From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
I have a question about “active participation”.
The priest that used to service my SSPX chapel was very adamant about is using a missal to follow and pray the Mass. He added that it wouldn’t be necessary if you were fluent in Latin.
When I mentioned this in a Trad Facebook group, a couple people mentioned the old school “say the Rosary” during Mass and expressed respectful disagreement with Father.
We all know the line about “active participation” concerning the vernacular of the Novus Ordo. But this is the first time I heard it applied as such to the Vetus Ordo.
In your opinion, is Father correct in his insistence on using the missal to pray the VO?
The concept of “full, conscious and actual/active” participation expressed in Sacrosanctum Concilium did not leap full-grown like Athena from the heads of the Council Fathers. The call for deeper participation grew up all through the time of the 20th century’s “Liturgical Movement” and before. Long before the Council and Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, Pius X and Pius XI were urging people to more outward participation as an aid to their interior engagement. Pius XII also had his crack at it, although late in his pontificate in a document on music we were instructed that the highest form of active participation at Mass is the reception of Communion in the state of grace. Reception… sounds passive, right? It isn’t! When the mind is engaged and the heart is straining forward toward the moment you are actively receptive. There’s nothing passive about it!
The use of a “hand missal” is really helpful, particularly for those who have a hard time remembering something for more than a quarter hour. This is why I constantly suggest that people start looking at the readings and other texts of Mass with a good hand missal or other source on THURSDAY, refreshing every day till Sunday. On Sunday, you will be able to hear what you learned over the last few days even as the Latin is being sung. Sure, the reading is being said or sung in Latin. So? You’ve familiarized yourself with it for days before hand. Sure, take the missal along. Then, review what you heard on Sunday each day through Wednesday and start over. Vernacular is being read? Okay… repetita iuvant. Fluent in Latin or not… prepare.
One thing we have to remember about the readings at Mass, which is especially evident in the Vetus. The readings are also sacrifices being raised on high to the Father. The Word is being raised upward. This is why the priest has to read them and why they are read at the altar even if they are sung by subdeacon and deacon or read in the vernacular. This is also why they should be read in a sacral language, for us in the Latin Church – Latin. This sacrificial sense is stripped from the Novus Ordo, which, along with the multiplication of readings, gives the whole first part of Mass, the “liturgy of the Word” a didactic feeling. While there is certainly room for and an element of didacticism in liturgy it is not by any stretch of the imagination the primary element.
(I’ll wager that quite a few priests trained in more recent times who say the Vetus Ordo don’ realize that the readings are also sacrifice.)
It is right that we should be urged to engage with our minds and hearts, focused and commanded by our wills, in the words and gestures of Holy Mass, either in the Novus Ordo or in the Vetus Ordo. Frankly, the Vetus Ordo is in many ways even richer than the Novus, even though there isn’t the legendary variety of Scripture in the Vetus as the Novus. If you can do this without the aid of a book or sheet, great! If the book helps, great! If you want to pray the Rosary, great! Maybe a little less great, but… prayer is prayer. It’s just that the Mass is for us Catholics the “fons et culmen… source and summit” of our Catholic identity.
Every word and gesture of the sacred liturgy, especially Holy Mass, is CHRIST acting and speaking. As Head, He speaks in the person of the priest. As Body He speaks through the congregation. When they speak and act together, such as the moment of Communion, Head and Body are manifestly one, Christus Totus, in that sublime, mysterious moment.
The rites are our rites. We are our rites. They shape us. We have our identity also from them.
As a baptized person you have a real share in Christ’s priesthood. That share isn’t like that of the ordained priest, but it is real. It enables you to offer pleasing sacrifice to God.
Knowing that you share in the priesthood of Christ, knowing that every word is Christ, knowing what you are going to be presented on Sunday, prepare well so that you can with your whole mind and heart under the guidance of your will actively receive everything that Christ wants to give you through the sacred rites of His Church.
I will never say that it is a bad thing to say the Rosary during Mass. As a matter of fact, sometimes that is just the right thing to do. However, most of the time we are offered the opportunity for a fuller engagement, not just with the Lord at Communion (or maybe not if you are not in the state of grace), but in the whole beautiful formulary of Mass for the day, part of a seasonal cycle or a saint’s day.
06:36
Sunrise today seems a loooong time ago at 07:35 and it set quite a while ago at 18:12. The Ave Maria bell didn’t ring at 18:30.
In the Novus Ordo this Sunday it is the 30th Sunday of what an old friend of mine (rest in peace) called “Greater Meatloaf Season”.
The sun rose at 07:34, later and later. It will set at 18:14, earlier and earlier.
Before anything else, again and again I get questions like:
Speaking of catechisms and speaking of being at peace…
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