Yes, I know liturgy is all about community, sharing a meal, communion with each other in Christ. I don't really care: I want my solitude. Yes I am old, ornery and eccentric!
I think of my mother who recalled that when she was raising us, her nine children, her only break all week was that hour when she walked up to Sunday mass, prayed quietly and walked home alone.
I think of the conversion of Dorothy Day. Hers was an intellectual turn that resulted from her reading the saints and Catholic theology and practice. She was baptized on a rainy, gloomy day and walked home alone. For years she personally knew almost no Catholics, even as she went to daily mass, prayed the rosary and read voraciously. She was deeply Catholic but entirely solitary. Her friends were the radicals, anarchists, bohemians...whose world she had abandoned...until Peter Maurin walked in. But she always remained something of a misfit in the world of radical politics and that Catholicism. Lonely!
Of course I love Sunday mass; the liturgy of Holy Week. I value the Latin mass with its chant, solemnity, and memories. I love charismatic liturgies with singing in tonques, inspired preaching, lively praise music. I also found delight in the Neocatechumenal Eucharist: the exhortations, echoes, and Kiko's rousing guitar music.
The core shape, the form, the interior logos of the Eucharist is sublimely simple: we listen to the Word of God; then the priest offers bread and wine, consecrates, and we receive. My all time favorite Eucharists are the ones we learn of by priests in prison, as in communism, who are smuggled a drop of wine and a crumb of bread and they reverently, secretly consecrate and receive. The entire, immense, infinite, eternal, boundless Eucharist is right there, in those few words and simple, minute elements.
So, I am basically a low-brow, no-frills, guy in liturgical style. There are a number of reasons why I cherish silence, anonymity, calm.
- Bascially an introvert, I cherish my solitude.
With my work, large family and close friends I have plenty of fellowship, maybe too much.
My Irish-Catholic DNA: a friend reminded me that in the centuries of poverty and oppression by the English, the Irish celebrated simply, quietly, without ostentation and left all the bells and smells to the high-church Anglicans.
Mostly where I worship I am demographically a minority, surrounded by Asians (mostly Philipinos), Latinos and a smattering of blacks and whites.
We moved into Jersey City as adults, after our marriage, and therefore do not have the network of connections from growing up here. We have always been "strangers" or immigrants here.
Don't imagine that I am in a mystical state at mass. Most of the time my mind is meandering and ruminating: writing my next blog essay, critiquing our pope or president, thinking about my day, fixating on my biggest work worries (enough money? bedbugs and hoarders, psychiatric situations, relationship challenges), or daydreaming about that georgeous actress I saw in a movie the previous night (today that would be Gene Tierney in Laura...I can't imagine how JFK could leave her for a life in politics?!?!).
But the good thing: the words of the priest, the readings and prayers, as well as the visuals (paintings, stained glass, stations, stations, etc.) intrude on my obsessions and compulsions and draw me to ponder the love God has for us as shown in the Gracious Act of our salvation.
For daily mass...routine, calm, quiet, anonymous, invisible, alone, patient, inspiring, protective, secure...THANKS BE TO GOD!
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