So that was the norm back in the day? You just went to mass and mostly watched the priest, he and the server said the mass and you just watched?
High Masses were the exception rather than the rule. Most Masses were low. I don’t know the relative proportion of dialogue vs. non-dialogue low Masses but I’m given to understand that, at least in the United States, participation was fairly strong among ethnic Italians, Poles, Mexicans, etc. Among Irish, not so much, a lingering artifact of vicious English persecution (where being heard celebrating Mass meant torturous execution, so silence became the norm).
Even at High Masses, “just watching” is not the ideal. The old Mass is an organic experience: the body of Christ comes together and each has its own unique, vital, essential function to discharge. The priest pronounces the consecration and offers the sacrificial victim; the deacon (if one is present) proclaims the Gospel and assists the priest in preparing and purifying the vessels; the subdeacon (if one is present) proclaims the epistle; the servers prepare the altar at the various stages of the liturgy; the schola offers music; the congregation prays. Like different organs of the body, each one carries out a different function in pursuit of a common end: the flourishing of the whole organism (which, for us, is accomplished by the worship of God). So, again, your job at the Mass is prayer and contemplation. If it’s a dialogue Mass then repetition of the server’s responses is the form of prayer which is taken; but the idea that you can only pray at Mass if you, personally, are saying the responses or singing the songs is, to say the least, very recent, and very much opposed to the kind of communal worship to which the old Mass is calling you. It’s primarily a contemplative experience.
In reading through the missal, the mass is beautiful, but if it is only one sided (the priest doing all the work) that seems really odd to me. Maybe that is because I am so used to the non tridentine mass.
So, basically, go to the mass, grab a missal, try and follow along if you can hear the priest and then go home. Okay… I won’t question it, but that seems really odd.
John
Why would you grab a Missal? I thought the whole point of going was that you already have one and want to try it out (though there’ll be some modest differences since the TLM Missal in use today is from 1962, and there were some changes made between then and the 50s).
You can question whatever you want, but if you don’t go into it with an open mind, you’re not going to get much out of it.
It didn’t appeal to me much when I first went (my first TLM was a low Mass), but I recall my girlfriend at the time (who came with me) saying that it “wasn’t what Mass is supposed to be.” She meant that it was silent and stoic and reserved and hierarchical, not user-friendly and chatty and accessible like the ordinary form of the Mass she was used to. I thought to myself “Well, if that’s not what Mass is supposed to be, how did no one notice as much for 2000 years or so?” I couldn’t quite shake that thought or answer that question and I eventually came to the conclusion that I was missing something, that there was something I wasn’t getting, and that if I didn’t “like” or “prefer” the old Mass (and just thinking along those terms gave me the shivers even then, as if my likes or preference are worth anything), it was only because I was a sinner who liked and preferred the wrong things. So I kept going on occasion, here and there, where time and travel permitted, and found the things I hadn’t gotten the first time. Now I prefer it exclusively, and am a better man for it.
That’s the attitude which it commands of you: self-evacuation. Putting your likes and preferences aside and approaching it on its terms, not yours. Deferring to the judgment of history and the far-superior sanctity and piety of your ancestors. It lays you bare in your smallness and frailty and ignorance. On the other hand, it offers you a rootedness in tradition and history and an experience of transcendence utterly unlike anything else you will encounter in the world.
