A Teen’s Testimony of the Impact of the Latin Mass in Her Life

The following account was a homeschool assignment given to a 15-year-old from California. We are grateful to this remarkable young lady for having shared it with NLM. To me, it speaks more (and more profound) truths than we will ever hear from any Synod. – PAK

I have been going to the Traditional Latin Mass for several years now, and with good reason. It has enriched me spiritually in many ways, and I have felt a stronger love for Jesus Christ in my soul than ever before.

When I was younger, only about five years old, I went to the Novus Ordo Mass every Sunday. My older brother, especially, instilled in me a love for God and for Holy Mass. He told me to meditate on the Mass, and the sacrifice that was taking place, and to spend lots of time contemplating the decades of the rosary.

But to be honest, I never understood how the Mass was a “sacrifice.” At my Novus Ordo church, the priests said it was a celebration. To my younger and smaller self, I had trouble figuring out whether the Mass was a sacrifice or a celebration. Because to me, it certainly could not have been both. A celebration reminded me of parties and happiness, and a sacrifice reminded me of sorrow and pain. A small child does not understand the meaning of true sorrow and deep pain, and so the concept of a “sacrifice” seemed very mysterious to me. I wondered a lot about it, but after not figuring out what a sacrifice really was, I decided to cast those thoughts aside. If I didn’t understand it, then surely it wasn’t important, right?

I lived in a similar way for years, trying to love God but not knowing what loving God really was; trying to pay attention to Mass, but not understanding what was taking place. I knew God was present, but I didn’t know the prayers. When did the bread become the Holy Eucharist? I used to think it was when the band started singing the Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Hosts and we all knelt. I even thought that I was already a saint, and that everyone around me was too. Hell was a place reserved for very, very few people, I thought.

As I got older, I started disliking Mass. Why did we have to go every week, sometimes even more frequently than that? I especially disliked when Christmas Day fell on a Saturday, because then we would have to go to Mass two days in a row. I noticed no difference in my spiritual life. I didn’t even know what a spiritual life was. I was told by my brother and mother that it was something very special. But I never knew what it was exactly. How can someone tell if they are advancing in their spiritual life? Since I had felt no change my entire life, I assumed I had reached that point of spiritual perfection long ago. But the saints loved the Mass very much, so if I was a saint, then how come I didn’t like Mass?

One day, though, everything changed. My father announced that we were not going to our regular parish that Sunday, but to a different one. A different parish with a different Mass.

When we arrived, I noticed how quiet it was. How sacred it felt. When the Traditional Latin Mass began to be offered in front of me, I was confused. I didn’t understand a thing, and I didn’t give anyone the sign of peace. It felt very different. I remember particularly disliking kneeling a lot and not being able to talk to people in the pews behind me. It was like something very serious was going on. But I had never thought the Mass to be very serious, so why was everyone so prayerful and reverent? And everyone dressed nice too. It wasn’t like a get-together for everyone to join hands and sing happy songs and chat. It was a beautiful, sacred prayer.

For about the first six months, I disliked both Masses. I didn’t like kneeling for so long. The Novus Ordo Mass was boring enough. Why did we have to go to a different Mass that felt twice as long?

Changes in my soul were slow, but definitely there. Over the years, I learned more and more. I learned that the Mass was a prayer, something I had never known before. I followed along to the prayers in the 1962 Missal and saw people reverently beating their chest at the Agnus Dei, and it seemed so interesting to do that, so I started doing that too. I wore a veil, which obscured some of my sight, making me almost see in tunnel-vision forward to the altar. The Gregorian chants were breathtaking, and I would just kneel there, listening to the beautiful music and watch the incense float up to heaven, and I felt peace.

I went from being a child continuously asking her mother when we could leave, to a child who somehow just knew that she had to be silent. I learned, from the grace of God, that Mass is for praying. Mass is for adoring Christ. When I genuflected in front of the Altar, I really meant it. If I didn’t walk slowly and reverently through the church, I felt like I was disrespecting God’s holy place. Because God was there, and I knew it very well.

I started looking forward to Mass, and to the rosary, like never before. I would take every moment to deeply meditate and pray. I would impatiently wait in the car on the drive to Mass, thinking about kneeling before the altar and pouring out my entire heart to God. He became my confidante, and so easily, with God’s grace aiding me, I would feel infinitely better after praying. It was like a breath of fresh air. When I was a child, I thought God was just this important god that made the world then took a step back. After going to the Latin Mass, I realized how much of a father He is. He did not take a step back from the world, and He listens to our prayers every day. I can put total trust in Him because I know He loves me.

Sometimes I would envision the altar as a throne, and when the priest was consecrating the Eucharist, a king would come and sit on the throne. And at communion, the people were coming to the foot of the throne to beg their king for help, to adore their king and his mightiness, to thank their king for all he has done for them. It was truly special. But, in my mind, people could not go visit their king without a gift! Therefore, it would make sense that people had to give something to God when they went to receive, because God was giving Himself to them. The person receiving needed to have a desire for God and had to be as pure and sinless as possible. A person had to become like an angel from heaven before they could dare receive God. 

As I grew older, I grew alongside a Mass that was never-changing. One that reflected the never-changing nature of God. It became like a home to me. I grew spiritually in ways I cannot even describe.

When I turned fourteen, I traveled to Spain for three months. Spain is an incredible place, really, and I had an amazing time there. But of course, everyone experiences the regular feelings of homesickness for the first week or so. I had never been in Europe before, so it was a very new experience to me.

One of the first things I noticed was my homesickness, and the desire for something familiar. On Sunday I went with my family to the Latin Mass in Madrid, and it patched up my homesick heart. When I knelt there, I poured my heart out to God in contemplative prayer, and I was more than glad that I was not at a Novus Ordo Mass—I didn’t have to respond to prayers aloud or greet people. I could just pray and feel God’s presence. The Traditional Latin Mass was a piece of home, but not like if I were to go to an American restaurant in Spain or see American tourists. What made it feel like home was God. That sacred presence in my church at home was there. That infinite peace, and the feeling of God’s grace coaxing you into deep prayer so delicately. It was all there.

I’m sorry to say, but when I later went to a Novus Ordo Mass in Spain, it wasn’t the same. I tried very, very hard to feel the same, but it was so hard, even though I can speak Spanish. The Mass was too distracting! I could not pray, or prepare myself for communion, or make thanksgiving afterward. I kept telling myself I would save my prayers and my devotions for after Mass, in the period of silence before the candles are blown out and the altar is disassembled. But that defeats the entire purpose of Mass! How can you go to a Mass and tell yourself that you will pray afterward? Mass is a prayer itself. How can you pray Mass after Mass is done?

I went to the Novus Ordo Mass every day in Spain except on Sundays (when we went to the Latin Mass), and I became confused again and again. I didn’t feel at peace or at home. I had been going to the Novus Ordo for half of my life and yet it didn’t feel at all like home. There wasn’t a hint of nostalgia. All I could think was how I wished I could just be in the Latin Mass at that moment.

I’ve even gotten to the point where, when I stand in the pew at a Novus Ordo Mass, a particular thought runs through my mind. I don’t try to think about anything but the Mass, yet, unbidden, this thought keeps returning: Why does this feel so fake? Why am I even here? What am I getting from this?

The only thing that consoles me at a Novus Ordo Mass is receiving the Holy Eucharist. But otherwise, I feel the childhood boredom I had felt for many years in the past, that wishing for it to be over soon.

I cannot fully explain why the Latin Mass has helped me so much. When someone asks me to explain my experience, I’m usually at a loss for words at first. How can you describe the deep movements of your soul in words? It truly is a very beautiful experience, and one that a person can only understand after they have been to the Latin Mass themselves. I proudly say that I will try my very best to attend the Latin Mass as long as it remains available, for the rest of my life if God wills it. I believe that the Latin Mass is the Mass that will truly aid me on the journey to spiritual perfection. And I believe that it will change your life too, just as it did mine.

