What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

You will remember that H.E. Arthur Serratelli, Bishop of Patterson  (NJ – USA) started a series of presentations on the recovery of the sacred.

Part 1

There is good stuff Part 2.  His Excellency this time makes a distinction about liturgy as a divine activity, an encounter with the transcedent and what can reduce that encounter or block it.

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The Liturgy of the Church is a moment where all the dimensions of our lives come before the living God. [So often since the Council it has been claimed that Mass is a human experience, rather than an encounter with the divine.] It is the place where we have an active encounter with God.  It is the place, therefore, where we can rediscover the sacred in our lives.

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Certain settings demand their own particular etiquette. [The aptum et pulchrum has been lost in most dimensions of society, but it is especially lacking in liturgical practice far and wide.]  Dress at a wedding reception differs from dress at a sports event.  Conversation in a bar is louder than in a funeral home.  The more we realize we are coming into the Presence of God in Church, the more respectful and reverent our whole person becomes.  Chewing gum in Church, loud talking, beach attire and immodest dress simply do not belong!

In church, we need to cultivate a sense of God who is present to us.  This is why we are called to observe moments of silence.  Both before Mass begins and during Mass.  Liturgy is much more than our joining together.  It is our opening ourselves to God.  By our singing and praying, we respond to the God who addresses us in Liturgy.  A constant torrent of words and songs filling every empty space in the Liturgy does not leave the heart the space it needs to rest quietly in the Divine Presence.

In the Annunciation, after the angel announces to Mary that she is to be the Mother of the Lord and Mary gives her fiat, there is silence (cf. Lk 1:38).  In this pregnant silence, that Word becomes flesh. Mary remains the model of the disciple before the Word of God.  She reminds us that we need moments of silence for God to enter our life.  We need those moments in our personal prayer and in the Liturgy.  [This is similar in some respects to a sermon I gave in NJ last year, in Camden!]

In the Liturgy recorded in the last book of the New Testament, in the Book of Revelation, the word proskynein (to bow) is used twenty-four times—more than in any other part of the New Testament.  John, the author of the Book of Revelation, presents this heavenly Liturgy as the model and standard for the Church’s Liturgy on earth.  Our body bowed in prayer acknowledges the Lord’s majesty.  It visibly confesses our belonging to God who is the Lord of all. Here is a strong reminder of the place of body in Liturgy.  [So, bodily posture does make a difference.]

We are not just spirit when we pray.  We pray in our total reality as body and spirit.  And so, to recapture the sense of the sacred, therefore, we need to express our reverence through our body language.  The norms of the Liturgy wisely have us stand in prayer at certain moments, sit in attentive listening to the readings, and kneel [KNEEL!] in reverent adoration during the solemn prayer of consecration.  These norms are not arbitrary nor are they left to the discretion of any individual celebrant. [Say the Black.  Do the Red.]

Creativity is not an authentic rule for celebrating the Church’s Liturgy.  In many cases, it humanizes [See above!] the Liturgy and draws attention from God to the celebrant.  The priest is merely the servant of the Liturgy, not its creator or center.

Commenting on this, Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, said: “The greatness of the Liturgy depends — we shall have to repeat this frequently—on its unspontaneity (Unbeliebigkeit)…. Only respect for the Liturgy’s fundamental unspontaneity and pre-existing identity can give us what we hope for: the feast in which the great reality comes to us that we ourselves do not manufacture but receive as a gift (Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 170).  Since the Liturgy is a gift and not something of our own creation, it takes great humility to celebrate the Liturgy properly and reverently.

Observing the norms of the Liturgy helps to create a profound sense of the sacred in each of us at Mass.  Celebrating Mass and observing liturgical norms also makes us visibly one with the entire Church to which we belong.  “Priests who faithfully celebrate Mass according to the liturgical norms, and communities which conform to those norms, quietly but eloquently demonstrate their love for the Church” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 52).  [In Sacramentum caritatis, His Holiness makes a strong connection between who we are and how we pray.  We are our rites.]

Today it has become commonplace at the end of the Liturgy to recite a litany of gratitude for all those who, in some way or another, have made the celebration beautiful.  ["I would like to thank the mother of the lady who folded the napkins for the luncheon to follow…"] No doubt there is a way to express gratitude at the end of Mass.  But is it possible that each time applause breaks out [I know applause was common in the ancient churches, but I just can’t abide it.] in the Liturgy at the end of the Mass for someone’s contribution, we lapse into seeing the Mass as a human achievement? Sometimes even during the Mass after someone has sung a beautiful hymn, there is spontaneous applause.  At such a moment, does not the real meaning of Liturgy lapse into some kind human entertainment?

There is a good piece at NLM.  In a nutshell, a diocesan priests spent time with the FSSP learning about the older form of Mass.  The experience changed him.

