Ubi Petrus

You get to pray the Benedictus, where Zechariah’s lips are opened after nine months of silence and a beautiful prayer of praise and thanksgiving pour forth at the birth of his son on the very day the Church celebrates that very John the Baptist’s beheading. It is impossible to miss the amazing and simultaneous contrast and coherence between the two events. To then pray, “[y]ou my child shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you shall go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins” and to contemplate how that prophetic work, and indeed how nearly all of the prophets met their end, is simply sublime. If you haven’t started to pray the Breviary, now is a beautiful time to start.

…when in the initial paperwork is included the reminder that “[w]e will be going to Mass every Wednesday this year.” That’s the kind of information you just can’t see enough. Sure, it’s not daily, but the beauty of it is that it means you no longer have kids who go to the school and go through Sacrament and/or religion classes and don’t go to Mass because their parents won’t bother to take them. Yet another step in recovering the damage associated with nearly losing an entire generation. Deo gratias!

In counterpoint to the sour and dour of the last post …

My wife and I were laying in bed this morning telling each other that we really needed to get up, using our black lab as an excuse not to when my six-year-old daughter walked in. She usually tries to climb in bed and snuggle for a few minutes before we get up and moving for the day so we didn’t think anything of it.

Until we hear her address the dog with “the Lord be with you”. As we attempted to stifle impressed chuckles she proceeded to instruct him in the proper way to make the sign of the Cross. Now, St. Francis loved animals so maybe this is her inner Poor Clare coming out, but I don’t know. If nothing else, it reminds me how different her life is growing up knowing God and His Church from my life at her age without any of that.

I’ve often, to myself anyway, bemoaned the fact that nothing “interesting” ever seems to happen. I always see other people with stories of assisting at Mass with a Cardinal from the Vatican, or people helping to restore a church to beauty or having people approach them out of the blue to ask something about the Church. It’s the last one that really gets me for some reason – nobody ever seems to talk about anything religion-related even anywhere near me – it’s almost like I have a warning sign hanging aorund my neck or something. Or so I thought.

Thanks to a very crazy schedule I took my son to his Karate class tonight, not when we normally go. I sat there for the most of class watching him and scanning through the latest edition of First Things. Then I realized the people in front of me were talking about going to church and what a relationship with Jesus meant to them and the like. Just hearing that at all put a smile on my face since public shows of religion are, as I’ve said, pretty rare around here. Then I heard one of them say “I can’t believe they call him ‘Holy Father’ – don’t they know nobody is holy but God the Father?” My face, needless to say, dropped.

It didn’t stop there. I couldn’t catch the whole of the conversation because I was trying to be subtle and not be too obvious that they’d piqued my attention. Suffice it to say other classic and now-classic anti-Catholic statements were made including the usual trope about priestly celibacy which necessarily led to and revolved around the sex abuse scandal. I was, to say the least, no longer excited to hear this conversation. But I just couldn’t decide – was this the time to drop my nickel into this conversation or was it sufficiently inappropriate to butt in? Do I stand up and defend Holy Mother Church or do I suffer the indignity of having to hear their poorly informed slander and pray for their enlightenment?

What did I do in the end? I choked. Yup, dropped the ball straight on the floor. I let myself hide behind indecision and wound up doing neither. What really hurts about is that, simply, I know better. Do I pray now for their enlightenment? Absolutely, and a chance to be the one to bring that enlightenment about if it be God’s will. But I also know why God hasn’t dropped that type of discussion in my lap until now – I’ve just been not ready for it. Am I ready for it now? I don’t know, but I do know that the pain of listening to people slam Holy Mother Church unopposed is something I don’t want to have to go through again. Sometimes God gives us “put up or shut up” moments. I only hope I choose the right one if this comes to me again.

Mass and Divine Office are liturgically interrelated. The latter furnishes the setting for the Mass, as the gold of the ring is the setting for the precious jewel of its stone.

Read the whole post from Breviarium Romanum and tell me you don’t wish your parish participated in the Divine Office in a public way. If it does, well, I confess to some level of jealousy. Even if it doesn’t, I can’t possibly encourage you enough to take up the Divine Office for yourself. It has provided, for me, many moments of light in days of darkness.

