It’s to help Father lift his arms.
No, seriously, it is!Thanks for the update. I hope you have the opportunity to go again, if you wish. I’m always happy to experience different forms of Catholic worship, even if it is not my thing.
Joy, do yourself a favor. Don’t sweat it. Pick an inconspicuous place to sit and just observe. Don’t feel you have to know what to do and when to do it. You’ll learn. When you feel more brave, sit in the first pew and observe the priest close up.
Back in the 1960’s, during Traditional days when Latin Mass was the only Mass, the Low Mass which you saw was the usual Mass for the great majority of Catholics. High Mass and other sung Masses were just a lot more rare
Well, I attended this evening with my mother as she remembers the time when Mass was always in Latin. She said this was the first time she felt like she was an observer only, though she could follow it a little better than I could as she does know Latin, so I wasn’t sure whether this was the norm or not. She seems to recall Masses from the past as beautiful and all High Masses
but that could just be her memory or how we look back fondly to the past. I just hadn’t expected it, that’s all.This itself is one of the many issues that existed in the Roman Rite prior to the reform. The High Mass is normative, so much so that there are aspects of the Low Mass that can only be explained in relation to the High Mass. The fact that the Low Mass had become so pervasive was definitely considered problematic.sudy:
Back in the 1960’s, during Traditional days when Latin Mass was the only Mass, the Low Mass which you saw was the usual Mass for the great majority of Catholics. High Mass and other sung Masses were just a lot more rare
This was one of my reactions to the EF Mass and continues to be an issue for me. I’ve no problem with silent prayers, ad orientem worship, etc., but I always feel as though I have no part in the Mass. I have come to appreciate the Mass, even the Low Mass, but I do not seek it out as preferable to the Divine Liturgy or an Ordinary Form Mass. It helps, I’m sure, that I have some outstanding choices for OF Masses if I cannot attend Divine Liturgy.I’d been meaning to go to a Latin Mass for a while so this evening I’ve attended my first one. It was a Low Mass and I found it incredibly difficult to follow. I figured that not knowing any Latin would be my only issue, but it was at a whispered level so I couldn’t even follow its structure. We, the congregation, hardly participated either… I hadn’t expected that. I thought we’d be speaking the responses, but that didn’t happen… it was the server only, and his whisper was almost indistinguishable from the priest’s. Basically I felt like I was just an observer, rather than a participant. It did feel holy, though… I’ll give it that. Anyway, I plan to attend a Sung Mass in a couple of weeks from now, so that will be much easier to follow
I’m fortunate in that the OF Mass I attend has all the trimmings and is 100% in line with Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Missal: Latin/Greek Gregorian chant propers and ordinary, French plainchant for the rest, all beautifully done and beautifully sung. And this even at weekday Mass. It gives me no desire to drive the 100 km or so to make it to the nearest non-SSPX EF Mass. Moreover I know a fellow Gregorian chorister and fellow member of the Gregorian Institute of Canada who has been to that EF Mass, and said that the Gregorian chant was abysmal.
The low mass was a liturgical abuse the spread util it was normalized. The origin is mass stipends from the wealthy, and letting a monk knock off more masses per day for the es
ISTR it was Trebt that normalized them.Older versions of the Mass had larger parts for the people, but with the rise of the low mass, etc., just which parts were which was forgotten. so pretty much all parts ended up with the priest for good measure.
