SILENCE IS THE PERFECT HERALD OF JOY. I WERE BUT LITTLE HAPPY IF I COULD SAY HOW MUCH. - MUCH ADO

When Fr. Raymond Brown was challenged about some of his early works on Scripture he said not to judge him by those words, that they were written twenty years ago and he has evolved since then. Bear that in mind with what I am about to share with you. It is a though in process and I think I like it but have not thought it entirely through.

When I decided to offer myself to the priesthood there was a lengthy application process part of which was meeting with a veteran priest for an interview. This took place in the basement of a building on the campus of John Carol University. In a cramped office an older priest with mussed hair and wearing a sweater just a wee bit too tight around his expanding horizons asked me this question, “So (at the time) Mr. Valencheck, you want to serve God. Tell me about Him.”

Mind you I had an active relationship with God. I prayed daily, went to mass most days, discerned His action and calling in my daily life, had conversations with Him, believed in Him, was willing to go into full service to Him, but I had difficulty answering that question. Not, I believe, because I did not know Him, but because I knew Him in a way that is difficult to put into words. (I ask the same question of couples preparing for marriage now telling them that they will have smaller versions of themselves asking them, ‘Who is God,’ and that they need to develop a vocabulary to answer that question.)

Now I can tell you all kinds of things about God. He is a distinct mode of Being. “He is that about which nothing greater can be thought.” Trinity. Unity. Of divine simplicity yet three hypostases or persons – One is essence distinguished in persons by relation, and so forth and so on . . . But does knowing this lead me into a deeper relationship than the type of relationship that I had with Him before knowing these things? In some ways yes, but in many ways no.

In the pre-Vatican II mass there was a complaint that many people did not understand what was going on because it was said in Latin and the priest faced the same way as the people. But if they were thoroughly confused and absolutely lost why would any sane person go to mass? Why would anybody recommend it? SOMETHING must have been engaged. Perhaps it was a connection with the mystery that spoke in the depth of the heart: that which is exceedingly difficult to put into words but which is none-the-less there. It was a contact with that mystery that was perceivable though perhaps its inner mechanics was not.

But to this perceived alienation to the mass it was thought to make the mystery more accessible, a laudable thing to do. So the language was put into the vernacular, the priest turned to toward the people so that every action could be seen, and other innovations were sometimes added in an effort toward full disclosure such as using glass chalices so that people could see the wine turned blood.

Yet there was not the grand, “Aha!” moment in the Church. Granted, there are many factors for people seemingly understanding less about their faith and lack of die-hard adherents, but one might be led to think that if the meaning of the mass were indeed more apparent we would in turn be much more excited about it, understand it better, and be much more open to share it.

But perhaps we have over explained the unexplainable. We try too hard to show the un-showable. As a result instead of engaging the mass on a deeper level one might inclined to think, “I saw, I heard, I got it,” and fail to explore the mystery. Because of this I have always wished there was a way to have a hybrid mass that combined elements of both ways of celebrating the mass, but that won’t be and so it is not an answer to be much explored.

I am glad the older form or our mass is offered as I have always gained a tremendous amount from it. I’d like to think that way most people experience mass today could be celebrated in such a way that the mystery could be injected back in more suitably. While it was more difficult to pray the older mass rubrically, it is equally hard to pray the mass today with the same mystery. It requires silence, careful choices in music, delicacy in the way it is celebrated, and maybe (I believe more than maybe) at least some dabbling in Latin.

It probably can’t be done over night or exclusively. It takes a long time to be weaned off a sugary diet to something more substantial to the point where you like it. (I’m trying to do that with my coffee at the present.) But once you develop that taste you rarely want to go back.