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From another entry: during the Roman Canon “I felt intense loneliness”
The Jesuit ultra-leftist weekly America Magazine had an article by a self-described liberal-minded priest who made a decision to celebrate the traditional form of Mass when a group asked fo it.
I posted the whole article and made comments here.
There are some very good comments in this article what deserve discussion.
I will preface this with a point I have made fairly often. When younger priests who never knew the older form of Mass begin to learn it, it will change their perceptions about what Mass is and who they are as priests. Older priests will have much the same experience when they reaqcuaint themselves, especially after decades of having had only the newer forms of liturgy. This must be a motive for Summorum Pontificum.
An excerpt from their latest number with my emphases.
Having decided to offer the Tridentine Mass, I began the arduous project of recovering—and reinforcing—my Latin grammar and vocabulary so that I could celebrate the liturgy in a prayerful, intelligible way. As I studied the Latin texts and intricate rituals I had never noticed as a boy, I discovered that the old rite’s priestly spirituality and theology were exactly the opposite of what I had expected. Whereas I had looked for the “high priest/king of the parish” spirituality, I found instead a spirituality of “unworthy instrument for the sake of the people.”The old Missal’s rubrical micromanagement made me feel like a mere machine, devoid of personality; but, I wondered, is that really so bad? I actually felt liberated from a persistent need to perform, to engage, to be forever a friendly celebrant. When I saw a photo of the old Latin Mass in our local newspaper, I suddenly recognized the rite’s ingenious ability to shrink the priest. Shot from the choir loft, I was a mere speck of green, dwarfed by the high altar. The focal point was not the priest but the gathering of the people. And isn’t that a valid image of the church, the people of God?
The act of praying the Roman Canon slowly and in low voice accented my own smallness and mere instrumentality more than anything else. Plodding through the first 50 or so words of the Canon, I felt intense loneliness. As I moved along, however, I also heard the absolute silence behind me, 450 people of all ages praying, all bound mysteriously to the words I uttered and to the ritual actions I haltingly and clumsily performed. Following the consecration, I fell into a paradoxical experience of intense solitude as I gazed at the Sacrament and an inexplicable feeling of solidarity with the multitude behind me.
Let me toss a couple ideas onto the table.
First, many opponents of the older Mass claim that its spirituality is contrary to, or at least out of keeping with, the spirituality of Vatican II.
Second, in Holy Mass (and elsewhere), because of the sacrament of Holy Orders, the priest is alter Christus. When he says Mass, he is both acting in the person of Christ (in persona Christi) as Priest and Victim.
Third, sacramental reality is not less real than tangible reality we perceive with our senses. The sacred mysteries of Holy Mass make present the very events they portray: the Last Supper, the Sacrifice of Calvary. By our baptism we participate in these sacred mysteries.
Fourth, one of the most important elements of a proper ars celebrandi described by His Holiness in Sacramentum caritatis is that the priest must be "transparent" (my word). It is an abuse to impose your personality unduly on the liturgy. By staying out of the way of the true Actor in Mass, Christ the High Priest, the priest is a greater bearer of the person of Christ in a special way in the liturgy. That is an act of charity: sacrificial love, sacrifice of self for the good of others. That is service.
One of the things that I was very struck by was the writer’s comment that during the Canon (which makes Calvary present) the priest felt loneliness.
I would like to open this to some discussion. However, I will try to direct it. Please follow my lead if I cut off tangents or try to get more thoughts on some point that has been raised.
If I delete comments that are leading down rabbit holes, don’t freak out. If people take the discussion in directions I have ask that we avoid, and I delete comments, don’t freak out.
I especially invite comments by priests. As a matter of fact, if we can get priests talking together about this, I will then ask lay people not to comment, but to read carefully.
Bravo to Fr. Kerper for taking up this ministry and stepping beyond what is thought conventional for a “liberal-minded” priest.
When Pope Benedict speaks about reconciliation within the Church, I think this is what he has in mind: that many priests will have such an experience and such a discovery in celebrating the old and venerable liturgy.
Comment by RC — 26 November 2007 @ 9:05 pmFather,
Comment by danphunter1 — 26 November 2007 @ 9:15 pmI, obviously am not a priest so I cannot know for sure how isolated he feels when praying the Roman Canon, but I have always had the impression that it is more humbling than lonely.
Please correct me if I am wrong but isn’t the Alter Christus unitied with the people at mass and as their leader offering Christ to Christ?
