"The Thursday of Mysteries"

Isn't that a beautiful way to describe today?
I've only just learned it.

I appreciate that word "mysteries" used synonymously with "sacraments," very much.
At Eastern Rite liturgies I've always thrilled a bit at the phrase, "I will not reveal Your Mysteries to your enemies," as if we were suddenly plunged by the universality and sacred timeliness/timelessness of the Sacrifice into penal times, or the first century and were willing to die rather than betray the goings-on in the catacombs to the authorities.
One doesn't see it much in the West, although the sheet music from which I first learned the Bruckner Locus Iste translated sacramentum that way, IIRC.
This is, I promise you, not about aesthetic snobbery, but the music that will happen tonight at any of the Roman Catholic churches within reach will be so jarringly bad or inappropriate that I was casting about for an alternative, and my default Byzantine parish seems not to be having any liturgy tonight, can that be possible?
(Here, I can prove, at least to my own satisfaction that it's not snootiness on my part - if it were not a thousand miles away I would attend an Extraordinary Form Mass I used to hear with some regularity, where the propers that are not sung recto tono or to a psalm tone would be unrecognizable they would be rendered so badly, by a choir that included on singer with a voice like an electric cheese grater. The appropriate done badly by worshipers giving their best is more fitting than the inappropriate done well by worshipers giving their favorites.)
Anyway, I found a church, (of a rite that I don't know well at all,) whose bulletin gives a time for Liturgy of  Thursday of Mysteries.
(And between Holy Orders and Eucharist, and washing of the feet - do Easterners do that? dont know -  our evening will be filled with Mystery.)
Was this Father Hardon?

"A mystery is not a truth about which we can know nothing. It is a truth about which we cannot know everything."

Reblog: "I'm not a Trad, but..."

I am in a very different place, (literally and figuratively,) from when I wrote this, and I'm coming to understand, and sympathize with, people on both extremes of this issue, the True Believers in the Liturgy Wars.
An Extraordinary Form Mass, a regular celebration of the Mass of the Ages has just become available to me, not too far away, and on a weekday so it doesn't usually interfere with either my parish duties, (voluntary) or my familial duties, (voluntary and yet on compulsion.)
But at the same time I am experiencing a reprieve from the sadly perfunctory and weird liturgies that are my usual lot with beautiful and careful Masses said by someone who is at about the furthest one can go in the other direction  from the EF while still being obedient and rubrically correct.
And thrown into the mix, a one-off Are-you-kidding-me Eucharistic celebration complete with off-the-leash pets, and a little labyrinth-induced game of Find the EMHC.
(Someone, PLEASE! what is with modern church architecture that encompasses aisles that dead end????!?@??)
But I think most of this, other than that dealing my employment, still holds true:

If I ...were free to participate where and when and how I would, the Extraordinary Form would not be my first choice.But now, praise Benedict and the motu proprio, I am at least entitled to ask for that, whereas I am not entitled to ask for the Ordinary Form with the Ordinary sung in Latin.Or the Ordinary Form with the priest facing ad orientem. Or the Ordinary Form with no jokes. Or the Ordinary Form without being asked to squawk Lord of the Dance. Or the Ordinary Form without a glad-handing rotary convention inserted where the Pax Christi is offered. Or the Ordinary Form where no adolescent in a football jersey will address me from the sanctuary. Or the Ordinary Form with no mention of Jambalaya or sports enthusiasms.So I am asking for the Extraordinary Form.And my aspirations are rightful.

Reading For Comprehension

An opinion piece in Homiletic and Pastoral Review has occasioned quite a bit of comment in my online ovals, (they are far too off-kilter to call "circles.")
It is called "Questions Regarding the Use of Latin in Celebrating the Mass" and it boils down pretty much to Do you think it should be? and then an answer of No.
The Pharmacist/Philosopher starts off with an example of a verse of a Latin hymn and asks the reader to "pray the text...without performing an internet search or using an online translation."

I'm not typical because I took Latin in middle and high school.
Well, I suppose I should say rather than "took," that I was "given" Latin.
And I gave precious little back.
Oh, I did well enough to get highest marks on the College Board "achievement test", but that tells you all you need to know about the follies of reading too much into test scores.
I've forgotten most of it, but I had no problem with his example, the one word I didn't recognize I could deduce, from the English "irrigation."

Other in my online ovals might think I already knew that verse, but I am a little ashamed to say that while I recognized it as the sequence for Pentecost, I honestly did not know the Latin, I have only ever sung or spoken it in English, (and often done neither as the celebrant didn't have time for all that stuff, optional or otherwise,) but that is neither here nor there.

He goes on to fret about possible lack of understanding of the Eucharistic Prayer/Canon, on the part of the priest, and therefore, a defect in his intention, which would invalidate the Sacrament.
Seriously?
If a celebrant doesn't know, and remember, and understand the EP in his native language well enough to be quite sure of his intentions when reading from a missal in Tagalog, in French, hell, in Klingon, were it licitly translated, HE IS NOT COMPETENT TO SAY MASS PERIOD.

It is odd, is it not? that anti-Latin forces, (among which I count this Pharmacist/Philosopher,) continue to harp on a priest's possible incompetence, lack of comprehension and mispronunciation of Latin, and no one ever seems to campaign against non-Latino priests stumbling through Spanish-language Mass to be pastoral; or worry that the English language Mass celebrated in the United States by your local Ghanaian or Pakistani priest may not be valid.

My, I do go on...
And I haven't even arrived at my actual points.

There are two of them.

One of them is the mistaken message given by too much emphasis on comprehension -- that the miracle of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the confection of the Eucharist, the infusion of Grace by the actions of God the Holy Spirit is somehow open to human understanding.

IT IS NOT.

It is SUPERNATURAL.

It is beyond our comprehension.

And the other is amusement that the type of Catholic, (I do not include the Pharmacist/Philosopher in this, I have no idea of where he stands on this,) who is most likely to say that the people can't PRAY unless the WORDS are simple enough and familiar enough, is also the type of Catholic most likely to love and repeat ad nausum the probably misattributed to St Francis of Assisi, "PREACH the Gospel at all times, if  necessary, use WORDS."

It seems to me that the Person to Whom prayers are directed is more sure to understand them perfectly even if we don't use words than is the person to whom preaching the Gospel is directed, no?

Maybe that's just me.

(Oh, and whilst I think of it, "Some of the differences between the two Masses are the direction the priest faces while celebrating the Mass, the music, the prayers, and the languages used during the celebrations"? Umm.... no. Of  those four exactly ONE is actually a "differences between the two Masses.")

The Tridentine Low Mass as a "Sane and Solemn Tonic" to Liturgical Shenanigans

Kevin Di Camillo has a lovely piece at NCRegister about his discovery of the Extraordinary Form.

I am, of course, disposed to give a friendly hearing to the ideas of anyone who flat out says,

"I had no 'reaction' to the 'new Mass', no axe to grind, no animosity— only a vague curiosity as to why Pope Benedict (who, if nothing else, was obviously a bona fide genius......) would 'bring back the Latin Mass.'" [emphasis supplied]

And although our experiences were very different, he shared this question with me - what is this strange thing that so many find "so appalling"?

It was the irrational virulence of that ... hatred is not too strong a word... that demanded of me to experience something so apparently frightening and powerful.

It is, of course, easy to throw the new Mass under the bus, and that is (a) wrong, and (b) not my point. My point is simply that in a world where we each have more email, voicemail, texts, meetings, and Skype-chats than we could possibly digest in a lifetime, the Tridentine Mass offers a complete contemplative oasis. You have the right to be silent when you pray. True, on Sunday at the Novus Ordo, we SHOULD sing "loud-and-proud"— but at Low Mass you can be, you MUST be, silent before your God.
This I found (and find) wonderfully fulfilling — and terrifying. “Fulfilling” in the sense of theosis: as the Mass culminates in Holy Communion, one is literally filled with the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is, of course, absolutely true in the Novus Ordo as well— but this is “terrifying” in that the quieter it is the more one is AWARE that this is happening. Christ becomes present again, and we are about to receive him in perfect silence— not even an "Amen" after communicating.

I'll just add, I myself prefer a diffident dialogue Mass, but different strokes...

A Love Story

A priest on the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name -- at least, not in most chanceries.

Well, that rules out the first one that popped into your head, doesn't it? (Admit it!)

Hmmm... what could it be? what would be frowned upon in most of the halls of power of American Catholicism? they're a pretty enlightened bunch, right? forgiving of human foibles, morally flexible, in that who-am-I-to-judge way.

What in the world would cause them to be getting all judgy?

Of course! you know what it is -

“So what do you think of the Tridentine Mass, Bishop?” Sweat began to form on my brow...
It is a scene which has happened to me many a time, and which is very familiar to young priests all over the world. All of a sudden, I was no longer just one priest among others. I was a marked man. I had committed the not very original sin of being one of “those priests,” the kind who celebrated the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. I was an enigma to the many friends I had made in the communities who enjoy exclusive use of the pre-conciliar liturgical books...
And I was a mystery to my brother priests and even some of my parishioners who couldn’t square the man they knew as their friend, who seemed so jovial, fun-loving and open-minded...
At dinner, my dear father in God, the successor to the apostles, shared with us, “I remember the Tridentine Mass when I was a boy. I served that Mass. I still remember the responses: Introibo ad altare Dei; ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. But it was not beautiful. We had priests who said Low Mass in fifteen minutes and had no idea what they were saying. I lived through all of that. I am done with that. I like the English Mass, and I don’t want to go back.” One can hardly argue with another man’s experience: it is what it is, it is his experience, and you can’t discount that.
Then the priest who launched the cannonball turned the discussion to the contemporary adherents of the extraordinary Mass, “They’re all crazy. They’re just nostalgic for a past they have never known. And most of them are just the walking wounded."...
they would always see my penchant for the “Trad” thing as a character flaw, a foible, an inexplicable eccentricity. 

