Need your advice on attending Mass

  • Thread starter Thread starter jesusmademe
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
“jesusmademe said:
It is very hard when you cannot be yourself at Mass. I shouod try to be like all the other guy but want to be myself.
[/quote
At Mass, we are uniting as a community - it’s not 300 individuals all wanting and getting it their way. Singing is natural and does not need to be learned. Just open up your heart and sing to the Lord the best you can. The Psalms tell us to “come before His presence with singing.”
Click to expand...
 
Well, the organists at my parish, switches the organ out of A440 tuning, but turning the switch in the back of the organ. Her husband, who sings in the choir, removed the knob so it can’t be switched back.

The result is that the songs are sung higher than what most men can sing, but lower than what women are use to. Fits well for the organists who has a lower voice for a female.

Anyway, gotta learn to live with it, as volunteer organist are relatively non-existent in my area.
 
jesusmademe said:
I know that learning to sing isn’t always that easy as people might think.
I often find that people who are untrained singers can attend Mass and try to sing.
Why should untrained singers sing at Mass? As a person who take singing seriously I find that Mass is not a time for practicing singing.
Also, who can it be that it is supposed to be easy to find out the correct key? It is actually too low at Mass (something that organists should be aware of but probably aren’t). Lift up your hearts are too low.
I cannot attend Mass if they have music as I don’t agree with how badly things are. I do like the technical quality of the organist.
How should I deal with it?
Click to expand...
If you have one near you, attend a Latin high mass
 
jesusmademe said:
Attending Mass can be exhausting. There are so many weird things going on. And then too many people.
Do people really find it relaxing to attend Mass. I talked to a Priest who would have such an experience.
How is it possible to have such an experience?
Any tips?
I am not sure what the Priest used to do (he is dead now) but he told me that I should be grateful that I exist. He said his only wish was to know God. Maybe I get cought up in the details.
Click to expand...
I think there are many valid reasons for attending Mass. Your reasons may not be someone else’s. Their reasons may not be yours.

I would suggest putting some thought into why it is you go to Mass, and what you are hoping to get out of it and bring to it. Then focus on that. Without that focus, it can be very easy to be distracted by what is going on around you, rather than allowing it to contribute to the positive experience being there can be.
 
jesusmademe said:
I know that learning to sing isn’t always that easy as people might think.
I often find that people who are untrained singers can attend Mass and try to sing.
Why should untrained singers sing at Mass? As a person who take singing seriously I find that Mass is not a time for practicing singing.
Also, who can it be that it is supposed to be easy to find out the correct key? It is actually too low at Mass (something that organists should be aware of but probably aren’t). Lift up your hearts are too low.
I cannot attend Mass if they have music as I don’t agree with how badly things are. I do like the technical quality of the organist.
How should I deal with it?
Click to expand...
You really need a rethink. Your focus at Mass should not be on the singers. That is not why we attend Mass. Your focus should be only on Christ.
 
I don’t sing because I am good at it, I sing because it is a way for me to express my joy at the beauty and truth of the things we are at Mass for. That’s Jesus up there! That is our Lord, in the flesh. When I well up at the beauty and goodness of that thought, Christ doesn’t care that I don’t even know what it means to transpose from D to F. He just cares that I am there, worshipping Him and praising Him for who He is.

I’m a recent revert to Catholicism and one of the things I couldn’t wrap my head around was why people at Mass were so bad at socializing. Coming from a Protestant church where that was what one did at church, I thought Catholics were just super standoffish, but it was because I didn’t understand that Mass wasn’t a social gathering, it was a prayer. You don’t have to fit in at Mass. I have two kids who don’t know how to sit in a church without a nursery right now, so I don’t “fit in,” but that’s not why I’m there. I’m there for the Eucharist and to spend time in prayer with our Lord.
 
OP, you have several other threads in which you have a problem with people singing, or how things are sung etc. It seems to me that your attention is not on the right thing: Receiving Our Lord in the Eucharist.

Have you joined the church and become Catholic yet? I see in your profile that you were not Catholic at the time you joined CAF. Perhaps you should join RCIA and learn more about the faith so your mind and heart will not be distracted from God by the singing.
 
I wonder if it is more of a psychological issue rather than a spiritual issue. What do you think?
 
You came from a Protestant background. I guess you were not a Lutheran.
 
FrancisFan43 said:
Go to the low mass. The mass where they don’t sing. You get all the benefits of attending mass without having your ears offended. Usually they have this mass early in the morning (7am in my parish)
Click to expand...
We don’t have such a thing except on weekdays.
 
