The custom of concealing behind the altar during the last part of the office the last and most elevated candle, and of bringing it forward burning at the end of the service, is a manifest allusion to the death and resurrection of Christ, whose light, as Micrologus observes, is represented by our burning tapers.  “I am the light of the world”.  John VIII. 12[50].  In the same manner the other candles extinguished one after another may represent the prophets successively put to death before their divine Lord:  and if we consider that the psalms of the old Testament are recited at the time, this explanation may appear more satisfactory than others, which would refer them to the blessed Virgin, the apostles and disciples of Christ[51].  In the triangular form of the candlestick is contained an evident allusion to the B. Trinity.  This candlestick is mentioned in a MS. Ordo of the 7th century published by Mabillon.

[Sidenote:  Chant, lamentations.]

The anthems and psalms, with the exception of the Miserere which is the last psalm at Lauds, most of the lessons and other parts of the office, are sung in plain chant.  From the middle of the 15th century the three lamentations or first three lessons of each day used to be sung in canto figurato in the papal chapel:  but by order of Sixtus V, only the first lamentation of each day is thus sung, and even it is much shortened, as Clement XII directed:  the two others are sung in canto piano according to Guidetti’s method.  The first lamentation both of the first and second day is by the celebrated Pierluigi da Palestrina:  that of the third day by Allegri.  Baini observes, that the first lamentation of the second day is considered the finest:  Palestrina composed it for four voices, besides a bass, which entering at the pathetic apostrophe ’Jerusalem, Jerusalem, be converted to the Lord’ “every year makes all the hearers and singers, who have a soul, change colour”.  Bayni, Mem.  Stor.  T. 1.  The lamentations of Jeremiah have the form of an acrostic, that is, the verses begin with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in regular order, the first with Aleph, the second with Beth, and so in succession.  It was difficult to observe a similar order in the Latin Vulgate:  but to preserve some vestige of it, the name of the Hebrew letter, with which each verse begins in the original, is sung before the same verse in the translation.

[Sidenote:  Conclusion of the office.]

When the Benedictus or canticle of Zachary and its anthem are finished, the choir sings the verse “Christ was made for us obedient even unto death”:  on the second night they add “even unto the death of the cross”:  and on the third, “for which reason God hath exalted him, and hath given him a name, which is above all names”.  The heart of the christian is melted to devotion by these words, sung on so solemn an occasion:  he kneels before his crucified Redeemer, and recites that prayer