Every Life a Mass
GUEST COLUMN
It is a rare thing to capture life in a moment, but when we do, we find one foot on Earth and the other somehow in Heaven. Nowhere is this truer than in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Indeed, unlike any other transcendent experience, the Mass contains the whole breadth and depth of life. It is active and passive, spirit and matter, communal and personal, common and extraordinary, joy and sorrow, immediate and eternal. It is birth and death and resurrection, again and again.
When an adult Catholic walks into her parish church, she enters the bosom of Holy Mother Church. At the threshold, she dips a finger in holy water and crosses herself. In doing so, she remembers and relives her Baptism when she was “born again” — that is, reborn as a child of God. She might even recall her trials and wrestling with God — in a word, the labor pains — that precipitated her Baptism. Now, she is allowed rest, away from the world; she is at home.
Taking a pew, she waits to meet the priest as passively as a newborn babe awaiting the arms of her father. The priest enters in a procession with Christ lifted high, as if to exercise her young neck, strengthening it so she may hold her gaze toward Heaven.
After the greeting, she has aged to toddlerhood, when a child first begins to sin. Those sins must be accounted for, and they are in the Penitential Act, the Kyrie, and the Gloria. During this time, she makes her apology, is forgiven, and sings of how good the Father is. Reconciliation has occurred, and she may grow up further.
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Now in our time an edition of the BCP has appeared under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church, which does what none of its predecessors did or could do.
Unlike any other transcendent experience, the Mass contains the whole breadth and depth of life. It is birth and death and resurrection, again and again.
The Church is the mother of Christendom. She encompasses all modes of life, from economy to culture, from politics to family relations.