Beginning on pp 177-8, here’s an interesting reflection on Job that substantially mirrors every homily I’ve ever heard on him and a reflective outline (what would this format be called?) of the development of personal faith over time.

The Lutheran Witness, June 15, 1915.

At least one Vatican official I talked to recently told me he believes the future of the Church’s liturgical life will be a type of fusion between the old Mass and the new Mass of Paul VI. This is the view of many.

But at least one Vatican official I talked to, also in the past month, told me he believes the future is solely and exclusively in a return to the old rite. “The old rite is our past, and it will be our future, ” he told me. “The new Mass is a passing phase. In 50 years, that will be entirely clear.”     (Source)

If that’s true, I’ll be 97 when everything is entirely clear. I don’t expect still to be editing this blog. – awr

May I also just say how much I value your blog as a forum aspiring to and generally achieving Benedictine moderation in the midst of the generally vituperative world of liturgical blogs – why do the liturgists so furiously rage together (cue Handel)? Keep up the good work (and prayer). 

Thank you for your blog — it is so informative and the discussion is some of the best I have seen in this type of venue.

What a great blog, intelligent, witty, humane. And your attitude toward some of the habitually cranky habitual posters is refreshing and worthy of your domain name. 

Thank you for all the energy you spend and the wise suggestions and criticisms — I can tell that they all come out of a deep love for the church and all its mystery.

Holy Virgin, truly mother of the eternal Word who has come into our flesh and our life, Lady who conceived in faith and in your blessed womb the salvation of us all, and so are the mother of all the redeemed, you who live ever in God’s life, near to us still, because those united to God are nearest to us. 

With the thankfulness of the redeemed, we praise the eternal mercy of God that redeemed you.  When your existence began, sanctifying grace already was yours, and that irrevocable grace was with you always.  … 

For our salvation you said Yes, for us you spoke your Fiat; as a woman of our race you accepted and bore in your womb and in your love him in whose Name alone there is salvation in heaven or on earth. …

In you, holy Virgin, who stood under the Cross of the Redeemer (the real tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the real tree of life), as the second Eve and mother of all the living, [in you]  it was redeemed humanity, the Church, that stood under the Cross and received the fruit of redemption and eternal salvation. 

From a prayer by Karl Rahner in his Mary, Mother of the Lord

After all, at any age, it’s possible to be distracted at our liturgical celebrations. One of the Syro-Malabar rite Catholic youth I interviewed in 2008 had developed, in conversation with one of his pastors and others, a strategy for overcoming distractions during the liturgy. When he found that he was distracted, thinking about his outside responsibilities, for example, he would silently say a short prayer, like the following: “Mother Mary, please help me to have peace in my heart.” This prayer helped him “get back into the mass.”

The great thing about this strategy was it simultaneously released him from the distraction and from his awareness of the distraction, so he didn’t continue to be distracted by the guilty thought that he should be paying better attention.

It’s never too early to learn the liturgical skills we need to pray better, so this week I told Thomas I would teach him a prayer he could say when he’s having trouble listening in mass. He’s been asking about St Benedict and his Book (you can hear the capital when he talks about it) so I was inspired by the Rule of Benedict:

Jesus, help me listen
with the ear
of my heart.

He likes it. How do you cope with liturgical distraction?

I am led to this thought by my reading of C. S. Lewis’s fourth Letter to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (Harcourt, 1964), on what happens when we pray and on God’s knowing us:

“What, then, are we really doing? Our whole conception of, so to call it, the prayer-situation depends on the answer.

“We are always completely, and therefore equally, known to God. That is our destiny whether we like it or not. But though this knowledge never varies, the quality of our being known can. . . . . Ordinarily, to be known by God is to be, for this purpose, in the category of things. We are like earthworms, cabbages, and nebulae, objects of divine knowledge. But when we (a) become aware of the fact—the present fact, not the generalisation—and (b) assent with all our will to be so known, then we treat ourselves, in relation to God, not as things but as persons. We have unveiled. Not that any veil could have baffled this sight. The change is in us. The passive changes to the active. Instead of merely being known, we show, we tell, we offer ourselves to view.

“To put ourselves thus on a personal footing with God could, in itself and without warrant, be nothing but presumption and illusion. But we are taught that it is not; that it is God who gives us that footing. For it is by the Holy Spirit that we cry ‘Father.’ By unveiling, by confessing our sins and ‘making known’ our requests, we assume the high rank of persons before Him. And He, descending, becomes a Person to us.

