The Truth About Good Friday Liturgy from Catholic Church
The prayer for the Jews in the pre-1955 Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday reads as follows :
" Let us pray also for the faithless Jews [perfidis Judaeis]: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. [No instruction to kneel or to rise is given, but immediately is said:] Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from Thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness [Judaicam perfidiam]: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen. " (Source: Liber Usualis Missæ et Officii pro Dominicis et Festis Duplicibus (in Latin), Rome and Tournai: Desclée, Lefebvre & Co., 1903, p. 356; Missale Romanum (PDF) (in Latin), Bonnæ ad Rhenum, 2005, pp. 221–222, archived from the original on September 26, 2019, retrieved January 2, 2022)
Regarding the omission of the genuflection from this prayer, Liturgist Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B., wrote:
" The Church has no hesitation in offering up a prayer for the descendants of Jesus' executioners; but in doing so she refrains from genuflecting, because this mark of adoration was turned by the Jews into an insult against our Lord during the Passion. " (Source: Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B. (2000). The liturgical year. Vol. VI. Passiontide and Holy Week. Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications. p. 485. ISBN 978-1-930278-03-5 )
The original Christians first addressed their missionary sermons to Jews from the Judea region and called on them to repent, to enable them to escape from the expected final judgment (Acts 2:38). The New Testament does not testify to a special prayer for Jews.
Around 100AD some early Church Fathers, such as Justin, occasionally counted Jews among the enemies for whom persecuted Christians should pray according to Jesus' commandment of love of enmity (Matthew 5:45) and his own request for forgiveness on the cross (Luke 23:34). This followed the example of Jeremiah, who had called on the Jews exiled in Babylon to pray for the good of the city. (Jeremiah 29:7)
Since the rise of the church to the Roman state religion from AD 380, the Christian mission among Jews had very little success. Only a few theologians such as Hieronymus and Leo the Great admonished Christians around AD 400 to include the Jews as unbelievers in their prayers, since they were the root of the Church.
Since about AD 500, a special Jewish prayer in the daily Mass has been known. However, this was only included in some measuring orders in Spain since AD 586. The Roman, Milan and Gallican Liturgies of the 6th century prayed for Jews, heretics and pagans only on Good Friday. The Sacramentarium Gregorianum, around the late 6th century, contained such Good Friday prayers. According to the Ambrosian Rite in the 8th century, they were formulated equally for all three groups and demanded that all of them include a genuflection.
Around 800, for the first time in the Salzburg chapters, then in the church mass books among the Carolingians, the interceding for the Jews, the usual invitation to the prayers, otherwise usual in all prayers, was missing. Amalarius justified this around 820 as follows:[6]
"In all prayers we bend the knee, (...) except when we pray 'pro perfidis Judaeis'. For they have bent their knees before Christ, but have turned a good custom into its opposite, since they did this as a mockery."
With this, he wrote the sneering knee fall of Roman soldiers who scourged and tortured Jesus before his crucifixion, mentioned in Matthew 27:29 and Mark 15:19. This justification prevailed throughout the Church, as such, the genuflection in the prayer for the Jews was omitted.
A handwritten marginal note on the sacramentarium of Saint-Vast (10th century), translated in 1924 justified the elimination of the genuflection. It was as follows:
"Here none of us [priests] should bow down because of the fear that the wrath of the Christian people instilled in his priests."
Pope Pius XI had been reportedly in favour of the changes and asked the Sacred Congregation of Rites to review the matter. They commissioned Benedictine abbot Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, a specialist in the liturgy, to assess these proposals. He spoke out unreservedly for its implementation and described the omission of genuflecting as biblically unjustifiable. The congregation recommended the acceptance of the requested changes and submitted its opinion to the Holy Office for review. They first consulted Dominican friar Marco Sales, considered close to Pius XI. He initially accepted that, from the point of view of faith and doctrine, there was no reason to object to the proposed liturgical reforms. However, in view of the Catholic tradition, they were considered inappropriate and not useful and argued that:
1) All the criticized parts of the Jewish prayer, including the omission of the kneeling and the 'Amen', had already appeared in the ancient Church. As "venerable holy liturgy, dating back to antiquity", they escape any reformability.
