She sets the stage by describing the all-too-common experience of the Sunday Mass with the priest and his personality dominating the liturgy -- a nearly unavoidable effect of the now nearly ubiquitous stance of priest facing the people (versus populum): "The priest became the center of the Mass – and not in the alter Christus offering sacrifice mode he’s supposed to - and for the rest of us, there was no escaping him."
But wait. There's a kicker coming. She continues:
... Here’s what struck me this time.Think about what this means. Fr. Z. comments:
The parish has a special intention for which they are praying to the Virgin.
So after Mass the priest led the people in this prayer to the Virgin for this special intention.
He turned around. Away from the congregation. With them.
He recited the words of this prayer to the Virgin, on his knees facing her statue – which stood in the sanctuary.
He turned , he faced the statue, he prayed.
With us.
I could not help but wonder why embracing this stance and this mode of praying which did not deviate from the given, “rote,” prayer one bit - leading us, but in the same direction – was acceptable now, but not during Mass.
When it came time to pray instead of "celebrate together" (quotes added), the instinct was to face the same direction together to the one whom they were addressing. When the priest got himself out of the way, they prayed together.[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]
The imposition of a versus populum position for Mass was probably the single most corrosive thing perpetrated in the name of Conciliar liturgical reform. That was the opinion of the great liturgical scholar Klaus Gamber.
A reorientation of our Catholic identity requires a reorientation of our liturgical worship. One way to help reorient ourselves as a praying Church would be to reorient our altars to the “liturgical East”.
9 comments:
This post suggests some thoughts. I don't go to mass to pray, going to mass and being in the assembly with the people and the priest and following and understanding the prayers and the historical references and the movements around the altar and praying the Our Father and receiving the Blessed Sacrament is the substance and complete extension of the mass. The mass is the oblation of all of us. To say private prayers, an old custom when nothing was understood, is like going to a symphonic concert carrying your own recorder and playing it while Schubert or Bruckner sound.
We surround the altar because we form a cone of worshipers around the Divinity. Like the angelic hierarchies turning around the focus of grace and reality that is God.
On the other hand when we attend benediction with the Sacrament exposed in the monstrance we kneel all facing It..
The mass is the prayer there is nothing else.
Anonymous, the one word of your comment that is confusing is the "don't" at the beginning of your second sentence.
If you meant that you do not go to Mass to pray private or personal prayers, that is one thing. Maybe that's what you meant, at least so it seems from your later reference to those who pray while not knowing what is going on (in Latin, presumably -- though that's a highly debatable point).
If you meant that you don't go to Mass to pray the Mass itself, which is the prayer of all prayers, that's another thing. But I don't think you meant that, because you refer to the Mass as a prayer (as, of course, St. Pope Pius X stressed by telling Catholic to "pray the Mass.).
I'm inclined to agree with the latter point -- we should enter into the prayer of the Mass; but not at the expense of excluding private prayers. While the former is ideal, I find my mind wandering even when I go the the Novus Ordo Mass which is in English. Perhaps it's just the familiarity of the prayers, even the antiphonal parts we say as a congregation. If offering personal prayers helps a parishioner to enter into the oblation of the Mass, I see little harm in it.
The ideal, as I say however, is that we do our best to make the prayer of the Church our own prayer in the Mass -- and I would suggest that this is no less challenging (perhaps even more challenging) if the prayers are in the vernacular in our typical Novus Ordo Masses, where distractions abound.
@ Sheldon
Thank you for your comment. When I wrote that "I don't go to mass to pray" is clarified by the rest of the somewhat baroque and long paragraph. For me the mass is substance, the joining together of the faithful in a single charitable body through words and action.
When it happens to me that I am more moved by the chant itself than by the meaning of the words I am intimately chastised. That is my translation from the Confessions , book X, chapter XXX.
I say I have translated it because the translation I have is old fashioned to the point of being comical. I don't say that I have translated it in order to display my knowledge and therefore my vanity. I believe strongly in understanding texts thoroughly and with notes if necessary and if possible penetrating the meaning of the texts deeply and connecting them together in a whole of clear and truthful meaning.
A cone of worshippers. Turning around the focus. I would have said "hub" to save the metaphor, in the great wagon wheel that is the Mass.
Clearly you are a guy with an aversion for sharp angles. What do you do about the cross?
