Mary’s Presence At Mass

MARY’S PREENCE AT MASS

A  diocesan liturgical bulletin recommended that hymns to Our Lady ought to be sung at Sunday Mass only on her feast days.

“It is not that hymns to Our Lady are not appropriate, but they are not appropriate within the Mass,” the Auxiliary bishop was quoted as saying. (The Universe).  The commission’s secretary later explained;  “the hymns or songs used at any Mass must be related to that part of the Mass, or in keeping with the feast or liturgical season being celebrated”. So, for example, during the month of May we sing to Our Lady, ”hymns at times other than at Mass, where our attention must be on the celebration of the Lord’s resurrection”.   Far from lessening devotion to Our Lady,” the bulletin is encouraging it in its correct context”.  One wonders.

What does “correct context” mean?   What is the rationale behind such a directive? Why would a group of people considering parish worship ever send it?

LETTER . . .

What does heaven feel on Trinity Sunday, for example, as the parishioners of St. Mary’s Downtown, Anywhere, sing in honor of Our Lady? What is the reaction there on Easter Sunday; if these same liturgical backwoodsmen and women choose to sing to her at Mass?

The distress of the liturgical commission is evident – ‘on Sundays of the Easter season, whether they fall in May or not, the hymns chosen should relate to Easter and not to any other mystery or devotion”.  Is heaven really like that, if the parishioners do not give themselves exclusively to a consideration of the Trinity or their risen Lord as defined by the liturgy commission?

If such a directive came from a government department – mothers to be honored on their birthdays or mother’s day, but rarely at family gatherings – it would seem incredible.  Do we ever appreciate sufficiently a mother’s role? Such rigidity suggests a Church on the lines of IBM or some giant computer company, where basic humanity may get in the way of efficient, exacting machinery whereas traditionally, “God chose what is foolish in the world . . . low and despised in the world . . . that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God”. (1 Cor. 1:26ff.). Do big brother and sister in the liturgy team show enough appreciation of that reality, the “correct context” of Sunday worship?

. . . AND SPIRIT

We know what is intended. The Mass, carefully structured on a central theme or time of year, should never be fragmented or smothered with irrelevant extras. It is meant to build community through the worship of God in the mystery we are celebrating. But has the laudable idea been properly digested when, within a living community of faith, at the peak moment of celebrating Mass, a hymn to Our Lady is considered “not appropriate within the Mass . . . where our attention must be on the celebration of the Lord’s resurrection”? Is the mother of God such a distraction? If faith is alive at Mass, we are not just recalling evocative memories but present realities of whom Our Lady, as resurrection achieved, is not the least. As the bulletin refers to her, it suggests an immature compartmentalized faith. The letter has overrun the spirit.

WHAT DO . . .

It all depends on what is seen . . . insight not eyesight, expressing itself in “faith working through love“.  (Gal. 5:6). Within that context of life and worship, one recalls the so attractive Catholic world of Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth century English writer, who, in Our Lady, saw how all are loved in Christ. Her enlightened faith led her to see that Our Lord “wills that it be known that all those who delight in him should delight in her with the delight that he has in her and she in him”.  (A Revelation of Love, 25). That sentence cascades with delight. Seeing that and trying to live within it can one easily suggest times and seasons for its expression.  Containing the delight is not easy!

Contemplatives like Julian see further than most. For them, reality is increasingly one and simple. The rest of us try uneasily to jostle seemingly disparate figures together in an uneasy collage. Everything has its own pigeon-hole, if only we can find it.   Our Lady particularly is a problem for someone with such a vision.

The truth is that the combined resources of the universal Church can scarcely begin to fathom “the delight that he has in her and she in him”. Through baptism, one person in Christ with Our Lady – “Neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28);  it is possible to share that delight from within and impossible not to echo the delight in what we see. Given Julian’s perspective – an insight from Christ she believes –  logically, is it possible to do otherwise? On the evidence of the written record, it is hard to see Julian a member of the team which produced that bulletin.

