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NOT TO BE SERVED BUT TO SERVE…
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A Facebook friend recently put up a post (by someone else) that said: “I’m so sick of churches trying to modernize themselves as an attempt to attract young Catholics. Young Catholics want tradition, incense, stained glass, and chant. We don’t want to feel like we’re sitting in a rec center with a mediocre band playing in the background.”
Let’s get the obvious out of the way, first. This “young Catholic” has not been attending Mass in the Archdiocese of Mobile! I wonder where she has been going (and yes, the original post was by a female). Beyond that, I question her ability to speak for all “young Catholics,” and her implication that they (whoever “they” are) really want the Tridentine Mass is unfounded. She is, as the saying goes, a “loose cannon.”
But there’s a more serious issue here that I think needs to be addressed: if she thinks it’s wrong to try to attract young Catholics with what others (especially involved with Life-Teen) would call contemporary worship, I hope she can see that if those drawn to these things are selling out for “entertainment,” so is she. The only difference is the kind of “entertainment” being desired.
No, there is no excuse for “bad liturgy.” By that I mean worship poorly prepared and poorly, sloppily celebrated. But finally, the questions of incense or flower petals, stained or clear glass, chant or Christian contemporary, are irrelevant to what ought to be happening. The celebration of the Eucharist is an act of worship, and it can happen in a European cathedral (beautifully or badly) or in a “rec center” (especially when the “real church” is still being built). We are not coming to be entertained; we are coming to worship our Lord and be empowered to live His teaching & example.
If I come with a proper disposition and desire to praise my Lord, then even if the liturgy is not celebrated as “perfectly” as I would wish, God is still with us. What is the depth of my heart’s state in recollection when I come to Sunday Eucharist? For 400 years there were no churches as such in the Roman Empire; no doubt the believers of Rome or Philippi or Thessalonica or Corinth sometimes had to settle for the equivalent of “rec centers,” if their leaders’ houses weren’t available. But whether or not, they weren’t Brunelleschi’s Duomo in Florence. And it didn’t matter because their commitment to their faith-life, their commitment to active love, and their belief in the power of the Eucharist, to quote I Peter 4:8, covered a multitude of “sins.”
Why did they gather? Why do we gather? If it’s only for “entertainment” of any form, Sunday football is a better option. But if we come to serve and honor our Lord and not be served (the typical term for this is “being fed”), we’re missing the point. The word “liturgy,” after all (from the original Greek) means service. It’s our service of worship and praise to God in Jesus Christ, and our enablement to serve the Lord in our brothers and sisters. Let’s keep things in perspective, please. Let’s re-examine our quality of commitment to the Gospel and Jesus Christ.
