GUEST POST: “Do blogs change lives?”

Here is some feedback and comments that will keep me going for a while.

“Do blogs change lives? They do when they pay honour to Holy Mother Church and draw us into her treasures. Back in 2006 I did not even know the TLM existed. But thanks to WDTPRS I became intrigued: what is this Traditional Mass about which Fr Z keeps posting?

Enthusiasm was not immediate because there was such a steep learning curve. But what captured me was reading time and time again posts or comments which affirmed that the TLM by its very form offers greater glory to God. If this were so, then I wanted to be there, especially while my country scorns God.

Furthermore, your posts explained that the TLM’s rites and prayers dare to address us as sinners in need of redemption. This kind of communication is what my soul responds to, for I know it is true. Novus Ordo spirituality seems frightened to go there. And what sealed the deal for me on the TLM is that these two realities which are so infinitely far apart—God’s glory and our sinfulness—are bridged by that very reality which is the essence of Holy Mass: the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ on Calvary. And the TLM is full of references to the Cross and to sacrifice, in too many ways to count. As there is nothing on earth more adorable than Christ on the Cross, then there is nowhere better to be every day than at a TLM.

Now I am a seminarian for an Ecclesia Dei community, and cannot thank God enough. Thanks too to you Fr Z for your blog, especially for those posts around the time of Summorum Pontificum, which insisted that if we hunger for God’s glory, if we hunger for Redemption, if we adore the Cross, then we simply must go and be present at Traditional Masses, again and again and again, and pray and work to understand the sacrifice and to consent to the sacrifice. And God does not disappoint.

For anyone out there who has the beginning of an interest, please please do go to the TLM, and don’t stop going. It will fulfil you.”

It is great that this young man found some inspiration and courage to check out the TLM.  I love this devout enthusiasm and zeal.  Zelus domus tuae!

My path into the Catholic Church was through the Novus Ordo celebrated in close continuity with our Roman liturgical tradition, and with great reverence and splendor.  It was the binding, blending, building experience of both my intellectual and affective conversion.