Prayer as Linear

The Exception to the Rule

In a recent contribution by Fr. Thomas Kocik to a debate which (it would seem) pits theology against posture/orientation in liturgy NLM - Form and Function Discussion I am a bit at a loss to understand why anyone could have the impression that anything orthodox or right-thinking in our theology of the Eucharist would militate against returning to worship, according to the existing rubrics just as it has always been possible, ad Orientem. I cannot help but see praying the Eucharistic prayer with everyone facing toward the Lord as anything less than an essential component (please, sooner rather than later) to any serious effort at healing the rupture or loss of continuity within the tradition.

I remember years ago going with a group to visit the church in Rome named Santo Stefano in Rotondo. Why exactly we went and as I group I do not know because there wasn't much to see as the floor inside the church had been taken up and there were archeological digs going on everywhere inside. I say this so as to make it clear that I did not experience liturgy in this ancient round church with the altar in the center. My suspicion would be that the "in the round" part of the name of the church pointed to the anomaly of it all. This building was an exception to the rule. The tradition leaves us for the most part with linear houses of prayer and even those little baroque jewels elsewhere in Rome with hardly a straight wall or column inside are no exception in terms of the arrangement of the altar (even the Pantheon as a Christian house of prayer is no exception) not in the middle but to one side.

I think it is a mistaken tactic to argue in favor of ad Orientem on the basis of the ascendency of the sacrificial character of the Mass over the table/feeding, meal/banquet... communion notion. Would it not be better just to say that our whole tradition of prayer and adoration is linear? The sobriety of our transcendent faith keeps us from hopping ecstatically or as if in a trance around some campfire. The reason that monastic choirs face each other probably has more to do with the one big book shared by all and turned from side to side in days back before the printing press than it does with anything else. 

Our Canon, our prayer is addressed to the Lord and we kneel or stand before Him, facing Him.... together.

(Label this one an opinion piece, please.)

2 Great Thoughts on the New Missal

Antidote to Secularism

I just finished the little "Roman Missal Companion" published by MAGNIFICAT. It's great both for the commentary by Prof. Anthony Esolen on the more conspicuous changes in the ordinary of Mass, as well as for the introduction and editorial articles provided.

Personally, two notions impressed me from the editorial section of this booklet.

Firstly, Father Cameron, OP, illustrates the Church's intention to give "her worship a heightened sense of the sacred" by noting an insight from the theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg from 1996 on facing the challenge of secularism:

"If members of a secularist society turn to religion at all, they do so because they are looking for something other than what that culture already provides... What people look for in religion is a plausible alternative, or at least a complement, to life in a secularist society. Religion that is 'more of the same' is not likely to be very interesting..."  (page 9)

Secondly, Father Mulcahey, OP, touches simply but profoundly on the notion of the ars celebrandi:

"For priests and other ministers of the liturgy, the new English Missal is an opportunity to re-learn and then to do what the Roman Rite requires. We all know that after Vatican II the Mass was often celebrated more informally and with more self-expression by the celebrant. Without being overly rigid, we do greatly need this reminder that in the liturgy we are ministers, servants. We have our roles in the Mass in obedience to the Master, and must not obtrude ourselves into everyone's attention. The principal actor at Mass is Christ crucified, and having to pay closer attention to a new Missal can help put us in our places." (page 13)

While not wishing to repeat the thoughts on Liturgy and Reform which I have shared on my previous blog, Island Envoy, I'd love to know what Father Mulcahey thinks about worship ad Orientem also in service of this notion of the priest celebrant as servant and not protagonist at Mass. 

I pray for the successful reception of the New Missal, for all that means in terms of liturgical music, and hope (where the building permits without major financial outlay) that the OF would always be celebrated ad Orientem. All I can say to the hesitant is "Try it, you'll like it!" The showmanship reflexes will quickly fall away and people will find themselves praying: Sursum corda! Habemus ad Dominum! 

This Summer's Literary Great

 Dead Souls?

Thanks to a little encouragement from a friend, I was able to fill a "literary lacuna" this summer by reading and thoroughly enjoying "Dead Souls" by Nicolai Gogol. If you live in the US and are a Kindle person, you can order Gogol's complete works, including the above mentioned novel, free of charge.

