From an Enamored Child of the Latin Mass

I am a cradle Catholic born in 1981. Since August of 2008 I have been exclusively attending the Tridentine Mass. In the 5 years prior to this date I had attended Tridentine Mass only a handful of times, and no other time at all before that.

What I will try to relate here is my personal relationship with the Tridentine Mass and how I have become enamored with it. Subsequent blog posts will explore how it has strengthened my Faith and contributed to my spiritual growth in Hope and Charity.

The first few times I went to Tridentine Mass I must admit I did not understand much, or feel much for that matter. I was actually a little lost and too busy trying to find out what was going on to really let it show me. Once I embraced it, meaning I knew I was going to let it teach me faithfully and without expectations, I began to see different sides of it.

It is with this spirit of wonder that I began to develop a personal and intimate connection with the Tridentine Mass, little by little, like a puzzle at the end of which there are tons of surprises, and in this case, an infinite supply of spiritual graces.

Slowly, with both the Low and the High Mass I started learning little things that produced great love in my heart.

One of the first things with which I connected, is at the beginning of the Mass, when the Priest confesses his own sins in the Confiteor. Not only does he recite it, but throughout the prayer, you can also see him bowing before the Altar and slowly moving left and right as he confesses his sins. After he finishes this prayer, the Servers pray for him beginning with, ‘May almighty God have mercy upon thee’ …

Then it’s the Servers’ turn to do the same prayer, and we the laity are to see this as our part and to follow closely in our hearts. In the part of the mea culpa, as the Servers strike their breasts, we are also invited to gently strike our breast three times. The rubrics also inform us that at this time that we are to dispose ourselves toward true contrition. The subtlety with which the three small strikes are done by each person makes it so personal, as if we are alone before God. This may be a small physical interaction, but in essence it requires full concentration to follow it.

After observing this for a few Masses, it began to feel very natural, and after a while longer I was able to begin to recite the prayer in Latin by heart.

Nowadays, even without a Missal or any auditory cues, I can recognize the movement of the Priests and the Servers, and my heart has been trained to pray for the Priest at the time in which he bows down, and express contrition at the time in which the Servers do. And even though my physical participation is small, each little strike is so meaningful, and I look forward to this subtle but symbolic movement every Sunday.

This to me is the wonder of the Latin Mass. Rather than less participation from the laity, there is more. It demands me to be spiritually present and to be paying close attention to every word, every movement. It demands a synchronicity that must be genuine, one that can easily be avoided without anybody else noticing, ensuring therefore that each action is real when it does take place. I will relate another similar example to that of my experience with the Confiteor.

Everywhere in the Missal as it goes through the Mass one can see there are little Crosses indicating that at the moment a certain phrase is said by the Priest, one is to do the Sign of the Cross. It requires me to be alert for them, not mechanistically, but following the words (I don’t even have to know their meaning in English, just the Latin will do!) and I have come to realize that a majority of them are said around a particular time when the name of the Lord has been mentioned in a special way.

As I go through Mass, if I ever zone out or lose sight of the prayer, all it takes is a subtle Sign of the Cross for me to once again focus on God. Sometimes the Priest does not necessarily say things out loud or I cannot hear him – nonetheless, by his motions and by the time in the Mass, I know that I must do the Sign of the Cross. This is again the wonderful synchronicity that the Mass demands.

The subtleties are everywhere. In the 10 months I have been attending the Mass I have not stopped discovering. Every Sunday a new subtlety is opened or an old one deepened. But it is not about the discovery itself, it is the depth in which they take me that is fascinating. Each new subtlety is but another key into the Mystical Body of Christ. Rather than an emotionally charged experience, the Mass is a quiet pacification of the spirit – a deepening of contrition, reverence, prayer and exaltation of Christ.

What I have come to find out is that, The Tridentine Mass, like the philosophical and theological tradition of the Church, uses a perfect architecture; its artistic and spiritual elevation being so high that at first it seems distant, but once embraced, it is as close and intimate as the most rural of villages. Like a fine wine, it opens up its sweetness after it breathes fresh air. Likewise, the Mass after we let it settle in our soul, breathes fresh air into us, and as we feel the cool breeze we suddenly hear the river of everlasting water coming from the distance.

I am enamored with the Mass. What was once a responsibility, it is now my repose – my strength. My heart beats in a special way when I think about the Mass. It beats quietly and graciously. I am being pacified and my will is slowly giving in. The Rite is teaching me, slowly and deeply what the Sacrifice is. And that is a topic which deserves another post.

