Why Traditional Liturgy speaks to the Heart
(Photo Credit: Tony Gentile / Reuters)
Not everyday does one say that something “speaks to their heart”. In fact, in much of the world today we prefer not to speak of the soul or heart at all. So when a friend recently asked why I attend Mass in Latin, I was initially somewhat short for words. I thought to myself that he certainly did have a point, it would indeed be easier to worship in English and even easier again not to go at all. Eventually I formulated a spontaneous answer saying; “because it speaks to the heart”.
I was careful not to say that it merely spoke to my heart, but rather the heart in general, recalling the opening words of the Catechism that “the desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by and for God” (CCC 27). The Mass, I explained, is not merely a matter of preference. One might well have the preference for a shorter Mass, a more “energetic” Mass or a more “inclusive” Mass. But as I said to my friend, the Mass isn’t about what we want but what God wants. Expecting to be taken for a lunatic, I braced for his rebuttal. However, I was met solely with an inquisitive raised eyebrow.
So I went about explaining to him (and myself incidentally) why I thought this sacred language, and in general a more traditional liturgy, had a place at Mass. First, anticipating the confusing and often controversial nature of the theme, I outlined the different types of Masses. That the Mass most young people grew up with is called the Novus Ordo Mass and that the Mass more common before that (always in Latin) is called the Extraordinary Rite, Tridentine form or Mass of the Ages. The Novus Ordo form can be in almost any language; English, French, German, Lithuanian, Italian and surprising for many, even Latin (it is mistake to believe that the Novus Ordo Mass is always in the vernacular without exception).
By no means should one run away from Mass altogether just because there are abuses of the liturgy in some Novus Ordo Masses. One should seek primarily reverence and a prayerful atmosphere and only then think about what language or what rite the Mass is in. It just so happens to be that Masses that incorporate varying degrees of traditional liturgical practices do tend to be more reverent.
With this reverence comes a greater understanding of what the Mass is. Not merely a habitual symbolic horizontal ritual that one goes to, to please his or her grandmother and meet the neighbours, but rather a renewal of the Holy Sacrifice of Calvary. Our Lord allows himself to be so vulnerable in the Eucharist, in fact more vulnerable even than in the manger in Bethlehem. How we treat this sacrament is directly reflected in the belief (and unfortunately often unbelief) in the true presence amongst fellow Catholics.
A cure for this is receiving Our Lord on the tongue and kneeling if possible. Another manifestation of our respect for the Eucharist is how we deal with fragments of the consecrated Host that fall on the church floor. To an outsider, having so much reverence for what they see at first to be a mere piece of bread seems crazy. However there’s nothing wrong with being seen as a little crazy by the world. Were the saints not seen to be a little crazy, was Christ himself not seen by his contemporaries to be a little crazy.
In a world of passing fades, where everyone wants to be different (but ironically all in the same way), Latin and Tradition stand as pillars of unchanging universal truth. It links us today, to the faithful of times past. It provides continuity and clarity. It is a living expression of the catholicity of the Catholic Church. Latin is appealing to many young people today because by its nature it is radical, it is counter cultural. It radicalises youth, the one type of radicalisation that only brings good, radicalisation towards beauty, towards truth, towards Christ.
We live in a generation marked by our love for new experiences and also our short attention spans. Traditional liturgical practices accommodates the former and challenges the latter. Latin takes a bit of work at first, but it's like uncovering a mystery. It makes you work to understand what’s going on. It takes you from passive daydreaming to active awareness of and participation in the Mass, via prayer.
Ireland like many countries has seen a public perception of the Church move from cynicism in 1980s, to hatred in the 2000s and now in the 2020s to indifference. Arguably indifference is the worst of these three. Indifference relegates religion to something nice that your grandmother enjoys on a Sunday morning, but otherwise insignificant to our day to day lives. Something private and not to be tolerated in public.
Embracing the mysterious, miraculous and sacrificial nature of the Mass is no doubt the best way to capture the interest, imagination, and devotion of today's young adults. Latin, furthermore provides a demarcation between the ordinary and the extraordinary. It separates the language we use everyday and the language we use for worship.
Both Latin and indeed the Church stand in opposition to everything temporary. It is permanent, its is ever-relevant and what more, it is true. A deep truth that is as hard to articulate as it is easy to appreciate. In short, it is everything that the heart craves for. I have seen young men cry in a reverent Mass, featuring varying degrees of Latin, incense, ad orientem consecration and kneeling for Communion on the tongue, and I cannot blame them, for I count myself among their number.
When the Church appeals to the young on the terms of the secular world it screams of cringe. The Church should not aim to compete with Hollywood on the terms of Hollywood. The local parish priest does not have the million dollar budget of a music video or the latest blockbuster film.
Every day we are bombarded with the noise of the secular world media. The goal of this media is to entertain. This is not something bad. There is a place for secular media and that work can most certainly be sanctified, but that place is not the Mass. The goal of the Mass is not to entertain but rather to worship. One does not clap at the enormous effort of the parish choir out of lack of appreciation for their contribution but rather in recognition of their music as being prayer, not for human glory but the glory of God.
