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Tuesday 2 September 2008

The complex silences of prayer

It is sometimes hard to feel myself a part of the Reform2 crowd, (as the members of the Pangloss party would scornfully have it -- "all's for the best in this best of all possible liturgical reforms!",) when every time I come across something that seems to me to speak precisely toward problems in Mass as I currently experience it, or put perfectly into words some joy to be had in, or treasure to be mined from the Liturgy, it seems to point toward the usus antiquior, rather than an improved OF.
Fr Blake of http://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/, to describe the quality of those times we hear nothing, at least with our ears of flesh and blood, uses the phrase "accompanied silence."
And this may have been his, I can't remember, "the silence is conducive to prayer in the old rite; in the new rite it is often more about waiting than prayer."
It does often feel as if waiting to merely recognize a sound to which we can make our memorized but not internalized sound in return, waiting for "a cue" -- and never mind the added problem that I can't trust the other guy in the scene....
And I begin to think complexity of the silences is simply not great enough, to often.
In the quest for comprehensibility, (is that a word?,) things often seem to have been "cut down to size."
I did not not know at first that one of the points of departure between zealous adherents to the two rites, (as opposed to ambivalent wafflers such as myself,) is whether numerous things ought to happen at the same time.
The widespread idea that "now everybody sings!," "okay, now everybody must sit quietly and think, for 30 seconds," "it's time for everyone to line up to go receive Communion," is very out of tune with some parts of the Mass, and with the notion that we may licitly take different roles.
(The attempted enforcement of unanimity of posture is another symptom of of this.)

Too much going on, but not enough happening....?

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