Rediscovering the Dry Mass (Missa Sicca)
Dry Mass. An anonymous author writing as Simon de Cyrène remembered on PellegriniNellaVerità.com his early youth when as a 20-year-old he spent several weeks of spiritual retreat at the Charterhouse of La Valsainte in the Swiss canton of Fribourg to examine whether he had a Carthusian vocation. He says that the Carthusians practised the Missa Sicca – the dry Mass - every day, in addition to the Conventual and individual masses.
Covid Curfew. When the Coronavirus curfew was imposed and the bishops prohibited attending Mass, Simon de Cyrène found this devotional practice to sustain him spiritually, since watching Masses on television or via the internet didn’t appeal to him. The Dry Mass is the recitation of the prayers of Mass, without the Roman Canon and Communion. Faithful, deprived of their priest, used to recite a Dry Mass and even sang it. The Missa Sicca was a common form of devotion in the medieval Church when a wedding or funeral was …More