When we sing at Mass - or at any Christian worship - it is not for performance. It is because Scripture (both OT and NT) tells us singing is an essential part of worship, and because the earliest Christian liturgies or testimonies about Christian worship confirm that.

And as an organist, I can tell you that the most frequent complaint I hear is that hymns are pitched too high, not the reverse; untrained singers often struggle to hit high notes.

This morning I sang in a language - Korean - I’m not quite fluent in, and it probably bothered my neighbours. But I sang anyway, as it was my way of participating in the common worship.
 
God knows their hearts. That is all that matters. If their singing is poor, our behavior and thoughts are poor.
 
jesusmademe said:
You find attending Mass something easy but I don’t.
I guess that if you are different you don’t feel that you fit in with the rest of the group.
Click to expand...
Every human being feels they don’t fit in more often than people talk about. It is part of the human condition.

Attending Mass is difficult for many people. Right now, I feel so uncomfortable at Mass because I am tired of people asking me about my husband’s death. I know they mean well, but, I do not want to see the pity faces.

It is difficult to get up and get dressed because I live with debilitating pain and want just one day each week when I do not have to go through the pain of “getting ready”.

For two years we had a priest who literally drove me to panic attacks.

We can each write a book on the times when Mass is difficult. If going to Mass was always the easiest, funnest, best thing for us, it would not have to be assigned as an “obligation”.
jesusmademe said:
I guess I am not very comfortable with the Priest never facing the Liturgical east which is more correct.
We have many problems at Mass. Too many.
Click to expand...
As a convert in the digital age, I understand this as well. I had to take a break for a couple of years from Catholic blogs/social media/forums because I was spending every Mass as “Little Lady: Liturgy Cop” and it was stealing my peace and joy.

I’d suggest Fr Phillipe’s book “Searching for and Maintaining Peace” and a break from reading about how faulty things are.

Read @babochka 's words. As I said before, my family is generations of professional singers and musicians. Still, my greatest memory is my sweet mother, tone deaf, singing as she stood beside me in church. She loves Jesus and sang to Him.
jesusmademe said:
Attending Mass can be exhausting.
Click to expand...
Try sitting on the front pew, so you can simply focus on the Crucifix. If you have an old parish with big pillars, it is great to sit behind one of them so you see nothing but the pillar. I’ve gone to Mass and stood out in the vestibule facing a wall so I could shut out everything except the words of the Mass.
 
[The Communion] hymn is prayer, the corporate thanksgiving prayer of the members of Christ’s Body, united with one another. Over and over again the prayers of the liturgy and the norms of the General Instruction emphasize this fundamental concept of the unity of the baptized, stressing that when we come together to participate in the Eucharistic celebration we come, not as individuals, but as united members of Christ’s Body. In each of the Eucharistic Prayers, though the petition is worded in slightly different ways, God is asked to send his Holy Spirit to make us one body, one spirit in Christ; the General Instruction admonishes the faithful that “they are to form one body, whether in hearing the Word of God, or in taking part in the prayers and in the singing…” (no. 96). It describes one of the purposes of the opening song of the Mass as to “foster the unity of those who have been gathered” (no. 47), and says of the Communion Chant that “its purpose [is] to express the spiritual union of the communicants by means of the unity of their voices, to show gladness of heart, and to bring out more clearly the ‘communitarian’ character of the procession to receive the Eucharist” (no. 86).

It is difficult for some of us to embrace this emphasis on Mass as the action of a community rather than an individual act of my own faith and piety, but it is important that we make every effort to do so. Christ himself at the Last Supper pleaded with his Father: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are… as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us…” (John 17:11, 21).Baptism has joined us to Christ and to one another as the vine and its branches. The life of Christ, the Holy Spirit, animates each of us individually, and all of us corporately and guides us together in our efforts to become one in Christ.
USCCB The Reception of Holy Communion at Mass
Click to expand...
The Holy Spirit is the breath of Christ. When we add our breath to that of others in the Body of Christ, it is a sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence. It is prayer.
 
I guess we have too many people at church complaining about this and that. Some of those have a degree so they have fact but still too much complaining.
If you want a discussion on Liturgy attend an EF. You will find many young people with strong opinions on the topic of Liturgy. They also like to complain about the OF.
I rather have the offical teachings than people’s oppinions.
 
Last edited:
TheLittleLady said:
. I’ve gone to Mass and stood out in the vestibule facing a wall so I could shut out everything except the words of the Mass.
Click to expand...
Shut out what?
I myself have issues with too much going on in the pews. People do this and that and a child crying and so on. Then the music can be difficult and so on.
But the people in the pews can be difficult to deal with. I am a fan of smaller groups as my brain focuses on details and there are more details in a big group.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top