The World Over

Friday night on the World Over on EWTN (encoure Monday at 10PM Central) SJC's very own Fr. Dennis Kolinski was on with Archbishop Burke to discuss Summorum Pontificum. Very cool. But there was an email question that got me to ranting at the tv. Someone had asked how the dialogue was supposed to happen when the priest has his back to the people. Simple. Inasmuch as the Mass is a dialogue it is a dialogue between God and us, the congregation, with the priest as our leader. And for those who cannot abide silence in worship I'd recommend that you try it. Take a moment and listen. God the Father can say more in 5 minutes of silence than most theologians can say in a lifetime. Some have said that the older form of Mass makes it more about the priest and the rest of us are just there. Unlike the newer form where I think many priests feel that it is about them and how they have to entertain us and that for that one hour everything hinges on them. I've been to Mass where an elderly Irish priest made the end of every homily another episode of "Kids Say the Darndest Things". And which thinking about Mass makes me more of an active participant? In modern parlance we "attend" Mass, in older days (and God please more and more in the future) we "assist" at Mass. One great truth that we tend to no longer remember is that at Mass we are participating in an unbloody representation and actual continuation of the worst action every committed in Creation. Deicide. We the created have scorned, humiliated and finally killed the Creator. We are all guilty of it. And at the same time it is the unbloody representation and actual continuation of an act of such goodness that we don't have words of any sufficiency to describe it. The Creator allowed himself to suffer and be killed to open the gates of Heaven to us. Shouldn't our Masses be as worthy of representing this reality as we can make them?