So I've become a liturgical radical in my own small way, most recently as the sacristan at our small, rural Wisconsin parish. I made some first moves for Advent, introducing the "Benedictine" altar arrangement of six candles and a crucifix. I veiled the chalice, and I polished and returned to regular use a beautiful, shining ciborium that had been tucked away in a dusty cupboard in the sacristy. We're still a long way from ad orientem, or a Latin-language canon, or even the purchase of cassocks and surplices for the altar servers, but even these first small changes have lent a degree of solemn reverence to our liturgies, a hint at the full beauty of our Catholic liturgical tradition.
I was thinking about what is attractive in traditional Catholic liturgy this past Sunday after the baptism of my newborn son, Cornelius Michael Ambrose. I had convinced our temporary parish administrator, a good, faithful priest in his eighties, to conduct the solemn ritual using the older liturgical books. It was his first baptism using the Rituale Romanum since the early years of his priesthood, and there were many stops and starts as we made our way through the ceremony. There were pages lost and then found, mispronounced Latin words, rambunctious children peering over the rim of the baptismal font, chattering and running about, tugging on sleeves, and even on this patient priest's alb.
Yet somehow, through all the missteps, and the noise, and the children's chatter, Sunday's baptismal ceremony moved inexorably forward, with the full force of its majestic symbolism. Thankfully the salt hadn't yet been exorcised and blessed when a youngster tipped the bowl off the table and broke it. A quick trip to the sacristy for a replacement took care of that matter. And it didn't matter that there were children running ahead up the aisle as the priest protectively draped his violet stole stole over the newborn baby and led him, carried by his grandmother, into the church while everybody recited the Creed and the Our Father. Symbolically, this was Cornelius Michael Ambrose's entrance into the Church, an entrance to be ratified in the saving waters of baptism, and the symbolism of that literal entrance, step by step up the aisle, was beautifully clear.
There is something about traditional Catholic liturgy, with its regularity, its repetitiveness, and its symbolism, that preserves reverence in the midst of the distractions of everyday life. It actually begins with the structure of the church building itself, with its steeple and cross rising above the surrounding houses, a constant reminder of sacred, unchanging things in the midst of the secular world. It continues as one enters a church and sees the statues, the stations of the cross, and the ubiquitous flickering red of the tabernacle candle, a reminder of the real presence of Christ and his promise to remain with us always. It is seen in the division between the nave and the sanctuary, where the priest and the servers carry out sacred actions according to set formulae, no matter what is occurring in the pews, be it the dozing of elderly people or the cries and chatter of a discontented children. There is a predictability in the priest's "The Lord be with you" and our response "and with your spirit," a familiarity that the believer can focus on, something that is constant and unchanging, to which we bring our ever changing needs and petitions.
The beauty of Catholic liturgy is that, in it, the sacred reaches down and touches the world with the eternal, unchanging promises of something more than what the world can provide. The unchanging nature of heaven's promises is mirrored in unchanging language, ritual, and symbolism, all comforts to the mind that there is also something unchanging in God's promises to us, no matter how much change there might be in our fickle life circumstances. The sacred meets us where we are at and accepts us as we are, distractions and messiness of everyday life all, and then elevates us out of ourselves, at least for a moment providing a foretaste of where we are headed and what we are to become. Sometimes, sacramentally, the touch of the sacred has enduring effects, as a newborn is born yet again, indelibly marked as a child of Christ, or as bread and wine become Christ's body and blood, his real presence in our midst. The appearances remain, but the transcendent, unchanging reality veiled behind mere appearances gives joy to the believer's heart.
We had invited parishioners to stay after Mass for Cornelius' baptism and reception. Not many took us up on the offer, but among those who did was a young couple visiting from another parish. They remarked to me afterward that the ceremony had seemed so welcoming, so much "like family." That comment made me happy, for in the sacraments we become one family of faith, gathered together in the one house of God our Father, for sixty minutes, or for ninety for those who can bear it that long, to experience a foretaste of our eternal heavenly home before we head back outside into the world, back to our many, varied, temporary abodes.
No comments:
Post a Comment