Liturgy as Labor versus Liturgy as Leisure

(Part 2 of a two-part series, “Exorcising the Demon of Activism.” For Part 1, see here.)

Last week I spoke of the tendency of modern Christians to prioritize activity, good works, social work — in short, the “horizontal” dimension — over the “vertical” dimension of the individual and corporate relationship with God and His kingdom that we find in, and cultivate through, personal and liturgical prayer. It is no secret that a pragmatic and utilitarian attitude dominates our world and, regrettably, our Church. Rare is the pastor of souls who takes seriously himself, and then teaches others by example and word, that seeking contemplative union with God is absolutely the first priority in the life of every man who has ever lived and who will ever live, and that this means giving Him the best of our time and resources. I sometimes have a mental picture of our final judgment being initially about why we gave God so little of our time, attention, and love when He was present in our midst in symbols and in His Real Presence; and, only after that fundamental defect has been thoroughly examined, launching into the terrifying review of our particular sins, offenses, and negligences.

The heroic Jesuit Fr. Willie Doyle, S.J. (1873–1917), who expended his life for his men on the battlefield of World War I as a much-loved and courageous army chaplain, and therefore cannot be accused of pious daydreaming, once observed: “Did it ever strike you that when our Lord pointed out the ‘fields white for the harvest,’ he did not urge his Apostles to go and reap it, but to pray?” (Recall Matthew 9, 37-38: “Then he saith to his disciples, The harvest indeed is great, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest.”)

Pope St John Paul II’s critique of the impoverishment of personal relations in a materialistic society suggests a striking parallel with the confusion of primary and secondary in the life of the Church:

The criterion of personal dignity — which demands respect, generosity, and service — is replaced by the criterion of efficiency, functionality, and usefulness: others are considered not for what they “are,” but for what they “have, do, and produce.” (Evangelium Vitae, §23)

The liturgical reformers committed an analogous blunder. The criterion of liturgical dignity — which demands profound respect for tradition (a prerequisite to internalizing its wisdom), generous self-surrender to its ascetical and rubrical demands, and sincere service to the faithful in offering them ongoing formation — was replaced by the activist criteria of efficiency, functionality, and usefulness ad extra. Liturgy was to be judged not by what it is in its innermost essence, but by its externals, its facilitation of us, its meeting of our untutored needs, its satisfaction of our desires, and (in a best-case scenario) its stimulation of our apostolic activities. It became a Mutual Aid Society for Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, with a decorative Catholic touch.

A contemplative ritual such as the Church had offered to God prior to the mid-1960s will never be able to withstand the relentless demands of the pragmatist for instant results or continual production of “output.” This is due to a fundamental error: work is taken as the paradigm of actuality, rather than rest. We would do well to dwell on this point.

Aristotle introduced into philosophy one of the most useful distinctions ever made, the difference between “first act” and “second act” (or, as some translations have it, first actuality and second actuality). We understand this distinction, which is not logical but metaphysical, by considering a lot of examples from common experience and intuiting what they have in common: being able to see versus actually seeing; being alive but asleep vs. being awake; being equipped with intellect or habitual knowledge vs. actually understanding an essence, which is when knower and known, subject and object, are one and the same. This latter state is being “fully-at-work” (in the Heidegger-influenced language of Joe Sachs), but paradoxically, it is not working at something laboriously; it is actively resting in the possession of a form or a perfection. Capacity for work is ordered to working (attaining actuality), but working is ordered to a certain “rest” (actuality fully achieved). What Abraham Maslow called “a flow state” or, colloquially, “being in the zone,” is just this second act/actuality of which Aristotle speaks, at its peak.

The solemn public liturgy of the Church, though it involves the combined efforts of various people, is essentially the latter kind of work: being fully-at-work in Christ’s actuality, which He now shares with us as an overflow, a redundantia, from heaven, and to which we unite ourselves more as twigs or leaves floating downstream than as trucks carrying gravel or streamrollers flattening asphalt. We are not making a better world by the work of our hands; we are being remade in the image of God, who is pure act.

Josef Pieper’s best-known book is called Leisure, the Basis of Culture. By “leisure” Pieper means what we do for its own sake when all our other practical needs are met. Leisure is not relaxation, which is an interval of inaction before resuming exertions. Nor is leisure exactly the same as recreation, when we entertain ourselves or one another in a more or less dignified manner. Leisure is the reflective and contemplative activity of rejoicing in what is real, with a full mind and heart, with no other business pressing on us and pulling us away; it is resting with wonder and gratitude in the goodness of creation and its Creator; it is what the virtuous man labors to make room for, because it is the best human activity and, in fact, something more than human.

Seeing “Liturgy as Labor” and seeing “Liturgy as Leisure” are, then, the two basic ways of seeing it. The former is activist, the latter contemplative; the one is based on a paradigm of involvement and production, the other on a paradigm of receptivity, surrender, and rest. The partisans of the first conception think of themselves as doing the right thing, bringing the right state of affairs into being, and thus feel that their opponents are “passive” and “mute observers”; the partisans of the second conception think of themselves primarily as beholding and loving what is beautiful or noble in itself, and therefore consider a certain kind of passivity a virtue, and quiet observation a form of opening one’s soul to the power of another who acts to conform the soul to Himself. As Andrew Louth remarks, “To participate by beholding seems a shortcoming only to the busy Western mind.” (The Study of Spirituality, p. 187)

Monastic professions: everyone in this photo is receptive in stance and action

Monastic private Masses (see here for more recent photos)

Fr. Ray Blake asks the question “Why are contemplatives problematic?” and answers:

It is presumably something about the ‘otherness’ of their lives. . . . their values are not those of the contemporary world: they tend to stand still rather than go out to the peripheries of contemporary thought, stat crux dum volvitur orbis, which means they don’t get “with the program.” There is something about the transcendence and otherness of their lives that says some important things about God; that he is above and beyond us, that he is unknowable, ineffable, which means he is beyond the control of Kings and governments, or even Churchmen. The war on Liturgy that speaks of the transcendent of the post-conciliar period uses the same arguments, or lack of argument, as those who have difficulty with the contemplative life. Liturgy that is pure worship, that does not seek to teach, or build community or to “celebrate” in the contemporary sense of the word, is equally incomprehensible; it is about esse [to be] rather than agere [to act]. 

In his fine work Love and Truth: The Christian Path of Charity, Jean Borella brilliantly analyzes the mentality behind suppressing prayer and liturgy because of “social needs”:

Being universal, this commandment [of love] is by definition and a priori applied to every man, but its realization does not require, for it to be accomplished in perfection and for us to be perfect, that we apply it successively to all men. A similar interpretation is implied, however, in the manner in which our contemporaries have become intoxicated with a quantitatively unlimited charity. Besides, why limit the import of this commandment to humanity? Does not the cosmic order concern the whole of creation, and has not Christ ordained the teaching of the Gospel to every creature and not to man alone? And on the other hand, imperfection, misery, and injustice being by definition inexhaustible, the work of justice claims the totality of my time and therefore the totality of my life.
          Consequently, everything not directly an individual or social work of justice is [regard as] mortal sin. Prayer and liturgy, momentarily requiring the whole man and the cessation of every action for the sake of the collectivity, become mortal sins themselves. For to pray, we must withdraw from the world. It is not we ourselves but Christ who is saying this, and we only need state that the commandment on prayer comes immediately after the just-quoted passage, as if the Gospel wished to forestall the modern errors of interpretation: “For yourself when you wish to pray enter into your chamber, close the door and pray to your Father who dwells in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt 6:6).
          The hic and nunc of our existential situation implies a unicity of acting. We cannot do several things at once. The act of prayer and the liturgy concretely exclude the social act and vice versa. If active charity is to absorb the totality of the charitable power, everything opposing it should be eliminated. And this is why we think the modern conception leads directly and logically to the elimination of liturgical worship and the spiritual life, that is to say ultimately of the Church and theism, for their opposition, in concreto, is strictly inevitable. (225–26)

