The Work of the Liturgy

Behold me, in your mind's eye, in blue T-shirt and grey leggings, a furry pink sleep-mask clinging above my hairline, sitting in my green armchair of illness. I look every year of my age and then some. Poor me, full of the cold. The only stickers I have been earning for my diary are for flossing. 

I had so much I wanted to do yesterday. I knew the gym was out, but I needed to buy coffee and milk for After-Mass Coffee and Tea, arrive at Mass itself on time, hand out dance party invitations and inform the community that tickets for a Real Dance go on sale next week. I didn't get as far as the bus stop before I burst into tears, handed Benedict Ambrose a sheaf of printed materials and the parish hall key, and went home. 

It's interesting. Even after COVID, online priests opine on the question "Am I sick enough to stay home from Mass?", not "Am I too sick to go to Mass?" It implies that people would rather not go to Mass and are just looking for an excuse. However, there are people who love Mass so much that they would be tempted to risk giving their fellow worshippers smallpox, let alone a merely abysmal summer cold. Possibly the man who coughed so hard behind me on the bus on Thursday was on his way to Mass. How could I continue to blame him for my pain if I my germy self took public transportation? And how was I going to make the coffee in that tiny kitchen without infecting the flower-like youth of the par---? Waaaah!

To assuage my pain, I got involved in an online dispute with mothers who habitually carried their infants to the front pews of churches for Mass. 

This was not my intent. Someone had posted a link to a document by a young father understandably furious that an Eastern Rite priest had halted Mass and refused to continue until he (the young father) and his wife removed their crying 10-month-old baby from the church. I felt very sorry for them until the story turned into an apologia for always sitting at the very front.  I still felt sorry for them, but I was unconvinced that a 10-month-old baby's "brief intervals" of watching the priest outweighed the needs and wants of everyone else in the church. So I weighed in to agree that people who glare at young parents are mean and that a church that isn't cryin' is dyin' and to suggest that the laity should voluntarily give up [the highly coveted] back pews to parents so that they can slip out easily when fussing turns into full-throated screaming.

Well, faster than you can say "Rosa Parks," a mother of many objected to the idea that her children should have ever had to have sit at the back of the church. She and another mother declared that they had always sat in the front rows with their children so that they could see what was going on. When the children scream-cried (my phrase), the first mother took them out. I wrote that this showed great love of neighbour, which it does. And who am I to have online fights with mothers-of-many?  

But one of the mothers did say something fascinating, which was that it had never occurred to her to doubt the priest's ability to say Mass such that "the normal sounds a toddler might make would be the deciding factor in whether the mass is validly celebrated."

"After all, they do have the words in black and white in front of them."

Now, I hadn't brought up validity, and I was talking about scream-crying, not toddlers demanding Cheerios or announcing their boredom. But had I not already known we were talking about the Novus Ordo,  the legalistic mention of validity would have tipped me off. Nobody who goes to a TLM thinks "validity" is the be-all and end-all of the liturgy. It's so basic and assumed, we don't even think about it. It never occurs to us that a priestly slip might render the whole deal invalid. ("Gosh darn it, I guess now we'll have to try to make it to the Cathedral Mass on time!") 

We also don't think of what the priest does being as simple as reading the black, doing the red like an ecclesiastical plumber looking at the boiler manual. We assume the work of the liturgy is actual real work, even if the priest makes it look easy. (TLM altar servers are most definitely working.) But, you know, that's the TLM. Maybe having three front pews of noisy children makes absolutely no difference to priests saying the Novus Ordo. Being able to entertain the thought that I am wrong is my online super-power. 

Therefore, I shot off a couple of messages to priests, and one immediately got back to me to say--adding that I could quote him--that when he says Mass--the Ordinary Form as well as the Extraordinary Form--he never looks directly at the congregation. 

"Zero idea what's happening two feet beyond my altar," he typed.

"They could be on fire, and it's not my problem." 

I laughed so hard it almost cured my cold. 

One thing about not being a mother-of-many---and, by the way, apart from the cloister I cannot think of a more meaningful and valuable life for a woman than being a mother--is that I do not have overwhelming demands on my attention. At Mass, I am (if not in the front pew) free to direct it on all kinds of people. (I try to use this for good, not evil.) Back before Pope Francis, when we were an "old" community with a 3-or-4 voice Men's Schola, and not the men-and-women's choir youthquake we are now, I used to sit in the back choir stalls and meditate prayerfully on everybody.

As we were (and still are, relatively) a small community, I recognized almost every regular parishioner and knew most of the names. I noticed when the thurifer gained weight, and I noted which university student had joined the ranks of the candle bearers. I noticed that one of my Head Tea Lady predecessor chose to leave Mass to set up during the Communion of the Faithful. I could see that one of the few (then) young mothers was frantic with embarrassment whenever her baby cried. When a loud ker-THUNK indicated that someone had fainted, I instinctively knew where to look for the doctor.  In community disputes, I can simultaneously see all sides and mentally side with and (less nobly) against all parties.

And this, I think, could be a super-power all Catholics should cultivate: the ability to see Mass-related disputes, like co-existence with crying babies, or what women should wear, or what men should wear, for that matter, from everyone's perspective. Of course, this takes some imagination, and ultimately, of course, it demands some research.