Here in eastern Oklahoma, our usual custom is to go to Latin mass at the monastery nearby. Yesterday, because of weather and other logistics, we went to our parish church which has a Sunday Novus Ordo "English" mass and then a later Latin mass. We went to the English one.
In the traditional calendar, the season of Septuagesima started yesterday. In the new calendar, yesterday was the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A.
I wonder how it seems to the pastor, who celebrates both the parish masses, to switch from one to the other within the space of a morning. It's not like they are opposites or adversaries, the two forms with their respective calendars. But they are different. I haven't actually heard this particular pastor celebrate a Latin mass. The English ones we've been to here are reverent, mostly attended by people our age or older (ie boomers), and you see all the signs of post-conciliar "active participation":
--a choir that can harmonize, a better than average keyboardist; a laity rotation to read the Scriptures; ushers; audible congregational responses to the dialogue elements, settings, and hymns; various ministries outside of the mass; and so on. Greeters at the door to hand out bulletins and interact with people; smiles and friendliness. There are no less than two deacons and this is for quite a small town in a state with a quite low Catholic population.
The pastor's homily was about the Beatitudes, which are in the Gospel reading for this Sunday, and was along the lines of this reflection by Gavin Ashenden. Basically, Father SD was trying to refresh and level-up our understanding of the terms used in the passage. He presented it as somewhat of a ladder or pyramid; for instance, the first Beatitude is
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
He said that poverty in this context is not economic -- simple lack of worldly goods -- but something more like humility, which means a fundamental understanding that everything one has, one has received from God. He said that by its nature, humility is not an outcome, not in this life at least, but more like a starting condition. If you say "now I'm humble" you transgress the very condition. He moved on through the other operative descriptions in the passage, contrasting them with the Ten Commandments which for the most part more negative in structure, and don't generally tell us how to practice virtue, how to become "perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect".
When I'm writing this out, I become aware how difficult it is to paraphrase, and how I am out of practice. If this partial summary seems unsatisfactory, the fault is mine, and not Father's. And of course, when you are homilizing you have about 12 minutes to say everything you have discerned you need to say on that occasion to your flock. Each of them will probably hear it a bit differently or take something different home from it.
I mentioned contrasts at the beginning of this post, and contrast is an unavoidable feature of the Catholic Church as it exists nowadays. Perhaps it always is, but in different modes and with different focal points.
In support of this -- my last post was about "progressive polarization". Polarization by definition is co-relative (so is progress, indeed). By that I mean that they have referents outside of themselves, and they are in themselves comparative terms in respect to themselves -- poles are like opposites, and progress is from one place to another in a forward direction. I will just mention that they are also both used analogically in this context. In themselves, they are spatial, locational terms; but Balthasar is using them to universalize a kind of positioning. Or so I would think, without having really read Balthasar except in a sketchy, proxy manner.
The way I translate progressive polarization is as eschatology -- the End of all things, meaning not their termination but their direction and meaning -- and as lifting the veil. I see the idea in almost all literature, even fiction that doesn't qualify as literature; in social and political events; in nature and in personal life. I see it most clearly in the liturgy and things associated with it, which includes some parts of my own life story.
(Here I am defining Liturgy very broadly almost as a synonym for our Faith; it has a much more specific meaning as well. )
I can't seem to say clearly what I am trying to say, which is awkward, but I'm leaving it up because there is something there and the messiness obscures but does not falsify it. I may be able to read it later and see a way to pull the messy bits into better order.
The homily on the beatitudes, and the thoughts on post-conciliar liturgical participation, and the bits on poles and progress and contrasts, don't seem to belong all together, but they all do join together, because they all intersect in the liturgy, and they are all things that go into the experience of Catholics who are seriously participating in the life of the Church. In fact, our whole faith life in today's circumstances is this kind of tangle, and I haven't even mentioned some of the things that are front in center in other countries. It's a feature of a Faith that is far more immense than any human mind can encompass, a Faith that subsumes everything in the universe and in human thought. The tangle is the outward or backwards appearance. I suppose it is the way good is brought out of evil, order knitted out of chaos.
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