Now, what Borella describes may well be considered a “limit case” that will never be reached on earth, regardless of the combined effects of activism, indifference, and wickedness in high places as in low; nevertheless, the logic driving toward it leaves a path of carnage behind itself, along which are strewn the lost or never-awakened vocations of tens of thousands of contemplative religious after the Council — a gaping hole in the Mystical Body on earth that no campaign of charity, no pastoral programs, no liturgical reform, could ever fill. Precisely when and where the primacy of contemplation and the true leisure of liturgy are rediscovered and embraced will there be a restoration of the Church’s missionary dynamism and her once-unparalleled charitable work in the world. Delightfully, the way to reach that longed-for goal is the same as the goal itself: prayer and worship. The means and the end coincide, even as our “daily bread” par excellence is the Maker of bread and the Life it imparts.

The Church Exists to Seek First the Kingdom of God

(Part 1 of a two-part series, “Exorcising the Demon of Activism.”)

As the traditional Latin Mass returns and as discussions of it multiply, one might hear an objection like the following, which I heard almost verbatim. “The traditional Latin Mass is too focused on the vertical and not enough on the horizontal. It fosters a bunker or fortress mentality. We cannot have people leaning so much toward the contemplative; they must be ready to storm the battlefield of the culture war.”

A specimen “in the wild” can be seen in the following words published a few years ago by a Catholic writer who, I believe, would no longer endorse them:

I am not saying there were no aspects of the “way of praying” in the old liturgy which may have been dangerous, in some way, to true Christian maturity. It may be true that, in some ways, as some reformers have argued, the old liturgy tended to foster a type of piety which was simplistic, a “pie in the sky” faith detached from the “here and now” of Christ’s call to act on urgent matters of charity and social justice. In this view, some aspects of the celebration of the old Mass, the incense, the robes, the mystery, caused people so much to focus on “heaven” that they forgot “earth.” I acknowledge that this may have been, and may be, true, and a concern for liturgical reformers who are truly committed to building the Kingdom, here and in time to come.

If this caricature were true, why would the greatest saints of charity and social justice — such as St. Vincent de Paul in the seventeenth century, or in our own times, Dorothy Day, who was traumatized by the liturgical revolution — encourage the careful and beautiful celebration of the traditional liturgy, which nourished them for their whole lives? They knew that whatsoever we do to the poor, hidden, humble, and vulnerable Host, we do to the glorious Christ our Judge in heaven; indeed, whatsoever sin we commit against the divine liturgy, we commit against our poor brothers and sisters, whose greatest treasure in this world is the Church’s faith and worship. For it is in the liturgy that the comforting words of the Prophet Isaiah are fulfilled:

All you that thirst, come to the waters: and you that have no money make haste, buy, and eat: come ye, buy wine and milk without money, and without any price. Why do you spend money for that which is not breed, and your labour for that which doth not satisfy you? Hearken diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and your soul shall be delighted in fatness. (Isa 55, 1–2) 

The history of the Church tells a far different story, one that C. S. Lewis has aptly conveyed in a famous passage from Mere Christianity that’s always worth repeating:

A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither.

In the hustle and bustle of actively participating in close-to-home vernacular “Lite Rites,” it has come to be viewed as almost indecent for laity to ask that the liturgy be conducive to meditation, or for clergy to expect the Mass and the Divine Office to foster a contemplative life in their souls. Lewis’s observation could be custom-fitted to our postconciliar situation: “Aim at worshiping the Lord in spirit and in truth, and you will get active participation ‘thrown in’; aim at active participation, and you will get neither.”

The way that liturgists still carry on, one would think they are speaking thus to one another: “What shall we do, so that all of us may be doing something? What shall we sing or speak? Who shall do the reading, who shall bring up the gifts, who shall clap the laudatory hand or hug the neighborly torso? When shall we stand or sit or kneel?” And Jesus is there to say, “The pagans seek all these things. Your Father knows that you need them — at the right time and place. Seek first the kingdom of God, and all the rest will be added unto you.”

If we aim more at the participation than at the reality to be partaken of, and if we insert explanations and directions into the liturgy (“how to”) rather than taking pains to instruct people at other times so that they may truly yield themselves to the liturgy, we are inverting the proper order of goods, the proper hierarchy of values — and thereby meriting the deprivation of those goods, the anarchy of those values.

A Dominican spiritual writer, Fr Gerald Vann, articulated this relationship of primary and secondary in his work The Divine Pity (pp. 12–13):

It might be true to say, take care of contemplation — make sure that it is fervent, assiduous, and wholly God-centred — and action will take care of itself, the redemptive work will inevitably follow in one form or another; but the reverse would certainly not be true. What is the purpose of the grace of God, the sacramental system, the whole dynamism of the supernatural life, but to enable us to know God, to love God, to serve God?...   To be poor in spirit, to be meek, to be clean of heart: all these things denote an attitude of soul towards the world; but primarily they denote an attitude of soul towards God… Yes, we must long, and pray, and work to be filled with the love of our neighbour; but first of all, above all, we must long and pray and work to possess the one thing necessary, the substance of life everlasting, the thing whereof this other, when it is strongest and deepest, is the expression and derivative.

Abbot Ildefons Herwegen conveyed much the same sentiment in his 1918 introduction to Romano Guardini’s The Spirit of the Liturgy — an introduction sadly no longer printed with it these days:

It is not assemblies, speeches, demonstrations, nor the favor of states and peoples, nor protective laws and subsidies that make the Church so strong. And while there can never be enough done in preaching, in the confessionals, in parish missions, in catechesis, and in works of mercy; yet all such things are merely the external achievements that flow from an internal power. It would be perverse indeed to be concerned principally for such achievements whilst neglecting the concern for the purity, intensity, and growth of the internal source. Wherever the Church truly, vitally prays, there supernatural holiness springs up on all sides; there active peace, human understanding, and true love of neighbor blossom.

Dom Gabriel Sortais, Abbot General of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance from 1951 to 1963, likewise had a profound understanding of the primacy and fruitfulness of contemplation:

The Church is intimately united with the Word of God, who became flesh for the salvation of mankind, and it is precisely this union with the incarnate Son of God which is the source of her pastoral function… It is by her union with Christ praying, teaching, and suffering, that she transmits the benefits of the prayer, the word, and the sacrifice of Jesus.
          Once you have close union, you have outgoing and true apostleship. Without close union with Jesus, there can be no question of radiation, of making others know and love him. (Quoted in Guy Oury, OSB, Dom Gabriel Sortais: An Amazing Abbot in Turbulent Times, trans. Brian Kerns, OSCO [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2006], 279; 300.)  

Mexican allegorical painting of Christ’s wounds as the font of life (depicted are the “five persons,” Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Anne, and Joachim); for more on this type of image, see here.

Una voce, the prophet Isaiah, C.S. Lewis, Fr. Gerald Vann, Abbot Ildefons Herwegen, Dom Gabriel Sortais tell us of the primacy of contemplation, of being centered on God, of feasting on the food He offers us, so that the rest of what we endeavor to do will be permeated with the “internal power” of divine grace, besought and received from its “internal source”: prayer, liturgy, sacraments. These orient Christians to the life that never ends, the life of the world to come, the heavenly destiny for which Christ purchased us with the outpouring of His precious Blood.