I don't know when I have read such a relentless (intended positively) concatenation of character studies of mostly men, but also of a couple of women, all placed on the scales of life, scrutinized and found wanting. The novel spares no one from least to greatest except for priests (whew!). If the book wasn't so humorous and were it not for the appearance in its final chapter and for the counsel provided by Murazov, the great landowner, to three of the book's very different and tragic souls, then the emptiness, folly or futility of so many lives would probably send one screaming.

As it is, I find myself wondering why Dostoyevsky gets such high marks and Gogol comes up short in the anthologies. If you know Gogol or after reading him have some thoughts about why this Slavic Dickens hasn't made the cut, let me know!   

He Answers All Our Needs

20^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A

Isaiah 56:1, 6-7

Romans 11:13-15, 29-32

Matthew 15:21-28

“’O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour.” (Matt. 15:27-28)

 “(A)ll who keep the Sabbath free from profanation and hold to my covenant, them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer, their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isaiah 56:7)

When I was a child we were given pointers for identifying a Catholic church when we were traveling on summer vacation. One counsel was that if on entering the vestibule of the church you found there a cloakroom, then you knew it was not a Catholic church. Orders from Sister were to turn around and leave immediately! 

What is a house of prayer anyway? Today there are some Catholic churches with cloakrooms and many more with greeters at the door; times change. Years ago a common excuse folks gave for abandoning their Catholic faith in favor of some other group was that at the Catholic church it was all too cold and impersonal (no cloakrooms and no greeters: no fellowship and no coffee and donuts!). What is God’s house of prayer supposed to be like? What is a house of prayer? 

I don’t know if people still use that excuse of no fellowship, of our being too impersonal as a reason to turn their backs on us. Perhaps not on that account, but on another I am sure they still go away, namely when they disagree with Father. Instead of going to the next parish, some people get upset and offended when Father rubs them the wrong way and they abandon the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church altogether, in favor of something they might find user-friendlier, while trying to put the blame for their departure on the priest. Some stop going to church entirely with this same (sorry! dishonest) excuse. Go figure! In these peoples’ minds, no doubt, the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel would have been justified in stomping off in a rage, thoroughly offended by the treatment she received from the disciples and Jesus.

“O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

Faith and prayer: where are you at in terms of them? Can you compete or compare with the Canaanite woman in her tenacious supplication: “Have pity on me Lord, Son of David! … Lord, help me. … Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”? Faith! Tyre and Sidon is, as it was in Jesus’ day, foreign territory. Stranger as she was to God’s people yet she came to Him in her need. 

How much could this woman have known about Jesus? What excuse could we possibly have for not depending on the Lord, Who has washed us clean in the waters of Baptism and strengthened us through the grace of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, and Who tends us and absolves our sins through the ministrations of His priests, who feed us with the Body and Blood of the Lord? For us today, unlike the case of the Canaanite woman, Jesus and His disciples are not just passing through town but He, the Lord, is present in our lives and sacramentally present here in our parish church, our house of prayer. 

There was nothing simple or superficial about this woman. She had faith and she faced the cold shoulders, the annoyed and puzzled looks of the disciples; she kept coming back, each time referring to Jesus as Lord, as Dominus, that is as God. Her faith, humble and sure, was in the Son of David and in His power to cast out the demon tormenting her daughter. Can we do any less than turn to the Lord, always so close to us, in every moment and regardless of our need?

“O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

Desperation alone will not explain this woman’s tenacity. If faith were not present she would not have known enough to turn to Jesus. She took advantage of a surprising and unique opportunity, having discovered Jesus in her town. Maybe there is no such suffering in my life or in my family, at least not like there was in hers. Some would try to write her off as desperate and say she had nowhere else to turn. That is true enough, because who other than God Himself, God visible and present to our world in and through His Son, Jesus, who else conquers over sin and death? Who but God casts out demons? And what about us, do we have other options for life? Can we center our lives on anyone or anything other than Jesus? Can we trust anyone else to answer all our needs? Can we do without turning to Jesus and without doing so constantly, in every moment of our lives? Where does our sufficiency lie? Can we do without calling upon the Lord’s Name as if we had no need, or as if WallMart and Dillon’s were sufficient for our daily bread?

