Faith and Feeling

I haven't posted in a while. I don't have much to say right now. It's not like I'm having a spiritual crisis or anything, but, most of the posts I've made previously came from "overflow". You know, when you're really feeling your faith. Lately I'm not feeling my faith. That's not a crisis, it's just a fact. My faith is present. It's not shaken (or stirred). But sometimes you don't feel it. I posted briefly before about mysticism, and how that's not really in the cards for me. I accept the fact that all I have is faith, and that just barely.

This might sound like a negative post, but that's not my intention. My intention is to declare that having the gift of faith is just fine with me. Sometimes you're on a high, you feel like a fire-eater, like you can do anything. Sometimes you just try to make it day-by-day without doing anything that will bring disgrace to the Body of Christ. Sometimes you're gaze is upon heaven, sometimes your gaze is upon the clock, waiting for time to go home. For me it's enough to start each day with the desire to live like a Christian and see what happens. I hate it when I get caught up on "how I'm doing" as a disciple. It's pointless. I need to learn to just live. Leave the good that I might do at the foot of the Cross and the bad that I do in the same place.

Why am I babbling like this? I dunno. Just blowing off a little existential angst, or some big words like that. Am I making any sense? Probably not. Thanks for listening anyway.

Meditation During Mass

The Eucharist is perfect because it is the perfect metaphor for the one who is truly present in it. It is real, living, yet essentially silent, inscrutable. And, like the gospel message itself, it is brought to us via the work of imperfect humans. It is otherworldly, yet it breaks through the silence of heaven by becoming true human matter. It can't be scientifically verified, but can only be approached and appreciated through the gift of faith.

Eucharist (cont'd)

I’ve heard it said that proclaiming some Catholic doctrines “mysteries” is an excuse we use when we can’t justify or explain a doctrine. This argument is used, usually, in a screed denying the doctrine in question. The correct view of course, is that God is, ultimately, unfathomable apart from revelation, so it stands to reason that the truth about him, at least partially, would be beyond human comprehension.

Further, I take the truth of mysteries to be a proof for the existence of God and the truth of the doctrines themselves. As my friend and mentor John Soos says, “How can a finite mind make up an infinite God?” Indeed. And how could a finite theologian make up a doctrine that he himself can’t fully explain?

Not that it is tough to make up nonsense, e.g., “Can God create a rock so heavy that he himself couldn’t lift it?” (Which I first heard posited by the eminent American philosopher George Carlin). However when you’ve asked a nonsensical question you haven’t asked anything at all (to paraphrase C.S. Lewis). When you ask, on the other hand, how God can be three-in-one or how bread and wine can become the Body and Blood of Christ, you ask a question that can be studied and answered and understood, but only to a point. Like infinity, you can only go so far in your contemplation until you hit the “wall” so to speak, which human intelligence can’t scale.

So, when I approached the Eucharist, I came to believe it via a combination of rational argument and transcendent truth.

The rational argument came from the teaching of the Fathers, who from the earliest days of the Church proclaimed the truth of the Real Presence. It came from modern writers, many of them converts, who were able to take those historical arguments and synthesize them in a way intelligible to a 20th century materialist. It came from a clear reading of John chapter 6, which I had never been able to manage as a fundamentalist.

But I also came to believe it because it was so unbelievable. It was something no one could have made up (the similarity of the myths of the Mystery Cults only proves that the pagan world was yearning and looking forward to the coming of the Messiah as much as Israel was, though they hardly knew it). It was so audacious and wonderful that it couldn’t be anything else but true. The only “too good to be true” that has ever actually turned out to be true.

I hardly knew what to make of it then, and ever since, even as I thank God for it and glory in it each time I go to Mass, I hardly know what to make of it now. I just know it is true, and that it makes all the difference in the world.

The Body of Christ

There are many issues when you embrace the Church from a background that includes fundamentalism, agnosticism, and not a small amount of narcissim.

But it all comes down to the Body and Blood of Christ, doesn't it? The Eucharist is the key difference between Catholicism and any other religion. The outrageous thought that God would gift us with his true presence every time we go to Mass. That the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ the Lord is not only present to us, but is consumed by us and becomes somehow a part of us.

It's outrageous. It's unbelievable. It's unthinkable. That's why I know it is true.

More later, I don't even know where to begin on this.

Semi-coherent Ramblings on Contemplation and Mass

I have no idea what it means to be a contemplative, though I've read books about it to the point of frustration, but I do know this: one of the advantages of the Latin Liturgy is the opportunity to participate in a more intuitive, as opposed to intellectual manner. In other words, if I hear the English language being spoken, it is reflexive for me to attend to the meaning of the words themselves, and if I'm not careful, I can lose the overall thrust of what is actually going on. In the Latin Liturgy, I can be present, I can participate, but I can also find a quiet spot inside of myself which can be open to promptings and movements of God. These may take the form of ideas, plans, or just a quiet, secure knowledge of the rightness of what I believe. It sounds anti-intellectual, I suppose, but I don't mean it to be so, when I say that I don't have to think my way through Mass. I can experience Mass, and hopefully experience the one who is present.

Mind you, I'm not saying I hear the voice of God during Mass, telling me, personally, what's what. But there are few places where I can set aside everything else and maybe, for a few moments, be open and receptive to God in quite this way. Again, I repeat, I am in no wise a contemplative, much less a mystic, but in that small quiet chapel, in the midst of the most reverently conducted Mass you'll ever want to see, I can sometimes skirt around the edges of the neighborhood of contemplation. For me, that's pretty close, and a little can go a long way.

There is an excellent book, Know Him in the Breaking of the Bread: A Guide to Mass By Fr. Francis Rudolph, which though written about the Mass as we hear it in English at most of our parishes, has an amazing appendix about the Latin Mass. In it, he talks a bit about the history of Vatican II, the fallout as it pertains to liturgy, and about the many good reasons some people prefer Latin. I recommend the entire book, but if you pick it up just to browse, read the appendix. Here is one of my favorite quotes:

The Mass is the Mass, wherever and however it is celebrated. Naturally you will find some forms of Mass more congenial than others. You have a right to search out the celebration where you are most happy, but other people have that right as well. If you travel out of your home parish to find your favorite church, you have no right to despise those whom you meet going the other way to Mass in the church you have just left. And if you cannot avoid attending Mass in a style you dislike, remember that it is the one, eternal Mass, and no matter how uncongenial the surroundings, how boring the sermon, how fatuous the priest, it is the Sacrifice that matters. Christ has come to earth for us, come let us adore him!"