The Word became flesh not to bring us bigger and more climate-friendly houses, electricity and running water, literacy and hygiene, voting rights and online banking. None of this will prevent any of us from paying the debt of Adam: pain, sorrow, and death, followed by judgment and eternal bliss or woe. The Word became flesh to lift us, body and soul, to a share in His resurrection from the dead and His indestructible joy in His Father.

A Garden Nursery Is An Essential Business - Especially in Lockdown!

In this period of lockdown, a focus on gardening can be a way to facilitate the meditation upon the beauty of God, in even the most mundane of homes.

There are some who want to see a beautiful culture, who suggest that one of the reasons that we see such ugliness in modern culture is that the guiding principle in design is utility. In a society that is so utilitarian, driven by economic considerations only (so the argument runs), there is no use for beauty and so in order to cut corners, architects give it little consideration.

I don’t hold to this view.

First, I believe that beauty does have a utility. It is a visible sign that something is good at fulfilling its purpose. A beautiful house is beautiful because it houses people well. This means it has to be liveable in such a way that the people who live there can actively pursue their supernatural end. Such a house will be structurally sound, will encourage the creation of community, and prayer, as well as all the mundane and everyday activities of life that we engage in - eating, sleeping, and even watching movies from time to time!

In principle, every building, no matter how mundane its primary function, can be designed to account for the fact that the human beings who occupy it are body, soul, and spirit.

When people see such a house (or factory, warehouse, hospital, university, shopping mall...), they will instinctively know that it is good for them - even if they can’t say why - and will want to live there or go there. Beautiful houses sell, therefore. Furthermore, I suspect that generally, even the most cynically profit-driven developers know that visual appeal will create demand for what they build, and would try to make their buildings as beautiful as they can within budget.

The main reason that there is such ugliness, I suggest, is that architects no longer know how to design beautiful buildings. They try, but they can’t do it. They are ignorant of or do not understand the basic rules of harmony and proportion that were developed as design principles for buildings that are in harmony with this highest and most noble purpose - enabling people to work towards their supernatural end. As a result, they are unable to design beautiful buildings. They are generally ignorant of these principles of design, and even if they are aware of them, because they do not recognize the true end of man, they would not acknowledge their importance.

This architect was trying to create beauty!

Most of us are not in a position to influence the design of the homes we live in. Economic considerations direct us to a limited range of choices. However, there are things that we can do to create a more beautiful environment. The need for a beautiful home that elevates the soul has increased recently, given that we are bound to spend so much time at home.

One way to respond to this is to plant for beauty, so that we can create little Edens that encourage meditation upon God’s creation. Just as an icon corner can be a focus for prayer at home, beautiful plants and flowers can nourish the soul. Every plant, as a reflection of divine beauty, naturally incorporates the principles of harmony and proportion of the cosmos, and so can be an object of meditation and aid to contemplation. If you can create a medieval walled garden, that would be great,

but if not, the tiniest space can be planted out - even if it’s a window box.

I was pleased to discover that because construction is considered a necessary business in California, and landscaping is an aspect of construction, garden nurseries have remained open. I don’t know if this an inspired recognition of the need for divine beauty in people’s lives in these troubled times (I suspect not), but it is welcome nevertheless.

Here is a little corner outside the building where I live, which I have planted up. It is a tiny concrete space, but becomes a place for prayer when the sun shines. I’m no expert at this, but just to have something like this makes a huge difference in my appreciation of being at home.

Gregorian Chant: Perfect Music for the Sacred Liturgy

Last week I posted at Rorate Caeli the full text and video of the presentation I gave at the Sacred Liturgy Conference in Spokane in May 2019, under the title “Gregorian Chant: Reservoir of Faith, Wellspring of Devotion.” I am especially grateful to Marc Salvatore who produced a first-class video that includes my illustrations (e.g., a liturgical map of the Old World) and musical examples. My goal was to furnish a pretty comprehensive introduction to the history, functions, characteristics, and unique fittingness of Gregorian chant for the Roman rite.

Some excerpts:

Since chant was the custom-made music that had grown up with the Church’s liturgy, the chant traveled wherever the liturgy traveled. No one dreamed of separating the texts of the liturgy from their music; they were like a body-soul composite, or a happily married couple. Or you could compare the chant to the vestments worn by the priest. The chants are the garments worn by the liturgical texts! We might even dare, with medieval freedom, to apply the words of Psalm 103 to the chant in relation to the liturgy: “Thou hast put on praise and beauty: and art clothed with light as with a garment.” In the Transfiguration of Christ, there were two elements: the mortal body of our Savior; and the radiance of glory He allowed to shine through His body from a soul already enraptured in the beatific vision. In some ways, the chanted text is a transfigured text, radiant with an otherworldly glory that reminds us of our true home.

In all religions of the world, we find the chanting of sacred texts. This universal practice derives from an intuitive sense that holy things and the holy sentiments that go along with them should not be talked about as ordinary everyday things are, but elevated to a higher level through melodious modulation—or submerged into silence. Authentic rituals, therefore, tend to alternate between silences and chanting. Both of these may take place by themselves or in conjunction with symbolic actions. The contrast between singing, which is human expression at its highest, and silence, which is a deliberate withholding of discourse, is more striking than the contrast between speaking and not speaking. The former is like the rise and fall of ocean waves, while the latter seems more like switching a lightbulb on and off. Speech is primarily discursive and instructional, aimed “at” a listener, while song, which more easily and naturally unites many singers into one body, is capable of being in addition the bearer of feelings and of meanings that go beyond what words can convey, greatly augmenting the penetrating power of the words themselves. We find this especially in the “melismas” of chant, the lengthy melodic elaborations on a single syllable that give voice to inner emotions and aspirations that words cannot fully express.

Gregorian chant is “ametrical” or “non-metrical”—the only music of its kind in the Western tradition. Gregorian musical phrases follow the irregular rhythm of scriptural texts. Unlike the pagan poets of Greece and Rome, the Hebrews did not have metered poetry. The Greek and Latin translations of the Psalms, faithful to the character of the original, are not metrical either. Moreover, the Church Fathers were opposed to the use of strongly rhythmical music in the liturgy—“music with a beat”—as it smacked too much of pagan cults. Because chant is not confined to a predetermined grid of beats, such as duple or triple time (think: a march or a waltz) but conforms to the syllables of the words, its phrases seem to float, flow along, meander, and soar. It breathes rather than marches ahead; it moves with a wave-like undulation, or like birds circling in the sky. Non-metricality and modality are the two characteristics that most obviously distinguish chant from all other music. A large part of the “magic” of chant is caused by its unconstrained fluidity and freedom of motion, which seems to break out of the hegemony of earthly time and the constraints of the flesh represented by the beat.

Because our ears are so habituated to the major/minor key system, Gregorian chants, which employ eight different modes that seldom conform to our modern musical expectations, strike us as otherworldly, introspective, haunting, incomplete, or to use a term that has been applied to Byzantine icons, “brightly sad.” We should rejoice in this fact, which illustrates a general rule: an ancient art form is more, not less, likely to be associated by a modern believer with the holiness and unchanging truth of God, His strangeness or otherness, His transcendent mystery, the special homage He deserves, and the need for our conversion from the flesh to the spirit, that is, from a worldly mentality to a godly one: “Be not conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind” (Romans 12:2). The very differentness of the art form, which the passing of ages has accentuated, acquires theological and religious significance. We see the same thing with the use of ancient liturgical languages, silver or gold chalices, ornamented priestly vestments, the wearing of veils by women, and Romanesque or Gothic architecture. All of these things have acquired expressive and impressive power due to their longstanding exclusive association with divine worship. In other words, I want to say that we have advantages, in a sense, that medieval people didn’t have.

