Picture a choir-loft view of a church full of Catholics assembled for the Eucharist. It’s a solemn feast, Easter perhaps. The presiding priest has just incensed the gifts and the altar, and has himself been properly reverenced in turn by the server. The server, who probably doesn’t do this very often, manages to survive holding the thurible open so the priest can put in mor (...)
Article
Assembly Required
Christ’s Presence in the Pews
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" I thought that old people went to church because they had nothing better to do and knew they would die soon. Now I know better. We go to taste the sweetness of the Lord." ..and the assembly..
That and the emphasis on assembly is the answer but it's still hard to get that across to the un-initiated.And explaining the delight of baseball is also hard to explain to the un-initiated.
And perhaps we could pay attention to planning the liturgy in advance, making homilies sparkle, unburdening our priests with three, four and five liturgies each weekend? If it looks like the celebrant is just suffering through one more excercise, how can you blame the youth for feeling unengaged? What would happen if there were smaller, more intimate churches and chapels in each neighborhood instead of behemoth cathedrals which need casts of thousands? And then, there is the gifts of women and the married that are both ignored and denigrated. It is as if the church says to them, 'we don't need no stinkin' laity.' We've got our terrible new and unfathomable sacramentary, lots of pray, pay and obey relics from of old, and really pretty lace and vestments to wear. We need a pope in jeans and sandals with the gnarled hands of a fisherman.
Thank you, Prof. Portier, for such a wonderful set of reflections on some under-appreciated aspects of the value of attending mass. Your essay contains a great many points that have stuck with me, popping up throughout my day, time and time again. In fact, as I read your piece, I was moved to tears, and not just once. It's not often that I bring myself to such things, trained as I am in the healthy skepticism of moral and political theory, but I found your voice to be the voice of _wisdom_. The kind of wisdom which need not be theoretical or philosophical (though I think you have that kind, too), but the kind of wisdom which is a discerning eye concerning what matters in life. Again, thank you so very much.