Liturgical Year : Activities : Farewell to Alleluia

Catholic Activity: Farewell to Alleluia

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Here is an old and beautiful custom of singing farewell to the Alleluia, a custom that leads the family into the penitential season of Lent.

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Reviving an old custom we make a farewell celebration of the Alleluia on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, singing it in all the tones we know from the year ‘round before we "give it up," the first Lenten sacrifice. Denying ourselves the most perfect expression of jubilation in our prayers, we are enabled to retreat deeper and deeper into the spheres of penance and self abnegation. (Many weeks from now there will come the great moment when the deacon approaches the Bishop with the words: "I announce to you a great joy: it is the Alleluia." And the priest sings it in three different keys before the gospel of the Holy Saturday Mass, the choir repeats it jubilantly, and we all rejoice again: "Alleluia: Glory be to him who is.")

Activity Source: Our Children's Year of Grace by Therese Mueller, Pio Decimo Press, St. Louis, Missouri, 1955