The vast majority of Latin chants were composed by anonymous monks, cantors, and canons. We will never know their names in this life. What a healthy corrective to the egotism that often comes with artistic creativity and performance! Chant quenches distinctive personality—both in that we usually do not know its author, and in that we cannot “shine” or stand out in a rock-star way when singing chant in a schola or congregation. It works against the desire for show, encourages a submersion of one’s individuality in Christ, and makes us act and feel as members of the Mystical Body. Like other traditional liturgical practices, use of chant strips us of the old man and clothes us with Christ. This process of conversion needs to be gentle and continual if it is to be ultimately successful. It cannot be the result of fits of enthusiasm, emotional highs, or psychological violence.

Human beings are made for the contemplation of God. Gregorian chant prepares us for this contemplation and inaugurates it. It is music evoking and drawing us towards the beatific vision. In particular, the melismas express “the ineffable sighs and groanings” of the Spirit. Gregorian chant—and, in a different but complementary way, the quiet low Mass—brings something of the revitalizing spirit of the cloister, the tranquility of the monastic “search for God,” into every church. If monasticism is simply the Christian baptismal vocation lived out as radically and integrally as possible, then our liturgy, too, should have this monastic core identity, purity, and efficacy. Without it, we are already on a downward course into superficiality, distraction, and worldliness.

Read the rest here.

Do Congregations Dwindle Because “People Don’t Understand What’s Going On”?

What's going on here is evidently something special...

At the often amusing and generally tendentious blog called PrayTell, Msgr. M. Francis Mannion offered readers a theory about why liturgy must be in the vernacular. In short, unless people can understand the words of the rite, attendance is sure to dwindle at an alarming rate!

Those who are attached to Latin in the liturgy (mostly in the context of the Tridentine Mass) would do well to attend to what is happening in the Greek Orthodox Church in America. A recent study by George Demacoupoulos of Fordham University proposed that the Greek Church should consider dropping the ancient Greek currently used in the liturgy and move toward English or modern Greek. The principal impetus for this is the fact that congregations are dwindling at an alarming rate due in great part to their incomprehension of the current language of the liturgy. This is especially true of young people, who are unable to connect with the liturgy because of the language problem. I bring this up because of the attachment of some Catholics to the Latin Mass. If they do not know what is going on in the liturgy (even with the use of a Latin/English missal), their attachment is apt to be merely aesthetic. Despite the myth of youthful attachment to Latin, I think the attachment will fade.

What a coincidence, I thought, that the greatest exodus in Catholic Church membership since the time of the Protestant Reformation coincided with the progressive vernacularization of the Roman liturgy throughout the 1960s and 1970s! How curious that this decline has continued, with the usual statistical variations, to the present day, as bishops consolidate and close parish after parish — in spite of a liturgy that is totally comprehensible, and indeed, invites and even enforces popular participation! [1] What’s not to love? How bizarrely contrary to all the laws of nature and culture that Latin Mass communities in the USA have grown from a handful in the 1980s, to about 250 in 2007, to about 500 today! Pretty good for a faddish attachment to an alienating ritual. Not to mention the kind of responses Latin Mass-goers give to survey questions.

In reality, we all known that there are far more factors at play than what language the liturgy is in, or whether people participate “actively” in it. There is the question of whether the rites as celebrated evoke the presence of the thrice-holy God, the Lord of heaven and earth, before whom we must bow our heads and bend our knees. There is the question of how much extraliturgical catechesis is being offered (or even whether any instruction worthy of the name is taking place). There is the question of intentional discipleship on the part of the faithful: the more seriously parents practice their faith, whether they are charismatics, traditionalists, or social justice crusaders, the more likely their offspring are to remain committed.

But back to Msgr. Mannion’s claim. In the simple world of “clear and distinct ideas” in which liturgists live, the lack of verbal, rational comprehension of liturgical texts will inevitably cause a precipitous decline of worshipers — and anyone who thinks the contrary is suffering from illusions of grandeur, induced by aestheticism.

Does this explanation hold water?

The assumption that following word-for-word the meaning of liturgical texts and making vocal responses to them is the primary way in which Catholics participate in the liturgy — a view popularized by liturgists in the 1950s and 1960s — has since then been subjected to severe critique from many angles. Sociologists have pointed out that dense, impenetrable, to some extent off-limits religious rituals are a powerful motivator for belief and devotion. Psychologists note that archetypal symbolism conveyed in gestures, clothing, and other physical phenomena, not to say the superrational language of music, are at least as communicative as words, if not more so. Theologians have always emphasized that liturgy is not, first and foremost, a human work we do for God, so much as a divine work He bestows upon us, allowing us to take part in that which is greater than anything we can grasp or control. This is one of the chief reasons why liturgy as it developed always adhered more and more to established ceremonies, texts, chants, and rubrics. All this emphasizes that we are not about our own business, but about the Father’s business, as Jesus said when His parents found Him in the Temple.

As noted above, the mainstream Roman Catholic world, like the Greek Orthodox, is also experiencing the loss of worshipers, but no one can maintain that our simplified Novus Ordo liturgy in the vernacular is beyond the reach of most individuals who speak whatever modern language happens to be used in a given area. On the hypothesis of rationalism under which they continue to labor fruitlessly, liturgists will never be convinced that the liturgy is sufficiently comprehensible. Instead, they will simplify (or advocate simplifying) again and again, and make the language simpler and simpler, until . . . what? Until there is nothing left to understand. This is what generates boredom and disengagement: in what is easily accessible, there is, or at least seems to be, nothing really worth understanding. The great mystery that saves the world flashes past like a Hallmark greeting.

When a love of reverence, beauty, and ceremony is written off as “aesthetics,” one knows that one is dealing with a peculiarly modern form of reductionism, according to which, as Martin Mosebach dryly observes, sincerity is proved by ugliness or plainness. For the Mannions of the world, the longing for a transcendent and numinous expression of the sacrifice that unites heaven and earth is reducible to nostalgia, sentimentality, or elitism. In that case, one might as well write off most of Western cultural and religious history, which produced and rejoiced in the most extravagant visual and audible fine art for the sake of glorifying God and raising the human soul to the stars. An illiterate peasant who knows nothing about the liturgy save that the Lord God is being adored and who joins himself interiorly to this movement would be sanctified, regardless of whether or not he knows the details of “what is going on.” In contrast, are we so sure that Catholics who hear all the prayers in the vernacular “know what is going on,” much less make it their own in genuine prayer?

To speak like a Thomist, I would say people in these conversations fail to make necessary distinctions. Instead of talking about participation as if it is a binary switch (on/off, active/passive), we should admit that there are at least five levels of participation:

1. Present but not paying attention.
2. Hearing and understanding words.
3. Relating to the liturgy as an act of worship: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, supplication.
4. Joining together understanding (2) and worship (3).
5. Entering mystically into the Christus passus, as we see in so many saints. This is compatible with (2), (3), or (4), but often goes beyond them in ways that can neither be planned for nor put into words.

For someone stuck at 1, a liturgy that is linear, modular, and verbose will come across as exceedingly dull, like sitting at a meeting. Such a person desperately needs his or her attention to be caught by something out of the ordinary, something unique to the liturgy that will seem strange and offer an opportunity for puzzlement or disturbance of the closed mind. What we want is an uncomfortable seed to be planted that may germinate in memories or dreams. As memory specialists often say, we remember best that which is unusual.

For someone who has progressed to 2, the usus antiquior presents both challenges and opportunities. It challenges the worshiper to take a more active role in understanding what the liturgy is saying, so that, paradoxically, attendees of Latin liturgy often know more about the texts from having been forced to do some work to crack them open. Moreover, the guise under which the words are heard — namely, in an archaic, defiantly non-vernacular language with (when properly pronounced) a beautiful flowing sound as of streams or rivers — adds an indefinable mystique to the texts, a religious aura, a sense of set-apartness and elevation. (I develop these points in this article.) The texts are clothed in special sonic raiment, even as the liturgical ministers are clothed in their hieratic garments.

