Let nothing be preferred to the Work of God
Father Hugh Somerville-Knapman, a Benedictine monk of Douai Abbey, has posted a brilliant essay on the sacred liturgy. For vast numbers of the faithful, the liturgy has become something unsettled and unsettling. Dom Hugh writes:
Monks live liturgy. “Let nothing be preferred to the Work of God” (Rule of St Benedict 43:3) our holy father St Benedict bids us. The Divine Office and the Mass punctuate and structure our day, uniting our lives with Christ’s sacrifice of perfect praise in his Body and Blood on the Cross. This union is what gives the monk’s life its truest and deepest value. A monk with no taste for liturgy is akin to a bird who fears to fly: things can only be difficult and frustrating. So if some of us monks seem to be endlessly focusing on liturgy, you might cut us some slack. For us, the liturgy is the privileged way to live in Christ’s Body, a privilege which necessarily imposes demands on our daily living outside the liturgy. These demands we spare no effort to meet faithfully, though we so often fail.
Father Thomas Kocik‘s article of 9 February 2014 (see The New Liturgical Movement) discussing his long–standing and courageous commitment to the “reform of the reform” and his disillusionment with the possibility of it being realised dovetails with Father Hugh’s observations. I was, at one time, as deeply committed to the reform of the reform as was Father Kocik, having contributed to the Beyond the Prosaic conference at Oxford in 1996 and to the book that followed it. Like Father Kocik, although several years earlier, I came to see the futility of trying to repair something that, at bottom, is structurally unsound. Nowhere is the old adage, “Haste makes waste”, truer than when applied to the precipitous reform of liturgical rites and the books that contain them. In most places the liturgical landscape has become a dreary wasteland. The liturgical rites and books prepared so feverishly in the wake of the Second Vatican Council have been tried and found wanting.
There are, it is true, liturgical oases here and there, where the reformed rites are carried out intelligently, with dignity, reverence, and devotion — I am thinking of certain communities, monasteries, and parishes, the Communauté de Saint–Martin, for example — but these subjective qualities cannot make up for the objective flaws and structural weaknesses inherent in the same rites.
Although I am content with the sacred liturgy as we celebrate it here at Silverstream Priory, using the 1962 Missal and the traditional Benedictine choir books for the Divine Office — however modestly and humbly, and with limited means — I affirm and share the conclusions and aspirations of both Father Hugh and Father Kocik. The passing of the years has demonstrated the intrinsic inadequacies of the reformed liturgical books of the last post–conciliar era. The cracks in the post–conciliar liturgical edifice became evident almost as soon as the new rites began to be “lived in.” Today, the same edifice appears like so many shabby buildings put up hastily during an economic boom, now revealing their structural flaws, and threatening imminent collapse.
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Fr. Kirby – This post as well as Fr. Kocik’s have been very disheartening for me to read. WHy should I remain Catholic? All the apologetics seem to contradict the reality of modern Catholicism. If I can not trust the church in how to worship God how can I trust the church in anything else? Why should I not just become Orthodox? No guitars, altar girls, liturgical dancers, clown masses, or polyester vestments there.
Yes, Mr McKee, I understand your sentiment. One must always remember, however, that the Holy Church has been through worse storms — think of the great sweep of Arianism through the Church in the 4th century — and still she remains the beloved Bride of Christ, humbled, battered, often in tatters, but still His Bride and our Mother.
By saying that the reformed rites are what they are, and by choosing not to invest our energies in a reform of the reform, we are making an act of trust in God’s Providence. The whole affair is too big for any individual or group to take on. Rather, we must go about praising God quietly, peacefully, joyfully, with immense gratitude that Pope Benedict XVI gave the Church “Summorum Pontificum”, and in doing so infused a bright hope in the hearts of clergy and faithful alike.
Trust in Our Lady’s maternal Heart. She is close to you and to all who are tossed about on life’s tempestuous sea.
It is time of great desolation and suffering. It is hard to persevere. Thank you for your priestly witness.
Like the great generations of the past who lived through extreme ecclesial and cultural upheaval, we are called to drink the bitter chalice of scandal, loss of faith, tepidity, sacrilege, blatant disobedience and an auspicious host of other adjectives, perpetrated on every strata of the Church – curia, bishop, priest, religious and laity. But those who love the Church from the marrow out are called to the stark and lonely co-redemption of this age, to walk in the cold with your candle lamp at 2:00am with Father John Vianney to pray, be you housewife, monk or banished priest. Let us bathe the Lord in the tears of our hearts as we weep and suffer for our Beloved Church, Mother, Bride, home, life…Let us dart about like sparks through stubble, these shabby structures burn faster than ones built well. If enough souls give themselves over to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, She will take us one by one into the furnace of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and we will set the Church on fire! Then we will laugh and roast the marshmallow liturgies on the pikes that pierced our hearts and sing of the Glory of God! Dude! Count me in!
Thank you Father Mark!
I have no experience of Traditional Mass but what we get now is nothing but “the scraps from the table”.
More and more I’m becoming distraught and confused about the way the mass is said/celebrated in my local parish.
It affects my spiritual life, it affects my life in general.
And we can legitimately explore and/or experience the more “eastern” rites of, for example, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church that are still in communion with Rome but have absolutely beautiful liturgies and music of their own. We must, as Fr. Mark says, for Divine Providence to work out what is happening in the Latin branch of the Church, particularly with regard to the liturgy right now, IMHO at least.