What is life without the Mass, the humble creche in which
our Savior descends truly into our midst in the Eucharist, the "source and
summit of Christian Spirituality"? It
is where human beings are most at home.
It is at once natural and supernatural.
It is an aroma of what our very Life urges us toward. It is heaven - but for a moment.
The Mass is, as Belloc recalls, "...all that the race
needs to do and has done for all these ages where religion was concerned; there
you have the sacred and separate Enclosure, the Altar, the Priest in his
Vestments, the set ritual, the ancient and hierarchic tongue, and all that your
nature cries out for in the matter of worship."
Our nature, a spiritual life breathed into stuff of earth,
yearns for Divine Beauty but has nothing suitable to offer Him in this holy
celebration save earthly stuff. We seek
out what somehow reminds us of Him, as though from instinct, so as to fulfill our
natural desire to beautify our worship of Him.
Of course, beauty is not a necessary element of the Mass, as Alexander
Schmemann notes: "Unnecessary it is
indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the 'necessary.' Beauty is never 'necessary,' 'functional' or
'useful.' And when, expecting someone
whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with
candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and
joy. It is heaven on earth..."
This is neither metaphor nor contradiction.
“We cannot conceive a more intense affirmation of the world,” wrote
Josef Pieper, “ than ‘praise of God,’ praise of the Creator of this very world.” The world is good because it came from
God. God withdrew His Glory from the
world when it became unfit for Him to dwell in.
The God-man redeemed the world and the veil before the Holy of Holies
was rent, signifying the reunion of God with His creation. In no metaphorical way, at the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass, we reenter the moment of Christ’s Sacrifice and God enters into
our presence through the veil of the tabernacle. We are likely in a church – probably on
Sunday morning – but we are outside of time and space. For a brief while, we are reunited with our
Creator in the Blessed Sacrament. Though
it escapes our perception, we are in heaven.
In heaven there is no partisan cause or political bias. There are no hidden agendas or motives. There is only confrontation with Truth,
Goodness, Beauty - which are all in reality one and the same Being. The Mass is such an encounter with God,
though hidden; real - even outside the religious mind; veritable - though not
"verifiable," save by faith alone; and tangible - touchable -
physical. It is the consummation of the
Christian life via consumption of life's source, divine Wisdom - the Word incarnate
- Jesus Christ.