Let us be clear, however: the mere hearing and understanding of words, or, conversely, the mere hearing and not understanding of words, is not yet an act of prayer. That is why it is certainly possible for someone to sit through an entire Mass, understanding everything in the vernacular or being impressed with the sound of Latin, but never once adoring, repenting, thanking, or supplicating. (This, needless to say, is possible in any liturgy whatsoever; even the High Masses at St. John Cantius in Chicago are attended by secular Jews looking to be uplifted by a free concert.)

At level 3, symbols and ceremonies play a particularly crucial part in leading the soul to the four primacy acts of prayer with which the liturgy always concerns itself. To take one obvious example, one is far more likely to adore the Lord in the Holy Eucharist and to examine one’s conscience with contrition before receiving if the Host is surrounded by a rich ceremonial involving bowing, genuflecting, incensing, standing ad orientem, the lifting of the chasuble, etc. Notice that not a single one of these actions involves any words.

Level 4 would be the ideal for normal circumstances (that is, short of a special grace of contemplation, which is what the final level points to). Here, one understands with some facility the texts of the liturgy, which after a while one knows by heart or by a kind of connaturality, yet one is also highly attuned to its multiple forms of expression and therefore well situated to posit the spiritual acts they call forth. I say this is ideal because it prepares the one assisting at liturgy to savor and enter into the very mysteries themselves that are made present in it.

Although each level involves the support of God’s grace, since we can do nothing supernaturally good without His aid, level 5 points to a moment in which the liturgy simply opens up to contemplation. The absence of this is not to be lamented, just as its occurrence is not to be expected, since, in a way, it goes beyond the sphere of liturgical action. I have in mind the stories of saints who went into ecstasy during the Mass — often, but not exclusively, the priest offering it. St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Gertrude of Helfta, St. Philip Neri, and St. Pio of Pietrelcina are well known mystics of the Mass, but there are many others.

It is rather difficult, to be perfectly honest, to image level 5 occurring in connection with the Novus Ordo, as it is stubbornly opposed to contemplativity in its operative assumptions and methods. Level 3 is not especially easy to come by, either; and this lack threatens Level 4. Finally, even Level 2 is thwarted by the Novus Ordo because its very simplicity and vernacularity are so easy to zone out of. One is reminded of the frequent phenomenon in families where children will ask “Have we said grace yet?” even though the table blessing was said only a few moments earlier.

Thus, as surprising as it may seem, the Novus Ordo has a tendency to encourage, not full, conscious, and actual participation, but rather its opposite: being present but not paying attention, or what we have called Level 1. There is a reason, on the other hand, why ordinary Catholic faithful find the four acts of prayer of Level 3 coming more naturally and spontaneously at the usus antiquior; why their knowledge of the texts of the liturgy, Level 2, tends to be better, since they need to work at it; and finally, why it is fitting that this ancient rite should have prepared the souls of the greatest mystics of the Mass, those whom God summoned to Level 5, to receive the gift of contemplation.

If my analysis is correct — if it is even only partially correct — we may handily dismiss Msgr. Mannion’s prediction that youthful attachment to Latin liturgy is ephemeral. The source of the attachment is far more profound than aesthetics, although obviously it has and should have an aesthetic component; it is far more profound than nostalgia, although no one should knock the value of nostalgia, properly understood. Those who visit a Latin Mass parish are likely to see the pews populated not only with silvery heads but with black and brown-haired people, and more babies than all the neighboring parishes put together. Time indeed will tell what is going to fade and what is going to flourish, but if I were a betting man, I know where I’d put my money.

Master of Portillo, “The Vision of St Gregory”

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for information, articles, sacred music, and Os Justi Press.

Techniques for Meditation and Contemplative Prayer with Sacred Art

I have made the case in a series of articles (here and here) that a vital part of the antidote to the continued hemorrhaging of believers and failure to attract new converts to the Roman Church is prayer with sacred art. Roman Catholics must once again learn to engage with art in their prayer worship, I believe, if we want the Church to grow faster. And this applies as much to traditionalists as it does to liturgical liberals.

You can read a simple presentation of the argument here; and a discussion of how St Thomas Aquinas’ 4th Way helps us to understand why sacred art is so vital to the mission of the Church, here.

In regard to how we pray with sacred art, the general principle I have outlined is that we pray as we would normally, but engage with art visually as we do it. This is especially important in the context of the liturgy. The simple statement of this is: pray with your eyes open and look at a painting as you do so.

St Luke Drawing the Virgin and Child, by Rogier van der Weyden 1435-40

All the spiritual directors I have had have emphasized the importance of a balanced prayer life which consists of liturgical prayer, i.e. worship at the pinnacle, but also of devotions and para-liturgical prayer, structured prayer done with others, and then personal prayer. While each has value in isolation, the greatest value of the latter two is forming us for the highest form of prayer, which is the first in this list, liturgical prayer. Each of these different sorts of prayers can be done in conjunction with appropriate visual imagery, and will be enriched if we do so.

When books that I have seen talk about prayer with images, they tend to focus on personal prayer, and usually meditation and contemplative prayer. This is good as far as it goes, but they are less helpful if they do not explain the value of this prayer in relation to our pattern of prayer in general and the liturgy in particular. Unfortunately, they usually do not do this. And again, the point should be made, that the techniques described for prayer with sacred art even in the meditation and contemplative prayer are not really very different from those methods used ordinarily without sacred art, the only difference is that one looks at an appropriate painting while doing it.

Take for example a method of visual prayer based on the method of praying with scripture called Lectio divina. The link I supply here is a simple explanation of Lectio - without images - I found on a Carmelite website. One point to note in regard to the use of terminology is that since the days of The Beatles and their association with Maharishi Yogi, the words meditation and contemplation have often been used interchangeably; when people say they “meditate”, they often mean one of the methods of Eastern religions in which one seeks to eliminate thought. In the Sixties, this mode of prayer became fashionable, and a plethora of related meditation techniques were spawned, as all sorts of people tried to offer instant enlightenment for the price of a cup of coffee a day, or something similar. There are even new-age influenced “Christian meditation” methods still around today that began in this period. The intention might have been to draw those seeking nirvana away from Eastern religions and to Christianity by offering something similar, but Christianized; but because they don’t come out of the Christian tradition, they often have the opposite effect. They take Christians away from Christianity to what they see as the purer, older, more traditional form of this sort of meditation.

“Meditation” in the Western Christian tradition is very different, as we can see from the simple explanation given by the Carmelites, above. First of all, meditation and contemplation are two different things. Meditation in the Western tradition, in contrast to the popular understanding of the word, is active - we direct our thoughts to the chosen subject, i.e. we think about something. Contemplation is perhaps closer to the popular idea of meditation, but although passive, we are alert to and receptive to the thoughts that occur.

Back to sacred art: I have seen a number of books that describe an equivalent to Lectio divina for visual imagery called variously Visio divina or Conspectio divina. (Latin scholars can decide which is the most appropriate). Instead of meditating on texts from the Bible, you meditate on the content of a well-chosen painting. I have heard it said that this technique of Lectio with sacred art can be traced back to St Claire of Assisi. (I don’t know the truth of this.)

The common way of considering art is to analyze the content in detail, reading it as though it were scripture.

I suggest that the images should be chosen to harmonize with liturgical practice. These could be images of the Feasts or Saint being celebrated on a particular day. In the ideal (which of course almost never happens in Roman churches) there would be a painting placed in church for that Mass that day, the sight of which immediately brings to mind and compresses all the fruits of the earlier meditation and contemplation into a package that is presented to us in a single moment.

