Do you know your “liturgical vestment” vocabulary? Do you
know what the priest is supposed to
be wearing, but isn’t?
I suspect many of you do know, but it appears the priest in the photos does not. So, just to keep us all on the same page, here’s an “amicable”
lesson.
The priest in the photos is missing his amice! (Okay, the words “amice”
and “amicable” are not really related in any way, but I thought it was a fun
play on words anyway.)
Fr. Z had an interesting
(and humorous) post about this a couple of months ago. He explained:
An amice, from Latin amictus,
“a garment put on over other clothing”, in turn from the verb amicio “to
throw round, to wrap about, to cloth”, is a rectangular linen cloth which has
strings at two corners on one long side. It is placed, first on the head, and
then over the shoulders and around the neck. The strings are then crossed over
the chest, passed around the back and around to the front where they are tied,
so as to keep the amice in place.
336. “… Before the alb is put
on, should this not completely cover the ordinary clothing at the neck, an
amice should be used.”
On a related issue, however,
when you see a priest’s “Roman” collar sticking up out of his vestments, that
is a liturgical abuse. His collar must be covered because his collar is “street
clothes” as opposed to sacred vestments.
It can happen that the alb or
amice will slip away to reveal his street clothes. That is not an abuse. That
is an accident. What is an abuse is purposely vesting in such a way that the
collar is revealed. [It appears that the priest in the photos above makes a habit of it...]
…
In the older, venerable,
traditional form of Holy Mass, in the Extraordinary Form, the amice is always
used, regardless of the shape of the alb. The priest first washes his hands,
saying a particular prayer, and when the priest puts on the amice, he lets it
rest on the top of his head briefly and he says the prayer:
Impóne,
Dómine, cápiti meo gáleam salútis, ad expugnándos diabólicos incúrsus … Upon
my head, O Lord, place the helmet of salvation, so that I may defeat the
assaults of the devil. (cf Isaiah 59:17; Ephesians 6:17, 6:11)
Ah, how much we have lost…
