6th Sunday after Pentecost 8.7.07 Summorum Pontificum (released 7.7.07)
Today we celebrate the Pope’s Motu Proprio enabling a freer celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass.
We hope the Mass will be celebrated more widely, and now free of any taint of being considered somehow disobedient, divisive, subversive.
Hey, we are only praying after all!
The clarifying of the status of the Mass will, the Holy Father hopes, lead to an increase of unity within the Church.
Everyone should be happy. The traditionalists are gaining something; the moderns are not losing anything (along the lines of ‘You are not losing a daughter, you are gaining a son’).
There is in the end a fundamental unity between Catholics of every opinion and taste: that we want God to be glorified and souls to be saved – ever the two ends of the Church.
We believe here in this community that this particular form of the Mass (and other sacraments) does give both glory to God and certainly helps souls to be saved, not least our own souls.
We have discovered the beauty of this rite, and we hope now that many others will also.
I will not go into all the technical details here, but review rather how we can understand this Mass and benefit from it.
The Mass is transcendent. It lifts us out of ourselves and our daily routine; taking us to the very courts of heaven. One day within Your courts, Lord, is better than a thousand elsewhere.
If this is escapism it is the best kind, because we are escaping to a real place, and better than here.
One hour of heavy duty contact with the Power, Love and Goodness of God, with Mary and all the angels and saints. It is a good way to fill in an hour.
And the benefits are immense: Grace for every kind of need; a Sacrifice which atones for all human sin; a Communion with the Body and Blood of Our Lord, which sanctifies us.
A lot of what happens in the Mass is Mystery to us. We don’t know the inner workings of God’s mind, but we get used to entrusting things to Him.
Whatever happens we must be better off after one Mass than otherwise.
So we hope to take full advantage of this new freedom for the Traditional Latin Mass.
We hope it does appear in every parish, and that every priest will learn to say it, thus enriching their own priesthood.
But we cannot be confined just to counting numbers of people or Masses. Sure, the more the merrier,
but we know we have to live the Mass as well as go to it.
We have to make our own interior participation in the Mass as worthy and complete as such a great event requires.
We have to be as humble as we look as we bow and kneel before the Almighty.
We have to be as charitable as Christ Himself, who pours out His life for us.
We have to be as joyful as the angels, worshipping before the Throne of God.
We have to be as zealous as the apostles; as hopeful as the prophets; as long-suffering as the martyrs, as pure as the virgins.
We are mixing in all this company; we have to play the part!
We live like citizens of heaven to prove we are worthy to go there, and to bring some order to this troubled planet. Not to mention that heaven is our true home, so we have to get used to it.
The most beautiful thing this side of heaven, said Fr Faber of the Traditional Latin Mass. It is a good deal the other side (that is inside) of heaven as well.
May it be multiplied indeed, in its frequency, and its fruitfulness to the world.
Long may it live and flourish, until it merges into the heavenly liturgy which knows no end.
