How ought we worship?

      I went back home at the end of June from a few months of being where the Latin Rite was the norm—low Masses during the week, high Mass for Sundays and feast days. I came back to a normal bilingual Novus Ordo Mass. I understood much more clearly why people object to the bilingual approach, but also was struck at the chaos in that liturgy. It had escaped me before because it was familiar, but now—well, the jumps and starts were startling. It was exacerbated by the way in which instruments were being used, drums and synth were more clear than the human voices and an extra “punch” was frequently delivered by the synth at the end of any short line of prayer or song. (The priest was speaking all of his parts in English, while the choir was leading all responses in Spanish).

The Eucharist was given to people not just by the priest but also by a laywoman.

There were good things to say about the homily, the priest encouraged us to go after our “lost sheep”--those who were baptised but are no longer practicing the faith. Still, I could not go back. For Sunday Mass, I started going further to attend the Latin Rite.

    On the First Friday of July, I went to the local parish in order to go to Mass only to discover that there was no Mass. Some women were reading the readings for the day and leading some prayers. When one of them announced the Our Father “to prepare for the Holy Eucharist” I left. How was this different from Methodists or Anglicans? A priest consecrated the host ahead of time, but still, I could not bear it. I looked online for “First Friday Latin Mass” and found an evening Mass at an SSPX chapel. So I went. People were praying the Rosary when I arrived and presently Mass began. It was a low Mass, followed by prayers of reparation led by the priest. One of the people their handed me a booklet that had the prayers they were using. The Mass itself brought tears to my eye. I didn’t quite cry, I don’t think, but close. It is easier to pray there.

    Weekday mass at the NO comes a little closer to the simplicity of the low Mass, but the prayers are not as rich and you still have the jarring conversation thing happening. In the Latin Rite, I do not feel under any pressure to know and follow each genuflection and prayer, but rather an open and free invitation to participate in the great Prayer of the Mass, to enter mysteriously into the very life of Christ, to gaze into His holy Face and be enraptured in His most Sacred Heart. Doubtless, where the Creed is sung, I will sing along. If it is a high Mass, I will likely be singing along wherever more than one voice is singing the ordinaries. I will often be murmuring the propers in their places, or simply as I come to them while using the missal as a prayer guide—and what prayers!

    Since I mentioned the First Friday, here is an example from that day: “O God, You mercifully deign to bestow on us in the Heart of Your Son, wounded by our sins, an infinite treasure of love; grant, we beseech You, that, rendering It the devout homage of our affection, we may also make a worthy reparation for our sins. Through the same, etc.”

    Another example of the rich yet ordinary prayers of the Mass of the Ages is the reminder at every high Mass of our baptism as we are sprinkled with Holy Water and we sing the Asperges Me.

    Then there is posture—when the priest is also facing Christ in the tabernacle, when we are all facing East together it directs us toward God. When priest and congregation are facing each other—well it is easier to get caught on the horizontal and miss the transcendent.

    So far, this has only been my impressions, but the thing is, I know that God cares about how He is worshiped. He tells the Samaritan woman that God is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth (as well as telling her that the Samaritans did not know what they worshiped in contrast to the Jews). Throughout the Old Testament God is concerned with right worship. Cain was not happy because God preferred Abel’s sacrifice to his. Abel’s worship was accepted, Cain’s not so much. When Moses was sent to free the Israelites, it was so that they could worship God in the way that He was calling them to do. Along the way people died because they brought the wrong kind of incense or because they challenged the priesthood ordained by God. Is the God we worship, not the same today, yesterday, and forever?

By the Waters of Babylon...

 Do you ever read a Psalm and it just hits you deeply, you pray it and it expresses more deeply what you might want to say or how you are feeling?

Psalm 137 is one of the Psalms that just stands out in sorrowful and passionate beauty--"If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her skill".  Ever since seeing Jerusalem in the Psalms as a type of the Church or a type of the heavenly Jerusalem, these lines have had a deeper significance.

We are exiles, and they require of us mirth.  "How can I sing the Lord's song in this foreign land?"

It is a haunting psalm deserving of some beautiful music.  The fragments I can hear in my head do not do it justice.

The end too, must not be left off, though perhaps a bit disturbing.  We have had too much white-washed and watered down.  It is better to look at it as it is.  Doubtless, the exile wished vengeance upon his enemies, and doubtless, we must be ruthless in crushing out our little vices that would keep us entrapped in exile in Babylon.

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, 

yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. 

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. 

For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;

and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,

Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;

if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem;

who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed;

happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

 

This week in reading through the year

Although I tend to prefer the lectionary, this year we have started doing a read through of the Bible.  So I will try to have a weekly Sunday post of the readings for the coming week.

Sunday, January 14 - Gn 27, Ps 14, Mt 16-17

Monday, January 15 - Gn 28-29, Ps 15, Mt 18

Tuesday, January 16 - Gn 30, Ps 16, Mt 19

Wednesday, January 17 - Gn 31, Ps 17, Mt 20

Thursday, January 18 - Gn 32-33, Ps 18:1-24, Mt 21

Friday, January 19 - Gn 34-35, Ps 18:25-50, Mt 22

Saturday, January 20 - Gn 36, Ps 19:1-6, Mt 23

A passion for truth

     When I entered the room set aside for the seminar, there were not many people.  As more people began to come in, I enjoyed listening and observing.  There was a student who was not here because she had to, but was grateful that Franciscan hosted these conferences and that she had the opportunity to learn from the speakers.  There was a man in olive pants, tweed jacket, and slightly muddy shoes whom I judged to be a speaker.  Especially when the student who was messing with the sound equipment came up to him with a little clip microphone.  There was a student with maybe a German accent (I discovered that I was correct in that assumption later) behind me, talking about classes and theology and marketing.  I caught a glimpse of her dark, long coat and skirt, and bright blue scarf in my peripheral vision.
Most of the people on the first day seemed to be older than myself.  I overheard talk of coming from Pittsburgh and New York, but it did seem as though most people probably had some connection to Franciscan University.
     To start the conference, a priest was invited up to pray.  His eyes were mostly directed up, but were very lively and warm.  It almost seemed as though he was uncomfortable standing in front of the group.  But he prayed.  It was a very earnest prayer, not long; but just thinking back to his prayer--I do not remember any precise words--still as he prayed for the Holy Spirit to work amongst us and bless our efforts to bear to witness to the truth I felt like crying.

Then James Kalb was introduced and he did an excellent job of introducing all that was to follow.  It was a thick sort of discourse.  I am very glad I took notes, but I certainly plan to go back and do some reading, which is the idea of this sort of thing--whet people's appetites for what is true and good and beautiful, and they should then continue to pursue the true and good and beautiful.  I am afraid I do not do that enough as a teacher.  Anyway, back to the topic.
     One of the points that stood out in the first discourse was the idea of restoring a healthy understanding of Natural Law.  This was brought up as a way to confront the current technocratic approach to life and law.
What is technocracy? "the government or control of society or industry by an elite of technical experts." This definition exactly fits what Dr. Kalb was talking about.  Part of his complaint against the current liberal technocratic approach is that there is a tendency to disregard the voices of those not considered experts and expertise is increasingly defined by an increasingly atheistic humanist world-view.  What is reality is described as atoms, the void and sensation.  Also, there is a denial that they are exercising power.  They merely recognize the power and rights of every person, and act as arbitrators--the neutral protectors of everybody else.
So how do we respond?  Compromise?  Emphasize our traditions in terms of symbolism?  Emphasize functionality?  These are not adequate.  There is no compromise, because they see themselves as outside the debates about right and wrong--the "technical experts" inform us of what we need to do and if we don't understand, we must be ignorant.  Remaining loyal to tradition and defending it with symbolism and rhetoric only plays to their claim that traditionalists are illogical and narrow-minded bigots.  Functionality--well, how can we even begin to talk about function unless we agree that things are ordered to purposes?  This is where an understanding of natural law could really help.
We also need to have a renewed understanding of ultimate goods, the importance of sacrifice in society--our need for God.  We cannot merely tell the world that something is wrong; we must show them something better.  "Nothing is going to get better unless we get better."

I'm not sure if it was in answer to a question, but at the end of my notes on the first presentation was this, "Not anti-institutional
                      God, thinking, church, community
                                                                   Goal?  Christendom?"

One of the criticisms leveled against the technocratic world view is that it is reductionist, broadly-- figure out what the properties of a thing are in order to do what you want to do with it.  This stands against a more traditional approach of seeing a whole system of life that cannot necessarily be completely understood.

The next lecture was not delivered by the author as the author was ill.  While the first had been somewhat dense in information, technical, thoughtful, and engaging; the next was engaging in a very different way.

It had more of an element of anecdote--describing writing, looking out the window and remembering growing up as a "free-range kid."  He spoke of the sense of wonder in childhood that some grow out of, and some grow out of early on in their childhoods.  He spoke of the importance of wonder in accepting God and in seeing the world for what it is rather than what we can get.  He illustrated the idea of wonder and its opposite, excessive ambition, by the way of Shakespeare's Tempest.  Now, The Tempest is a familiar play to me, and one of my favorites by Shakespeare, but to hear it described in terms of wonder--think of all the magic and music of Prospero's island--made me want to revisit the play.  I would absolutely love to see an excellent presentation of it.

Another lecture that still stands out after a year was by Sheila Liaugminas, a journalist.  She spoke about the power of words and the importance of telling stories that tell truth.  In that, she also emphasized reading and writing from a heart centered on the ultimate Truth.

For a few little thoughts:
Nihilism--This word keeps cropping up as a word to describe the current situation of culture in the West generally and in the United States in particular.

Humpty Dumpty language and the LBGT movement--turning words inside out to insist that what is bad is good, what is wrong is right.

Objective good--a restoration of this idea being near impossible without the restoration of a right understanding of natural law, which also came up in various people's talks.

Ultimately, it comes back to a need to recognize who God is and what has He called us to be.

The Necessity for Spiritual Food

I have lots of calorie-driven family and friends. I have learned that once they reach their "I need food to remain a nice person" point, they really need to eat some food. Otherwise, life will be unpleasant for everyone around them until they do get food. This can be applied to spiritual matters, as I realized this evening.
I was spending a bit of time reading the Bible and thinking about what I read. A while after I had finished reading and had taken my crocheting up again, I observed that in the short time between reading and thinking on the Bible and that moment, my outlook had altered for the better. I was a bit more energized and felt a bit more able to function in a decent and motivated manner. I seemed more able to focus on things. I began to think about what made the difference.
Why did I seem spiritually and emotionally energized after reading the Bible? I discerned that it was because I had just taken in spiritual food. Before I had read the Bible, I had been unknowingly starving for spiritual food and consequently very spiritually weak. When I took in some healthy, nourishing spiritual food, my spirit received energy and was able to function better. It was like the moment when a very hungry person has gotten some food. They savour it and then are able to get up from the table with renewed vigour to go about the tasks of the day.
If a Christian does not take in spiritual food on a regular basis, he will not be able to function spiritually. He will be spiritually starving himself. This is the reason it is so important that a Christian must be consistent about reading the Bible and communing with God. If he isn't, he will not be able to stand in a spiritual fight. He will be knocked over, easily overcome, and it will be difficult or nearly impossible to get up again. It would be easier for him to give up and die.
Tonight, the importance of reading the Bible frequently has been impressed on my mind. I knew before that reading the Bible was important and that it was spiritual food, but the implications of that have been made clear to me. Without consistent spiritual food intake, one will grow weak and unable to fight, causing him to lose and eventually die if not properly nursed back to health on nourishing, sustaining spiritual food, just as it is with physical food.