Monday, August 16, 2010

Extraordinary Mass Number Four - Thoughts

On Sunday the 15th, I attended for the fourth time (as an adult) The Mass in the Extraordinary Form - celebrating the Feast of the Assumption.

Celebrated as a Low Mass, at Our Lady of Grace Church yesterday afternoon, by Father Robert Ferguson of the FSSP. And it was an overwhelming experience - perfect in every way (save for missing a part of the mass having to attend to my 8 year old's bloody nose). And it reminded me of a lesson learned from my childhood. That is - The Low Mass RULES! I am keenly aware of the Church's teaching that the High Mass is the "ultimate expression", etc. But I submit to you that - on a day in day out basis - they are wrong. Maybe at St. Peters or some other grand ediface on some days a High Mass is the best, but for the everyday Catholic - whose faith is simple, sincere, deep, and not wrapped up in Pomp and Pretense - the simplicity and humility of the simple rite reflects perfectly the humble and simple approach we have (or should have) to God our Father.

In addition tho the pure simplicity of the rite, there is the added aspect of being able to follow closely and precisely what is going on. In the High Mass, there are many times when the priest is up at the altar doing his thing and the choir is chanting away happily and there is now way at all to figure out what the heck is happening. At Mass one should internally participate and contemplate the enormous gravity of what is happening on the altar. The music should be focused on and supportive of that - not an ostentatious distraction from it.

Further it is now clear to me that the trend to highly produced Pontifical High Masses - both live and on television - is a distraction from the ultimate goal of establishing the traditional mass as a regular occurrence in most parishes. Watching one of these (admittedly beautiful) Masses is so overwheming and long that it can only be a turn off to those ordinary "John and Mary Catholics" who have neither the experience or the initiative to know that that is not an example of what having one of their parishes Sunday Masses in the extraordinary form would be like. They see a two-hour production on EWTN and think "no way would I want to have to sit through that every week" -never realizing that the normal parish mass would have virtually nothing in common with what they have seen on TV (or worse yet heard about second or third hand).

The two most beautiful Masses of my adult life have been this Sunday's Low Mass, and the Missa Cantata I attended last Easter in a tiny, beautiful church in Winston Salem, NC. If we could transform the average Sunday Mass at the average parish into something as simple and moving and beautiful and holy as those two Masses, the Church would be well along the read to true renewal.

Please Lord Let it be so.....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did it ever occur to you that the misal is supposed to be read along with the priest and not by him? If you truly understood your religion, and were as humble as you suggest, house be reading every word of the mass as I do every day. The beauty is the whole mass, not some abbreviated, watered down, quick fix for the ignorant and lazy. There is a reason it is called a sacrifice. Why do people protest given anything to God and expect so much? Unbelievable.

Tom S. said...

First I would like to say Thanks for your comment. But I would like to point out one or two issues.

Did it ever occur to you that the misal is supposed to be read along with the priest and not by him?

Yes, in fact that was part of the whole point of my post!

If you truly understood your religion, and were as humble as you suggest, house be reading every word of the mass as I do every day.

I generally do.

The beauty is the whole mass, not some abbreviated, watered down, quick fix for the ignorant and lazy.

So, the Low Mass, as faithfully offered by the church for centuries, is not the "whole mas", but a "watered down quick fix for the ignorant and lazy"?!?

There is a reason it is called a sacrifice.

Yeah, and that reason has NOTHING to do with whether it's a Low Mass or a Pontifical High Mass.

Why do people protest given anything to God and expect so much? Unbelievable.

Yeah, Unbelievable...

Anonymous said...

The Low Mass has its quiet beauty and the Missa Cantata and High Mass have their awe inspiring beauty.
Aside from the obvious fact that both forms of Mass are True Sacrifices,
I love the official music of the Church, Gregorian Chant, and as almost every Church document of the last 100 years has intructed the faithful, we must embrace our intense patrimony in this official plainchant of the Church.
As a wise priest once told me, "he who chants often, pleases God more often."
Thanks Tom!

Dan Hunter