Finding Comfort in Discomfort. Will we stay or run away? |
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December 7th, 2008
This morning after Mass, I spoke with a dear lady that brought back a whole host of memories. She had a pained expression on her face, and upon enquiry I discovered she was struggling with the atmosphere in the Church. It was of new construction, and very respectful in design, not starkly modern as so many are today. Really, it is the nicest new Church I have ever been in. Still, it is nearly impossible to recreate in a new Church the ambience of the centuries old German Catholic Churches we are blessed with in our area. Built by craftsmen that we no longer have, and if by chance we do, what a fortune it would cost today! The very walls speak of generations of prayer and sacrifice, and the light pouring through the magnificent stained glass windows touch the soul, speaking of God in a way nothing else can. Both of our families attend the Tridentine Mass on Sundays, and as it was no longer offered at our former Church due to lack of attendance, we were at this newer one.
As we discussed this, I was forcefully reminded of my own discomfort over the years, and one which I know very many of you share. If you are reading this, it is probably because you are of a traditional frame of mind, and are drawn to this site as a result. Right? Likely, you too are pained when you go to a Mass or a Church which isn’t as traditional as you are, yes? Maybe even avoiding them altogether?
Allow me to share with you a few thoughts on this subject… things I have learned over the years and as a result, what once caused me great pain and discomfort, is now the source of great comfort! How is that possible? Bear with me as I start at the beginning and share with you the story that led to a 180 degree change of view.
I grew up sede-vacantist. For those of you who have never heard that term, it is latin for “the seat is vacant”, referring to the See of Peter. My dad came back into the Church during the sixties, and shocked at the changes that had occurred since his childhood, he turned to Scripture for the answer. He concluded that we are living in the times of the great apostasy, and so he fled to the mountains with us… literally. I was only seven, and so the Catholic Church I grew up in was one without Priests or the Sacraments, as my dad was convinced that all were in apostasy and it would offend God if we had anything to do with them. We prayed the rosary and studied out of the old seminary books my dad retrieved from the garbage and secondhand stores. On Sundays we would read the Mass out of the old missals, and sermons from one of the Saints or the Church Fathers. We lived this way from 1970 to 1990, when I left home and moved to Cincinnati.
I joined a Church for a brief time then, which shared my views somewhat, and received my First Communion at the age of 26. When I married my husband,a convert, I returned to what I found most comfortable... living my faith at home, albeit in a lukewarm fashion. This went on for a couple of years when we heard of an old priest that was sede-vacantist . He would drive hundreds of miles throughout the country to bring the Sacraments to people like us once a year. And so I lived this way until about 1998, when something amazing happened.
It all started with a Baptist lady I met at a dog club. (I had a very naughty German Shepherd puppy that needed help learning his manners). She was very vocal in her beliefs, and was much delighted in the fact she was saved, and expressed it through t-shirts, bumper stickers and word. My Catholic Faith was expressed more quietly, grace before meals and such, yet seeing a common interest in God between us, we began to talk. Soon, she and her husband were convinced the Catholic Faith was the true Faith, and we began to pray out of the missal together on Sundays. When our priest stopped by for his yearly visit, they were brought into the Church. Then she wanted to go to Mass more often! Oh no! I’d explained the state of things, the apostasy, and so it was the will of God we live this way. She tried to understand and be content, yet yearned for more. I feared for her and her husband. Could their newfound faith persevere under these difficult conditions? Would they grow weary and fall away? I began to wonder if we should go to a traditional Church, but which one? I knew of several, but they disagreed with one another! What was the chance we’d pick the right one? It seemed best to just follow the old priest and do what he said. He said he didn’t know of anywhere else either, so just pray and trust in the mercy of God and he would be back. Yet I knew how hard it was to stay fervent in the Faith receiving Jesus only once a year! What if He was available more often?
