DD,Part lll

“How can we not be filled with WONDER?” DD PART III The essence of Liturgy, according to Pope Francis, is that it is grace—it is not “…the fruit of an individual interior searching for Him, but it is an event [the encounter with God] given” (#24). It is the Lord who seeks us, for us to encounter Him, to receive the Lord into our hearts and souls in the Eucharist, to become part of Christ-Church (= Mystical Body, Head & members). The goal is community (us) rooted in unity (Christ the Head). if this is what Liturgy is all about, I wonder why we don’t wonder? I have deliberately just used the word “wonder” in two different ways. The first is really the asking of a question—like “I wonder what the King is doing tonight” (from Camelot). The second is more fundamentally liturgical, and it is this sense that the pope wants to emphasize and to recover in our worship. This kind of “wonder” is related to the word “wonderful,” meaning filled with wonder/amazement. Our word “miracle” actually is derived from the Greek word meaning a wonder—something that causes us amazement (and, ideally, gratitude; consider the responses of the people to Jesus’ miracles). Have we lost the sense of wonder because the elements of our Eucharist are too small, too sad, too ordinary? After all, it’s only a little wafer, a short sip of over-sweet wine. But then, consider the Incarnation itself. How could it be that the Divine Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Eternal Word, be found in Jesus of Nazareth? He was a man who ate and drank, slept and woke up (perhaps even snored), who needed His diaper changed, who sweated with work, who had to deal with aching muscles, indigestion, colds and headaches… This man: God?? How incredible (how “wonder-filled,” if we believe it!). For myself, I have many “peak moments” as a priest, in my spiritual encounters with the Lord. One of them, surprisingly, happens every Wednesday morning before Mass. Since we have all-day Adoration on Wednesdays, and since I consecrate a Host every week for this purpose, it means I must empty the pyx that held the Host of the previous week. I do so by breaking the Host into four parts and placing them in the ciborium. They are typically used for Holy Communion at that Mass. But as I am holding the Host and breaking it, there is in me an overwhelming awareness of Who I am holding and what I am doing—how it’s a small re-creation of Calvary, and as I break the Host I am reminded that it is my sin that brought the Lord to the Cross. I am filled with wonder that my Lord is willing to place Himself in my hands. And I am filled with wonder that He is also willing to be placed into your hands, in your body, for your and my good. How can I (we) not be filled with wonder? Pope Francis is explicit that there is only one proper form for Eucharistic celebration: “The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II…are the unique expression of the lex orandi [rule of prayer] of the Roman Rite” (#31). If that is the case, and if desire for the “Tridentine Mass” is based partially on misplaced nostalgia, then the real task is to celebrate the Roman Rite as powerfully and properly as we can, to facilitate the experience of encounter with the Lord that should transform us. A priest came to me last year to ask if I would help him to schedule clergy workshops on exactly this topic. And this leads to DD PART IV.
Fr David