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Online Edition - Vol. IX, No. 4: June 2003
About Letters to the Editor
READERS' FORUM

Readers' Forum -- the lively "Letters to the Editor" of the Adoremus Bulletin provides a forum for exchange of ideas, comment and information on the sacred liturgy -- but the letters column is not normally published online. (Sample letters below).

If you are reading the Adoremus Bulletin in the "online edition" only, you are missing one of the most popular and useful features of the journal. To become a member of Adoremus -- and receive the "hard-copy" edition, including the "Readers Forum", see Membership page.

We are grateful for your letters. While we read every letter, we get so many that it is impossible to answer or publish all of them. In selecting those to appear in "Readers Forum", preference will be given to subjects of widest interest. Letters should be 250 words or fewer, preferably typed. They may be e-mailed. Please include your name, address, city and state (which may be withheld on request). If a letter refers to a previous issue of AB, please include the date of that issue and name of article. All letters may be edited for publication. Be sure to indicate clearly if your letter is NOT intended for publication.

Readers' Forum -- June 2003

"Saint Louis Jesuits"? -- Baptismal Fonts Redux -- Reverence Is Not the Problem -- Reverence is the Problem -- Membership Renewal -- "Neo-Catholic"? -- "Sponsoring" Seminarians -- AB Helpful to Seminarians -- AB Helpful to Priests -- AB Helpful to Converts -- AB Tediously Written -- Too Much Stress on Ritual -- A Proposal for Reform... -- Disposable Purificators? -- Wedding Inspires --What about the Apocryhpha? -- Why Print Donors' Names? -- New Documents

Letter

Reverence Is Not the Problem
As I read comments in the Adoremus Bulletin, I wonder where people think that God is and what He wants us to be. I wonder about a piety where people think that only the priest can serve and only in a Latin Mass, or when people enter and leave the church with solemn faces.

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for giving us a Mass in a language that people of each country can understand and celebrate the Jesus that comes to us in His precious Body and Blood; that allows lay people to serve and love the Lord through ministry within the Church; and Christians to reach out to others and smile, talk and support others in community before and after the service.

Reverence to God is more than the way we celebrate Mass, it is the way we live each day of our lives and show love to one another, not in becoming an island within ourselves. Yes, we need time alone to ponder the wonder of God, but Mass is a celebration of coming together as a community and knowing that we not only receive Jesus in our hearts through the Sacrament but that we are to take what we receive and share it through our daily lives.

There is no lack of reverence at Mass, only a lack of understanding that the Mass was man-created and man-changed, both through the work of the Holy Spirit. Who knows what God has in store for His people in the next 2,000 years?

Bertha Novaczyk
Glenview, Illinois

Response
It is a fundamental teaching of the Church that the Mass was instituted by Jesus Christ. It is not "man-created". The Catechism of the Catholic Church [1323] says, quoting the Constitution on the Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) 47:

"At the Last Supper, on the night He was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of His Body and Blood. This He did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until He should come again..."

Sacrosanctum Concilium 22 states:

22. 1. Regulation of the Sacred Liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church, that is, on the Apostolic See and, as laws may determine, on the bishop.

2. In virtue of power conceded by the law, the regulation of the Liturgy within certain defined limits belongs also to various kinds of competent territorial bodies of bishops legitimately established.

3. Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the Liturgy on his own authority.

(Emphasis added.)

Letter

Reverence Is the Problem
Scene: Patton enters a field hospital somewhere in Europe during WW II. He is observed going from one injured GI to another. He turns and sees one man. His body is wrapped. Silence envelopes the scene. While Patton approaches the battered man, he reverently removes his shiny helmet. Patton, a five star general, salutes a non-com. Patton kneels at the side of this young man. He is struck with awe by the selfless sacrifice. Patton prays. No motion -- Heaven and earth are suspended. The scene speaks volumes!

Jesus, the Son of God, salutes each of us -- as each of us should bow to He Who Is. Each an act of profound humility.

Reverence -- Patton shows to the man. Reverence -- what each one of us at Mass ought to demonstrate to Christ; profound and deeply sensed courtesy, a bow, that one person extends to another. Like gently embracing an infant.

I've attended Mass at most Catholic churches in Boise. As I entered the House of God, I am oft-overwhelmed by a din almost too awful to bear. Instead of being able to quietly revere, adore, and praise He Who Is, I hear chatter, the kind that one expects at a party. Nothing wrong with discussing events of the day with one another. But at the Event of Events? "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me" (Is 29:13).

There is a time and place for all things under the sun. For the celebration of the Mass, there is only that distinctive time to come and adore Him. I pine to enter His House, untroubled by the outside world of abominable clatter. I desire to visit Him during the majesty of the Mass with a quietude and serenity that bespeaks that sacrament's august nature. He is the central focus at Mass -- not our friends. "This is My Body this is My Blood of the new covenant" (Mt 26:26-28). Folks, Jesus is truly present, Body and Blood, soul and divinity at the consecration -- the transubstantiation.

After we adoringly receive the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, do we have much time to reflect in our hearts the "wonder at the God Thou art"? (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Adoro Te Devote).

To be with Jesus, Cor ad Cor -- heart to heart -- ought to be my goal, at Mass and in my life. "I and Thou", as Martin Buber would say. That illustrious Jewish theologian knelt before the Lord as he wrote the book of that title. He emphasized the personal relationship each person ought to have with the Lord. "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am" (Jn 8:58-59).

One hour of quiet serenity -- is that too much to ask? He invites us to be with Him. How can we hear Him in our hearts when there is a cacophony before -- during -- after Mass?

Please -- be quiet!

Phil Ferguson, OPL
via e-mail

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