Fr Smith is a delightful writer, (and wonderful speaker, any opportunity you have to hear him preach, or deliver and address, take it!)
"Inexplicable eccentricity" :oD
Go read the rest of the blog post, and learn how a Baptist kid discovered the glories of liturgical prayer, Catholicism and the Roman Rite and "fell in love."

Signs and Wonders

We drove some distance to go to Mass on Sunday.
It was Mothers' Day and I couldn't bear, didn't want to risk going to our parish, and besides, I don't often have the opportunity to attend the Extraordinary Form.
We arrived early, and after praying before Mass,  I was talking to my Mother and Father, as is my wont.
How much Mom had loved it the few times I was able to bring here there.
I've been laughing lately, somewhat ruefully, that the Almighty only breaks the laws of nature, only gives us miracles when they are necessary, for faith - so if you already believe you're plumb out of luck! No miracles for YOU....
But gee, wouldn't a sign be swell? just a little one? Dad? Mom?
No, I know. It isn't necessary.
But would it kill ya?
That's okay.
I feel especially close to my parents, really to all my family, even those I never knew, in Church. At Mass, especially at the Latin Mass that generations of them sang and prayed.
I love this from a letter of St. Teresa of the Andes:

How I would have loved to be by your side...But our souls met by the tabernacle.

And so they do.
Our souls meet by the tabernacle.

Anyway, I need to take advantage of the few weeks this time of year when I can get there, you know, long drive or not, before it's back to the dry, minimalism of...
Wait, what?.... what's the priest saying, what' he announcing before Mass?
He's being transferred, he won't be available to say the EF for them any more down here.

He's being transferred

He's being transferred to a parish in my town.

Signs and wonders, signs and wonders

An Anglican-style Rosary

This is NOT really what the post is about, but Fr Hunwicke's description of the Rosary As Weapon, (to quote a bumper sticker one sees hereabouts,) caught my eye:

Fr Wason began Solemn Rosary ... not one of those rapid Irish Rosaries with the laity racing into the Sancta Maria before the priest has even got to the fructus ventris tui, but a slow, meditative, Anglican Rosary in which, at the end of each Mystery, Father preached about it generously and extensively, allowing no typological crumb to fall unexamined to the ground.

Against all odds, the morning Rosary with a bunch of other weekday Mass-goers has become my thang.
And a mighty good thang it is, too.

Rose Vestments....

.... thoughtful homily; reverent, deliberate ministers, (including the servers.)

Who cares that there was nothing approaching unanimity regarding the rubrics for the congregation?

(I've lightened up on that ever since I was told by someone who seemed to know that sort of thing, that for all intents and purposes, there WERE no rubrics for the congregation. As long as no one is giving anyone else the skunk eye for saying the dialogues, o genuflecting twice in the Credo, it's all good - live and let pray and let pray.)

Humilty, and Me-mility

Yesterday in Sunday School, while discussing I can't remember what, I was moved to confess to my fifth-graders that I have an enormous head, and am full of myself and always think I'm the smartest person in the room... or at least I did.

So I disagreed with a lot of people, about a lot of things.
And there was a thing, or two, about which I simply disagreed with the Church. (I'm not talking about prudential matters.)

Well, about 20 years ago, and I don't know what occasioned this brain storm, but I somehow finally realized that over many decades, many centuries there were and had been many men and women, a whole lot wiser, and a whole lot more learned and a whole lot holier who thought differently from me, who thought with the mind of the Church.

And I realized that it was possible that they were right. Maybe probable that they were right.

Okay, they were right.

Which meant I was wrong.

And I decided that I could accept something without understanding it, I would accept it. I would simply surrender.
And I learned so much, and so many things became so much better for me, and easier for me, and more meaningful for me, and things in my life came together, and... but that's really not the point.

The point is, I need to listen to people who are wiser and more erudite and holier than I am.
And I try to.
So...

What am I to make of this?

After having devoted nearly forty years to a worthy “reform of the reform”; after having taught and defended the Novus Ordo Missae to the best of my ability; after having composed — to a certain acclaim, even from a dean of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Liturgy — an entire monastic antiphonal in modal plainchant for the French liturgical texts; after having composed hundreds of plainchant settings for the Proper of the Mass in the vernacular; after having fought mightily for the restoration of the Proper Chants of the Mass; after having argued to the point of exhaustion for an intelligent obedience to the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani; after having poured myself out in lectures and in preaching to priests, seminarians, and religious, I am obliged to conclude that I could have better spent my time and my energy humbly carrying out the traditional liturgy such as I discovered it — and such as I so loved it — in the joy of my youth. I say this not with bitterness but with the seasoned resignation of a weary veteran lately come home from an honourable defeat in the liturgical Thirty Years War.

 (And this?)

Dom Mark made a powerful impression on me a few years ago.
I have to  think about all this.
No, I have to pray about it.