Do we pick our house of prayer for its fellowship, its cloakroom, its greeters, its rousing music and powerful preaching or because God’s Altar, His Tabernacle is there and the one acceptable sacrifice of the New Covenant in the Blood of Christ is renewed in unbloody fashion through the celebration of the Eucharist there? Isaiah said it so clearly and his words through the Church have lost none of their force as they are addressed to us today: “Thus says the Lord: Observe what is right, do what is just; for my salvation is about to come, my justice, about to be revealed.” The obedient and the faith-filled will see God in Christ, now and live with Him forever in Glory.

Simeon and Anna, as elderly people who prayerfully begged God to send His Messiah and deliver His people, spent all their time in the Temple. They were blessed with an encounter with Baby Jesus coming to the Temple on His Mother Mary’s arm. Simeon and Anna received the assurance that their prayers had been answered. You and I might have or certainly do have other duties which keep us from copying their example. Important is that we follow the example of the Canaanite woman, that we recognize Who our Redeemer is, that we turn to Him wherever we might be and that when, especially each Sunday, we have the opportunity to gather with His Church and return thanks to the Father with Jesus in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, that we do so with that woman’s same focus and determination, confident in the Lord’s power to save us as well.

Faith and prayer: Holy Cross parish is indeed fortunate; you are indeed fortunate to have such a beautiful house of prayer, a place with the Tabernacle front and center, a linear and focused building where our eyes are naturally drawn to Jesus lifted high upon His Cross. The atmosphere is conducive to silence, which is what we need for prayer, for lifting our hearts and minds to God.

Stake out, claim this sacred space for yourselves and for all those you love, for all those who come here to pray. Help make this place God’s house and a ladder to heaven for you and for others. Do so by your reverence, by your posture and your silence; do so by the way you come and go, by being conscious of the importance of this place and of Him Who dwells herein! Wherever you are however, wherever life takes you in the course of a week, live in the presence of God. Don’t miss an opportunity to spy Jesus as you go about your duties at home, at work, at school, wherever. Turn to Him in all your need!

“Have pity on me Lord, Son of David! … Lord, help me. … Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”

 

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Hats Off to the "Facebook Culture"!

In less than 9 minutes, Father Barron says great things about affirming the good, the true and the beautiful (in this case, in the realm of sexuality) by saying "No" to common trends. Any preacher of the Word knows that you can only say so much. This video is a genuine tour de force! It deserves the highest compliments and helps me in dealing with a long-standing and gnawing question I have about the "new media" and their contribution to proclaiming the Gospel.

Ultimately, the best and regular way within a community which understands itself as Christian to share the experience of God, to make Him all that He should be for us, is within the context of an ordered family where, please God, both Mom and Dad are present and witness to the faith they were gifted with at home. Older people all over the Caribbean told me that along side the family, or if the family failed in its mission, the Catholic school of days past was the effective encounter with the Lord, which many times led small children to a faith-filled life even if Mom and Dad did not go to Mass or pray with their children. It was chance, but it happened, thanks be to God, again and again in days gone by.

Today, as I say, people look to the "new media" in substitution for the Catholic school as that outside chance for touching the hearts and lives of those neglected or deprived of the "little Church" as that primary and essential first encounter with the God Who made us, saved us in Christ and Who loves us so dearly. As a blogger and observer of some years, I think it safe to say that full-time and "monetized" bloggers have bigger readerships, but I am beginning to wonder how much of any of our (whether we be blogger by vocation or avocation) readership/subscribers actually read or think about what they often light upon, whether systematically or by chance. Average times spent by readers on a given post would seem to point to something less than serious engagement (How far are we from the kind of flipping through the pages of a magazine which happens in waiting rooms?).

Hence, "Hats Off to the 'Facebook Culture'"! It has the marks of what would be closest to a living community of people, not isolated, of people who touch base with those whom they love and admire on a regular basis. Articles like this one of mine don't hack it. Even the impressive volume of 1 minute videos on YouTube from both the Vatican and Rome Reports don't chalk up the numbers.