An alternative is to consider general themes of salvation history which are re-presented to us every time we go to Mass. Themes in salvation history are a pattern of events that relate to each of us in our personal pilgrimage of salvation. Once we grasp the idea of the interrelatedness of all things, by understanding how particular and significant episodes in scripture are related to each other, it facilitates a mode of thinking by which we more naturally place our own story, and hence ourselves into that picture. So, for example, the crossing of the Red Sea relates to the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan and the descent of the Spirit and then also our own sacramental Baptism and Confirmation, by which each of us dies and rises spiritually and receives the Spirit (1 Cor 10:1-5). Our foretaste of eternal life to come, like Israel eating manna in the desert on the way to the promised land, is our reception of Holy Communion, the pledge of our own future life and resurrection (John 6:54). Each of us has a story by which we die with Christ and as Christians are raised up with him too. I am reminded that this applies to me every time I walk into a church and cross myself with the holy water - ‘Jordan water’. Here is one that I do regularly, just to illustrate. It takes about 15 minutes of meditation and then I allow if I have time about the same for contemplation.

I am not expecting anyone necessarily to do precisely what I do. Just from the passage above, you can see that there are alternative images to the ones that I have chosen below that one could focus on in order to enhance the subject of the meditation. Also, there are many expert theologians amongst you who could develop something far better, I am sure. My thought here is that it might encourage some of you to incorporate something like this into your own prayer lives in a way that will nourish your faith and worship. If you can come up with something than this, then please go ahead!

So my program has eight meditations. I have offered one image per meditation, but there could be more than one some cases as you will see. I have prints of examples of these prototypes in my own icon corner at home and I look at them as I consider each one. I have done this often enough that if I meditate without the images, they appear strongly in my imagination.

This little series of meditations takes me on a path that begins in the world and the leads me into the heavenly realm of the Mass and then I return to the world to complete the cycle. First, by Holy Spirit and the prayers of the saints and Our Lady, I come to Christ. Then through the triple sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and communion I enter into the mystery of the Trinity, partaking of the divine nature, and finally I go out into the world, to love and serve God and my fellows and, one hopes, better able to draw them to the Church each time this cycle is repeated.

Each meditation uses the following structure: first, a statement that characterizes the image I am looking at, second a short hymn of praise (I have memorized Psalm 116(117)), third penitence, fourth petitions. Then there is a brief contemplation in which I repeat slowly the Jesus prayer eight times, ever quieter in my mind, before moving on to the next image.

After the eight meditations are finished, I then I repeat the Jesus Prayer to myself, allowing it to become quieter and quieter as a thought in my mind - I imagine someone else saying it and that I am listening. I observe the thoughts that pop into my mind as I do this. If the train of thought is good I run with it and might even write a note down if I want to remember it. If it is bad, I return more actively to thinking the Jesus Prayer until it is eliminated.

Before I start I do a short meditation of gratitude - in which I list 10 or so items from the day that are good and thank God for them and a review of conscience in which I acknowledge my sins and ask for forgiveness.

Here we go!

1. Blessed be God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three persons and one God.
               Psalm 116 (117): O praise the Lord all ye nations, praise him all ye peoples, for his merciful kindness is more and more toward us; and the truth of the Lord endureth forever.
               Lord have mercy (3 times)
Prayer: Father, may the Holy Spirit lead me to Jesus, in Jesus Name, Amen.
               Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner (8 repetitions)

2. Blessed be God, in His angels and in His Saints.
               Psalm 116 (117)
               Lord have mercy (3 times)
Prayer: Please you saints and angels in heaven, pray for me to Lord our God, that I may have all that I desire and all that is good for me, but only in accordance with His will. Father, hear our prayers, in Jesus Name, Amen.
               Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner (8 repetitions)

3. Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
               Psalm 116 (117)
               Lord have mercy (3 times)
Prayer: Mary, Mother of God, please show me your Son, and pray for me to Lord our God, that I may have all that I desire, and all that is good for me, in accordance with His will. Father, hear our prayers, in Jesus Name, Amen.
               Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner (8 repetitions)

4. Blessed be Jesus Christ, True God, and True Man. Behold the Lamb of God.
               Psalm 116 (117)
               Lord have mercy (3 times)
Prayer: Oh God, take away my sins and the fears and resentments that arise from them. Let me die with you spiritually through baptism Amen. I ask this through Jesus Christ who lives and reigns...etc Amen
               Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner (8 repetitions)

5. Blessed be Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, my Lord and my God.
               Psalm 116 (117)
               Lord have mercy (3 times)
Prayer: Oh God, let me rise spiritually through confirmation and receive the Spirit. I ask this through Jesus Christ who lives and reigns...etc Amen
               Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner (8 repetitions)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

In the Heart of the Church, a New Carmel and Center of Traditional Liturgy

New Liturgical Movement is pleased to make this announcement on behalf of the Carmelite sisters of Fairfield. Their noble project will be of great interest to many of our readers. Pray for God's blessings on their worthy endeavors.

A New Carmel

To continue and perpetuate the vital work of love in the heart of the Church, a new beautiful Monastery of Discalced Carmelite Nuns is being constructed (http://fairfieldcarmelites.org) in the quiet rural farmland of Fairfield, Pennsylvania. This beautiful new property will provide a fitting home for an interior blossoming of monastic life and will be ready to receive a constant stream of vocations zealous for God and His Church.

“In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things!” (St. Therese of Lisieux)

The Carmelite in the Heart of the Church

The Carmelite Nun is a consecrated bride of Christ who is called to give herself unreservedly to the work of her Divine Bridegroom: the salvation of the world. In union with the Savior and imitating the Blessed Virgin Mary, Carmelites are hidden away in the heart of the Church, beating day and night with the rhythm of continuous prayer and sacrifice, in order to bring the vital flow of divine grace to the other members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Like the heart concealed in the chest, behind grilles, turnstiles, and high enclosure walls, they joyfully pursue a life of prayer and sacrifice so that they might glorify and love God—even for those who do not—and make reparation for sin, obtain heavenly aid for the clergy, support the labors of missionaries, preserve the unity of families, and increase divine charity in all the faithful for their eternal benefit.

“The smallest act of pure love is of greater value in the eyes of God, and more profitable to the Church, than the greatest works.” (St. John of the Cross)

The new Carmel in Fairfield is a daughter of the vibrant and growing Carmels in Valparaiso, Nebraska and Elysburg, Pennsylvania. The Nuns pray the full traditional Divine Office and have the Traditional Latin Mass daily, which is open to the public.

Making History

This Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Fairfield is being built according to the traditional style of an original 16th Century Spanish monastery, not merely for its aesthetic value, but for the quality and integrity of religious observance that is fostered by the beauty and simplicity of traditional monastic architecture. As the Nuns draw from the riches of their Spanish Carmelite architectural heritage, this new monastery will also be built using traditional building methods. Thus, stone masonry, timber framing, slate, plaster, and reclaimed wood for flooring will be used to recreate the simple but edifying style of an original 16th Century Carmel, for a shining example of the beauty of the Catholic Religion and a testimony to the world of the glory of God.

Visitors to the Carmel will be able to be immersed in the graces of the prayer of Nuns, which reverberates within their cloister walls in the silence of holy contemplation, echoes in their devout recitation of the Divine Office, and resounds on high in the sublimest chant at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Furthermore, the contemplative religious brothers and priests of the Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the area will help provide the Sacraments to visitors and a place of hospitality in a guest and retreat house near the Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, helping to make Fairfield, within driving distance of many Catholics on the East Coast, a center of prayerful retreat and spiritual refreshment for priests, religious, and the lay faithful coming from the region and around the country.

