Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us!

To-day, which in the Traditional Calendar is Whit Monday, in the modern Roman Rite's local Australian Calendar is the Solemnity of Our Lady Help of Christians.  Given the importance of the feast, and the need to pray for a relative undergoing a medical procedure, I went to Mass...

I do wish the celebrant would recall that the Creed ought be read, it being a solemnity!  It is of far greater importance to join the Church in confessing our Holy Faith than to indulge in what was the great time-wasting session that ensued instead: while all sat (meditating on their latter end, as the saying goes), we had tiresomely longwinded extempore prayers of the faithful, one of which, from an over-pious middle-aged female, as well as being inaudible, was longer than the sermon.  I resent turning the Mass into a pathetic prayer-group.

Alas!  I had come to "Lazy Mass", an unfortunately common variant of the Ordinary Form, especially when Mass is celebrated for a small coterie, middle-aged and up, on weekdays.  (The virulent form is such a Mass dominated by foul religious sisters or fouler layfolk of the dissenting variety.)  Note that I write not of Mass for the very aged or frail, since they of course can hardly be expected to sit, stand and kneel in due order: I write of those perfectly able to kneel at Mass on Sunday, but who manifest an aversion to the same on weekdays.

Sitting – apparently this is the acceptable posture in which to worship God.  Or so one not conversant with the actual directions of the Roman Rite might conclude, given the lazy way all but two rested in their chairs during the Preface, when they should have stood (as had done at the start of Mass, and as they did for the Lord's Prayer later on), and, most scandalously, during the entire Eucharistic Prayer (the amply-carpeted floor being too uninviting for most knees).  The rationale seemed to be that if one sat dumbly during the very Consecration, why bother standing for the Preface?  The well-known and reinforced requirement that one must now stand up at the Orate fratres seems not to apply to such Lazy Masses.

I expect that if I had asked why, there would have been horror at the question even being posed: apparently at a weekday Mass this sort of thing reigns in some places.  There is an entire blindness to the scandal of such material irreverence and disobedience to the clear directions given for the Mass, which allow no exceptions for such pretended exceptions.

It is wrong to sit at such times unless one is incapacitated.  If kneeling is not possible, it has been pointed out in Notitiæ, official organ of the Congregation for Divine Worship, that standing is the next best.  But no, ignorance triumphs again.

It particularly offends and upsets me that such a bad custom perverts the proper understanding of what liturgy and due reverence require, and turns the dread mysteries of the Mass into a safe little sit-down.  People even get the wicked idea (Luther I think first gave voice to it) that somehow such an "intimate" little affair is more "authentic" than the norm, when it is in fact a corruption inimical to a true perception of religious respect.

How typical that in backward Tasmania, the notorious coffee-table Masses of the sixties and seventies are still alive and well!  At least those who destroyed the liturgy back then largely drew the logical conclusion and either reformed themselves (as one hopes) or left altogether (as one fears), their innovating irreverence slipping away into indifference and atheism...

Despite the priest (personally devout), who has I know improved matters in the parish to some extent, I discovered anew that I cannot bear the way weekday Mass is arranged, not on his part, but on that of the congregation.  It drives me away every time, and has for years, whenever for any reason have I steeled myself to go again.  But I suppose this would be considered evidence of my having a problem, not those folks in their unthinking laxity, no...

Mass on Wednesday

For the first time in a long while, after work I managed to get to Mass: a simple said Novus Ordo, at St Vincent's Hospital chapel. I was agreeably surprised to find that at last the small congregation there has learnt to stand at the Orate fratres, and keep standing for the Preface.

(This had been previously what I term a worse "lazy Mass", whereat Christ's faithful do sit dumbly, forgetting that the carpet is soft and thick, their knees bendable, and irreverence inseparable from impiety.)

Another Lazy Mass

What is it about hospital chapels?

To-day, having for a change read the parish bulletin, I noticed that St Luke's Hospital (recently, like St Vincent's, incorporated into Calvary Health Care, based in Hobart and somehow carrying on the charism of the dear sisters who used to run it in the olden days) has a Mass on Thursdays at 3.30 pm: so I went along.

