The Feeding That Was To Come

A friend sent me this excerpt of a letter written by J.R.R. Tolkien (who needs no introduction) to his son. I have been chewing on it for the past couple days. But before I get to the letter, let me lay out the context in which I received it. 

I had just given a talk at a local parish on Eucharistic Adoration to encourage people to sign up for a Holy Hour at the Perpetual Adoration chapel there. Because it was a First Saturday, I figured I would go to Confession there, pray my rosary and do my fifteen minute meditation, and then receive Communion at the vigil Mass.

As soon as I entered the sanctuary, I began experiencing the triggers of a kind of liturgical PTSD, like a war veteran at a Fourth of July firework display. Having left multiple parishes when the abuses became too much to bear, everything came back just as I remembered it, since many of these suburban parishes are all cut from the same mold.   

First was the incessant chatter. I put down a kneeler, near the tabernacle (which, of course, was off to the side since the nondescript stained glass window took primacy of place behind the altar) and tried to pray. It wasn't children making noise, but the middle aged and elderly parishioners chatting casually as if they were in a Lion's Club hall.  

Of course the pews were all stocked with your standard OCP missals, and it wasn't long before the music ministry began doing what they do best: keeping the past half century alive in song. The music was flowery, pleasing to the ears of those from that era, and one hundred percent effeminate. Like an awkward middle school boy who is adopting a new-found atheism, I held the missal and opened not my mouth. 

The priest processed in with two acolytes: one boy and one girl. Of course. The muscle memory from my twenty plus years in the Novus Ordo responded in queue to the responsorial psalms and prayers: the participation of the laity is paramount in the new rite, after all.

My heart rate shot up, as it does when I attend an unfamiliar parish (I have only been to a handful of Sunday Masses in the new rite over the past four years) when it came time for communion. A white-haired woman in a mid-length skirt (a Sister?) directed herself to the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, and scooped up the Lord to deliver to the priest who was ten feet away. The gaggle of EMs were on point--they ascended to the altar and after sanitizing their hands and rubbing them together vigorously to make it clear to the congregation they were not unclean, proceeded to take their stations like faithful point guards.

I wasn't sure what the field play was, so I awkwardly shuffled over through the pews to the center aisle to receive from the consecrated hands of the priest. I did not kneel, but extended my tongue as inoffensively as I could. But I still managed to give offense by this gesture, I suppose, since I seemed to be one of the only ones not receiving on the hand. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could feel the scorn imminating from the elderly priest. I said "Amen" (or at least I thought I did, though it is not second nature now that we do not do so at the altar rail in my parish) and cloaked in the blanket of shame I felt cloaked in by the minister, proceeded to make my way back to my pew in a circumspect matter. But not before having to pass by two middle aged men slapping each other on the back and talking about their plans for the weekend. 

After Communion I gave my brief exhortation to encourage worship of the Lord whom I and everyone there had just received, and it seemed well received, a novelty almost. Upon leaving the church to shake the pastor's hand and attempt to thank him for the opportunity to speak, his countenance dropped and his eyes narrowed. "I don't know what you do at St. P's, but here we say 'Amen' before communion." I was firmly and fittingly chastised, and sent on my way. 

My heart continued to throb with a dull ache that evening, a nasty but familiar hangover from all the Masses I had attended in which I knew nothing different. When I was in a dysfunctional relationship in my twenties, I kept telling myself "Relationships are hard...they are supposed to be hard." Then you meet someone who is not hard to be around, with whom it is completely natural to be yourself and give yourself to them fully, and you realize that those years spent chaffing against the grain were not, in fact, normal. The norm, maybe. But not normal or healthy.

If it seems like I'm being critical, I am. Which, for me, was the worst part of attending Mass in the new rite. There are no shortages of opportunities to find fault. Which brings me to Mr. Tolkien's letter to his son, which I received that night unprovoked from a wise spiritual friend (emphasis mine):

"The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion. Though always Itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals.

Also I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children – from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn – open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand – after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come.”

My time for the past four years in my 'safe space' of healthy, traditional Catholicism had the effect of inoculating me from the mainstream Catholic culture, that 95% of Catholic churches operating today. It has become something foreign--not just the Mass itself, but the masses--the people themselves. The people Christ came to feed with both bread and body. Those who may not know or have the sensation that they are hungry for true bread, but who still need to be fed.

My acidic reflex in these situations has become hard to choke back down. But what, then, am I to make of Mr. Tolkien's incisive words of recommendation? My taste was indeed affronted, and violently so. An author of such repute as Tolkien would not use words carelessly, and so he chooses this as an "exercise." Exercise hurts, especially when you have not been pushed to work those muscles, like a body builder who is all arms and torso instructed to hit the leg press machine. 

Have traditionalists become like the 1%--those billionaires and celebrities who are insulated in their gated communities from the 99%, perplexed that not everyone owns their own yacht and who takes for granted that they will never know or care about balancing a checkbook? Are we meant to exist as a exclusionary people, a chosen race, a royal priesthood?  

I don't know. What I do know is I couldn't wait to get back to my own parish after this painful experience to be fed with the nourishment I have come to expect. Like a child at the dinner table, "I want this...not that." But the words of Tolkien uncomfortably remain, like an extra spoonful of lactic acid being poured into my veins and massaged into my already burning and wearied muscles.