Going on now and until July 25th, 2018, a series of stone and timber framing workshops will be held by professional craftsmen from Europe to begin construction on some of the initial facilities for the Carmel. These and future workshops are aimed at cultivating a workforce comprised of both volunteers and professionals. No previous experience or training is required. Both volunteers and professionals are invited to participate and can gain new certifications through this project. There is no charge for the course, and those who are interested in registering may call the Carmel of Jesus, Mary and Joseph at 570-672-2122 to learn more.

“Build the house: and it shall be acceptable to me, and I shall be glorified, saith the Lord.” (Haggai 1:8)

How You Can Help Make History

As these Carmelite Nuns offer their spiritual labors day and night for the eternal benefit of souls, this unique and historic work for Our Lord and Our Lady depends on the material support of the faithful in the construction of this house of God for generations to come. Organizations, families, and individuals are welcome to contribute or volunteer in a variety of ways in the construction and support of the Carmel, at any time of year. Also, your generous financial donation is much appreciated to realize in Fairfield a center of beautiful traditional liturgy for the enduring benefit of many souls. The St. Teresa of Jesus insisted to her religious daughters: “we live upon alms.”

For more information and to support this Carmel in making history, please visit http://fairfieldcarmelites.org. May God reward you!

Traditional Liturgy Attracts Vocations, Nourishes Contemplative Life, and Sustains the Priesthood

Monks at Clear Creek: no lack of vocations here!

In my post “Divergent Political Models in the Two ‘Forms’ of the Roman Rite,” I argued that people who bring a well-developed life of faith to the Novus Ordo are equipped to derive spiritual benefit from it, while those who attend the traditional Latin Mass are confronted by a strong and definite spirituality that drives them deeper into the mysteries of faith and the exercise of theological virtues. The new form is a loosely-demarcated playing field for liturgical intramurals, whereas the old form is an ascetical-mystical bootcamp through which soldiers of the Lord are driven. The former presupposes virtue; the latter produces it.

Can we find any external confirmation that this analysis is correct?

I would say yes. A sign of its truth is how often one encounters young people who either converted to the Faith or discovered a religious vocation precisely through the traditional liturgy. It was the liturgy itself that powerfully drew them in. Conversion and vocation stories in the Novus Ordo sphere seem to have a lot more to do with “I met this wonderful person” or “I was reading the Bible” or “I found this great book from Ignatius Press” or “I got to know the sisters in my high school” or “their devotion to the poor was so moving.”

All these motives are truly good, and the Lord wants to use them all. But it is still noteworthy that the Novus Ordo is rarely the powerful magnet that draws them in; it is a thing that people who are already drawn in for other reasons will go ahead and do as a regular prayer service. It’s the difference between relying on a neighbor for help and falling in love. Young people today rely for help on the Novus Ordo; they fall in love with the traditional liturgy. Or it is like the difference between acting from duty and acting from delight. We dutifully attend the Novus Ordo because it’s seen as “good for us,” like oatmeal; we get excited when the Latin Mass is available, because it’s delicious to the spiritual palate.

Perhaps readers may object that I am exaggerating the contrast. It may be that I am. But I can only speak from my own experience, as well as from conversations I’ve had as a teacher, choirmaster, or pilgrim with hundreds of young people over the past twenty years. There seems to me to be a vast difference in the perception of the attractiveness or desirability of the old liturgy versus that of the new — so much so that if a Catholic college or university wished to increase daily Mass attendance, all they would have to do is to provide the old Mass, or to provide it more frequently, and the number of communicants would significantly increase. It might seem utterly counterintuitive, and yet it is borne out again and again at chaplaincies across the world.

A psychologist or a sociologist would say that this can have many causes, but what concerns me at the moment is that there is a real theological explanation. One can see, in liturgical terms, why the old form of Mass (and Office and sacraments and blessings, etc.) would be powerfully attractive to today’s youth who discover them. These age-old, pre-industrial, pre-democratic forms are so much richer and denser, more symbolic, involved, and mysterious, pointing both more obviously and more obscurely to the supernatural, the divine, the transcendent, the gratuitous, the unexpected. They are seductive, as only God can be seductive. Seduxisti me, Domine, et seductus sum: fortior me fuisti, et invaluisti (Jer 20:7). This, after all, is what Pope Benedict XVI had in mind when he wrote to all the bishops of the world: “It has clearly been demonstrated that young persons, too, have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction, and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist particularly suited to them.”

The reformed liturgy in its Genevan simplicity has never won any awards for seductiveness. It can barely be looked at head on before people feel embarrassed about its nakedness and try to clothe it with every accoutrement they can find or invent. We have to bring to it a devotion or a seriousness of purpose that we ourselves possess, if we are going to be in a position to benefit from the divine sacrament it spartanly houses. Without love of the Lord presupposed, this would be a wearisome, unrewarding business, rather like having to convince an indifferent person to be friends with you. It’s an uphill battle from the start. Why should young people be interested in something that is so boringly lecture-like, so logical and efficient, or so much in need of artificial sweeteners, like sacro-pop music? Most of them would rather be anywhere else.

A nun of the traditional Benedictines of Mary

In attempting to understand how liturgy helps or hinders priestly and religious vocations, we should also take into account the demands of active life and contemplative life. Religious communities nowadays tend strongly in the direction of the active life, with apostolates in the world. As Dom Chautard and others have pointed out, modern people are strongly tempted to fall for the “heresy of activism,” whereby we believe that by our hard work we will bring about the kingdom of God on earth. Liberation Theology is an extreme example of the same tendency, but it has been at work since at least the heresy of Americanism diagnosed by Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae, according to which the so-called “active virtues” of work in the world have surpassed in worth and relevance the so-called “passive virtues” of religious and contemplative life.

Since the Novus Ordo valorizes the active and denigrates the passive, it seems to fit well with the activist or Americanist mentality. Thus it seems that active religious orders could find it somehow amenable, as long as they could keep bringing to it an interior life cultivated largely through other means. But the priesthood, which must be rooted in the mysteries of the altar in order to remain strong and fruitful, and the contemplative religious life, which focuses on offering up the sacrifice of praise and not on an external apostolate, cannot flourish on a subsistence diet. What may seem “good enough” for the laborer in the vineyard is perilously inadequate for the priest and the contemplative, who need a truly sacerdotal and contemplative liturgy if they are fully to realize their great callings.

This is why we see everywhere across the world that serious priests and contemplatives will either “traditionalize” the Novus Ordo as much as they can, or adopt the traditional Mass and Office, or both. Examples of this variety of tradition-friendly approaches may be found in communities such as the Abbey of St. Joseph de Clairval, the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius, the Community of St. Martin, and the monks of Norcia, Fontgombault, Clear Creek, and Heiligenkreuz.

Am I saying, then, that the (relatively few) healthy religious communities that use the Novus Ordo would be even better off with the Vetus Ordo? Yes, absolutely. The good they have would be multiplied, their power of attraction and intercession greatly intensified. Unfortunately, however, even those who have come to recognize the superiority of tradition will be discouraged by the hostile climate introduced under this pontificate from returning to the Church's authentic lex orandi, lest they suffer the fate of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate or the Trappists of Mariawald. In this official opposition to the desperately-needed restoration of Catholic tradition we can see the telltale signs of the Devil's implacable hatred for the celibate priesthood and the contemplative religious life.

But neither human nor angelic opposition should prevent any community from quietly and judiciously incorporating the traditional liturgy into its daily life. “Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints” (Rev 13:10). The ancient Latin liturgical rites and uses have nourished the saints of the Western Church for over 1,600 years. They have an imperishable power to do the same for all the saints Our Lord desires to raise up today. Traditional liturgy never failed to attract vocations of every kind or to support the Christian life of the laity; it continues to exercise the same fascination and fortification among us. The new-fangled liturgical rite of yesterday, like the Americanist world in which it was inculturated, is failing. A healthier Church, a healthier spiritual polity, is in the making.

Seminarians of the FSSP in Germany