As Abbot Wormer might have said, "Replacing prayer with bad metaphors is no way to go through life, son"
"an old custom when nothing was understood"
What is the source of this great advancement in understanding, exactly? Do we know more than the apostles, or maybe just more than the dumb ox Aquinas?
Blessed be the cone!
I wouldn't consider it a SIN to be moved more by the [aesthetics of?] the chant than by the meaning of the words. I like Marshell McLuhan's idea that "the medium is the message."
The Mass is a sensuously rich event, and the words are an important part of it; but I think it a modern and propositionalist (perhaps positivist?) conceit to think it the only important part.
Furthermore, in the EF Mass, as opposed to the linear NO Mass, there are multiple layers of things unfolding at once: even if you were to attend to just the propositions, what would you attend to while the priest and servers are saying the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar while the cantor is simultaneously chanting the Introit? It's all magnificently beautiful, as Christopher Derrick said of the Catholic Faith itself -- a "strange divine sea."
@ Ralph. The word focus is used advisedly. It is a source, it is not a hub, it is the Focus that moves everything without Himself being moved.
For me it is the Crucified that is the aim of my meditations. The cross neither suffers nor feels. It is the man of flesh and blood that redeems.
Pertinacious Papist said, "I like Marshall McLuhan's idea that "the medium is the message." This is an important point: when it comes to the Mystery of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, words can only take us so far.
Anonymous said: "To say private prayers, an old custom when nothing was understood". I find this old argument against the Latin Mass (or even against saying private prayers at Mass) to be somewhat presumptuous. Does the writer really know what level of understanding the people had? And now that we have the Mass in the vernacular we understand so much better....really? Based on the surveys that indicate a woefully inadequate understanding of the Real Presence and the common behavior of many parishioners at Mass in most parishes (super casual, even immodest dress, chitchat in church before and after Mass, banal, secular style and man-centered music, applause during the Mass and/or at its conclusion, ad-libbing by the priest, use of unworthy vessels, lack of care in distributing and receiving Holy Communion and in purifying the vessels, etc etc etc) it would seem not.
I just attended a conference on the EF Mass and Fr. James Fryar, FSSP made the point that the fact that the Latin is not readily understood by most people is in itself a help in truly understanding the basic reality of the Mass as a mystery which is so far beyond us that it leads us to a sense of reverence and awe. "The medium is the message."
Also anonymous may not be aware that, understanding the different limitations people possess, Pope St. Pius X (in his Little Catechism) and Pope Pius XII in Mediator Dei allowed the use of private prayers at Mass for it "does not prevent us from hearing it with profit, provided we try as far as possible to follow the parts of the Holy Sacrifice." (The Little Catechism of St. Pius X). Also, the use of hand Missals with the translation on one side has always been a recommended practice.
After having attended both OF and EF for several years now, I believe the Latin and the richness of the ritual of the EF does much to enhance real and actual participation by the most people precisely because it is possible to participate on so many different levels based on one's abilities and dispositions as Pertinacious Papist alludes to. In the OF, there is only the constant stream of words that are meant to be heard and responded to, so in that context saying private prayers is like playing one's own recorder at a concert. However, people can only respond to so much auditory input, which I think explains in part people's desire to be entertained at Mass and why the respite from all the words that the Kiss of Peace provides is such a hit!
One last point: with all the activity inherent in the OF, it can lead us to think that worship is something we do, when in fact, it is Christ who is performing the worship of the Father by means of His Sacrifice. We can unite our selves to His action even if we do not understand all that is being said or whether we say anything or not.
"It is the man of flesh and blood that redeems."
Yes, I get that. But you were in the process of concocting silly metaphors for your well-informed, up-to-date experience of the Mass, remember? I wonder then why you have so little regard for the principal Christian symbol of the redemption -- the cross.
You say that the Mass is a prayer, which is correct. But your preoccupation seems to be with an aesthetic experience of it, what with your silly metaphors, your references to lions of the concert hall, and your evident concern to distinguish yourself from the "old customs" of the simple folk of past ages, who understood nothing compared to you.
But the aesthetics of the Mass are at best secondary, at worst obstructive. If the Mass is not said as a prayer, there isn't any reason to be there -- go to your concert hall instead and listen to Schubert. And if the prayers offered by others in silence are not always those found in the throwaway "worship resource," it is not up to you to judge their efficacy, or even to care.
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