Tradition and Charity: The Face Of Renewal

For the past month or so my family and I have been attending Mass in the Extraordinary Form--also known as the Tridentine Mass or the Traditional Latin Mass--in the city near us. This is at a parish different than the one where we are registered. The parish where we are registered and had been attending until last month is actually very reverent and liturgically minded for the most part. The church itself is over 200 years old, and still has an altar rail (though it isn't used), pews facing the altar (rather than in a circle), and patins at Communion. So, it's not like we were fleeing a heterodox Mass rife with liturgical abuses.

So, I often think, 'what is it that led us here?' and considering we are thinking and praying about making the switch to be fully registered at this new parish, it seems strange that I don't have a water-tight answer. I grew up attending the Divine Liturgy in Ukranian with my dad occasionally, so traditional liturgy is more familiar than it is exotic or new. Truth be told, I was never even really attracted to it in the first place, as I felt (at least in the Byzantine liturgy) that it was all about the externals--the incense, the chanting, the constant bowing and crossing. When people speak about the TLM being Heaven on Earth, these are the kinds of things that are attractions, not deterrents. I can appreciate beauty and formality, of course; but the "beauty will save the world" argument is not what drew me.

In a way, traditional Catholicism has more in common liturgically with "deed over creed" Judaism than it does with contemporary Christianity. As A.J. Jacobs writes in "The Year of Living Biblically,"

"There's an emphasis on behavior; follow the rules of the Torah, and eventually you'll come to believe. But evangelical Christianity says you must first believe in Jesus, then the good works will naturally follow. Charity and kindness alone cannot save you. You must, as the saying goes, be "justified by faith."

Of course whether you attend the Traditional Latin Mass or the Novus Ordo (I still have trouble writing that without it feeling pejorative), we are one in our faith, which theologically is still consistent with the rest of Christianity in being "creed over deed." But liturgically speaking, it is apparent in attending the Latin Mass that the rituals, the words, the language, the orientation even--matters. Right worship leads to right belief, or so I'm told.

The thing is, I'm starting to see there might be something to this. What is so radically different about the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is that it does not take my feelings, my understanding, or my participation into account. It took a little while for me to realize what is actually happening, but one almost needs to go through a paradigm shift. We are not 'sharing in a communal meal' as is sometimes the conceptualization in the NO, but witnessing the priest offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Even as I write, I recognize how new I am to this way of thinking, given how unsure I am in getting the terminology (and, by extension, the theology) correct. And I have been Catholic for over twenty years!

But there is something to this, obviously. Dr. Peter Kwasniewski writes,

"This is the challenge that the traditional Roman liturgy makes to us again and again, in its prayers, its ceremonies, its calendar, and its ethos. It is not accommodated to our worldly compromises... It proclaims unequivocally the primacy of things heavenly and spiritual. It is the luminous expression of an ageless tradition of worship, as carried out by men and women who made this worship their primary work in life. As such, it does the opposite of pandering to us moderns; it confronts us with our need for radical conversion. The old Missal is the unwavering, undying repository of the radical message of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God. Are we ready to hear this Gospel and take up the Cross?"

"Distrust of self," writes Dom Lorenzo Scupoli, "is so absolutely requisite in the spiritual combat, that without this virtue we cannot expect to defeat our weakest passions, much less gain a complete victory. This important truth should be deeply imbedded in our hearts; for, although in ourselves we are nothing, we are too apt to overestimate our own abilities and to conclude falsely that we are of some importance."

I remember when reading The Spiritual Combat years ago making a mental note of the order of the four things (weapons) necessary in the fight (Distrust of one's self; confidence in God; proper use of the faculties of body and mind; and the duty of prayer). Why did he list "Distrust of Self" first, feeling it necessary to lay the groundwork of human weakness before extolling the virtue of confidence in God? Did it matter?

Additionally, we see another example of this 'ordering' when it comes to the Commandments in Matthew 22. When an expert in the law asks him, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied:

"‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Mt 22:36-39)

The Lord tells the expert in the law that all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments, while acknowledging that "the first and greatest" commandment is to love the Lord God with all one's heart, soul, and mind. When speaking of the temporal goods we need to live and that we fret over--food, shelter, clothing--our Lord reasserts the proper order of things: "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Mt 6:33).

And so the way I have experienced it, that radical witness of God first as expressed in the traditional liturgy, sets the tone for everything else. This is what can be intimidating about the community--the seriousness and "set-apartness" of everything. You'd be forgiven for thinking you maybe wandered into a kind of Catholic Hutterite country if you didn't know better. At the first Latin Mass that we attended, I could not get over my self-consciousness. Our kids were behaving badly that particular day, even though most all of the other kids weren't. You could almost hear a pindrop--no idle chitchat, and a reverent attitude. The veils were a curiosity I had heard about, though not all women were wearing so it didn't seem like you would be kicked out for not wearing one. But it is that very seriousness and intentionality that, I think, is part of the attraction. There are no casual Catholics at a Latin Mass, for the most part. From what I gathered, most have significant buy-in and commitment, and have made sacrifices as well to be there. Some have suffered for it as well.

So what did get us there in the first place, and why have we continued to attend to the point of considering making it our permanent parish? I'd say it all started with...an invitation. We had friends of friends, very warm and hospitable people, who attended there and who extended an invitation for us to "come and see." We took them up on their offer. The first TLM we attended happened to be on a Sunday when they do hospitality afterwards--coffee, donuts and pastries, and a chance to mingle. Lots of kids running around, young families and older folks. As much as we tend to say as Catholics, "It's not about the fellowship, that's for Protestants," having a community to be a part of is important for some people, and I think we may fall into that camp. The community is small, but everyone seems to know one another, and are friendly. The pastor himself is a deeply humble and holy man, and he made time to get to know us as well.

I think there is a tendency, in the age of identity politics, to delineate into false dichotomies. Those less traditionally minded--as seen in liberal churches, Catholic or Protestant--may compensate by being more active in parish activities, service, and social justice initiatives, while traditionalists are all about the Mass and not as concerned with those other things. I consider myself and my family more as guests in someone's house at this point when it comes to the Latin Mass community, so I don't feel like I have any right to make such judgments about a community that is not yet our own. But I will say one of the most important things, one of the primary motivators besides an integrity in worship and learning to subject my ego to Almighty God, is that we pass on the faith to our children, and I feel that the TLM community is the best place to try to do this in. Our son has already expressed an interest in being a server, and the fact that there is no formal training or manual but that the other boys (and boys only) learn simply by observations and teaching each other with help from the priest is impressive. They serve with military precision, which appeals to male sensibilities, I think.

On the point of charity, and why I think traditionalism combined with charity has the potential to be an unstoppable force for renewal...it wasn't until listening to a conference of Fr. Ripperger's that I realized that the 'love' in 1 Cor 13 is really more accurately translated as charity. I considered that kind invitation to attend a Latin Mass by that friend of a friend as an act of charity. I had until then considered the Latin Mass community to be more or less insular and an island of sorts by choice, not open to outsiders. All it took was an invitation to get us there, a kind of gentle and innocuous evangelization in its ordinariness. Coffee and donuts as a way of connecting with other families and homeschoolers once a month was an added bonus.

Coming from a more left-leaning Catholicism in my early years as a Catholic, serving the poor was an important part of my spiritual practice and faith, one that I have no intention of abandoning. I also do not want to fall into the trap of denigrating or comparing Masses or the people that attend them; though we have made the decision to attend the Latin Mass when we are able (which is most Sundays) because we feel this is where God is leading us as a family, I still attend the NO for daily Mass and have no qualms with it (unless there are serious liturgical abuses). I'm a "both/and" rather than an "either/or" guy at heart, I think, and this applies as much liturgically as it does to charity and service to the poor, evangelization, practicing the Works of Mercy, and loving people.

When it comes to loving, we love because He first loved us (1 Jn 4:19). The greatest commandment, the "Big Stone First", is to love the Lord God with everything we have. And yet we also see in 1 John that

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1 Jn 4:20-21)

I am still a noob, but as we have witnessed, the power of the traditional liturgy to give glory to God here on earth, and the power of witness in charity here on earth as a means of leading people closer to Heaven, seems to be in my mind an unstoppable force for renewal. When I reflect on the following words of Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, it is such traditionally minded communities that come to my mind:

“The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality. Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial. By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened. He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered. If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves, to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other. Thus our own interior depths remain closed to us. If it is true that a man can see only with his heart, then how blind we are!

“How does all this affect the problem we are examining? It means that the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is all empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the [sidelines], watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of man, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future.

“Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.

“The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

“And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death."