Mass and Death

One of the reasons why I think there will be an attack on priests who support the Sarah Appeal™ is because the liberal elite hear in it a criticism of their projects perpetrated in the name of the reforms called for by the Council Fathers in Sacrosanctum Concilium.  They think the suggestion that, perhaps, we could say Mass as our forebears did for so long is an accusation that they were wrong all along.  In fact, the versus populum thing was built precisely on a sandy foundation of incorrect scholarship which experts such as Louis Bouyer and Joseph Jungmann eventually repudiated.  However, by the time they did that, the fix was in.
Another reason why there will be harsh blow-back for anyone who supports the Sarah Appeal™ is because ad orientem worship is an invitation to conversion.  In another post, I alerted you to a priest who touched on the moral dimension that ad orientem invokes.  HERE Ad orientem worship is itself an implicit call to right conduct.  That’s certainly a reason for Satan to hate it, to move his agents to stomp it and those who support it into the dust whence Adam came.  That’s why the Enemy will move his pawns, bishops and … queens… into action.  NB again what Card. Sarah quoted, above, from St. Ambrose De mysteriis.
Speaking of “mysteries”, another reason why ad orientem worship will be ferociously resisted is because it is yet another corrective toward producing during Holy Mass the apophatic conditions in which the worshiper might have an encounter with Mystery.  This encounter is both alluring and frightening.  It is alluring because we who are in the image and likeness of God are restless to be with God, who in this life is utterly mysterious, whom we can only glimpse darkly, as if in a glass or perhaps through the crack in the rock as He passes on the other side. It is frightening because it moves us to deal with the reality of death, the knowledge that one day we will cross over.  Holy Mass must prepare us for death.   But if we are too afraid to deal with this, then we fill our liturgical worship with myriad distractions.  We eliminate silence.  We reduce music and ornament to the lowest sort of thing.  We banalize the language and eliminate anything too challenging.  We do all that we can to eliminate the difficult, challenging apophatic conditions that are the necessary propaedeutic for that alluringly frightening encounter.  If Holy Mass is not helping you to get ready for your own death, it isn’t fulfilling one of its most important purposes.
Card. Sarah placed his finger directly on a huge wound.  His speech will some day be recognized as an important turning point, a healing point.  But remember that, as Augustine once pointed out, the doctor doesn’t stop cutting just because the patient screams for him to stop.  Things will get mighty noisy and ugly before this is over, my friends.
Therefore, clean your house.
Examine your consciences, look over your vocation and your duties, and GO TO CONFESSION!
And please, I beg you, pray for me.  I can feel it on the horizon.  Pray for all priests and bishops.  Pray that their minds and hearts be opened and that their actions reflect a loving balance of prudence and courage.

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