This to me seems like the most awesome task that any human could ever accomplish and with this task must go an unspeakable sense of humility, and awe.
What DOES it feel like?
God bless you and all priests for their fiat to God.
Surely, the Extraordinary Form makes this easier to accomplish, but it can be done with the Ordinary Form as well if we as priests model for the people that neither they nor the priest is the focus of attention, but Christ Himself.
Comment by Fr. Christensen — 26 November 2007 @ 9:28 pm
O my dear brother priest, Michael: When you were younger you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go…I pray that you let yourself be led and that we can meet again in joy before His altar in heaven. In the meantime, I pray you have a chance to read and reflect on Father Z’s comments on dangerous, even lethal, moral equivalences. My own experience of the TLM is that it my priesthood is becoming dependent upon it in a way that I could not have imagined even five years ago. Michael, you sensed the power of the Mass to humble a priest, to recognize our smallness and our our sinfulness. The newer Mass allows you to be Martha at her busiest. With the older Mass, you have only the Better Part. You don’t even get to choose—you are simply there, irrevocably there. I think, Michael, you touched a deep vein by sensing the people WITH you. In the newer Mass you always have them BEFORE you, no matter how hard you try to refocus (even when you celebrate ad orientem, although that helps). But with the older Mass you do sense you all set out IN ALTUM, into the deep. A priest is Alter Christus also in the newer form, but it less transparent to the congregation and to the priest himself. Especially with the more common forms of celebration, there is so much noise, so many other signals, that is exceedingly difficult to PRAY the Mass. But with the older Mass, you are both WITH the congregation and truly alone, abandoned. What a gift, what an incredible, undeserved gift! That majesty is almost intolerably beautiful. And by the way, Michael, it gets better and better. The rubrics become part of you, a second priestly skin, the words stick to the soul, the canon becomes part of your breath. What a gift. And it’s a gift I want for you. Pax tecum.
Comment by Father M — 26 November 2007 @ 9:37 pmWhile loneliness may be a poor choice of words, I think this priest intends to use it in a good way.
If, as he indicates, he is used to the demands to perform, to engage and entertain, then the loss of his usually overwhelming personality may make him feel alone.
Far more importantly, did not Christ himself express a kind of loneliness? His disciples fell asleep in the garden before running away, at which point the words of the Psalmist apply to our Lord: There was no one to take my part. In his last moments, one of his last words on the Cross, Jesus cries out “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” It seems, then, that a certain kind of loneliness may be a beautiful way for the priest to truly unite himself with Christ, the High Priest and Victim. In my reading of the article, I felt that the priest, on at least some level, might be rejoicing in just such a healthy loneliness.
Comment by David — 26 November 2007 @ 9:53 pmBut, the lex orandi statuit legem credendi. The Mass itself is a privileged vehicle of Divine Tradition. Therefore, if someone thinks he or she perceives that what the extraordinary form “teaches” us is somehow different from what the recent second Vatican Council teaches us, then he or she has made an error in interpreting one or the other.
Concerning what you said about the Ars celebrandi, I thought of St. John the Baptist’s, “I must decrease, while He must increase.” The priest must live this in all areas of his life and ministry, but where better to be imbued with this spirit other than the sacred Liturgy? In fact, Vatican II tells us in Sacrosanctum Concilium that the Liturgy is where we are to acquire the true Christian spirit.
I have come to cherish the rubrics of the TLM for helping my personality disappear at Mass. At Mass, it doesn’t matter who stands at the altar, as long as he is a priest, because the priest is a mere instrument of Christ.
Once learned, they seem to make perfect sense and flow so naturally with the rhythm of the liturgy. There is an aspect of rote-ness to them, but I think that Mother Church gives the priest the duty of informing the outward gesture with his own love and devotion. (I recently was watching a video of a Catholic priest teaching yoga and wondered why he must go outside the Catholic Tradition to find “prayers for his body” when such bodily prayers are already present in the rubrics of the TLM! Eastern forms of meditation which seem to be a craze among some priests don’t encourage spontaneous gestures and postures, why do the same priests seem to desire such spontaneity and lack of ritual in the Mass?)
Finally, just a comment of the consecration in the TLM. The fact that we priests not only relate what Christ did but actually look up to heaven, give thanks, blesses, and says Christ’s words is a very poignant reminder that we are acting in the person of Christ. We are not merely reading a narrative, but we are allowing Christ to use us to make Himself in His saving act present. And although we try to dissolve our personality, we remain ourselves and so, immediately after Christ become present in the Eucharist, we fall on our knees, even before showing Him to the congregation. Perhaps there is some aspect of loneliness, but might it not be argued that this is an aspect of the crucifixion?
