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Thread: Low Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :

Simple question:

Why is the Sunday after Easter known as Low Sunday?

Posted by Mama Thomas (# 10170) on :

It's usually called Thomas Sunday nowadays from the Gospel that takes place a week after Easter. I've heard it was called low because of lower attendance among other reasons.

I think it's like the origins of the Xmas Tree everyone keeps a favourite origin story as the real reason.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Low attendance - what with everyone 'churched-out' after Holy Week, the clergy on holiday, and (if you're lucky - as we are today) some decent weather for the families with kidz to go and do something else in......!

Ian J.

Posted by Panda (# 2951) on :

Really? I always thought it was low as opposed to high, in terms of the ceremonial that you would have had the previous week. A day to ease back a bit on the incense, processions, canopies, boat boys/girls, vimperers, and the like...

Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :

Not that that would worry our lot, we're so far down the candle we're subterranean.

Posted by Hart (# 4991) on :

I've always thought Bishop's Finger and Panda were both right: a lot of people play it down. Musicians play it down by either doing easy music that requires no rehearsal, or giving the choir a week off and just having one instrumentalist and cantor. Ditto for coffee hour coordinators, preachers, server teams, etc. For people that normally go to church once a month, they all went last week, so they won't be there. In many Catholic congregations, once a month attenders make up almost half of each week's snapshot congregation so it makes quite a difference.

It's also Domenica in albis, a custom wherein the newly baptized from the Easter Vigil return to church and wear the white garments they received then. For most Catholics, Divine Mercy Sunday takes over all other resonances. The trend of naming Sundays with common gospels from the theme of those indeed leads to Thomas Sunday.

In my community, it's first mass Sunday. We ordain priests on Easter Saturday, so today I'll be travelling around to three first masses. This means nothing is low!

Posted by Trisagion (# 5235) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Hart:
... We ordain priests on Easter Saturday, so today I'll be travelling around to three first masses. This means nothing is low!

What a lovely tradition.

Posted by Carys (# 78) on :

I thought it had something to do with 'Laudes' and someone else on Twitter had also seen that somewhere too.

Carys

Posted by The Silent Acolyte (# 1158) on :

Here's one explanation: that the word Low comes from the first word of the sequence, Laudes Salvatori voce modulemur supplici.

Were someone to trawl through Oblivion, I'm pretty sure they'd dredge up a thread from last year—or, maybe the year before.

[ 07. April 2013, 22:26: Message edited by: The Silent Acolyte ]

Posted by Percy B (# 17238) on :

I love the old custom in the office that office hymns do not return until Low Sunday. It's as if we were speechless about what has happened at Easter!

Posted by Hart (# 4991) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Silent Acolyte:

Were someone to trawl through Oblivion, I'm pretty sure they'd dredge up a thread from last year—or, maybe the year before.

Last year, 2009 and 2009.

And just for fun: one from Keryg.

Posted by Vertis (# 16279) on :

Definitely (and suprirsingly) not low attendance yesterday. Up 20% on our ASA, and several of those were newcomers who had come to a Triduum/Easter service and decided to come back for more.

Posted by Forthview (# 12376) on :

Low Sunday and Low Week always to me indicated the difference from the High Week of the christian calendar which is still Easter Week.
Dominica in albis depositis is another name when the newly baptised laid aside their white baptismal robes.(There is a custom in Paris where those who have been baptised at the Easter vigil come together to Mass in the cathedral of Notre Dame all wearing white robes)
In that connection the Sunday is also known as Quasimodo Sunday because of the first word of the Entrance Antiphon for the day in the Roman rite and the hunchback of ND had that name because he was supposedly born on that day.

However now,in the Roman rite, the first Sunday after Easter is renamed the Second Sunday of Easter and there is an emphasis on the Divine Mercy.

In Germany this Sunday has the name White Sunday
(der weisse Sonntag) and is one of the traditional days for First Communion.

Posted by Sergius-Melli (# 17462) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Hart:

quote:
Originally posted by The Silent Acolyte:

Were someone to trawl through Oblivion, I'm pretty sure they'd dredge up a thread from last year—or, maybe the year before.
Last year, 2009 and 2009.