“But I should not have said ‘becomes.’ In Him there is no becoming. He reveals Himself as Person: or reveals that in Him which is Person. For . . . God is in some measure to a man as that man is to God. The door in God that opens is the door he knocks at. (At least, I think so, usually.) The Person in Him—He is more than a person—meets those who can welcome or at least face it. He speaks as ‘I’ when we truly call Him ‘Thou.’ . . . ”

So Herbert Vorgrimler in Sacramental Theology (The Liturgical Press, 1992) [to bold face is my emphasis]:

“But what does ‘presence’ mean in this connection? Karl Rahner developed the idea that presence, for human beings, is always mediated presence. It always requires a “medium” that is humanly perceptible. This is true also of the presence of God as soon as this presence, passing beyond its silent, abiding being-there within creation, makes a breakthrough within the human heart, and reaches the level of human consciousness. From a theological point of view there is only one presence of God, namely, God’s self-communication to what is not God. But this presence is experienced and consciously perceived in different types of presence, in which God’s presence as grace affects human beings dynamically. This effect may always have different levels of intensity. The goal, however, is always the same: genuine, grace-filled, personal communication between human beings and God.

“The foregoing thoughts on the mediated presence of God require further precision with regard to the liturgy. In terms of Trinitarian theology we may say that the presence of God promised in the liturgical assembly is not simply that eternal, ineffable divine mystery that Jesus addressed as his Father and ours. It would be wrong to think that the liturgy makes God the Father present. Instead, it is we (also) who in and by means of the liturgy are made present to God the Father, are brought before his face: through his Son Jesus in the Holy Spirit. The divine Spirit who is the common possession of Jesus and of the community is, in the liturgy, the medium of the presence of Jesus, his person and the whole of his life and fate. The precise ways in which this medium—the Spirit of God—is active in the liturgy, bringing about the presence of Jesus in his person and actions, are the symbolic actions of the church (or ‘effective signs’—preeminently the sacraments—as the definition of liturgy cited above expresses it), in which Jesus is the real actor, the Word whose voice is heard when it is proclaimed, read or meditated as the word of God, as also in the prayer and song of the assembled community (SC 7).

“It should be clear from what has been said that God’s becoming present through Jesus in the Holy Spirit is effected through the initiative of the divine Spirit, and that initiative is also the author of the faith of the Church, which is celebrating the liturgy. But this making present of God reaches its goal only when the means of mediation, especially the liturgy, are consciously and emotionally brought into awareness. Self-surrender to the liturgy, whose basis and bearer is always Jesus Christ, means in every case (and thus in every sacrament) remembering Jesus. Participation in the liturgy is a celebration of the memory of Jesus, and its intensity depends on the Jesus-mysticism of the human being who is taking part. That participation is always a self-surrender to the will of God revealed in Jesus, and thus its intensity is also measured by one’s willingness to engage in a praxis of life that accords with that of Jesus.” (25–26)

“The church should be breaking down walls, not erecting them. God intends the church to be demonstrating what community looks like when God’s reconciling power is at work. … [A]ccording to the Bible, the church is an all-age community. … The only way to musically communicate God’s timeless activity in the life of the church is to blend the best of the past with the best of the present. … The gospel revolution at Coral Ridge continues!”

From time to time, because of my service on the Vox Clara Committee, I am asked about the status of Canada’s use of the new Roman Missal. Recently there was some news on this front, to wit:

The Bishops of Canada have been informed that the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) has now received from the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (CDWDS) recognitio(confirmation, authorization) for use of the new Roman Missal in Canada.

However, the CCCB is still awaiting confirmation from the CDWDS regarding proposed adaptations requested for Canada, which the bishops have submitted, as well as the proposed Proper Liturgical Calendar for the Dioceses of Canada (for example, when to celebrate Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, Saint Alfred Bessette [Brother Andre] and other such matters). 

Apart from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, all the other English-language Conferences of Bishops are also awaiting confirmation of their respective adaptations and liturgical calendars. 

The CDWDS has indicated that their staff is working through the remaining requests by Episcopal Conferences as quickly as they can.

          *          *          *

Friday, Sept. 3, this announcement by Msgr. Patrick Powers was released on the CCCB website:

 The CCCB has now received recognitio for the standard texts of the Roman Missal that will be used by all the other English-speaking countries, but has not yet received recognitio for any adaptations for Canada, nor for the proposed Proper Liturgical Calendar for the Dioceses of Canada. The recognitio received by the United States, however, did include the decisions of the Congregation on the requested adaptations and the liturgical calendar for the USA. The Bishops of Canada cannot select a date for the implementation of the Missal in Canada until all the approved texts, including the adaptations, have been received and the necessary amount of time ascertained for the Canadian Missal to be printed and published. In addition, it is not CCCB practice to release liturgical translations in advance before the official liturgical books have been published.

