There is a common lament that is oft heard, almost ad nauseam, that
our Catholic Masses are boring, lame and dreary. Our homilies preached by the clergy, are broad
ranging both in topic and in delivery.
Whilst some preachers are clearly gifted with the oratory skills of
Lacordaire, the renown and highly acclaimed pulpit orator of nineteenth century
France, there are far more who struggle to make their weekly homily substantial
and engaging, causing many to gripe about the quality of priestly formation and
homiletic training. Apart from the
preaching of homilies, the other common complaint is that the music, which is
an essential part of the Eucharistic celebration, just isn’t ‘engaging’,
especially to the generation so used to a daily diet of Spotify and iTunes.
While these may be valid comments or complaints made about the way
the Eucharist is celebrated, it may be revealing something else – not about the
Eucharist, but about ourselves as Catholics.
It could be indicating that we are hardly bringing ourselves into the
celebration in a real way.
Let’s just take a celebration of someone’s birthday for an
example. How much love we bring into the
celebration very much makes or breaks how good or how uninteresting the
celebration is. The more we love the
person whose birthday we are celebrating, the less we will allow the externals
of the celebration to determine the quality of the celebration. It is not that the externals are not
important, but if we do not have much love in our hearts for the person whose
life is being celebrated, those tangibles will be the only thing that we will
evaluate the event’s significance by.
The same would apply, perhaps even more significantly so, where the
celebration of the Eucharist is concerned.
It is not that good preaching or well-thought out liturgical music are
not important. They are, and I am all
for homilies that are sound, theological and relatable, with relevant points
for reflection. But we may be missing
the proverbial forest for the trees if we are only going to Mass to ‘get’ a
good homily. What happens at every Mass
is a monumental and cosmic event that changed the entire course of history for
humankind – God, in the Eucharist, has come to us in the most unimaginable
form, in man and in food, to give us something that we could never dream of
ourselves – a share in His own Divine life.
For this, we need to be ever grateful, which is what Eucharist means – a
thanksgiving. One can only be truly
thankful if one has love in one’s heart.
The more love we have, the more grateful we will be. It’s really as simple or as challenging as
that.
Besides bringing our love to the Mass, what many miss out in
celebrating the Eucharist is the way that they often aren’t bringing their
lives to the Mass. The Mass isn’t only
about what is joyful and mirthful and delightful. The Mass, because it is really the life of
Jesus celebrated, inclusive of those elements of Jesus’ life that are
sorrowful, mournful and sad. Our
connection with what is going on at the Mass is therefore predicated on those
similar elements in our lives that we are bringing together with us when we are
at Mass. The more we are aware of this,
the more the Eucharistic celebration becomes something we can personally
identify with.
Ronald Rolheiser was astute when he said that “Worship must not just
celebrate the heart that people feel they should bring to religious places, but
the heart as it beats in ordinary places”.
This means that we bring our own experiences of not just joy and
gratitude, but also the experiences where we are filled somewhat with what
partially paralyses the joys of our hearts.
We then stand around the Eucharistic table with the wounds that we share
with the other tables of our lives. It
requires of us to also be vulnerable before each other and so that there can
also be healing.
I don't think we are aware of this latter dimension of our worship
enough, and that is why we are only critical of what lays at the surface, which
comprises what we hear – the preaching and the singing.
The next time we find ourselves critical about the liturgy, perhaps
it is good to ask ourselves what we have brought to the table of the Lord, and
how much love there was on our part.
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