I began to pray for the first time in my life “Dear Lord, help me with this. You know how it is… I would like to receive You in the Sacraments more often, but where? It is all so confusing and hurts my head. Everyone I talk to disagrees, even priests. One points here, the other points there. And so I want to stay away from them all and just be with You. Okay? You have sent me a good priest, and I just want to do what he says. But my friend… she is having a hard time with this way, and I can’t blame her. I’ve had my whole life to get used to this hardship, but she is just beginning. I am so afraid for them… and it would be my fault if You expected us to find strength in Your Sacraments and I told them They aren’t here, and so they fall away without them…” As I prayed, I began to be filled with more and more hunger for Jesus in the Holy Eucharist for myself… a longing I hadn’t experienced since my childhood. Every day for several months I prayed this way, and then my friend and I went to a Catholic Conference.
It was of a traditional nature, and priests there offered the Tridentine Mass daily, yet I did not attend, because they accepted the pope, and I had been raised to think he was not the pope, and all who did were heretics or apostates. Soon, the priest offering the Mass noticed I did not attend, and he began to pester me.
“Why won’t you go to my Mass?” I was mortified to be put on the spot.
“Because you are a heretic, Father. I mean no disrespect and I’m sure you mean well. You just don’t know any better, and so I am praying for you.”
“But it is you who are in error!” he replied, and he would lightly smack me with his sash and I would flee. Every day this happened, until Saturday arrived.
“Tomorrow is Sunday. Surely you will come to Mass tomorrow?”
“No Father, I can’t.”
“But it is a mortal sin not to attend Mass on Sunday!” he was horrified.
Patiently I explained:“Father, perhaps in normal times it would be sinful, but these aren’t normal times. The Church is in heresy, apostasy even, and I can’t help that! Look at the terrible things that are happening in the Church, look at the daily scandals! Are these the fruits of holiness? No! I want no part of them! If only you knew what a sacrifice it is to me to have to endure this state of things! I offer it up daily, the fact that I cannot receive Our Lord as I would like. It is really hard, but I do it, because it is His Will I accept this state of things and make the best of it. Besides, I am in obedience to the best priest I can find, and he told me not to go, so there. I know I am always safe while in obedience.”
“But that priest is wrong!” Father said. “Why don’t you obey me? I’m right!”
I wished I could just melt and disappear; it was so horrible having to argue with a priest! Even if he was wrong and a heretic, I had to hand it to him he had zeal. “Father, my priest says you are wrong. And I bet you if I go out this door and to the nearest church, I will find a priest in there that says you are both wrong! I can’t listen to all of you, so I will just listen to one at a time, okay? And he said not to go to your Mass. Unless I know he is wrong, I have to obey him. I don’t know any other way to please God right now. If I do what you say right now, it would be to please you, and I refuse to do that. ”
Exasperated, the good priest finally asked me “If you refuse to listen to me, will you listen to the Holy Spirit?”
I was relieved I could finally say “Yes!” to him. Maybe he would be satisfied now and just go away and leave me with the Holy Spirit. No such luck. He pointed to a door.
“Well, then you go into that confessional over there and listen to Him while I pray for you over here.”
This was a new approach, and I was taken aback. My priest hadn’t said I couldn’t go to confession. Still, I couldn’t make a bad confession, and say I was sorry for something I wasn’t sorry for.
“I don’t think I am doing anything wrong Father. I can’t say I’m sorry, but I will go in just to go in.” So, more or less to humor him, hoping with this small concession he would finally leave me alone, I obeyed.
Dear friends, I cannot tell you what exactly happened in there, I don’t remember. All I do remember, is when I came out, I KNEW I was wrong. That I had been wrong my entire life! Jesus is here in His Sacraments! In His Pope! In His Church! Yes, in the one you see in every town, not the isolated traditional Catholic Church available here or there, that only offers the Latin Mass, but in that Church commonly known as Roman Catholic, obedient to the Pope, where even the New Mass is offered. Yes, the one that I had looked at with disdain most of my life, and considered protestant posing as Catholic. I was both overjoyed and horrified! Jesus was here! He was here! He IS here! Can you imagine believing for 30 years your one and only sweetheart is dead, and then to find he is alive!? That was the joy! But I was scared to death, because I’d grown up believing the Church was rotten. That the pope was bad. That the Mass I had to go to now, was going to be a horrible thing, a clown Mass or something. I felt for Abraham, understanding a little how he must have felt when told to sacrifice Isaac, knowing he had been asked to do something wrong, yet it was right at the same time! How very strange and impossible to explain! But as without a doubt God Himself had asked it, it couldn’t be wrong no matter how it seemed.