As part of the preparation for the implementation of the Missal, the Bishops of Canada will also be issuing catechetical resources to assist Canadian Catholics in preparing for the new translation. These resources will be prepared by the CCCB English Sector Commission for Liturgy and the Sacraments, with the assistance of the Sector’s National Liturgy Office. However, these materials can only be finalized once the approved text of the Missal, as well as the adaptations and the liturgical calendar, have been received for use in Canada.

This week’s issue of The Wanderer has an interview with Msgr. James Moroney, former head of the US national liturgy office, now consultor to the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, Executive Secretary of Vox Clara, and reputed string-puller for the 10,000+ changes to the upcoming missal. I know Jim well from my days on the drafting committee for the USCCB document Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship. He is delightfully optimistic, highly skilled in the complexities of church politics, and unfailingly charitable to everyone. I wonder how many people have heard from Jim that they’re the most importance person around for liturgical renewal?! Like many churchmen, he does seem to be tacking rightward as he moves upward. This week he “wanders” – i.e., he allows himself to be interviewed by the hard right Wanderer. It is striking how polemical the questions from Paul Likoudis are, and how well Jim lowers the temperature with his irenic responses. The full interview is here (subscription required, but you can sign up for three free weeks), excerpts below.   – awr

          *          *          *

Q. …  How is the renew­al going in the English- speaking world, and, from your perspective, in the United States?
A. The great good news for the postconciliar reform is the advent of a “ new and improved” transla­tion of the most important of all the liturgical books, the Missale Romanum. By authentically trans­lating the venerable liturgical texts of the Roman Rite the new Roman Missal will significantly deepen the catechetical, doctrinal, and worship life of the Church. …
          As I recently said in another context “…how blest we are to be witnesses to a second springtime of the vision of the council fathers lived out in our own day, as we prepare to proclaim, in some instances for the first time, the ancient collects which define who we are called to be, as we seek to move from ideology to worship, and from novelty to mystery, as we seek to desire not so much to change the liturgy, as to be utterly transformed by it.”

Q. You travel a lot. How would you assess the state of Catholic worship in the U.S.?
A. Perhaps a … [story] would help to put flesh on my optimism. I was recently in Cincinnati. …[There is] extraordinary openness and enthusiasm for the new translations articulated by practically all of the Cincinnati clergy. This year alone I have spoken to more than a half-dozen presbyterates, and the response is always the same: good priests trying earnestly to understand what the Church is proposing in her liturgy and trying with all their might to celebrate it authentically and with their whole heart and mind.

Q. From your perspective, do you see the Internet as a driving force for a return to a more authentic liturgy in accord with tradition?
A. …There are some dangers inherent in this age of instant communication. Misinformation can be spread just as quickly as authentic information. The copyrights of proprietary materials can be violated, and persons of all persuasions who are obsessed with particular ideologies can generate a lot more heat than light. We would be wise to follow the counsel of one popular blogger who recommends that his readers pray before surfing the Internet that God might direct our hands and eyes only to what is pleasing to Him.

Q. Most Wanderer readers have a memory of living through a liturgical revolution. How long do you think it will be before a new liturgical movement circa 1940 is in full swing?
A. I would suggest that a new liturgical movement circa 1940 has been in full swing since 1940! But revolution is hardly the word to describe the aggiornamento to which Pope John XXIII called the Church. … Sadly, abuses of the liturgy and other self- indulgent nonsense have always been with us, even before the Second Vatican Council. Recall Pope Paul VI’s lament that “ anyone who takes advantage of the reform to indulge in arbitrary experiments is wasting energy and offending the ecclesial sense” ( August 22, 1973).

Q. As a seminary instructor, what is your view of the upcoming crop of priests? Are they more in tune with the Benedictine reforms than the older priests?
A. I would describe the seminarians whom I have been privileged to teach as characterized by two qualities: They are men of deep faith and men of deep intellectual curiosity. Their desire is not just to understand what they are supposed to do at Mass, but why they do it. The Celebration of the Liturgy is, for them, inextricably bound up with their spirituality.

Q. Finally, what advice can you offer lay Catholics who want a more traditional liturgy but cannot get past the parish liturgical gatekeepers or the pastor’s inertia?
A. First: “If I have not love, I am nothing.” The first obligation of anyone who has been baptized into the dying and rising of Jesus is to love. That means to love those who are the hardest to love (or even to understand), to forgive those whom we perceive as having wronged us, and to act with patience, kindness, and humility in everything we do, including the promotion of the Sacred Liturgy.  …