A longing with many thoughts

I long to express something vast, big and magnificent. I have always longed to express what is true, the highest and most magnificent reality which we can think of. This longing is like a burning and unquenchable desire which I cannot stop or dry down or die out. And neither would I want to, for the longing is so strong and feels so right – guiding me slowly towards a deeper path, which becomes less and less afraid of new doors, even though it does become more and more afraid of God, and of offending Him. For who is God, and how can one being a mere human, possibly define Him?

God, being as being – esse qua esse – in itself, absolutely.

I long to distinguish the true God from all other gods so that I can experience Love in the highest order. He is Knowable through faith and reason, or so at least is the instinct of a good heart, as I define the state of my soul when it is oriented towards knowing God, a heart willing to purge itself of all that is ugly within our species (not superficially and materially but in regards to sin). When a heart is aiming to the saintly – even if it is in torment, even if it is in sin – if the heart is looking, every day, with great longing, to purge itself from all bad things in order to love God, then it is a good heart. A good heart searches and never gives up. It doesn’t look for relief, unless the relief is from God. It finds relief accidentally and temporarily through the material and the vain (that not directly of God), and then it is embarrassed to find relief in the material. Because when it is not searching it is not with God, and when it is not with God it is not entirely safe from being bad. And being bad means being away from God. Which in itself is the greatest possible sadness. It is however very hard to long for God the Father the abstract and the Almighty with tremendous intensity in every moment, especially when bombarded with not only a material, but a superficially material reality every day. The good heart is noble, but the good heart is weak.

But my longing keeps me thinking: Who is God? Everything. God is everything, but not everything is God – God is only one – the ONLY Being who just IS, is EVERYTHING, not everything individually, but everything at once. How can one know this is true, and not a mere syllogism – or a rational, abstract logic with no practical merit? Because Truth is grounded not only in Reason but also in Faith – both intertwined in utter perfection as the only possibility of perfection itself. It is both an entirely rational process capable of systematic discovery and a slow awakening of the good heart.

I have learned that the journey to God is a journey that starts with a desire – a thirst for virtue and for God, which is not to be confused with a thirst to be god, or to make man god, or to aggrandize god.

God comes when our souls are docile and ready for Him, in silence- with peace and without any struggle from within – with no longing from the creature, for the creature has found, at least temporarily by Grace, his peace. I long to be completely united with God.

It all starts with a longing, and so I long. Then I believe. Then I hope. And then I love. May God have mercy on us.

muddy confusion

I am lost and confused, walking through the swamps of the earth under an eternally dark night and in desperate search for light.

From all sides of the swamp I am surrounded by a sea of people, throwing themselves in the muddy waters, incessantly looking for dirt – eating and basking in it without shame. Many of them are playing with the critters, as if cute puppies – they smile at them and caress them. Panic strikes me each time a critter comes close to me but then again I am often paralyzed by them – somewhat attracted to them, finding in horror that I too often find pleasure in them.

Often I see other somnambulists like me, not quite awake from the muddy nightmare, but in movement – in the search for a way out. They too are repulsed by the critters at least enough to want to escape from them.

Today there are tears streaming out of my eyes. From afar I can see the luminous Mansions leading way to the Interior Castle. I still remember the times when Grace has put me close to these Holy Doors. Often, and especially when the critters have been sufficiently away from me for days, I am a man of courage walking diligently for the doors, hoping that the guards will let me in to its beautiful halls.

Oh, the sorrow that is to know these open spaces full of light where wisdom thrives and the confusion of our minds clears away. If only I could fly into these halls, but too often I see hungry and greedy men run to its doors, and the all-too-familiar haste takes them somewhere else altogether, to an alternative place where critters sit in disguise with riches.

Occasionally a man with a shining bright light will come out of the depths of such a phantom place, and sits around our muddy campground, far away from the Holy Fort where the Mansions lie. When these men come out, their appearance of light confuses many, but whenever I complain that these houses and these lights are not connected to the Fort, desperate men who come from rubbing themselves in the mud implore me to cease my preaching.

How can I not refuse such reasonable request when it gives men so much hope? For I too must confess that I have gone to these alternative houses many times. Oh, sometimes in my sorrow I even find myself staring at a luminous house, which I mistake for one of the Mansions, but on a closer look I see that it’s yet another plain house, which will give me the all-too-familiar jolt of lightning to fly me away and take me to a world of delights, only to drop me back down and remind me that the delights they offered me are just hazy dreams and illusions, far from the heaven they so hard try to emulate, but close enough that hopeful but lost men like me can fall for them.

Only the mansions have permanence. Only they are eternal. But how can I reach the eternal when I am so lost? Dazed and sleepy I go back to pleasurable thoughts of the flesh, suffocated from the turmoil that is all around me.