Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Sunday 23 May 2010

"Eleven O'Clock Always Comes"

A line of Himself's that he dusts off whenever he or someone else is in a turkey, or an underprepared piece, or part of a cast that just isn't meshing, or has a rotten director, or crazy producer, is in a run where the cast is being decimated by flu and understudies and stage managers with script in hand are scrambling to pretend something worth watching is on display, or what have you...

Meaning, yeah, the next three hours might seem like torture, (yes, to the performers as much as to the audience, civilians!) but it will all be over by the end of the evening.
You can count on it.

(He said it to me more than once last week, need I add...)

Anyway, I realized at Mass this morning that I often, well, not that often, but TOO often, think something similar -- the Consecration always comes, the Spotless Victim is always offered upon the altar, the Body and Blood of Christ is always administered to unworthy me, it's always Mass.

Even when the celebrant is saying the creed the way he thinks it should have been written, (I wonder at the whinging of those who don't like the new translation - the sorts doing the whinging, seem to me the ones most liable not to be saying the text of the Mass as given now, who expects them to say the new translation any more faithfully?), when the songs are absurdly ego-centric, when the psalmist is wailing his performance in a key too high for him, when the servers are visibly and distractingly gazing around themselves instead of, well... actively participating, even when I haven't prayed over the readings as much as I should have, even when the kid in the pew behind me is kicking the back of my seat, even when the homily makes no sense or is inappropriately agenda-driven, even when the musical setting of the Ordinary we're being asked to sing does not respect the integrity of the Missal, even when the Penitential Rite is truncated (not replaced, as would have been lovely and appropriate, with a Sprinkling Rite,) --

Jesus always comes.

And that's why I shall always be grateful for the Catholic Fiath.

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