Holy Mass or Unholy Mess?

Saint John Henry Newman, Victoria, BC

[Estimated read: 8 minutes]

If you, dear reader, are not bothered by the downward trajectory of the celebration of the Mass, or actively contribute to liturgical abuse (e.g., by disregarding the prescribed text of the Order of Mass), you might stand to benefit from reading this post.

SC 22:3. Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.

For those who acknowledge, affirm and defend the Mass and promote its solemn celebration, this post will likely amount to preaching to the choir. Even we members of the choir can profit from a tune-up as the need arises.

This is a brief meditation on the beauty of solemn liturgy, the necessity of reverence, and the truth that compels honest God-loving and God-fearing folk to worship God in the beauty of holiness.

Grace

We rely on God for the grace that sustains our faithful witness to His glorious Presence. We rely on His grace for the ability to respond to His invitation to embrace His Way, His Truth, and His Life. Without God's grace, the very life of God that makes possible our response and acceptance of His invitation, we force ourselves upon Him and begin to construct religion in our own image. We see this tendency playing itself out among many in the German hierarchy and elsewhere among those whose desire to reinvent the Faith merely confirms their loss of the need for grace to inform, form and transform their minds and hearts.

Intentions manifest as inventions

The Mass suffers at the hands of liturgical masons who mold ritual according to the liturgical rubric of me-myself-and-I. Beware, then, the idolaters. Too many folk, for all their training in the theological arts and/or liturgical zeal, have allowed themselves to be seduced by their own imaginative but twisted ideas about what it means to love as God loves, and the worship of Him in spirit and in truth (St. John 4:23-24). By routinely attempting to fit the Gospel into a worldly ideological framework rife with liabilities born of power hungry hearts, and by trying to filter out the inconvenient truths taught by Jesus and the Apostles, the patriarchs and prophets, they place themselves into a pantheon of false gods and make their fallen aspirations the object of worship. The celebration of the Mass, then, becomes a parody, a circus subject to whims of mitred brethren.

The heart breaks at the thought that, while the older form of the Mass is banned or barely tolerated, shocking examples of liturgical abuse commonly go unchallenged in the Pauline Mass. Perhaps contemporary attempts to rid the world of the older Mass are attempts to move tradition-minded Catholics back into Novus Ordo Missae (NOM) liturgies, so that their influence might refine the sensibilities of those who celebrate and attend NOM liturgies? The skeptics might say that that is a pipe dream, and a lie.

In this blogger's experience, many Latin Mass goers - not all, mind you - simply have no desire to engage the NOM because they have little to convince them that the NOM is redeemable. The NOM can be celebrated with dignity. Again, to many a Usus Antiquior enthusiast (tinged by schism or a misappropriation of authority?), that is hardly a reason to embrace the NOM.

Can the Novus Ordo Missae be rescued from the hands of ignorant and corrupt men? Is the Novus Ordo Missae worth saving? What is your answer?

Divine Worship, the Mass of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Ordinariate communities, is a form of the sacred liturgy in the vernacular that trains focus on the true orientation of the Mass. In Divine Worship, the following are foci:

• worship oriented to the Holy Trinity
• Jesus living among us
• the word of God heard in hieratic language
• humility in the presence of the living God
• adoration of the living God
• immersion in the one and same sacrifice of Calvary
• worthy reception of Holy Communion
• communion with the Holy Trinity as earthly members of the communion of the saints

The above list is only the beginning of the journey into Divine Worship.

The necessity of reverence, the beauty of solemn liturgy, and the truth.

Fr. Fr. Roland Guilmain

(W)e are called to reverence the name of God, the house of God, the Word of God, and the commands of God.

We must demonstrate this reverence by our actions. “Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father” (Matthew 5:16). “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him” (John 14:23).

Paul Krause | The Beauty of Reverence (Crisis Magazine)

Dr. Samuel Johnson, that famous and colorful English writer, may not have been a Catholic, but his devout Anglicanism still imparts an important truth for all of us today. Johnson said, “To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavor.” Our home, as we have previously said, is in the Body of Christ. To love that Body, to be happy in that Body, is to ensure the beauty and dignity of that Body. To cover that Body in mud, to tarnish it with mundane things, and to strip that Body like the greedy and wicked Romans, is to show no awareness of the reality of the Home which we find ourselves in.

“To be happy at home” is an important maxim because it also allows us to realize what lies in the vacuous center of a spirit of destruction. Those who destroy are not happy. They seek to change precisely because they are not appreciative. As such, they have nothing to revere and nothing to worship. Rebellion is the manifestation of this discontent. And, as we all know, rebellion makes everyone’s life more miserable, not just that of the revolutionary.

Reverence, then, is what accompanies appreciative worship. Reverence is directed to Christ out of the awareness of who we are and what we are in the presence of the Body of Christ. Reverence is the fruit of love. All things born of love are lovely and, as such, beautiful. And in that lovely and loving beauty we find the only true happiness that calms the restless heart: Christ, to whom every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess is Lord. 

In a recent article, Father Dwight Longeneker reminds us of the truth that

in a traditional celebration of Mass there is what (he calls) a “compendium of culture”: a combination of art, architecture, literature, logic, rhetoric, drama, poetry, metalwork, textile art, and woodwork. Why does this matter? It matters because matter matters. The foundation of the Christian faith is the incarnation of God’s Son who took flesh of the Blessed Virgin.

In the same article, Father Longenecker speaks briefly about the choreography of the Mass. In Divine Worship, more than the Novus Ordo Missae, we witness an abundance, vibrancy and precision of movement that points worshippers to the theological realities embodied in the Mass, realities offered by God for the illumination of minds and the salvation of souls. Divine Worship is choreographed in a manner that moves us into the sanctuary of the Lord.

Jesus Christ is the principal actor in the Mass. The Mass is Jesus' way to draw all men into communion with Him. The perichoresis or circumincession of the Divine Persons, the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is hinted at in the choreography of the Ordinariate Mass.

The doctrine of mutual penetration or indwelling of the three divine Persons was officially taught by the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century. The Council Fathers declared: "Because of this unity the Father is entirely in the Son and entirely in the Holy Spirit; the Son is entirely in the Father and entirely in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is entirely in the Father and entirely in the Son" (Denzinger 704). In theology this mutual indwelling has been called, since the eighth century, "circumincession" which comes from the Latin circumincedere and means "to move around in." The point of the teaching is to stress that the three divine Persons are perfectly one in being, knowing and willing. - ICU

Is it accurate to state that Divine Worship is an icon of the circumincession of the Persons of the Holy Trinity?

The sublime beauty of Divine Worship, a received beauty as can only be crafted and celebrated with the assistance of the Holy Ghost, that preserves the best of the Anglican liturgical patrimony, is God's art enticing us into communion with Him Who is the Beauty every human heart longs to embrace and to surrender itself.

reverentia "awe, respect," from revereri "to stand in awe of, respect, honor; revere," from re-, here perhaps an intensive prefix + vereri "stand in awe of, fear, respect" (from PIE root *wer "perceive, watch out for")

God is front and centre.

The Ordinariate liturgy inspires awe in the worshipper; awe for the works of God. How does the Ordinariate Mass do that? Great care is given to the celebration of the symbolism-rich ritual that disposes the heart and mind to God. To elevate the listener's ability to be present to the actions of God, the Ordinariate liturgy preserves awareness of Jesus, Who is the centre and summit of the Mass, by conforming its language and actions to the Faith received from God through the Apostles.

As we draw near to Holy Week and the Easter mysteries, may we each find our place in the sacred liturgy mindful of the price Jesus paid for our redemption. "O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam that gained for us so great a Redeemer."