The Wasteland of Liturgy

[Peter_M]

I came across an article in the Jesuit magazine “America” titled “55 years after Vatican II, the task remains the same” by father Robert Imbelli. Here is a link to the article if you care to read the whole thing:

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/09/29/55-years-after-vatican-ii-task-remains-same

After a romanticized review of rather mundane events surrounding Vatican II and the celebration of its 50th anniversary, Father Imbelli then leads us to his idea of what is still needed 55 years later - he calls it “mystagogy” and “mystagogic catechesis”. I’m not quite sure what he means, but it seems that he is referring to a kind of “personal encounter with Jesus” (to use a cliché).

What bothered me most about his argument was, from his perspective, we should not be overly troubled by poorly done liturgy.

Now I do not deny that words have their importance. But even the most poetic of renderings cannot replace the experiential appropriation of the Gospel. The power and authenticity of the words we employ in the liturgy stem from the living encounter with the Lord Jesus whose love reorients our lives… Nor am I an advocate of ill-prepared homilies; and I am as averse to sentimental hymnody, ineptly performed, as the most punctilious liturgical musician. But are we so bereft of contemplative capacity and mystagogical imagination that even in less than inspiring surroundings, we cannot enter into the saving mystery that nourished and sustained Alfred Delp, S.J., in the dankness of a prison cell?

Apparently, we should think of ourselves as Father Delp, confined to a Nazi prison cell where we need to take comfort in the mystery of contemplation afforded to us. This is not to belittle Father Delp’s sufferings, but are we really in the same position where we cannot ask for better liturgy and homilies? Are we prisoners that we must sustain ourselves with our inner life alone?

The post Vatican II church has lost touch with the dual aspect of worship - inner and outer. I agree with Father Ambelli that arguing over the particular words of the liturgy is a pedantic exercise. But, are we so poor that our outer worship - as expressed in the liturgy, and our general surroundings - are of little importance? I dread to attend mass in a church that looks more like a decorated gymnasium, or to hear a priest say the mass as though he just woke up from a nap. Both “mystagogy” and a beautiful Eucharist are essential, and to think that Vatican II was meant to do away with the beauty of the liturgy and replace it with a dry, lifeless, and abbreviated shell is a shame.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The priest who wrote the article sure likes to use a lot of ten dollar words.

However, I’m basically in agreement with him and with Clare.

The problem with critiquing the liturgy, as I see it, is that people all have different preferences, and there is also a subgroup of people who are really bothered by what they see as violations of the “rules”. Moreover, things that some of us see as minor nits or as not problems at all, other people see as a huge issue.

We have seen this over and over in the threads about music, about congregation gestures during Mass, about additional prayers a priest might work in during Mass (such as at homily time or announcement time), even about Santa Claus being a small part of a children’s Christmas Mass. I am not too bothered about people having preferences. We all have Mass times and Mass practices we prefer. I deal with this by simply finding churches that address my preferences in the way I like. I have a luxury of being able to choose from a lot of churches, and I realize not everybody has this blessing.

But when people carry on like their way is the only right or reverent way, and that other people who don’t see the issue are bad or irreverent Catholics, and that the entire Church is going to Hades in a handbasket because a priest added the St. Michael prayer to the Mass or had a certain type of music played or even had no music at all played, then yeah, I’m sick of it too.

Maybe we all need a good dose of the Father Delp experience to get us back on track. I was thinking that yesterday when one young man posted that when he attends Mass, he pictures himself as a martyr who might get shot leaving the church…I bet when you have to worry about that, all of a sudden it doesn’t matter so much whether people held hands or not during the Our Father.

 

[Peter_M]

Thank you for verifying that my absence from Mass on any given Sunday is not so important… I’m tired of it too.

 

[Edward_H]

Leave it to a Jesuit to take up that much space to say “each of us needs to put more love and sacrifice into the Holy Mass”.

The Mass is the culmination of our love affair with Jesus Christ. We have to “put work” into the Mass so that our union with Him (as He redeems each of us and the world) spreads into every faculty of ours, including our will, out intellect (including our memory, our reasoning capability, our imagination), our body.

The more of us we give to God in the Holy Mass the closer our union becomes.

Jesuits seem to think they need to complicate things in order to keep their Jesuit badge. Pretty showy writing.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Leave it to a Jesuit to take up that much space to say “each of us needs to put more love and sacrifice into the Holy Mass”.

