Ingredients for Active Participation at Mass
The two non-negotiables without which all the sit-stand-kneel is beside the point.
Sunday a week ago I only made it as far as the offering before I needed to go lay down. There was no obvious place to do so inside the church buildings without creating a situation with the security team (who are correctly erring on the over-cautious side these days), so I went out to the minivan, cracked the windows, adjusted the seats and laid down on the floor.
It was good. Silence. Parked in the shade, not too hot yet. Laying down would turn out to be basically my only good option for the rest of the day. Doing better now, still nowhere close to 100%, but getting there, I hope.
And laying there missing the rest of Mass, I did not miss the entire rest of Mass. What I learned, one more reason I have a theology-crush on Fr. Gonzo, is that our parish rings the steeple bells during the elevation.
Didn’t know that. You can’t hear them from inside the building. But sure enough at about that time when the altar server is chiming the bells at the altar, there went three steady tolls of the big church bell. Elevation of the Host, I was fairly certain. A pause, silence, and then three more. Elevation of the Chalice.
I would have liked to have been in Mass at that moment, but I was grateful that Father saw fit to make that moment present to the whole block. It allowed me, at that very instant Christ was being lifted up, to unite myself spiritually to what was happening in the Mass.
All the sit-stand-kneel-sing of the Mass is there to assist us in participating at Mass, but it isn’t the participation itself. Of course leading your body through actions that reflect the intended working of your soul is a good thing. It’s a helpful thing. Do it, if you can. It’s in your soul, though, that the participation is happening. If it should so happen.
So. Our very brief topic for today is to list the two things I required in order to be able to participate in the Mass at that grace-filled moment of the Elevation:
Spiritual conversion, necessary to love God in that moment.
Catechesis, so I knew the significance of that moment and how to order my prayers.
Everyone on the block heard the bells, but how well could they take that opportunity to pray those sacred moments of the Mass? It would depend.
You could be someone of good will, Christian or not, who felt a certain spiritual stirring, or bond of fraternal unity, at the ringing of the bells. You hear church bells and you think, “Ah, something good, or important, or even sacred is happening here,” and some kind of prayer might well up within you.
That kind of response from the ordinary passerby would indicate a certain level of spiritual conversion. It likewise requires at least the bare-minimum of catechesis that those are church bells and not the crosswalk signal or a fire alarm, and an idea of what church bells might signify.
You could, in contrast, be someone with no spiritual conversion at all, or even an anti-conversion. The ringing of the bells signals nothing to you, or it could even signal disgust, repulsion, rage.
To not feel hatred, to not feel nothing, but to at least feel something spiritual and to respond in some way in that moment requires a minimum level of conversion and catechesis.
Active participation in the Mass, though, is more than a general feeling of good will and religiosity. For your heart to be stirred at the Elevation, about the Elevation, you have to love Jesus. You have to be grateful to Him for His Sacrifice. You have to “know Him in the breaking the bread.”
This conversion is a work of the Holy Spirit within you, and your responding to that Grace. Other people can be of assistance in getting you to that moment, but ultimately the moment is between you and God.
The humans play a second part, a crucial part, in helping you rationally understand what is happening at Mass. Catechesis is the process whereby you learn all about the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the promise eternal of life, the Real Presence, the reality that Mass makes present the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross . . . and what is happening in each of the moments of the Mass. These are facts you can learn, and they are important facts.
We all of course each vary in our intellectual capacity for catechesis, and we should in no way discount the spiritual capacity for participation of those who may never be able to recite a lesson. There are different ways of knowing, but in all cases catechesis is about that knowing.
That knowing, at whatever level of ability God has graced you with, is what makes participation in the Mass possible: If your heart is turned towards God and you know what is happening on the altar when you hear the bells signaling the Elevation? Then you can actively participate in the Mass — even from the floor of your minivan.
If you don’t have both of those things, you could be standing at the altar itself and you’d still not be actively participating.
So. Anyway. Do what you can to help people get hold of those two things.
Artwork: I searched for “Jesus Van” and this vintage Sacred Heart holy card was the first search result. Guess it was one of those “Jesus take the wheel of my search engine” moments at Wikimedia.
PS: If the refrain to “O God, Almighty Father” doesn’t take your breath away every time, you need more catechesis:
O most holy Trinity,
Undivided unity,
Holy God, mighty God,
God immortal, be adored!
Many happy returns of the day!
On point, dear heart. (And praying for your personal needs.)