Am I discounting the importance of the efforts of Word On Fire? Not in the least! Father Barron is feeding and feeding well the apologists who have the faith but will never have time to take the courses. In season and out of season and with every means. Go for it, Father!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI 

The Transfiguration - The Reflection Continues

"Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

St. Peter's awkward interjection into the glorious scene atop Mt. Tabor has been for me the scriptural moment of this year's Feast of the Transfiguration. It has dominated my thoughts today. Strangely enough it does so in the midst of an ongoing reflection on my part concerning what it is that we as Church need most surely in our day in the face of hostility aimed at us as Catholics, we being those who as a body/communion are most clearly identified with the Lord Jesus and His Truth, whether we like it or not.

While it is possible that Peter's words might have been inspired by good old Middle Eastern hospitality, I would rather suspect as do many others that the prince of apostles was trying to hold onto a moment he didn't rightly understand. We probably do the same in the face of hostility and persecution: Oh, Lord, show us Your Face! Dear Lord, pitch Your tent among us! Cast a glance and put fear into the hearts of our foes! The almost universal popularity of charismatic expressions of faith, the admiration enjoyed by mediatic, mega-church preachers, despite behind-the-scenes intrigues or the simple fact that the Crystal Cathedral of Orange County is up for auction to the highest bidder... prophecy, tongues, signs of power, wonders or miracles seem to be the path. They may seem to be the way, just as Peter's tent strategy seemed good or right to him on the Mount of the Transfiguration.

Let me set another anchor for my reflection with a quote from Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange,OP:

"Sanctifying grace and charity, which unite us to God in His intimate life, are, in fact, very superior to graces gratis datae and extraordinary, such as prophecy and the gift of tongues, which are only signs of the divine intervention and which by themselves do not unite us closely to God. St. Paul affirms this clearly, and St. Thomas explains it quite well.

Infused contemplation, an act of infused faith illumined by the gifts of understanding and wisdom, proceeds, as we shall see, from sanctifying grace, called "the grace of the virtues and the gifts," received by all in baptism, and not from graces gratis datae and extraordinary. Theologians commonly concede this. We may, therefore, even now seriously presume that infused contemplation and the union with God resulting from it are not intrinsically extraordinary, like prophecy or the gift of tongues. Since they are not essentially extraordinary, are they not in the normal way of sanctity?

A second and even more striking reason springs immediately from what we have just said: namely, sanctifying grace, being by its very nature ordained to eternal life, is also essentially ordained, in a normal manner, to the proximate perfect disposition to receive the light of glory immediately. This proximate disposition is perfect charity with the keen desire for the beatific vision, an ardent desire which is ordinarily found only in the union with God resulting from the infused contemplation of the mysteries of salvation.

This contemplation is, therefore, not intrinsically extraordinary like prophecy, but something eminent which already appears indeed to be in the normal way of sanctity, although relatively rare like lofty perfection."

On Mount Tabor the Lord Jesus let Peter, James and John hear the Father's voice, they could in an image contemplate the fulfillment in His Person of all that the Law sought and the Prophets longed for. The Transfiguration in and of itself was not the fulfillment:

"As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus charged them, 'Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead."

The Resurrection, the victory over sin and death, is the event. Our share in His intimate life through love and His gift of sanctifying grace is our share in that victory, foretaste and promise of the world to come. We have here no lasting dwelling place; this is not the time to be setting up tents, if you will. We strive onward with our eyes open and focused on the truth which comes to us from God: the truth about life, about man and his relationships, the truth about our dignity and destiny. We push on with a certain urgency from the vision of Tabor to the reality of Golgotha.

To say seek the higher gifts, strive for virtue in your everyday life, might be to say too little, as people often miss the point as did Peter. It is hard to turn from what Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange tags as "extraordinary" in favor of the eminently "normal" which is at once so terribly profound. Even crystal cathedrals can end up on the auction block!


What about the hard times we are presently facing? Apart from petitioning the Lord to go easy on us His servants, we need to dedicate ourselves to serving Him, God, first and foremost. In his novel Callista: A Tale of the Third Century Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman speculates on the role persecution played in the life and vitality of the Church in North Africa. He looks soberly at persecution and puts real content into the expression "The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians". Many were lost in the persecutions, but oh so many were refined in the crucible of suffering and became lights not only for their own generation but for the centuries following. 