And with so many big words

He must not have been on board with the “Plain English movement”

 

[Edward_H]

Another, more demanding, way to look at it…is to ask why it is that God doesn’t tire of you or me, not just for our indifferent approach to His Mass, where we get to witness our own redemption at every Mass, but also during the day when we turn inward and focus on ourselves…our opinions of ourselves, our wants, our vanities, our pride, our supposed great intelligence, our credentials, our other attachments.

Being “tired of it” is never a good enough reason not to love God, with greater and greater effort and sacrifice and cheerfulness.

The value that we place on our "feelings’ of tiredness perhaps are too great.

We need to love God whether we are so called “tired of it” or not. We need to be willing to “set our opinion” aside and love Him anyway.

Finally, perhaps your presence (even slack and indifferent as it may be on any given Sunday) is nevertheless (and unimaginably so) comforting to Jesus Who could see you (and me) from Calvary 2000 years ago.

Perhaps we could offer our “tiredness” and “boredom” as a gift to Him in order to comfort Him, as He redeems you and me.

 

[Hereiam]

It sad that we’ve come to the point where we critique rather than celebrate the liturgy.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say again, Rejoice!

 

[Edward_H]

Yes…like as if we could have gone to the Last/First Supper, we could sit back and say on Friday morning, as they’re flogging Jesus, "the bread was a bit chewy, and the hymns we sung after Supper were the “old usual”.

Would that every time we could go to Mass as if it were our first/only/last Mass (as others have said before me elsewhere).

https://opusdei.org/en-us/article/fr-john-wauck-the-holy-sacrifice-of-the-mass/

 

[Peter_M]

Ah yes, they chewy bread at the Last Supper. If was InSufferable.

And the hymns, they were missing the glorious three person choir signing the rapturous acapella melodies of “I will raise him up…” And Jesus’ homily, why, it must have been about baking cookies. That would make it very much in the spirit of the current liturgical approach.

What we get out of the Mass is what we put into it. Of course! But it’s supposed to be Communion, not only what I get out of it personally.

Critiquing rather than celebrating the liturgy? Hmmm, when I celebrate, I should not have to tolerate, at least that’s not the primary reason I would go to Mass - to tolerate it.

Jesus has never told me that my presence was greatly appreciated at Mass. I don’t expect such revelations. My tiredness and boredom can be offered up to Jesus anywhere, not only in the spiritually and physically cold, Canadian pews of my local parish.

 

[Edward_H]

Agree…but union/communion with others THROUGH first union with Jesus Christ.

The “I should not have to tolerate”.

That spirit is the problem…it’s conditional, contingent love, love with strings.

We should want to go to Mass even if we receive absolutely NO CONSOLATION at all.

That’s a pure love, that’s the love we need to struggle to give God.

We shouldn’t look for “being appreciated at Mass” of course…that’s selfishness.

 

[bjblatz]

With all due respect, do you believe there is an objective form of reverence, or should everything left to the subjective whim of the individual?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I think there’s an objective form and that the Vatican and, where permitted, the bishops and pastors, who are the experts in these matters, set the bounds of where it should be. In the Catholic Church, we do not consider the teachings, rules and guidelines of the Magisterium to be “subjective whims of the individual”. Anything they agree to leave up to an individual pastor or even to the individuals in the pews is then going to be up to the subjective whims of the individual.

True reverence is actually in our hearts. It’s the outward expressions of it that we bicker over. A person could be going through dozens of elaborate old school pre-Vatican II reverential gestures, and still be irreverent in his heart because he is just going through the motions. And a person could come in dressed in grungy clothes and doing the most modern of “irreverent” gestures, and still have great reverence in his heart.

 

[Edward_H]

Humility and obedience seem to be virtues that if practiced generously would obviate the need for most definitions of reverence, calming the pangs of pride and vanity and comfort seeking.

Putting unity with God first and foremost, happily and eagerly so, has a beautiful way of harmonizing our individual piety in Church.

We “self-empty” as Jesus Himself self-emptied.

 

[Gertabelle]

With all due respect, do you believe there is an objective form of reverence, or should everything left to the subjective whim of the individual?

An objective form of reverence? Are you serious?

Reverence originates in the heart of the individual. YOU and I cannot know anyone’s heart but our own; and that is what we need to work on – our own heart, not someone else’s.

An objective form of reverence? Um, no.

 

[OraLabora]

With all due respect, do you believe there is an objective form of reverence, or should everything left to the subjective whim of the individual?

Any “objective” element of reverence would necessarily have to be an external gesture. And that is a notoriously poor way of gauging the true, internal, reverence of the faithful.