A reverent Mass is something that transcends the individual. It transports you out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary. I could go on and on explaining this point, but it is best to experience it for one’s self. An older friend of mine one said that beauty is objective and natural, you can’t convince someone with argument and persuasion that something either is or isn't beautiful, all they need to do is see it with their own eyes.
Unfortunately, many young people have been robbed of this opportunity to encounter Christ through the beauty of the Mass. Their experience and impression of Catholicism is something far removed from that of their ancestors. One cannot blame young people today who say that the Mass is boring or irrelevant to their lives, for no one has properly explained to them what the Mass really is and many have never seen it celebrated with the reverence that it deserves.
Human nature is to change things to conform with our own comfort and personal taste. That might work with human undertakings but with matters pertaining to the divine it’s always best to have humility. In short, I'd say, don’t change the Mass, allow the Mass to change you.
The structure of the Mass (Novus Ordo or Extraordinary form) is not beauty for beauty's sake but rather the liturgy is a physical expression of mystery and theological truths that transcend us. How we pray shows what be believe and there is no greater prayer than the Mass. Every priest is encouraged to celebrate a Mass like it is his first and will be his last.
This of course is easier said than done. In Ireland, like much of the West today there's a crisis in priestly vocations. For decades now young people have largely moved away from the Church and many parish priests have to celebrate multiple Masses in multiple parishes every Sunday. This can be exhausting and no doubt impacts the reverence with which the Mass is celebrated.
On top of that they have to contend with a vocal minority of parishioners who have their own strong opinions (opinions often not in continuity with Catholic tradition) on how exactly they think the Mass could be “more inclusive” or “updated”. All this creates a spiral towards the simplification and feminisation of the liturgy. An absolute death sentence for young male participation in the Church. The same demographic from which the Church needs the priests of tomorrow.
The Church stands for an ideal, for beauty, for truth and ultimately for salvation. The youth of today that do go to Mass do not want a watered down politically correct version of the Faith, they want the real thing. Many today confuse the purpose of the Church for something to do with social outreach or political activism. In reality, Catholics believe that Christ founded the Church for the salvation of Souls. Nothing can take precedence over this objective, everything else is secondary.
However there is still cause for hope. Increasingly within the Church there is a new rediscovered appreciation for traditional liturgy. Pope Saint John Paul II led a damage control effort against those who used the new found perceived flexibility in the liturgy after the Second Vatican Council, to allow or even promote abuses against the reverence of the Mass.
Then Pope Benedict led the greatest counter attack in defense of the sacred liturgy, in what he called “the reform of the reform”. Even as a cardinal he understood that for the average Catholic, the liturgy is the main interaction with the teachings of the Church and that how we worship is demonstrative of what we believe. In 1997 he wrote;
“The Church stands and falls with the liturgy. When the adoration of the divine Trinity declines, when the faith no longer appears in its fullness in the liturgy of the Church, when man’s words, his thoughts, his intentions are suffocating him, then faith will have lost the place where it is expressed and where it dwells. For that reason, the true celebration of the sacred liturgy is the centre of any renewal of the Church.”
And as Pope he took the lead in making that intention a reality issuing the “Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum” which allowed the Extraordinary Latin Mass to be celebrated without restriction and in his apostolic exhortation “Sacramentum Caritatis” called for more Latin to be incorporated in the Novus Ordo celebration of the Mass;
“Speaking more generally, I ask that future priests, from their time in the seminary, receive the preparation needed to understand and to celebrate Mass in Latin, and also to use Latin texts and execute Gregorian chant; nor should we forget that the faithful can be taught to recite the more common prayers in Latin, and also to sing parts of the liturgy to Gregorian chant”
Pope Francis too understands that liturgy is vital to the Church. It is clear that he wishes to uphold the integrity of the sacred liturgy like his predecessors. It was he personally appointed Cardinal Robert Sarah to Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments. Cardinal Sarah (twenty years after the above remarks by then Cardinal Ratzinger) speaks with even greater urgency;
“Even today, a significant number of Church leaders underestimate the serious crisis that the Church is going through: relativism in doctrinal, moral and disciplinary teaching, grave abuses, the desacralization and trivialization of the Sacred Liturgy, a merely social and horizontal view of the Church's mission. Many believe and declare loud and long that Vatican Council II brought about a true springtime in the Church. Nevertheless, a growing number of Church leaders see this "springtime" as a rejection, a renunciation of her centuries-old heritage, or even as a radical questioning of her past and Tradition.”
Despite the growing awareness of the problem among the Church leadership, the task of appreciating and facilitating reverent liturgy falls to regular priests and the lay faithful. Thankfully, all this has trickled down to the new generation of seminarians who can’t contain their enthusiasm for reverence in the liturgy. Indeed for any young man to want to be a priest today, is already marking himself out as an outlier. A rebel standing in opposition to all the false promises of today's secularist culture. The jump from there to embracing the traditions of previous generations is comparatively not that large, some might even say logical.
Niall Buckley
December 2019
Pope Benedict XVI celebrates Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican