“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in a
field which a man having found, hid it, and for joy on account of it goes and
sells all that he has, and buys that field.” (Mt. 13:44)
The Holy Eucharist is our true treasure, the heavenly banquet
here on earth, the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, the Holy Mass. The 19th
century catholic convert, hymn writer and theologian, Father Frederick Faber,
captures my sentiments best when he said:
“The Mass is the most beautiful thing this side of heaven.” The form of
Mass known to Father Faber is that which we celebrate this evening, here at St.
Rose of Lima and increasingly in many other parishes, religious houses and
chapels throughout the world.
Here we adore the one God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We give God due honor, due praise, and due worship. We come before Him with all humility, and in
doing so we imitate the Blessed Mother and the saints and martyrs throughout
the ages. This is a submit the will,
humble the heart, bend the knee, bow the head, strike your chest encounter with
Almighty God.
In the complex rituals of the Mass, there is a splendor
which brings to mind the sacred. All of her varied elements combine to create a
symphony of reverence, and the worshipper remains fixed in wonderment and
awe-filled adoration.
We should not be surprised that an increasing number of
people, and particularly the young, feel a strong attraction to this Mass. As
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has said, they “find in it an encounter with the
mystery of the Eucharist – particularly suited to them.” He added that “what earlier generations held
as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too.”
Recently I have been asking young adults who attend this
form of the Holy Mass what attracts them to it.
The most common response I received was “beauty;” the second was “a
connection with the past.” The Mass is beautiful because it is an expression of
what is true and good. We have heard
that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that the eye is the window to the
soul. A soul that is attuned to Christ
will find and will see Christ there, will see Christ here.”
The ceremonial and ritual elements surrounding the
Eucharist I liken to a frame of a beautiful work of art. The sacred mysteries,
the Eucharist, and the other sacraments are like priceless masterpieces. You do not frame a Da Vinci by taking it to
the local frame-by-night shop. Neither
do you set a beautiful fine-cut diamond in a lump of clay, but rather in the
most precious of metals carefully crafted. Such has the Church done throughout
the ages with the sacred liturgy. Such is our celebration of the Mass. A frame
not only enhances the beauty of that which it enframes but also protects it –
from dust and damage, for example. The rules and regulations of the liturgy
serve as a protection: a prudent restraint that leads us to a reverent celebration.
One thing that I can appreciate is the demands that the
liturgy places on the sacred minister – it requires of him a holy discipline,
an attention to detail; the memory of prayers and gestures must be maintained
by review, daily celebration, and at times correction on the part of others.
The effort that must be exerted shows that this is extremely important that the
sacred matters.
A remarkable characteristic of this sacred ritual is its
ability to leave a profound and lasting imprint on those who attend it, whether
it is when we kneel to receive Holy Communion or bow down in prayer, or when we
are surrounded by periods of sacred silence everything says: pray to God, connect with Him, make of
yourself an offering to Him.
The young have said also that the Mass connects them to
the past; there is a link, a chain of traditional memory which has been handed
on to us that the young are connecting with.
To loosely translate a quote by Goethe in his play Faustus: “What you have
received as an inheritance, you must now work to make your own.” There is a sense of continuity, of connection
with the past, that is desperately needed in these days when so much, including
basic moral principles that are timeless are presented as either up for grabs
or at least made questionable. For the young it seems the Mass is something
tangible, something consistent and unchanged in a world that changes moment to
moment.