An extreme example, we had an oblate who was severely handicapped and spastic, and confined to a wheelchair. He was not able to carry out any of the gestures we normally associate with “reverence” (genuflecting, kneeling, whatever). He wasn’t even able to make a sign of the Cross. His body was twitching nervously through the entire Mass.

He did, however, manage to radiate his pure joy at being at Mass simply from his facial expressions. Yet that expression is not one anyone’s list of “objective” criteria as a display of reverence, as it wasn’t obvious except to those who knew him or were sitting close to him.

In a similar manner, a new Catholic may trip up from time to time on the gestures, simply not being used to them or being used to those of his former ecclesial community. That has nothing to do with how reverent he or she actually is or how much joy he or she feels at being truly in Christ’s presence.

While it is true that some folks are overtly nonchalant, only God can read the heart.

As Catholics we have more or less traditional ways of expressing our reverence, but it is not within our pay grade to discern between someone simply going through the motions but not feeling reverence inside, or someone very reverent but clumsy or quirky when it comes to the outward manifestation of their reverence.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I should not have to tolerate

Yeah, that’s what Jesus said when he found out He needed to die on a cross. “I should not have to tolerate” this.

Jesus has never told me that my presence was greatly appreciated at Mass

Maybe not, butt this is in the Gospel of Matthew:

When he returned to his disciples he found them asleep. He said to Peter, “So you could not keep watch with me for one hour? - Matthew 26: 40

Bet those disciples were pretty tired and bored. They could have just gone home and been tired and bored in their bedrooms, because as you said,

My tiredness and boredom can be offered up to Jesus anywhere

Seriously, you sound like you don’t care about Jesus at all. Only about being entertained or excited by the Mass.

I think this is a reflection of spiritual problems you are having that go far beyond whether the Mass has an electrifying preacher and the Catholic equivalent of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, plus Jesus handing you a bouquet and thanking you for showing up as you walk in the door.

 

[Peter_M]

If we receive no consolation at all… what is the purpose? Does not receiving consolation constitute an expression of love?

That spirit is the problem. Piety should not masquerade under platitudes.

It would be a very valid point if I were trying to “sniff out” problems. It doesn’t require much effort to see the love of God is not given by such worship as we find today. Perhaps it is my personal preference (and therefore of little importance) that the mass is said with some reverence, and that the church not look like a glorified warehouse. Yes, St. John Paul said Mass on the back of a canoe, but that was provisional. Clear out the pews, set up some hoops, and you’d have a nice basketball court.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

If we receive no consolation at all… what is the purpose? Does not receiving consolation constitute an expression of love?

We see this spirit in other threads on the forum too. People seem to think that worshipping God or practicing their religion is supposed to make them feel good.

In reality, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. Love doesn’t always provide “consolation” or make us feel good. Any of us who have experienced love of a spouse, parent, child or other very close person knows this. Sometimes love is a drag. Sometimes love hurts.

If you’re truly suffering at Mass, and have no way of avoiding it such as by finding another Mass nearby that is more to your liking, then you should offer up your suffering to Jesus. Skipping the Mass and going home to suffer in your bedroom (to the extent you would actually spend that hour suffering from tiredness or boredom rather than find yourself something productive or enjoyable to do) is not a valid option because the Church has decreed that it is a sin.

 

[Peter_M]

I cannot take this seriously. Being entertained? You are missing the point entirely. Reverence isn’t being entertained.

I don’t doubt your love of God, please do not doubt mine. Perhaps you have had better experiences at Mass.

You exaggerate by bringing up the Mormon Choir, and the electrifying preacher. When I was a boy, we had a choir, dressed in robes, not a big show, not even a great show. But there were more than a dozen members. Today, there are at most four. The reverence is quite different. I don’t recall exactly how the priest behaved, but even after the Vatican II ritual came into full swing, the priest was sober and sincere in his homily. It was not electrifying. Telling jokes and humorous anecdotes was not the rubric of the homily. Today’s homilies seem more like entertainment.

 

[goout]

With all due respect, do you believe there is an objective form of reverence, or should everything left to the subjective whim of the individual?

The object of reverence is Jesus Christ. I hope that is understood.

What form can we now talk about?
Christ is revealed in humanity. He takes on full human nature, or “form”. Human beings are unique and at the same time varied.

Humanity lives in unique times in unique places with unique cultures, with unique personalities and ways of expressing reverence.

If the object of reverence is Jesus Christ who is God incarnate, then you must allow for the human element when you think about the form of reverence.

There is not just one form, because we are a unique communities of unique persons, reverencing a unique savior.

Does that make sense?