2) If such interference in this tradition were to be allowed to a private association, one would not come to an end and could just as well allow the removal of offensive passages in the apostolic credo, the improvers and the curse psalms from the liturgy. These contained much harsher formulations for Jews.
3) "Perfidis" always means a breach of words and contracts: This is exactly what God himself accuses the Jews in the Bible. Sales referred to Deuteronomy 20:27, 31:16, Psalm 78:57, 2 Corinthians 17:15 and Acts 7:5.
4) Just as God had only made a covenant with the Jewish people, only those who had broken this covenant and continued it constantly: therefore the expression "perfidis" is appropriate for them, and not for the pagans.
5) No one could accuse Pope St. Pius V, the author of the Missale Romanum, of anti-Semitism, since he had always stood up for the Jews.
6) According to Matthew 27:25, the Jews themselves assumed responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ.
" And Jesus walked in the temple, in Solomon's porch. The Jews therefore came round about him, and said to him: How long dost thou hold our souls in suspense? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them: I speak to you, and you believe not: the works that I do in the name of my Father, they give testimony of me. But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep.
My sheep hear my voice: and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them life everlasting; and they shall not perish for ever, and no man shall pluck them out of my hand. That which my Father hath given me, is greater than all: and no one can snatch them out of the hand of my Father. Because I and the Father are one. The Jews then took up stones to stone him. Jesus answered them: Many good works I have shewed you from my Father; for which of these works do you stone me? The Jews answered him: For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, maketh thyself God. Jesus answered them: Is it not written in your law: I said you are gods?
If he called them gods, to whom the word of God was spoken, and the scripture cannot be broken; Do you say of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world: Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though you will not believe me, believe the works: that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father. They sought therefore to take him; and he escaped out of their hands. " (John 10:23-39)
(For more know about Judaism, read it : https://romancatholictraditional.blogspot.com/2025/03/what-catholic-church-views-about.html?m=1 )
Reflection for Non-Jews such as Saracens (Mohammedans) and Heretics who deny the Divinity of Christ:
If your faith and religion are no better than those of the Jews (Pharisees), who understood that Jesus clearly claimed himself as One with Father, the same essence as the Father, and to be from the Father, and even the only begotten Son, conceived by the Father before all ages, then you will receive torment and punishment in Hell that is more severe than the Jews. (Matthew 5:20)
If you believe in Jesus, then you must believe that He is the Word of God who took on human flesh to be incarnated as a means of atonement for human sin. He became human without changes His Divine Nature, but controls His Incarnation as Human Nature so that as we as Human, can be crucified on the Cross. His Divinity and His Humanity are united, not altered, but not separated, but He has two different natures on His One Person. He who is the Word of God is certainly also God, because The Word is consubstantial with God. Anyone who denies the Divinity of The Word, should be questioned about their concept of monotheism. The Jews denied Jesus as the Messiah because of their worldliness, wanting the Messiah to be their Antichrist-like King of the world. But the Unitarians and Saracens are far more hypocritical and worse than the Jews because they have changed the Gospel of Christ with denial of Christ's Divinity.
(For more know about Hypostatic Union, please read it : https://romancatholictraditional.blogspot.com/2024/12/council-of-ephesus-431-ad-affirmed-that.html?m=1 and this : https://romancatholictraditional.blogspot.com/2024/11/council-of-chalcedon-451-citation.html?m=1 , and about Hypocrisy of Mohammedanism, please read it : https://romancatholictraditional.blogspot.com/2025/03/catholic-church-has-fought-against.html?m=1 and this : https://romancatholictraditional.blogspot.com/2026/03/exposing-origin-of-mohammedanism-from.html?m=1 )
