion, now its official name. Its name was uncertain through the Middle Ages. Durandus [3] [1] calls it merely Oratio novissima, using the name Postcommunio for the Communion antiphon. [1]
The first "Roman Ordo" calls the prayer Oratio ad complendum (xxi); Rupert of Deutz calls it Ad complendum. [4] [1] But others give it the modern name, [5] [1] and so do many medieval missals (e.g. the Sarum). The Postcommunion has lost much of its original character as a thanksgiving prayer and has absorbed the idea of the old Oratio ad populum. It is now always a petition, though the note of thanksgiving is often included (e.g. in the Mass Statuit, for a confessor pontiff). It has been affected by the Collect on which it is modelled, though there is generally an allusion to the Communion. [1]
In contemporary Catholic usage, the postcommunion corresponds to the Prayer after Communion and is sung or recited audibly throughout by the celebrant.
Mass is the main Eucharistic liturgical service in many forms of Western Christianity. The term Mass is commonly used in the Catholic Church, Western Rite Orthodoxy, Old Catholicism, and Independent Catholicism. The term is also used in many Lutheran churches, as well as in some Anglican churches, and on rare occasion by other Protestant churches.
Vespers is a liturgy of evening prayer, one of the canonical hours in Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Lutheran liturgies. The word for this prayer time comes from the Latin vesper, meaning "evening".
Divine Liturgy or Holy Liturgy is the usual name used in most Eastern Christian rites for the Eucharistic service.
A memorial in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church is a lower-ranked feast day in honour of a saint, the dedication of a church, or a mystery of the religion.
In the Western Church of the Early and High Middle Ages, a sacramentary was a book used for liturgical services and the mass by a bishop or priest. Sacramentaries include only the words spoken or sung by him, unlike the missals of later centuries that include all the texts of the mass whether read by the bishop, priest, or others. Also, sacramentaries, unlike missals, include texts for services other than the mass such as ordinations, the consecration of a church or altar, exorcisms, and blessings, all of which were later included in Pontificals and Rituals instead.
In chant, a reciting tone can refer to either a repeated musical pitch or to the entire melodic formula for which that pitch is a structural note. In Gregorian chant, the first is also called tenor, dominant or tuba, while the second includes psalm tones as well as simpler formulae for other readings and for prayers.
The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is a Byzantine Rite liturgical service which is performed on the weekdays of Great Lent wherein communion is received from Gifts that are sanctified (consecrated) in advance, hence its name; this Divine Liturgy has no anaphora.
The Office of the Dead or Office for the Dead is a prayer cycle of the Canonical Hours in the Catholic Church, Anglican Church and Lutheran Church, said for the repose of the soul of a decedent. It is the proper reading on All Souls' Day for all departed souls (Purgatory), and can be a votive office on other days when said for a particular decedent. The work is composed of different psalms, scripture, prayers and other parts, divided into The Office of Readings, Lauds, Daytime Prayer, Vespers and Compline.
The Gallican Rite is a historical form of Christian liturgy and other ritual practices in Western Christianity. It is not a single liturgical rite but rather several Latin liturgical rites that developed within the Latin Church, which comprised the majority use of most of Western Christianity for the greater part of the 1st millennium AD. The rites first developed in the early centuries as the Syriac-Greek rites of Jerusalem and Antioch and were first translated into Latin in various parts of the Western Roman Empire Praetorian prefecture of Gaul. By the 5th century, it was well established in the Roman civil diocese of Gaul, which had a few early centers of Christianity in the south. Ireland is also known to have had a form of this Gallican Liturgy mixed with Celtic customs.
In the Latin liturgical rites of the Catholic Church, a commemoration is the recital, within the Liturgy of the Hours or the Mass of one celebration, of part of another celebration that is generally of lower rank and impeded because of a coincidence of date.
The Roman Rite is the most common ritual family for performing the ecclesiastical services of the Latin Church, the largest of the sui iuris particular churches that comprise the Catholic Church. The Roman Rite governs rites such as the Roman Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours as well as the manner in which sacraments and blessings are performed.
The term "Celtic Rite" is applied to the various liturgical rites used in Celtic Christianity in Britain, Ireland and Brittany and the monasteries founded by St. Columbanus and Saint Catald in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy during the Early Middle Ages. The term is not meant to imply homogeneity; instead it is used to describe a diverse range of liturgical practices united by lineage and geography.
Solemn Mass is the full ceremonial form of a Mass, predominantly associated with the Tridentine Mass where it is celebrated by a priest with a deacon and a subdeacon, requiring most of the parts of the Mass to be sung, and the use of incense. It is also called High Mass or Solemn High Mass.
The Canon of the Mass, also known as the Canon of the Roman Mass and in the Mass of Paul VI as the Roman Canon or Eucharistic Prayer I, is the oldest anaphora used in the Roman Rite of Mass. The name Canon Missæ was used in the Tridentine Missal from the first typical edition of Pope Pius V in 1570 to that of Pope John XXIII in 1962 to describe the part of the Mass of the Roman Rite that began after the Sanctus with the words Te igitur. All editions preceding that of 1962 place the indication "Canon Missae" at the head of each page from that point until the end of the Mass; that of 1962 does so only until the page preceding the Pater Noster and places the heading "Ordo Missae" on the following pages.
The Secret is a prayer said in a low voice by the priest or bishop during religious services.
The Mass is the central liturgical service of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, in which bread and wine are consecrated and become the body and blood of Christ. As defined by the Church at the Council of Trent, in the Mass "the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross, is present and offered in an unbloody manner". The Church describes the Mass as the "source and summit of the Christian life", and teaches that the Mass is a sacrifice, in which the sacramental bread and wine, through consecration by an ordained priest, become the sacrificial body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ as the sacrifice on Calvary made truly present once again on the altar. The Catholic Church permits only baptised members in the state of grace to receive Christ in the Eucharist.
The Divine Service is a title given to the Eucharistic liturgy as used in the various Lutheran churches. It has its roots in the Pre-Tridentine Mass as revised by Martin Luther in his Formula missae of 1523 and his Deutsche Messe of 1526. It was further developed through the Kirchenordnungen of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that followed in Luther's tradition.
A liturgical book, or service book, is a book published by the authority of a church body that contains the text and directions for the liturgy of its official religious services.
Within the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, a variety of liturgical books have been officially approved to contain the words to be recited and the actions to be performed in the celebration of Catholic liturgy. The Roman Rite of the Latin Church of the Catholic Church is the most widely used liturgical rite. The titles of some of these books contain the adjective "Roman", e.g. the Roman Missal, to distinguish them from the liturgical books for the other rites of the church.
The Celtic mass is the liturgy of the Christian office of the Mass as it was celebrated within Celtic Rite of Celtic Christianity in the Early Middle Ages.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Postcommunion". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.