Comment by Fr. D.D. — 26 November 2007 @ 10:06 pmSimply Excellent…
Comment by RandyD — 26 November 2007 @ 10:24 pmI am simply amazed. I am not a priest, though God-willing someday I will be.
From the title of this post and Fr. Z’s brief introduction to the article, I had expected another piece dragging out the old “the traditional Mass alienates the priest from the people”, but instead I got a profound reflection from the (rarely heard) point of view of the celebrant, drastically changing the way we see see the priest as the alter Christus.
This article gives me a lot to think about.
Comment by Jonathan Bennett — 26 November 2007 @ 11:14 pmDear Father,
Thank you for posting this.
The road up Calvary was and is lonely.
I have an old St. Andrew’s Missal—-1945 edition—-the beautiful commentaries on parts of the Mass are simply a must read and study for everyone. Is the Novus Ordo the same Mass? I know it really is but in practice the Novus Ordo has become something quite different. We must pray that the Holy Spirit will guide us back.
Peter David Bolan
Comment by peter bolan — 26 November 2007 @ 11:57 pmExcellent post and great comments from our beloved priests! I think if more young men were shown this little known side of the priesthood, they might find the priestly vocation a little more appealing.
Comment by Michael — 27 November 2007 @ 12:04 amIf I could make a little suggestion here- I think it would be very beneficial to the readers of this blog, especially young men discerning a vocation to the priesthood, to hear more testimony and statements on the spirituality of Holy Mass from the perspective of priests. There are many articles and commentaries from the perspective of the congregation. We need more pieces that show just what it means to be a priest and to celebrate Mass.
Comment by Jonathan Bennett — 27 November 2007 @ 12:22 am
Dear Father Z,
Comment by Father M — 27 November 2007 @ 12:53 amI did have another, not terribly original, thought, but one which probably bears repeating. Father Kerper struggled with inconsistency, incoherence in deciding to offer the older Mass. He had made himself especially open to what he calls pro-choice Catholics and cohabitating couples. Now I hope he means that he does that with the hope of bringing them to conversion and not to accomodation. But what he probably will find is that the older Mass has enormous power within it to burn out the inconsistencies in our priestly lives. Because it is so clearly not OF us, something which comes to us from far beyond us, and carries with it the whole tradition of the Latin Church, it moves us towards consistency, and coherence with the larger tradition. Nothing in our tradition allows for accomodation to sin. Especially if the older Mass is offered regularly, the priest can easily find himself taking in this larger tradition and then challenging his own accomodations. Clearly, the older Mass does not root out sin—but it challenges it far more clearly than the modern Mass. And this reaches right into the priest’s own moral life. The priest is forced to say “non sum dignus,” to stand face to face with the “hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam”—and not just in the Canon. The very structure of the Mass points constantly to the priest’s spiritual poverty even as he dares to stand as alter Christus. The older Mass is a constant examination of conscience—sometimes painful, like a cauterizing flame, but necessary. Father Z, you said it so well—the Pope’s entire plan starts with the re-sanctification of the priesthood. We priests desperately needed the Motu Propio for the sake of our souls. And if the older Mass helps push us towards holiness, then it of critical importance for the whole Church. And by the way, priests need other priests who can speak to them of this kind of holiness. Thank God for Pope Benedict.
As a priest who has tried to learn the “Old Mass”, and not quite managed it yet, I think I can understand a little of what Fr Kerper is trying to say. I had the privilege of being a monk at Quarr for a few months, where the liturgy though strictly Novus Ordo, was very much according to the rubrics of the Missal. There was a great sense of liberation in knowing that for the most part the music for the Mass followed the Graduale, that the priest was expected to stand in a certain place and merely read, or more generally sing, what was appointed for the particular day.
Comment by Fr Ray Blake — 27 November 2007 @ 5:31 amBack in my parish, I re-capture something of that when I celebrate ad orientem. There is a great relief when one realises the celebrant is not the focus of the liturgy but merely its servant. If you have efficient servers, we have men here rather than children, then as important as the priest is, he too is just a servant of the liturgy not its master.
I wonder though whether it is a matter of rite or of orientation, that is “turning towards the Lord”?