What should be our hope? We do not and cannot rejoice, for example, in the damage done to our Catholic healthcare and social service systems worldwide by rabid atheists, militant secularists and bigoted relativists. By the same token, as we study and pray, as we, out of a genuine and pure love, refine our arguments and our strategies for service (in the case of healthcare and social services), we draw our hope from the clarity of our witness, (taking a clue from Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity) continually sacrificing ourselves out of love for our neighbor even without all of the sophistication and efficiency which technology and government subsidies can provide. We seek to serve man as he is in God's eyes. Our hope should be to join Christ Who prophesied that lifted up on the Cross He would draw all to himself. 


What do we do in the face of hostility? Maybe we'll know better if we stop balking at accepting our share in the sufferings of Christ, Who gave His life for our salvation.

SERVIAM

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Cognition and Contemplation

Last evening on EWTN's The Journey Home, Marcus Grodi and his guest reflected together or maybe we could say they struggled together with a distinction between faith and recognition, which Marcus had gleaned from an English spiritual author. The two men applied it to a common experience of converts to the Catholic faith, namely, that they come to faith, they experience a conversion, but having been part of a protestant tradition, they still have a way to go to reach the expansiveness, the fullness of Catholic faith which comes to us from the Apostles. The classic example or illustration of this distinction between faith and recognition comes regarding the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. They also applied the distinction in reverse to "cradle" Catholics saying that the recognition is there as habit and is a good thing, but sometimes the faith is deficient or lacking.

I don't want to challenge either them or that English bishop author (whose name escaped me for its unfamiliarity) concerning their distinction, but I'm wondering whether some of the guest's cautious observations about his actual conversion process and the fact that the priest who prepared him for reception into the Catholic Church seemed to be in no hurry might indicate a more essential way to describe our walk of faith, whether by way of conversion from another Christian expression to the Catholic or by way of growth in the faith of our baptism. The guest on the program hazarded the suspicion that the priest was waiting to see humility in his seeker before proceeding. My guess is that Father was a wise man who was looking for signs of the life of virtue, the fruits of the Holy Spirit, the only sure signs we have, presided over first and foremost by genuine humility, the only indicators we have of holiness of life, of zeal for the Lord and His Rule.

As Catholics we know that the goal of a life of penance, penitential practice, asceticism is the cultivation of the virtues. Turning our backs on vice or self-indulgence to seek the Lord and His Rule over us, "spiritual combat" as my friend Lorenzo Scupoli called it, is right, is the only good in terms of living uprightly. We are constantly gifted by God and to the extent (a bow in the direction of St. John of the Cross and our whole tradition!) that the Theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity conquer Satan's pride in our lives, the Lord gifts us again and again with the contemplation of His Face, of the Mysteries, of the great Truths by which only we can live.

Something I read these days in conjunction with the annual celebration of the Baptism of the Rus and the instrumental role of St. Volodomyr in that process, which has marked more than a millennium of people so profoundly that no amount of political machinations and oppression over time have been able to diminish altogether or completely destroy that soul, led me to think again about my own roots of faith and the crisis of faith generally in Western society. Cognition is certainly part of faith; faith and reason belong together. There is a teaching of prayers, a learning of Catechism which must be, but salting that with the "rousing" Sundays of animated parishes of the last 40 years is not enough. The full sacramental life, from childhood on, with the Sacrament of Penance under the vigilance of parents who want their children to be holy/virtuous is a sine qua non. Mom and Dad's faith, hope and charity, their daily prayer and personal sacrifices born out of love are indispensable. The reform of our Catholic Liturgy, the recovery of its sobriety and beauty, securing sacred space and guaranteeing it for Sunday must be.

We've been too distracted and for too long. I hope and pray that no more souls will be lost to our failure, yes to recognize the pearl of great price and sell all to obtain it. Maybe more in line with the tradition and more to the point would be to recognize, unworthy as we are, the responsibility we have for leading others especially children to the Lord by drawing them out, educating them, helping them to choose life and in abundance from God, the source of all good. Beyond faith, what Marcus and his guest termed recognition is contemplation as gifted to the virtuous, who humbly recognize the Lord as the be all and end all of our lives.