Feast of St. Augustine

From the Office of Readings (Augustine, Confessions):

Urged to reflect upon myself, I entered under your guidance the innermost places of my being; but only because you had become my helper was I able to do so. I entered, then, and with the vision of my spirit, such as it was, I saw the incommutable light far above my spiritual ken and transcending my mind: not this common light which every carnal eye can see, nor any light of the same order; but greater, as though this common light were shining much more powerfully, far more brightly, and so extensively as to fill the universe. The light I saw was not the common light at all, but something different, utterly different, from all those things. Nor was it higher than my mind in the sense that oil floats on water or the sky is above the earth; it was exalted because this very light made me, and I was below it because by it I was made. Anyone who knows truth knows this light.
O eternal Truth, true Love, and beloved Eternity, you are my God, and for you I sigh day and night. As I first began to know you, you lifted me up and showed me that, while that which I might see exists indeed, I was not yet capable of seeing it. Your rays beamed intensely on me, beating back my feeble gaze, and I trembled with love and dread. I knew myself to be far away from you in a region of unlikeness, and I seemed to hear your voice from on high: “I am the food of the mature: grow, then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me”.
Accordingly I looked for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy you, but I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is also God, supreme over all things and blessed for ever. He called out, proclaiming I am the Way and Truth and the Life, nor had I known him as the food which, though I was not yet strong enough to eat it, he had mingled with our flesh, for the Word became flesh so that your Wisdom, through whom you created all things, might become for us the milk adapted to our infancy.

Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
Lo, you were within,
 but I outside, seeking there for you,
 and upon the shapely things you have made
 I rushed headlong – I, misshapen.
You were with me, but I was not with you.
They held me back far from you,
 those things which would have no being,
 were they not in you.
You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;
 you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;
 you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you;
 I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst;
 you touched me, and I burned for your peace.

A Monk Visits a Parish Church

And is shocked at what he finds. There is much in this post by Father Mark that deserves wide distribution and reflection. Because ultimately what it reveals is a loss of sense of why we go to Mass at all–and unfortunately the ones who “plan” liturgies are often the most clueless, giving such platitudes as “we are building community.” I’ve got news for you–Mass isn’t about what “we” do but what has and is being done to us not by liturgical organizers but by God.

The Mother Teresa book (mentioned in the post below) points out the real temptation that enters into the life of every person who sets out to follow Christ. Mother Teresa’s sanctity is evident because she was not overcome by those temptations, most of us aren’t so saintly and when the doubt and darkness creep in we seek to take charge and run the show ourselves. This is the great disaster that most of us have to put up with on a weekly basis when someone comes to a microphone and starts giving us instructions on what it is we are going to do today at Mass.

 God gathers us to Himself–God brings us into communion with Himself, our active participation in the Mass is all about saying “Yes” to God and being aware of our inability to say “yes” with our whole being.

Father Mark’s reflections:

1) The loss of any notion of sacred space. I think this is directly related to the removal of the Communion Rail or other effective delineation of the sanctuary of the church. Time to rally ’round the rood screen again! The Tractarians were right.

2) Mass “facing the people.” This, more than anything else, undermined and continues to undermine the faithful’s experience of the Mass as a Sacrifice offered to God in adoration, propitiation, thanksgiving, and supplication. The altar has become the big desk of the clerical CEO behind it: The Presider. It has become a stage prop for the “performing priest,” complete with The Microphone.

3) Holy Communion in the hand. I see it every time I offer Mass in a parish church: the casual approach prevails. If one receives the Holy Mysteries like ordinary bread and a sip of ordinary wine, one begins rather sooner than later, will-nilly, to think of them as mere bread and wine.

4) No bells. Instead of ringing a sacristy bell to announce the beginning of Mass, the organist leaned into His Microphone and said, “Let us stand to greet Father Kirby.” Sorry. That is not what the Entrance Procession is about. It is a humble, joyful, and orderly movement into the Holy Place, a crossing-over from chronos (worldly, stressful, clocked time) to kairos (the heavenly, tranquil, timeless moment of God), an entering into the adorable presence of the God who is like a consuming fire, a making-ready for the inbreaking of the Kingdom of Heaven. A bell says it better.

Same thing during the Eucharistic Prayer. People need to be warned of the imminence of the most sacred moment of the Mass, even when the Eucharistic Prayer (Canon) is prayed aloud and in the vernacular. A bell does the job quite nicely. And another thing: saying the whole Eucharistic Prayer aloud and in the vernacular does not automatically guarantee “full, conscious, and actual participation” in the Holy Sacrifice. Silence, on the other hand, at least for certain parts of the Eucharistic Prayer, effectively opens a door onto the Holy Mysteries.

4) Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. Alas, they are not extraordinary. They are ubiquitous and, I think, superfluous. Does expediting the distribution of Holy Communion really constitute grave necessity? In the church where I offered Mass last Saturday there were four Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, all of whom were women. Three were wearing casual slacks and one was showing cleavage. They could have been serving lemonade at the parish garden party. It was frightfully inappropriate.

Could there not be properly instituted acolytes for the service of the Holy Mysteries where such are needed? These would be adult men — few in number — suitably vested in amice, alb, and cincture and, most of all, schooled in reverence, attention, and devotion, and carefully trained for the service of the sacred liturgy.

This brings up yet another issue? Where have all the men gone? At last Saturday’s Mass, the four Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, the Server, and one Lector were all women. I am not a misogynist. But honestly, this situation does nothing to foster priestly vocations.

5) The Music. Dare I call it that? Oh, the music! Show-tuney, trite, tired, and sickeningly sentimental with the organist/crooner singing into His Microphone. Might we not try singing the Mass itself: the Ordinary and the Propers? More than anything else celebrants must begin taking their sacerdotal obligations seriously by learning to cantillate the dialogical parts of the Mass, the orations, the Preface Dialogue and Preface, and the other elements that belong uniquely to them as priests.

I am not a gloomy person by nature, but last Saturday’s Mass left me very sad indeed. “For if in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry?” (Lk 23:31).

Even Christ Experienced Darkness says Cardinal

Cardinal Herranz compares the darkness experienced by Mother Teresa (related in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light) to what Christ experienced in his  agony in the  Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross. From Catholic Online:

Vatican officials said a new book detailing Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s long “crisis of faith” illustrates her spiritual strength in the face of doubt.

“This is a figure who had moments of uncertainty and discouragement, experiencing the classic dark night that God gives to chosen people in order to forge them on the road to holiness,” said Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, a member of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes.

“These moments of crisis felt by great saints are normal and in line with the church’s tradition,” Cardinal Herranz said Aug. 26. Even Christ experienced a similar spiritual trial in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, he said.

Such moments of “weakness” are in fact “the proof of the greatness of faith of Blessed Mother Teresa and take nothing away from her holiness,” he said.

Cardinal Herranz, who spoke in an interview with the Rome newspaper La Repubblica, said the progress of Mother Teresa’s sainthood cause would not be affected by the letters published in the book.

My Illustrious Baseball Career

Now recorded online.