I am sure that, but for my obedient and automatic standing and kneeling at the appropriate points, the few gathered for the Liturgy would have sat like lumps throughout.

(It may appear judgemental and nasty-sounding of me to - quite rationally, given my experiences - assume so, but under the I'm certain very well-meaning unintentional confusion about posture lies the assumption common to many if not most these days that somehow the rubrical necessity is to be informal as possible, and that a small gathering without any ceremony is in fact allegedly closer to the example of Our Lord and the Apostles in the Upper Room, and therefore Mass sitting about in bean-bags, with no vestments and so forth is per se more authentic, what Luther termed more real and evangelical, than what they deride as "bells and smells" and probably gay liturgy - the last criticism is particularly Australian, stems from our cultural cringe, albeit does have I will admit some truth to it in certain circles, yet is strange coming from liberals who presumably are less opposed to such immoral lifestyles!)

I feel sorry for Fr Kene, our local Nigerian priest-on-loan; apparently he, together with his confreres elsewhere in Tasmania, would prefer to dress as they do in Nigerian, in clerical outfits with Roman collars, but were told that "we don't do that here" - and I suspect that they have been warned off being too Catholic in other subtle ways, also.  No criticism meant of them personally of course; their preaching is excellent and orthodox.  But the cult of self-reinforcing anti-Roman mediocrity that reigns in the inward-looking Tasmanian presbyterate does not want to be discomfited: as I remarked at the time of the Tampa controversy (then-P.M. Howard's "Pacific solution" of taking boat-borne asylum seekers to detention camps on offshore islands or elsewhere), while the clergy here were vocal in opposing the Government on the refugee issue, if it had been a boatload of priests coming those same priests here would have urged them to be machine-gunned without mercy or pity.  

It's the dog-in-the-manger, spiritually abortifacient (in Bp Fisher's words), we-want-the-Church-to-die, almost self-hating attitude of the local priests that causes many of the faithful, including myself now I'm back, to simply retreat from involvement in the archdiocese.  The liberals have seen all their hopes blighted, and think that the disaster since the Council is the result of it not being fully implemented - as a complete rupture with the bad old days - by the nasty old Popes since.  This priestly generation (well, it's really a very old generation!) must die before rebuilding can occur: at least poor Adrian only has two years before retirement.  After all, the priest in Kingston parish - a strange example of apparent lack of Catholic faith; he preached in my hearing that Christ, when He died on Calvary, "didn't know He would rise again" - delights in telling his bewildered parishioners and parish councillors that he will be the last priest the parish will have (a large collection of the still-expanding southern suburbs of Hobart), and asserts they had best prepare for a priestless future (à la the Russian Old Believers perhaps? how unconsciously ironic).

Thanks be, in the Novus Ordo to-day is the feast of St Barnabas Apostle, the "Son of Encouragement", that faithful and greathearted man picked out by the Holy Ghost: by his name, he reminds me of the familiar passage from II Corinthians i, 3-5 which insists upon that which I live by, that it is in the God of all comfort we place our trust, and not in sinful men, of the sort who, were the Church a human institution only, would indubitably bring her to utter destruction:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort: Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, * that we also may be able to comfortthem who are in all distress, by the exhortation wherewith we also are exhorted by God.  For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us; so also by Christ doth our comfort abound.

[* Here ends the Little Chapter at ferial Vespers.]

Eve of Corpus Christi

To celebrate Corpus Christi (well, really to fete my return from New Zealand) I went out for dinner with relatives, which was very pleasant - but this was the agape after the eucharistia, since I braved "lazy Mass" at St Vincent's Hospital first: I call it that because the rather aged clientele not only don't kneel - yes, some may well be unable to (such as the man in the wheelchair!) - but perversely, even though they stand for the Gospel and the Lord's Prayer, they dumbly sit for the Preface.  I stand.

