By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
I write to you shortly after the massacre in Orlando, witnessing the divisions that some are making in reaction to this great sin in the sight of God. Above all, and first of all, those who died are human beings, created lovingly by God in His image and likeness, and it is this truth we must take with us to God in prayer, as we do for all the departed.
With many, we confront once again the mystery of iniquity, that man who is always capable of great good is also capable of great evil, including violence against his fellowman. Including the tragic and senseless loss of life in Orlando recently, we must commend all who have died to the mercy of Almighty God and also remember the teaching of Christ: “Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors.”
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I recently attended the annual St. Anthony feast day Mass and procession in New York City. This great occasion annually brings together great numbers of the devotees of “Il Santo,” the Franciscan Portuguese wonderworker and holy man who was adopted by the city of Padova where he had transferred shortly before his death.
In this same American city where so many travel to seek out the very best in entertainment, such as classic Broadway musicals, some entertainment did surface that day in the liturgy.
In a noble way, professional choir and soloists offered the musical gamut from the peace prayer of St. Francis to Ave Verum Corpus, accompanied by a capable organist. The pastor’s announcement of news of a personal nature about his transfer and the advent of a new pastor received the loudest applause.
The liturgy normally takes shape all over this country every Sunday very much as it did in New York that day: comments casually thrown together, often personal in nature, ooze their way out of the homily and into a substitution for the mandated silence that should bridge the Communion rite and the post-Communion prayer, if not also at other awkward moments. The fear of not reaching those who may depart Mass early motivates, I suppose, some of the all-too-common liturgical butchering in this and other ways.
Noisy, newsy, and short all too often describe the highest spiritual experience of most Catholics every week.
I was struck during the procession, however, that this is precisely the Church’s answer to the horizontal and social needs of our Catholics as felt by everyone: saying hello, meeting friends, walking side by side together as a Church and talking freely as time and religious experience is shared.
People seek out musicals in New York and other places for art and the experience of sharing the moment with others. They seek escape, wonder, awe, and sometimes tears as the talented actors and musicians compellingly relate the stories on stage. The audience takes a moment away from the harsh realities of life in order to dream even for a short while of being other people, in other places, in other times. For a brief respite, they experience pleasure in being entertained and in leaving the ordinariness of everyday life behind.
Perhaps you might respond that we should do well to offer this same experience at Sunday Mass. Do not the true, the good, and the beautiful give a foretaste of Heaven, another place where the humdrum of the daily rounds here on earth will forever be left behind?
There is one fly in that ointment, however: The beauty of the American musical theater is precisely in the flight of imagination it provides; there is no relevance whatsoever that carries over for the playgoer who must afterward return to his or her vocation with its joy and sorrows, rights and responsibilities, a daily routine that will be broken once again only by a planned excursion on a future day of vacation.
The wisdom of the liturgy of the Mass is the balance that must be respected between the horizontal and the vertical: The faithful who attend bring their sorrows, joys, and sufferings with them to the foot of the cross, and in the true offering of Christ once again upon the altar in their midst, the Lord God comes into the midst of them, melding His incarnate suffering and death to be shared with them and for them. Those attending the Mass then depart, not to forget what happened as in entertainment, but to continue that which has just taken place in everyday life.
The true power of the Mass, then, is lost when the most beautiful aspect is the music of the hymns which increasingly intrude upon the prayers of sacred texts, whether recited or chanted. Such liturgies appear more and more as pure entertainment to the casual churchgoer, as the priest learns to speed up his recitation of the necessary texts in order to end the Mass on time to clear the parking lot for the next Sunday Mass — in deference to the exponential use of hymnody and song.
It is the sacred texts that encapsulate the essence of Christ who has died, who has risen, and who comes again, and thus give to the faithful something of grace to take with them to address the crosses which they carry every day. It is the Scripture and the Tradition present which leave the worshippers with something beyond temporary escape to take with them as a grace.
Yes, the Holy Mass is the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven. But this is not so because the priest’s chair is centered in the sanctuary facing the people, or because the professional opera singers flock upon the steps near the altar to render their art, or because of the personal and even poignant news which studs homilies — bereft of any Gospel challenge to the people, beyond regurgitated worldly platitudes in response to violence.
No, the Mass is beautiful because of the otherworldly presence of Christ the Savior with the marks of His wounds seated at the right hand of the Father, in the Eucharist who will come again to judge the living and the dead. And who sends us away having received His grace of the Eucharist to carry our crosses through the valleys as we view with hope the mountain peaks ahead.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
(Fly from anywhere in the U.S. to join our pilgrimage to Italy, September 1-9, for Blessed Teresa of Calcutta’s canonization in Rome, as well as to Assisi, Florence, and Venice. Go to proximotravel.com and search for our group by typing “Maryland” in the search block. Click on my name, Father Kevin M C, to get further info and register.)
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