A priest says his first TLM: “it felt like tool that just fits the hand”

Our friend Fr. Ray Blake of Saint Mary Magdalene in Brighton has an interesting post today about his experience of saying Mass with the Extraordinary Form yesterday for All Souls.

The first Mass was simple just with the Ordinary (Kyrie etc) sung. Tonight’s Mass has been organised by some of the younger people in the Parish and has the Latin Propers.

The middle Mass, I celebrated was private, just me and a server, I offered it in the Extraordinary Form, the first time I have actually done so. It took me an hour to celebrate Low Mass, slowly reading the text and rubrics. I don’t know if at public Mass I might have disedified people, I got a bit mixed up with the ablutions, I think maybe not.

It is strange how comfortable it felt, like tool that just fits the hand. It was an incredibly prayerful experience. I offered it for my own deceased relatives, principally my mother who first received the Lord at this Mass, her parents, and all those ancestors who would have been buried with these words. I felt a strange union with those priests of ages past whose mouths uttered the same words, whose hands made the same gestures. At the back of my mind was the commandment, "Honour your father and mother, and you will live long in the land".

It makes me sound like a wet liberal but "it felt right".

Kudos to Fr. Blake.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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5 Comments

  1. Nick says:

    Jesus Christ, Eternal High Priest, grant to all Priests, Bishops, and Your Vicar on earth the graces which they need to love God with all their heart, and all their mind, and all their souls, and their neighbors as themselves. Amen.

  2. John Enright says:

    Congratulations, Father Blake! God bless you.

  3. Domenico says:

    On Youtube, video v=WAbmRut5Z7w , it is possible to listen to Pope John Paul II saying part of a Latin Canon (II perhaps) of the Mass (Novus Ordo). It is in the ’80s and the voice of the Pope is still clear and vigorous.

  4. Fr Ray Blake says:

    Fr Z.,
    Thank you for this spike in my stats, the thing that gave me the courage, if that is the right word, was watching an older priest celebrate it a few weeks ago. He had done so only once in the last forty years.
    The thing that held me back was that my Latin is schoolboyish, speaking unfamiliar texts I tend to stumble and the rubrics have always frightened me. I suppose I was being a bit uptight about it.

  5. RichR says:

    Great story. Fr. Z, you should compile these into a book.

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