And just for fun: one from Keryg.

Thankfully I looked first before offering my small knowledge about quasimodo... It was covered in previous years, but highlighting it wont harm!

Edit: x-posted.

[ 08. April 2013, 09:35: Message edited by: Sergius-Melli ]

Posted by Forthview (# 12376) on :

Just looked back and discovered I said much the same four years ago

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Vertis:
Definitely (and suprirsingly) not low attendance yesterday. Up 20% on our ASA, and several of those were newcomers who had come to a Triduum/Easter service and decided to come back for more.

Ours, too! It was the best attended Low Sunday in years. And one visiting young couple declared that they think they've found their new church. [Yipee]

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

I make a point of calling it Quasimodo Sunday, but then I make a point of doing lots of stodgy things that no one else pays any attention to for the fun of it.

Choir members (aside from four staff singers) get the week off at my place, but I still showed my face. We (apparently) had good attendance at the 9:00 service, as there were two infant baptisms (we did one adult at the Vigil). I made it to the 11:00, which was a steep drop off, but those who stayed at home should regret it; due to a coffee hour scheduling mishap, two people brought snacks, so we had a huge and delicious 11:00 spread for our limited congregation.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:

quote:
Originally posted by Vertis:
Definitely (and suprirsingly) not low attendance yesterday. Up 20% on our ASA, and several of those were newcomers who had come to a Triduum/Easter service and decided to come back for more.
Ours, too! It was the best attended Low Sunday in years.

Same here. Turned out to be a 60th wedding anniversary of two of our regulars and lots of wine and cheese straws. Loved it.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

Here in Italy it was the church AGM so many people avoided it (I was told).

Posted by LostinChelsea (# 5305) on :

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church isn't the be-all and end-all, I realize, but it says, "probably in contrast to the 'high' feast of Easter Sunday itself."

I'd looked that up because on Facebook, I saw someone make a strange argument about the lauds of that Sunday being greater than the "muted" alleluias of the previous ... which made no sense to me.

It's so hard to figure out where things come from. Does "laudes" explain it or is it a semi-obvious back-formation? I dunno, but it gives us something to pick at as we rest up from Easter.

Posted by Manipled Mutineer (# 11514) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
I make a point of calling it Quasimodo Sunday, but then I make a point of doing lots of stodgy things that no one else pays any attention to for the fun of it.

As did our parish priest; he even thoughtfully suggested it as a good name for the babies of two expectant mothers in the congregation! I understand it comes from the first word of the Latin introit for the day?

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

First two words, technically: Quasi modo geniti infantes, or "as newborn babies," from 1 Peter 2:2. I also learned this in a sermon a few years back. In Hugo's novel, the Hunchback was found abandoned on the first Sunday after Easter, and Hugo apparently used the name as a bit of a pun. From the novel, via Wikipedia:

quote:
He [sc. archdeacon Claude Frollo, Quasimodo's adoptive father] baptized his adopted child and called him Quasimodo; whether it was that he chose thereby to commemorate the day when he had found him, or that he meant to mark by that name how incomplete and imperfectly molded the poor little creature was. Indeed, Quasimodo, one-eyed, hunchbacked, and bow-legged, could hardly be considered as anything more than an almost

Posted by CuppaT (# 10523) on :

Low Sunday?! Oh my. Well, I've never heard the term, but it strikes me as rather funny. Why would anyone want to stay away from church when we've just celebrated our Lord's Resurrection? Wouldn't we just be itching to gather every day if it were practical?

I can't say that I've seen any lower than normal attendance in my own parish. There's the swell for Pascha of family from out of town and city folk from other churches who come to see the wonderful Orthodox services, but that's normal to us. But certainly at the mid-week service and at Thomas Sunday, church is quite full.

And as far as lightening up, HA, that's a joke! Just ask any Orthodox choir director about those first two weeks after Pascha. They are topsy-turvy as the Apostles must have felt. The Matins service has this cut and that thrown in and this not done and that done in its place and those songs drawn from Holy Week, but with these Resurrection parts added to them. Whew! You need to have been a choir director about 5 years before you can say to yourself, yes, these weeks are next and we will live through them.

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