I could see clearly that all of my life I had been on a severed branch, that it was withered and dead. That only when we are in the vineyard, connected to Christ through His Pope, do we have life and growth. That one mustn’t be scandalized by the bad grapes in this vineyard, but instead go to work pruning and fertilizing and weeding, working in the vineyard to nourish it and help restore it to health. That one must remain close to the root who is Christ in His Pope.
For about ½ hour I lay in the hallway outside the confessional, crying for fear and joy. Then the good priest finally had the relief of seeing me at his Mass, and I received Our Lord! Glory be to God! I have not missed a Sunday Mass since that day, and we have been very close since then, though he still refers to me as his “Excedrin Case”. I thank God daily for such priests, who love their sheep to such a degree as he does. He is truly The Good Shepherd. May God give us more, let us pray!
But back to the story. We returned home praising God we could go to Mass! Our husbands were astounded, but could tell something real had happened there, and went along with us. The good priest had quieted my fears about clown masses before going home, and told me to just trust in God, to always attend Sunday Mass no matter what, to find the most reverent Mass in obedience to the Pope available. If we happened upon one where things were crazy and we were worried about the validity of the Sacraments, just pray to God to help the situation improve, and be at peace. Pray, hope, and don’t worry! Padre Pio’s motto.
Thank God we live in a city that has the Tridentine Mass available, and so we didn’t experience the horrors I was expecting at all. It was beautifully reverent, they prayed the same prayers as in our old missals, and we were so relieved! The priest that offered our Mass did not give sermons that shocked me, but reinforced all of the beautiful truths of our Faith, and for the first time, there was no skimming over those parts about the pope! Hooray! It was such a relief. Even the Church was beautiful, and had the high altar and stained glass windows and statues, and I felt like I was in a fairy tale. I was an orphan no longer! I had found Christ! I had found my home!
But I wasn’t prepared for what began to happen. After awhile, Sunday Mass wasn’t enough! I was hungry hungry hungry… especially having starved for most of my life. I wanted to go every day! But the only daily Tridentine Mass was one that was not there in obedience to the Bishop and the Pope, and my Excedrin priest had told me not to go there. Only in obedience can we most please Jesus and be sure to eventually find the true path. This holds true for all of us. Oh! What should I do? I just stayed at home and prayed for the longest time, but my Excedrin priest was annoyed with me!
“You go get those graces, shame on you!”
“But Father, it is the Novus Ordo, the English Mass! I am afraid of what I will find there! What if it is invalid? What if they use grape juice and graham crackers? What if the priest tells jokes during Mass? What if people are wearing shorts and chewing gum? Besides, they say “all men” instead of “many” and so how can Jesus be there, when His own words are not used? ” My Excedrin priest was so patient with my litany of worries and woes!
“You will find Jesus there. Look at the host. Does it look like the host should? Then don't be afraid of invalid matter. Leave the rest in God’s hands. If others do wrong, that is between them and God. You do what you know is right. Always wear your veil, and always kneel and receive Jesus on your tongue in the most reverent manner. There is never any harm in doing those things, and they please God no matter how much it might embarrass you to be different. Never mind the all men or many. Leave that argument for others. There was a time when I offered that Mass, and I know Jesus was there, and it was valid. Trust Christ is in His Church and let the rest go! ”
Oh my. I cannot tell you how frightening this time was. I was in shock. Everything was so different! It was so noisy my head hurt and I couldn’t find my prayers. What happened to the Confiteor? Where is the bell? What did the priest just do? Oh no! I’d missed the Consecration! Everyone was going to the front of the Church! I just bowed my head and sobbed, because I wondered if Jesus was even there. I’d been raised to think this Mass was a mortal sin, a disgrace to attend, and look at me! Oh dear God! Was He going to condemn me? At least at this church there was an altar rail, and people knelt to receive Our Lord on the tongue… so trust trust trust. I went and received Holy Communion and went back to my place. There was so much confusion in me I couldn’t restrain the tears and having no tissue, couldn’t blow my nose! I felt sorry for anyone who sat in that pew later, I left it absolutely drenched. This happened for about 3 years… there was so much pain and doubt about it all, that if my Excedrin priest hadn’t told me to do this, I wouldn’t have.
That was about 8 years ago. And now that I have become an old hand, and experienced many different Masses in many different places, I will tell you that I go to each one with so much joy now! What once scandalized me, the scantily clad person over there, the protestant hymn sung here, the priest who talked about this instead of that, Communion in the hand, altar girls… they are no longer! I can see now only Our Lord! Glory be to God!
Dear friends of tradition, Our Lord is here! He is still here! In spite of our sins, in spite of the bad grapes, in spite of our abuse of Him, He is still here! He is in His Church! If you go and are overwhelmed with discomfort over what you encounter, do not flee as did St. Peter and the apostles when Jesus was arrested. Will you only be Christ’s friend when you are comfortable? Don’t let anything keep you from Our Lord. Go to Mass, and if you are uncomfortable, remember our abandoned Lord, and comfort Him. If you see Him being crowned with thorns, will you join Peter and run away exclaiming you do not know this man? Or will you stay and comfort Him? Will you tenderly pull out the thorns and wipe away the spittle? Will you stay or will you run away? One of the greatest pains Our Lord suffered during His Passion, was this abandonment by His closest friends. If His House is not as beautiful as we would like it, let us begin to rebuild it by transforming the tabernacles of our heart. Ask Our Blessed Mother to lend you Her Immaculately Beautiful Heart, and the rest will follow.
Amongst even the finest Catholics today I see this tendency to flee as did the first apostles, forming comfortable cliques of traditionalism, hiding from the rest of the world, afraid of being tainted. Who did Our Lord choose to spend His time with when He was here? Do you think He is any different now? Are you scandalized He would be in the midst of sinners? Why? As a good priest I know loves to remind us: “The Catholic Church is a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints.” If Our Lord is not above staying in this hospital, how can we be content anywhere else?
If we wish to make things better for ourselves and our neighbor, we will hardly do that by staying away from Mass because it makes us uncomfortable. Hiding from the very means of grace He has given us for our healing is like throwing away the rope as we drown! Don’t be afraid! Don’t run away! If we hurt because of the atmosphere or the irreverence’s at Mass, comfort Our Lord with your prayers and presence, and go even more often! When we stop looking at our comfort and look at His, everything begins to come into focus. Pretty soon we will develop eyes that see beyond it all to only see Him. Not only upon the altar, but in every person there.
Finally! The customs and ways of the Novus Ordo Missae are much different from the Tridentine Rite, and as with anything new, we often feel uncertainty and discomfort. But if it helps you feel any better about it, I found the Novus Ordo is actually more similar to the Maronite Rite of Mass, which is even older than the Tridentine! In that Mass it is customary to stand instead of kneel while receiving Our Lord, and they receive both the Body and the Blood. They pray in the vernacular instead of latin, and they share the sign of peace. There is more which is similar but I can’t remember them right now.
Well, I have gone on much longer than anticipated, so I will end here!
I write this with the prayer that anyone who is uncomfortable at Mass, or stays away out of fear, will now see it in a different light, and be able to give Our Lord the comfort and company He so desires!
O gentle Jesus, how marvelous are Thy Ways! Dearest Lord, so meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto Thine! Amen.
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