. . . WE SEE

Contemporary liturgy is at times one-dimensional, lacking contemplative balance. A total of thirteen verbal units, for example, has been identified in the opening liturgy of the word at Mass, and there is hardly a two minute sequence not demanding movement or response. Contemplative insights of such as Julian are found today in bookshops, not main-stream liturgy. Yet a Sunday congregation peopled by Christians who are alive in faith to the shared delight to which Julian invited her fellow Christians, could only heighten worship. Equally, while it is the delight of the contemplative, it is accessible to all of goodwill. There is no risk that “by your knowledge, this weak man is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died” (1 Cor. 8:11).

It is, in the end, about understanding community, seen and unseen. On Sunday, no doubt members of the liturgy commission are in parishes helping with the liturgy. They aim to give positive help and consider they have the resources to do so. Why then is it so hard to see Our Lady in a similar role? She is a paradigm example of what they are attempting. Within the congregation, she knows better than anyone that whether liturgist, St. Paul, or herself, all are but servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each . . . God’s fellow workers . . . ”. (1 Cor. 3:5,9).  In whatever capacity, it is a superb role to encourage faith in Christ.

GOD WHO GIVES THE GROWTH

But Our Lady never forgets, as some of us may, that whoever plants or waters, God gave the growth. “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth”.  (1 Cor. 3:6ff.).  She is who she is, her being attuned to God in Christ her Savior because God “has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden . . . (and) done great things for me”.  (Lk. 1.48-49). Every generation has seen this. Julian spoke to and for so many.

Given that context, therefore, has anyone anything to fear from Our Lady present at Mass or anywhere else? Would Julian have thought so . . . ? Does anyone? The best of us has only partial vision, since we see in a mirror dimly and “know only in part (1 Cor. 13:12). Our Lady on the other hand, now sees “face to face” and “understands fully” (1 Cor. 13:22).

There are no words to describe her delight now as she is rivetted by “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ”.  (2 Cor. 4:6). When it is said that at “Mass . . . our attention must be on the celebration of the Lord’s resurrection” does Our Lady’s presence distract from that, while the liturgist’s does not? As ‘THE servant through whom you believed” present to us in the risen Christ, the delight which is now hers cascades over whoever is willing to receive.

ASK . . .

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort gives a practical insight of what awareness of her presence at Mass might mean At Communion especially, we are one with Our Lord, and ideally, should gather ourselves to be wholly present in love and adoration. This is not easy as our minds and bodies are rarely still. By way of practical pastoral encouragement, he suggests we invite Our Lady within us to receive her Son.  Our being then expresses itself in love and adoration, at a new depth of reality, as silently in faith, we try to absorb the wonder within us. We desire to see what she sees.

His is the insight of contemplative experience –  “remember the more you let Mary act in your Communion, the more Jesus will be glorified. The more you . . . listen to Jesus and Mary in peace and silence, with no desire to see, taste or feel, then the more freedom you will give to Mary to act in Jesus’ name . . . especially in Holy Communion, which is an act of faith”.  (True Devotion 273). She is no external influence, gate-crashing the feast, distracting us from our risen Lord. Rather are we sharing through the sacrament the delight he has in her; and she in him, and both in us. It is not the least of the riches of the Mass that we are the locus of such wonder.

. . . THE BETROTHED

Ultimately, it depends on what we see. In a sacramental world the contemplative sees furthest. “If you want to understand how this happens, ask it of grace, not of learning . . . of desire, not of understanding . . . of earnest prayer, not of attentive reading . . . of the betrothed, not of the teacher . . . of God, not of man . . . of darkness, not of radiance …”. (St. Bonaventure, breviary reading). Much of contemporary liturgy, perhaps, is top heavy with teachers,“ as Bonaventure, an outstanding teacher himself, understands them here.  It is an honorable position, but He requires more.

Whoever, therefore, mediates the faith has a privileged place among the “servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each . . . God’s fellow workers“.  It is an individual role, effective insofar as he or she is at one with the will of God. Whether the perspective is that of the betrothed or the teacher depends on what is given and the response. As Our Lady’s being is to give Christ, it is hard to see, without confusing letter and spirit, how a hymn in her honor “is not appropriate within the Mass, as it is assumed it will take from the celebration of the Lord’s resurrection”. One may or may not find Christ in the company of the liturgist, but in Our Lady’s company. . . ?