82 year-old friend had his fill of “the pro-form prayers,” found himself “less and less appreciative of the formulaic requirements . . . feels more like a bystander than a participant . . . “
I responded:
If you’re there and buy into what’s happening, you are no bystander. If you don’t hear the recitations, so what? The formulaic requirements are secondary. Ditto the pro-form prayers after the consecration or any other time.
The big thing is your attention to and belief in and endorsement of what’s happening, namely the reenactment of Calvary. It’s not a memorial meal, another Last Supper. It’s a happening. Your being there does not make it happen, ditto everyone with you, except the priest.
I sent him links to some things I have written that pertain to this issue:
Mind wanders during mass? You need something to keep you on track? Have you tried Psalms?
Do Romans (Catholics) believe in the Real Presence or don’t they? That is the question . . .
God’s in the tabernacle, all’s right with the world — If you want it to be
It seems I have come up with more than I intended. I should write a book.
My habits?
I attend mass no matter what. Deliver the body has long been my motto. The sermon challenge isn’t the half of it; on the way back from church, I routinely ask the driver, “What was that all about?”
As for participating, I sometimes turn it all off, writing in my ever-ready pad things like “Pray, darn you, pray.”
Entirely on my own, knowing I am participating in the way necessary in view of what I consider sometimes laughable pseudo-requirements in our time of Novus Ordo, i.e. New Mass — offered only since 1969, you know.
I stopped saying Mass in 1968, before what we had today’s version. I grew up with Latin low Masses, as silent as could be for us sinners in the pew, who remained undisturbed.
I hear better than you, kneel when I can, noticing others that never do. One of my favorite preachers — we are well supplied by the friars who serve us — is a Kenyan who wins me over not by what he says, which I catch here and there, but his whole demeanor.
Again, be there and find something to keep your mind at attention, and you have it made. As for obligation, I’ve been loosey-goosey on that aspect for years. I was a Jesuit, you know, and we were liberals, what else?
— Jim
Then this morning, at kiss of peace time, I’d decided on the one of my fellow worshipers I’d nod to with the beginnings of a friendly smile, picking him (as it happened, not her) to whom I’d give a friendly smile.
A newby in our midst for week day mass, guy in his 40s, seemed alert enough, so I’d give the friendly smile. Forget about that. He had seen the hand-waving display in the pews ahead of us, as had I, difference being I knew it was coming, these good church-going people acting like fans in a football game, giving their all for their team, but for him it was new, had decided to go along with it but could do so much, which I gathered when he turned toward me (ready with my friendly smile) to whom he managed to show, what?, his own friendly smile? No sir, his look of what the hell’s going on here?
The guy was showing something he didn’t exactly mean to but came out with it anyway. Is this mass? he had to be thinking. As I had been thinking and re-thinking for years already.
Are we here to make special contact with God, or at a high-school reunion back-slapping and enjoying each other. Not what it’s about here, it’s about getting up and close to God, which inevitably means getting up and reasonably close to the objects of the divinely proclaimed second-greatest commandment.
It’s prayer time, not getting-together time baldly considered but entirely to get closer to God, who at times deserves our undivided attention. This is one of those times.
Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground 