Interesting Use of Bells at Mass?

[Aeolian]

I went to a very solemn Mass two Sundays ago at an out-of torn parish and saw/heard the most wonderful application of bells that I have never seen/heard/read about before. The formal procession was lead by a thurifer (check) followed by two acolytes (check) followed by a server jingling some glorious sounding small bronze bells (maybe six?) on a rope. It certainly focused my attention on the procession. It was repeated on the recession.

I just had to talk to the pastor! He was very serious about it and said that we must use all five senses to experience the Mass. Both the smell of the incense and the sound of the bells focus us on the procession and recession. I said that made sense as in the East, they have added bells to the thurible to keep peoples’ attention on the incensing going on. He nodded knowingly and agreed. He had considered adding bells to the thurible but the ones they chose were far too big. I thought a bit more and reasoned that the neither the procession nor the recession are part of the Mass proper so there is nothing wrong with doing it.

Has anyone here seen this technique in a Latin Rite parish? What do you think? I think it was gorgeously ingenious the way they implemented it. I also cringed at how some other parishes might go about doing this.

 

[Crumpy]

I’ve never seen this, I think. Our Latin liturgies years ago were somewhat stripped down.

From what I can tell, bells are not used excessively even at the Vatican papal masses, but I think they are used at the consecration.

I’ve seen the so-called Latin masses on EWTN and I’ve never seen even a papal mass so complicated and ritualized.

When I used to serve Mass as an altar boy at Latin masses, my friends and I believed in firm and timely ringing, not too long and not too short. Sometimes we dared to ring these bells for like two seconds. That was really a statement and quite ceremonial. The priests never scolded us for any pattern of ringing.

My favorite set of bells was just that, four bells each with four small clappers. That gave a compound sound that was very cheerful. Then, for some reason, those bells were replaced with another set of compound bells, but these had some musical sharp sounds to it.

I suppose we would have said back then that we wanted to give people their money’s worth of bell ringing.

we weren’t shy about using the wooden clackers in procession on Good Friday. They sounded horrible, if they were out of synchronization, so we tried to “clack” evenly. Again, no wimpy clacking – you got your money’s worth there, too.Made your spine tingle to hear them.

Our entrance bells were electronically controlled tube chimes. Six buttons, once all the way from left to right at an even pace, then four buttons to the left. One guy (there’s always one) try to ring them as fast as he could, which gave an awful sound.

In the neighboring parish, they had a bell that was rung by pulling a chain and then releasing it. I thought it was too cheap a sound, but it was the standard there.

 

[PrayForMeStJude]

Just a random tidbit… In the Byzantine right, the thurible has 12 bells on it to symbolize the apostles, with one bell always silenced to represent Judas.

 

[smilodon]

Could also be a carryover from Jewish tradition. I’ve heard the High Priest had bells on the edge of his robe so they would know if he’s still alive when he’s in the Holy of Holies - and that they used to tie a rope to his foot to drag him out if he died.