By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
I felt some sympathy for the Sailor seated against the back wall of the chapel, waiting for me as I concluded my celebration of a Traditional Latin weekday low Mass aboard the USS Kearsarge so he could guide me off the ship. He is an enlisted Sailor and religious program specialist charged with assisting chaplains of various faiths to offer religious services and meet the faith and spiritual welfare needs of Sailors, Marines, and other personnel serving with the Navy.
He clearly had no idea that what he just witnessed was the only real meeting on this Earth with Heaven itself in Jesus Christ, who offers and is offered, and who is received eucharistically, in every holy Mass.
All of us blessed with Catholic faith should consider it intolerable that anyone on Earth should be denied the opportunity to believe in the true Presence and Person of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. The New Evangelization project promoted by the Pope and our bishops calls us to proclaim our faith.
Yet we regularly tolerate this impoverishment of our unbelieving neighbors all the time by taking away the sacred elements of the holy Mass that bring consistency between our words and actions. Those who do not share our faith will not be moved to believe it if what we do does not reflect what we teach.
If what we teach and believe sets us apart from the many other religions surrounding us, should not the manner in which we celebrate look different from the way those who surround us celebrate? Nothing accomplishes this mission more effectively than the Traditional Latin Mass.
Serving in the military as I have for over 20 years, I have been privileged to meet and share the lives of a wide variety of persons from various backgrounds: religious, cultural, and educational. This experience has added to my capacity for compassion and for easily relating to, and better responding to the needs of, the individuals I meet in my continuing privilege of service as a chaplain to Sailors and Marines.
It has also confirmed the human impoverishment that is the result of the lack of the sacred in their lives.
As I write this, I am underway aboard the Kearsarge and am blessed with the opportunity to once again serve Catholics as well as people of all faiths at sea. When a priest puts on the chaplain insignia he disappears into the role of chaplain and, as such, military people of all faiths and no faith look to him as a guide for negotiating the wickets of life if nothing else.
The young Sailor in the chapel from Mississippi respected me as a chaplain and priest, of course, but the mysteries of God truly present on Earth were to him as a closed book.
It’s one thing for many young persons of today to have no experience of, or exposure to, the Catholic faith in a way that sets it apart from its mere imitators, perhaps even only in movies. It’s another thing entirely for young Catholics to know nothing of their own tradition, or why they should be Catholic as opposed to merely Christian.
What have we done in making the public face of the Catholic faith in her liturgies nearly indistinguishable from other forms of Christian worship? Has the effort to make everything “understandable” by making it entirely in English or by using any musical variety other than chant brought about a promised springtime of faith? By nearly any means of measurement possible, the verdict is in: The answer has to be no.
The falsehood that only in the world of faith is difficulty or challenge unacceptable has not encouraged its practice beyond adolescence. The way of saying our public prayer which does not regularly prod individuals to grow beyond their present capacity for consumption of worldly entertainment and discover the rich Catholic patrimony of the sacred has discouraged practice of the faith beyond Confirmation for many.
The definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” We have done this very thing in our parishes where the most horrifying prospect has now become facing change of any kind. The most egregious misdeed the pastor can commit is to change anything, and this has been successfully used for years as an excuse to shut out any reintroduction of the elements of the sacred such as Latin, chant or ad orientem worship. An explanation that these are not only not banned by Vatican II but actually encouraged therein often meets with no response.
We have produced and encouraged Catholics who are so militantly opposed to any elements of tradition that they will leave the community in which they have played a part for many years rather than face the discomfort necessary to adjust to anything beyond what they are already know.
This does not bode well for the Catholic project as a whole, in which our lives are one big preparation for the biggest change possible: that of going from Earth to Heaven. Such a transformation is possible only by living our lives now as one constant state of change, through conversion away from sin in order to grow in holiness.
Just like that Sailor who waited for me in the chapel as I finished the Mass, so humanly good in many ways, so it is true for many of our Catholics who are never encouraged to put out into the deep. Being humanly good is not enough for eternal life with God as made evident through the Christ event. In order to be saved, the human in us must be joined to the divine through Christ just as God was joined to man in Him.
We must share the fact that Christ continues to join God to us in Himself through the Eucharist, so that the many who are like that young Sailor will no longer be deprived of the true hope that comes through faith. I will continue to witness this life-changing truth for him and others by surrounding the mystery of the holy Mass with the elements of the sacred handed down so well in the Traditional Latin Mass.
Won’t you join me?
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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(Follow me on Facebook at Reverendo Padre-Kevin Michael Cusick and on Twitter @MCITLFrAphorism. I blog occasionally at mcitl.blogspot.com and APriestLife.blogspot.com. You can email me at mcitl.blogspot.com@gmail.com.)
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