Every priest and music director should be required to read and listen to every link on this page. Just the tiniest amount of imagination and one can easily move from hearing only Aristotle Esguerra’s voice to that of a full schola and/or the many and varied voices of an entire congregation. To dream, perchance to hope…

H/T to Jeffrey Tucker at NLM.

This morning I was greeted by a Facebook friend request from an old friend from high school. Looking at her profile I saw, to paraphrase, “iffy” which given our generation is not all that surprising. Then I realized that if she clicked on my blog the first thing she’d see was my rant below. As bad an idea as a P&W Mass is for my parish, it’s no excuse to give someone a reason to question Christianity, Catholicism or even the existence of God. Tertullian’s well-known “see how these Christians love one another” clearly was not in the forefront of my mind. So far to go, and quite possibly so little time. Ora pro me!

I’ll post on the very good, if also very full, vacation later. Somewhere in all our gear is the camera, but I know not where.

My wife and I chatted briefly this morning how nice it was to again sleep in our own bed, and I realized as well how nice it would be to go back to our parish this morning and not play the game of church roulette that travel can often become (think “Risen Christ ‘Crucifix’” and you’ll get an idea). That thought was heartening as we drove to Mass.

As we knelt to pray our choir director took to the microphone to mention two announcements that had not made the bulletin this week. The first passed quietly, letting choir members know their practices would start again soon with the end of the summer approaching. The second started even better – “We are starting a new group for the 11AM Mass”. My head raced at the thought they might be starting a schola, or at least a group intended to target more traditional musical forms. “We will be singing the same songs as we do now”, he continued. My face dropped. “But we will be doing them in a Praise and Worship style.” I burped. “We’ll be adding instruments including guitar, drums and bongos.” The taste of last night’s dinner invaded my mouth.

Yup, that’s right, I was the victim of liturgical music whiplash. The parish under our new pastor had slowly been righting the liturgical ship, re-introducing things such as incense and candle bearers and even appropriate periods of silence. Everything was pointing to a recovery of the tradition so easily discarded in the silly season which worshiped only the “right now”. And now this. In a small way I can now understand the betrayal those who love tradition felt when it was ripped away from them by people who “knew better”. I simply, frankly, do not understand why now, when so much of the Church is re-discovering tradition and discovering it is what the younger generation wants rather than this thin and transparent attempt at pandering – that only now do I find myself faced with people who want to go in exactly the opposite direction.

What am I going to do about it? I don’t know. As neither a cleric nor a trained musician my opinion will hold little weight and I am constantly harassed by worries that complaining may hamper any future vocation to which God may be calling me and might even cause difficulties in my work with the RCIA team.

Speaking of the RCIA team, I shudder at the mere thought of the impact this decision will have on their formation. Praise and Worship music, and by extension any Mass in which they are used, tends to be wafer-thin on catechetical value and submitting our inquirers, catechumen and candidates to that experience (since the 11AM Mass is the one they attend prior to the Breaking Open the Word sessions) frightens me beyond belief. Thinking back on it I wonder very much if I could have made it through my own RCIA experience if the only Mass I saw was full of P&W – it simply does not show forth a Church fully convinced and deeply invested in the truths it professes. And as a catechist I simply do not know if I am possessed of the spiritual strength to maintain myself appropriately when I have to attend with our candidates and catechumen. How am I to explain to them the Mass of the ages when I have to simultaneously explain that what they are seeing is in fact at significant deviation to it? This, as they say, has disaster written all over it.

St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Cecilia and Mary, Mother of God, ora pro nobis!

We’re heading off for a week of unplugged rest and relaxation. I expect by Tuesday I’ll have the jitters from not getting my St. Blog’s fix, but that too shall pass. As Mark Shea would say … Beans. Noses.

I was going to post something edifying about the Transfiguration, which is definitely one of my favorite events in the earthly life of Christ. Then I saw what Carolina Cannonball has done today and decided it would be most appropriate to just send you over there. Trust me, you won’t be sorry. Go! Scat! Just remember to come back and read all my other edifying works, of course.