In any case, the celebrant was a devout Franciscan priest who, one could tell, savoured the words of the sacred rites, and in all honesty I found even his use of the Eucharistic Prayer for Various Needs and Occasions quite bearable, seeing as it quite clearly enunciated the Sacrifice being offered up, and so forth (though the more self-reflexive lines about we the Church on our pilgrim way would best be deleted as too subjective and secretly smug).  As I was a little late in arriving (just before the Gospel), I had prayed to myself  in the car the opening parts of the Mass in the EF, Introibo and all that, and in the pause during the Offertory read to myself from my Breviary the Collect of St Margaret and the passage about the Valiant Woman that would have served for an Epistle.  It was good to kneel before the Mystery being enacted, and to come to receive the Body and the Blood.  Refecti Christi corpore et sanguine, te laudamus, Domine!

In thanksgiving, I prayed the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, each twice, the better to savour the words while turning to the Lord Who had come: Benedictus qui venit... Hosanna in excelsis!  After the Liturgy, I knelt before the Tabernacle and said First Vespers of Corpus Christi, which was thanksgiving indeed.

A good day, to-day; praying the Office, the Golden Sequence Veni sancte Spiritus, and even the Rosary on the way home, plus assisting at Mass; abundant consolations.  Lord, preserve me.

St Ambrose, The Roman Canon, and Lazy Mass

St Ambrose is notable for many reasons; but I will simply draw together a few recent and half-relevant thoughts his feast inspires as it draws to a close, and First Vespers of the Immaculate Conception fast approaches (which Vespers are to be sung tonight at St John's Pro-Cathedral).

Attending today the Novus Ordo, indeed the ordinary form (in all senses) of the Roman Rite, I nonetheless had the pleasant surprise of hearing the Roman Canon used.  The celebrant I suspect decided to do so given that St Ambrose, in his De Sacramentis, is the first to quote in extenso from a recognizable variant of the Canon; and how good to make such an allusion, rather than race through Mass (daydream, and you miss the consecration!) by using the all-too-brief and doctrinally poorer Eucharistic Prayer II, as 90% + of priests do, and not just on weekdays but on Sundays.

However, I was also reminded of my bête noire, the "Lazy Mass": that aberration whereby particularly a small group on a weekday believe that it is alright, even somehow better, not to stand (worse, not to kneel) when they should.  I know two places where no one stands for the Preface – yet insanely they do for the Lord's Prayer!  This laziness has developed because those not inclined to kneel (no kneeler – tho' the carpet is soo thick), having sat for the offertory, can't be bothered arising for the Preface if they are to sit again, and not properly throw themselves down upon their knees for the Eucharistic Prayer, as is the rule throughout the English-speaking Church.  

Of course those genuinely unable to stand or kneel are excused, but most of this avoidance of due posture is laziness combined with a distorted notion of worship: that somehow it is more 'real', more 'authentic', to laze on a chair rather than to stand or kneel (and Notitiæ long past pointed out that if you can't kneel at the consecration, it is best to stand, not to rudely remain seated), that the rules – oh, nasty! – don't really apply to little gatherings, as if it were rational to desire an 'informal' Mass (when worship by its nature demands ritual posture).  The trouble is that if one stands at the right moment, and no one else does, one feels a fool and a pharisee.  So I sat out the Prayer of the Faithful with the rest of the congregation: and I in no way rebuke them, for they wouldn't see that they have been led into a distorted attitude.

St Ambrose, I now remember, notes that the knee was made bendable to propitiate the wrath of God.  The sad fact is people would be outraged by the statement, yet it is totally in tune with the revelation found in Scripture, as taught and lived by the Fathers.

As is said or sung in Lent:

Oremus.

Flectamus genua.

Levate.

If we never humble ourselves, in penitence and in worship, how shall we truly know what it is to arise and stand in praise of God, Whose Onlybegotten did take upon Himself our human nature and man's estate, humbling Himself usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis, that being risen triumphant over death, He might be exalted above the skies – and to Him every knee must bow.