"I don't get anything out of mass" is easily the most frequent statement about the Eucharist.
That is the point: Jesus comes to us in disguise...he has no appeal, no comeliness, no charm. Utterly plain, mundane, unglamorous. He requires us to go beyond our "experience" and our feelings and appearance to see Him hidden in the simple, small, round, white host. He requires that we love Him, not for some pleasant feelings, but for Himself in his utter modesty and humility.
I like to go, from time to time, to the Latin mass. Where I go in Jersey City the chant is to die for: you are in heaven. Then the solemnity of the service: kneeling, standing, sitting...constant motion. A legion of altar servers, of all ages, engage our eyes as they genuflect, move the lectionary, hold the incense, bow, and circle each other smoothly in a well-practiced ritual. The Latin brings back memories of myself as an altar boy. I know enough of it so that together with my familiarity with the ritual I know what is going on but there is a solemnity, a mystery about it. Since half of it is not intelligible, my deliberative intellect is able to relax and I am able to surrender to a serenity that is enhanced by the incense, visual movement and on-and-off chant. It is a heavenly experience. I don't know why I don't go more often.
Better yet, as a charismatic I love to go to St. Antoninus in Newark: impassioned songs of praise and worship, praying in tongues, inspired prophesies, and zealous evangelical preaching. Not as serene or deep as the Latin mass, it makes up for it in energy and joy. You get evangelical revival, the sacrament itself, and a chastened Dionysian ecstasy all for the price of admission. I don't know why I don't go there more often.
In a similar key I have enjoyed over the years participation in the liturgy of Kiko and Carmen: heartfelt exhortations and echoes, guitar music as enlivening as praise and worship, and an intense sense of interpersonal communion. I don't know why I don't go more often.
And then there is the Tony Azzarto mass. From time to time Fr. Tony Azzarto S.J. brings a group of volunteers to our boarding home where he says mass and they serve a fine dinner. Our ladies love it. Tony does not use the chapel but the dining room. He is relaxed, friendly, warm, inviting and inclusive. There is something deep, prayerful and loving about him. You cannot help but feel serene and safe. He has a reverence in an informal key. Actually, much too casual for me. He welcomes all to receive communion, regardless. This leaves me conflicted. It is irreverent from a Catholic point of view. But everyone, including myself, is left with a sense of God's love. I do not fully approve, but I welcome them quietly because the event is generous, joyous, and deeply reassuring to our ladies.
In the same vein: the mass we share every five years at our class reunion, Maryknoll College Seminary class of 1969. It is a great event: we enjoy, stimulate and love each other. The emotional high point is the final mass. Four of us are today Maryknoll priests and one of them presides with Azzartoesque warmth, relaxed reverence and lots of humor. There is a dialogue, shared homily in which many share intimate feelings. Very moving. The majority of our classmates no longer practice their Catholic faith, abstaining from mass except for funerals and weddings. Of perhaps 30 classmates (and some wives), I am probably the only one tormented by its dissonance with Catholic protocols. Yet I doubt any imaginable gathering or ritual could substitute for it, so deeply engrained is our Catholic sensibility, even for those who have fallen away from the practice.
All of these experiences...music, emotions, ecstasy, serenity, smells, visuals...all feed into and flow out of the Eucharistic encounter. They are not extrinsic or accidental. But nor are they essential. It is more like your eyes, your hands, your feet...they are constitutive of the full you, but were they amputated, your essence would be intact.
The essence of the Eucharist, the fundamental shape, is sublimely simple: the hearing of the Word (prepared for by the confession of sin), the Offering, the Consecration, and Communion.
Everything else elaborates, expresses, enhances the core act.
And so, the act is most sublime when it is stripped down, unadorned, simple. The mass said by priests in prison with a crumb of bread and drop of wine that had been smuggled in. The mass of John Paul high in the mountains on a skiing trip with his young friends. The masses, since my youth, in which I have served or attended alone with the celebrant, in solitude and yet representative of the universal, bridal Church.
How about the ordinary parish Sunday Novus Ordo mass? Well, not so grea! It lacks the embellishments of the Latin, Neocat, charismatic or Azzattonian masses. Most of the time, the music is soft, sentimental, banal, lacking in solemnity or martial vigor. The atmosphere is casual, friendly, bourgie. The sermon is predictably thoughtful, intelligent, down-to-earth, moving to an assurance of the unconditional love of God (free of wrath, justice, accountability) and a moralistic exhortation to kindness, generosity, and inclusiveness. Basically, the accoutrements...music, friendliness, sermon...are distractions from the Eucharistic Act in its rawness and profundity.
The simple, short, unadorned daily mass of the Novus Ordo is my "Eucharist of Choice." It is nothing to brag about. It is like meat/potatoes/vegetable at Mom's: no flavoring, not gourmet. Plain, nourishing.
It is what our mother the Church gives us. It is more than enough!
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