I would characterize my experience as frankly stunning, and even life changing. I must admit that the experience has recast my understanding of the priesthood to some degree.

Also, by this intensive introduction to the ancient Roman liturgical tradition, I now more fully understand the paradigm shift and rupture that Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has spoken of. I can’t help but feel that once the adolescent rebellion of liturgical abuse and rejection of our living heritage subsides, they will be there to help all of us reclaim and reinvigorate the Latin Rite in a way that is truly organic and faithful to our roots, strengthening and in some areas reestablishing a vibrant Catholic identity.

This is exactly the point I have been hammering all along. 

Pope Benedict is convinced that the Church has a right to her own language, symbols and identity.

I direct your attention back to what I wrote elsewhere on this blog:

Pope Benedict is working to re-root celebrations of Holy Mass in the tradition whence it emerged.  He has written that it was unreasonable that a rite of Mass so important to the Catholic Church for so long should suddenly be virtually forbidden.  He wrote in the past about how liturgy grows slowly and organically, from rites and cultures enriching each other.  The Novus Ordo, stitched together by experts on table tops, constituted a break in this process.  Derestriction of the older form of Mass will help to heal people hurt by the loss of the older rite.  Widespread celebrations will have an impact on the way the Novus Ordo is celebrated… and vice versa!  It cannot be otherwise.  This has already been happening.  ...

...  Above all, the document will make concrete Benedict XVI’s desire for a “hermeneutic of continuity”.  A “hermeneutic” is a principle of interpretation, like a lens through which you examine a question.  In his 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia, His Holiness spoke of a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” used by many after the Council.  This resulted in a terrible break with our tradition.  For many it is as if nothing good or worth preserving happened before Vatican II.   Pope Benedict is working to reestablish continuity with the past, though not uncritically, through a “hermeneutic of reform”.  Derestriction of the older form of Mass must be seen as part of his vision for this reform, this rebuilding of continuity with the Church’s tradition.

The fact is that even now younger priests who have learned about the older Mass change their way of saying the newer Mass.  At the same time, celebrations of the older Mass today are more than likely so much better than they were before the Council precisely because of the experience (good and bad) gained from the last few decades.

With a biretta tip to Fr. Blake,   o{]:¬)    I offer for your consideration a piece in the Jerusalem Post.  This fits the famous "Tridentine template" which includes the obligatory elements of any ignorant article about the Motu Proprio.  

But this piece, below, is something else entirely.    It includes a couple very interesting images, juxtaposed.  As yourself why, after reading this (My emphases and comments)

The Vatican is expected to publish this week a document authorizing the use of a controversial Latin Mass, parts of which are deemed anti-Semitic,  [By whom?   And, is this claim actually true?] the Holy See announced Thursday.

According to a report in Britain’s Independent newspaper, some clergy fear that if the Latin Mass [Ooopppsss] were brought back into common use, it would limit the Church’s dialogue with Jews and Muslims, as well as create a schism among Catholics worldwide.  [Again and again, the issue of ecumenism pops up.  However, what non-Catholic critics really want is that Catholics not actually be Catholic, that they sacrifice their identity for the sake of dialogue.   However, as I have written many times elsewhere, Pope Benedict believes the Church has a right to her own language, symbols, forms of prayer and identity.  She has a right to a voice in the public square, using her own language and symbols, expressing her own identity.  This is one of the deeper purposes of the MP.  This is what smarter critics of the Church and MP are really afraid of.]

The 16th-century Tridentine Mass – recited every Good Friday – refers to Jews as "perfidious," and claims they live in "blindness" and "darkness." The Mass prays that God might "take the veil from their hearts" so that Jews can come to acknowledge Jesus Christ.

Rev. Keith Pecklers, an expert on Jesuit liturgy, [Which is really a good way of saying it, though it sounds like a contradiction of terms.] told the Independent that elements [Note well the ideologically charged label "element"] in the Church who embraced the old Mass tended to oppose "collaboration with other Christians and [the Church’s] dialogue with Jews and Muslims." [Again, its all about dialogue with non-Catholics.]

Currently, priests who wish to recite the Latin Mass, which was replaced in 1969 with liturgy in the vernacular, must receive permission from their bishops.

Pope Benedict’s decision, some believe, is an attempt to bring the ultra-traditionalist Society of St. Pius X group back under the auspices of the Vatican. The move has been opposed by many senior representatives of the Catholic Church in Britain, including Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, as well as Jewish leaders.   [AND???   SO???? We are really supposed to make decisions about what we believe or how we pray on the basis of objections of non-Catholics?  Apparently.]

The images:

 

The caption:

A woodcut showing Jews performing a ritual to extract a Christian child’s blood. These prints were popular in Germany and the Netherlands in the 15th Century.

The next image just below: