Looking through the liturgical lens

I was on an airplane recently near two women who were sitting next to each other but traveling separately.  A little into the flight, they began chatting.  In the middle of the two hour + trip, one of them opened her purse and pulled out a series of pictures.  The pictures were of her family.  She brimmed with pride as she showed off her children and grandchildren and shared stories of their lives.   The pictures and the stories helped the other woman to know a little about the person sitting next to her.  Their mutual exchange began a friendship.  But the irony was, the two weren’t originally booked to sit next to one another.  One of the women gave up her aisle seat so that a married couple could sit next to each other and therefore ended up sitting in the middle seat in another row.

Like the story above, all kinds of circumstances will seat new faces next to us at our parish on Sundays.  Some visitors may be Catholic while others may be from another faith tradition and still others just searching.  The liturgy is the church’s way of opening its theological purse, offering pictures of who we are as Catholic Christians.   We pray what we believe, and so everything we say and do in the liturgy tells others who we are.  Our prayers and our songs, every word, gesture, symbol and ritual gives others a snapshot of what and perhaps more important, who we hold dear.   Like the woman on the plane who opened her purse to share the gift of her pictures, let us pray for the grace to open our hearts so that we may share the gifts of our prayer and our faith with others.

O Lord, may our liturgical prayer be deep and passionate.  AMEN.

Being in sync

Recently, a group of parishioners at my parish returned from a mission trip to Whitesville, West Virginia.  The nearly 100 missionaries spent a week together following a similar rhythm:  breakfast, work, lunch, work, dinner, evening activities, bedtime.   Their being together and their sharing the same pattern of activities made them more united, unified, in sync with each other.   They came home changed.

The scientific word for this is entrainment.  Entrainment was first discovered in 1665 by Dutch physicist Christian Huygsen while working on the design of the pendulum clock.

Huygsen placed two clocks, with pendulums swinging at opposite rates, near each other.  He found that eventually the pendulums synchronized with each other, swinging at the same rate.  Entrainment has been used in everything from astronomy to music.   It has helped the scientific world to prove that two opposite oscillating bodies can have enough influence on each other to vibrate in harmony.

We could call the liturgy a ritual entrainment.  We come together and follow the same ritual patterns and rhythms: gathering, introductory rites, liturgy of the word, liturgy of the eucharist, communion rite and sending forth, singing, speaking, listening, standing, kneeling, sitting.   As well, we follow the same patterns and rhythms of the liturgical year which are guided by the patterns and rhythms of the moon and the sun. The liturgy synchronizes us so that we can be attuned to creation, to each other and to God, whose very breath began to swing the first pendulum of life.    As we come together in the liturgy, let us pray that we will be synchronized enough to, like the missionaries to Whitesville, bring God’s message of hope to the world.

O Lord, let us be your instruments of hope.  AMEN

Kicking it up a notch

Tyne Daly, of “Cagney and Lacey” fame is currently starring on Broadway in Terrence McNally’s “Master Class.”  She plays the role of soprano Maria Callas in the twilight of her career.  The play follows Callas as she coaches aspiring singers at Julliard.   At one point, she asks one of her students to exit and re- enter the classroom saying, “Enter again, take the stage, own it.   This is opera, not a vocal recital!”  The student replies, “I thought this was a classroom.”  Callous was trying to teach the student to approach her lesson as if it were an actual performance, with an attitude befitting a revered opera, with heightened awareness and imagination, awe and wonder, transforming an ordinary practice experience into something extraordinary.

Like the students in “Master Class,” we too are taught by the liturgy to see and experience ordinary stuff  as extraordinary.  For in the Mass, ordinary things are treated with utmost reverence, books are lifted high, furniture is kissed, bread and wine are blessed.   Ordinary activities take on new meaning, walking becomes processing, reading becomes proclaiming, singing becomes praising.    We, ordinary humans,  are also treated with extraordinary reverence.   We are blessed, incensed, sprinkled with holy water, lathered with sacred oil, and fed with the body and blood of Christ.   We too take on a new meaning as a human assembly becomes a divine body.    

We could call the liturgy our “Spiritual Master Class.”  It teaches us that God has first loved us and looked upon us and our world with awe and wonder.   Thus, everything has been touched by God’s grace.  Let us pray that as we are sent forth from the liturgy, we might look upon the world as God does, as the liturgy “schools” us, with new awe, wonder and reverence.

O Lord, help us to see as you see.  Amen.

What billboards are we showing?

Summertime means that hurricane season in the Atlantic has begun.  I will never forget when Hurricane Floyd made landfall in North Carolina in 1999.  I was on my way to a wedding in Solomons, Maryland and had stopped in Eastern North Carolina to visit family when Floyd came.   The hurricane triggered massive rainfall and flooding, creating chaos for residents and travelers.   Most of the roads on which I was set to travel were closed.  I was forced to go hundreds of miles out of my way to get to Maryland.  What was to be a three hour journey was now taking nearly nine hours.   Not being very good with directions added more turmoil to an already stressful trip.  To top it all off, I looked up at one point and saw a billboard that read,  “Do you really know where you are going?”  I wanted to scream. 

I think of that billboard whenever I reflect on how we greet visitors at our Sunday liturgies .  Do our faces, words and actions say, “You are in the right place,” or, “Do you really know where you are going?”   Our liturgy is ultimately the gift of God’s hospitality; God’s invitation to share God’s life and God’s love in every ritual moment.  We who experience God’s hospitality are called to become instruments of it.  A nod, a smile, an invitation, a genuine gesture of interest and caring go a long way in transforming visitors into guests.

As summer will likely find us either giving or receiving hospitality, I am reminded of an old  

Gaelic Rune on Hospitality.   

I saw a stranger yestreen; I put the food in the eating place, drink in the drinking place,

music in the listening place. And, in the sacred name of the Triune, He blessed myself and my house, my cattle and my dear ones. And the lark said in her song, often, often, often,

goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise; often, often, often, goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise.

Thanks and Praise

My mother was big on thank-yous. Most of her gratitude came in the form of baked goods—scrumptious edibles like Italian wedding cookies or Polish chrusciki.   She offered these mouthwatering treats to those who constantly showed God’s kindness to us:  the family doctor who never took a penny after our father died, the neighbors who plowed our driveway after the massive snowfalls.   She recognized God’s goodness in the hearts of others and was eternally grateful.   Focusing on the blessings of God rather than the pain of life often changed those potentially sadder moments into moments of thanksgiving.  Perhaps this is why counselors often encourage their clients to keep a journal of blessings. 

We could say the Eucharistic Liturgy is like being immersed in a journal of blessings.   It is a constant reminder of how good we have it with God.  In the liturgy of the Word, we hear God’s kindness unfolding in the lives of humankind.  In the liturgy of the Eucharist, we celebrate God’s goodness in giving us his Son, Jesus the Christ.   The heart of our liturgy is the Eucharistic Prayer, often called the great prayer of thanksgiving.  The word Eucharist itself is derived from the Greek εὐχαριστία which is translated as thankfulness, gratitude, giving of thanks.  One of the preface prayers for weekdays nicely sums it up:

You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift.  Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness, but makes us grow in your grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

If we are truly attentive to the reminders of God’s goodness offered in the liturgy, we will have no choice but to be so filled with thankfulness that, like my mother, we will have to pour out our gratefulness onto others.  During these days of Ordinary Time, may we take the time to recognize all the gifts of life.

O Lord, keep us growing in gratitude and grace.  AMEN.