Monthly Archives: January 2025

Revisiting recent commentary about the mass as head trip and how its current version, concocted mere decades ago, has led us worshipers down a primrose path of I dunno what, but I do know it’s missing the meditation element, worshipers being drawn willy-nilly into a kind of busy involvement that pretty much rules out so private an exercise.

Not meditation as young Jesuits learned from Father Master in the Milford novitiate in the early 50s, dwelling the night before on “points” you planned to meditate on, keeping them in mind as you went off to slumber and calling them to mind when you woke up, ready to pray.

An hour on your kneeler in the six-man dormitory to 6:30, down to low mass in the “domestic” chapel, Latin of course, ending at 7, when you dug in for 15 minutes of thanksgiving followed by a march across the aisle to the breakfast table, all in silence of course, except on “feast days” and not many of those. Silent breakfasts were our habit/fate and solo departures, meaning there was no grace-after if always before.

Nothing like that for me and you, probably not for today’s Jesuit novices either, which doesn’t mean we can’t emulate that to a (much) lesser degree while attending our 1969 mass, during which we can pray a little, snatching moments between participatory responses and gestures, catching a whiff of something-out-there, something-in-there, Someone rather, He who is everywhere.

As a St. Catherine of Siena, Oak Park IL grade schooler in the early 40s, Some of us would toss off a “God-sees-you” taunt, big joke you know, at someone about to do something bad, probably referring to sexual maneuvers, signaling reaction to what we heard from the sisters, at one time meaning it (not so much) and mocking it. Callous youth you know, fooling around with words of rebellion while back-handedly, dare we say, respecting it, taking it seriously. Maybe not.

Thing is, we aged Catholics can take it very seriously. And realize it and keep it in mind, in good times and not so good and even if there be such, neither. There we are, being ourselves, walking down the street, giving a thought to, what? The four last things, of course, don’t we all? Heh.

So anyhow those early 50s learnings pop to the fore. One of Ignatius’ weeks, I speak of the 30-day Exercises weeks, specifically when it was all about one of the four things, death and dying, which had us imagining ourselves on our death bed, getting ready for the Big Day, wondering how we’d like to have lived. Keeping in mind, of course, the transient nature of our life, here today gone tomorrow, we know not day or hour, and the street-walker named above, while considering such naturally prefers some sort of distraction, which understandable as it is, does not do the trick.

Nor does feeling guilty about it in the first place or feeling scared or just indefinably just god-awful uncomfortable. So first thing is to calm down, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Rather, there’s a better start, just ask yourself where God is. He’s the Creator and we believe keeps everything going, without Him there would be nothing that is, without Him nothing would keep going. Where is He? Try everywhere, try yourself. It’s He in Whom we live and move and have our being, as Paul told his audience at the Areapogus, an Athens court, and while you’re at it, put in a word or two asking him to give you a hand in getting a handle on that. If anyone knows, he does.

Better yet, ask the Creator, who is in you and with you and knows all about you, what’s good and bad. He knows the odds against you and in your favor and is committed to help you beat them or capitalize on them and all in all manage to get through life. Just ask Him. Often. Every day. You owe it to yourself but mainly to Him.

As for meditation at mass, take the ball and run with it. Settle in, start. Come on, gates, let’s meditate.

So. There we were, minding our own business, and away we went on a tour of mass as head trip, first defining head trip and then expanding on the concept.

Now more expanding as promised . . .

Mass for most of us is a pay-attention time, do this, do that, stand up, sit down, even kneel down but not when you’re in line for communion, then DON’T, or so implies our archbishop, who is also a cardinal and close friend and ally of the reigning pontiff. his man in the USA, giving his considered opinion about it in a newspaper column, of which newspaper he’s publisher, for what that’s worth, and that’s a lot, believe me, and I should know because I used to work for one and when asked by a small magazine editor to whom I’d pitched a story, for whom was I writing? whom did I consider my audience? and I said the editors.

Wasn’t supposed to say that, he took that as a so-what-else-is-new matter and I forget what I told him after that, but it was the truth, editors decide, some more than others. Got chewed out once by a picky one, not sharpest knife in the drawer, for writing a column for the big paper as if my readers knew a lot of what I knew as ex-Jesuit and before that an altar boy who won the religion medal at graduation from Fenwick High School in Oak Park in 1949.

So. The aforementioned archbishop, also a cardinal and last but not least chief shepherd of souls in two highly populated northern Illinois counties, owns his newspaper and says in it what he pleases, which is only right. It happens all the time.

We can debate this of course, as dozens have done online, making quite a splash, about what he said about kneeling for communion — stand up and hold out yr hand, mister, look at me and say amen to what I say — not dropping to yr knees, sticking out yr tongue, to the dismay as he saw it of fellow worshipers and creating chaos where once there was orderly PROCESSING.

So? What now, my friends? Had enough of what’s gone bad with mass attendance, yes. So? Look to the ideal, lost in the decades of swinging with the sway, lost in the shuffle of alleged reform of worship which turned out not what was intended, rather something of a betrayal some say of all that was and could be to get you not figuring out via head work but paying attention and lifted out of yourself and into God knows what, in any case nothing touchy-feely but a serious catching hold of What’s Bigger Than You in the presence of Whom? The Creator, my friend via the language of love, Latin, which becomes for you, mysterious as it is to 99% of you, an evocation of MYSTERY. Yes.

Nothing you can figure out, you can’t, you know, because it’s bigger than you by far and what you know so far. Got to watch oneself here, don’t get cute. It’s a danger, and this writer has no one in mind but himself when he makes the warning. Thing is, you want a liturgy that opens for you something really big, that leads you on gently enough, edging aside the busy-busy, letting, we make boldly to say, the Spirit move you.

Let’s stop there for now, take a breath while considering what’s to be done about our sit-down, stand-up, kneel-down-but-be-careful-when-and-where problems.

God bless Us, Every One! as Tiny Tim said to a chorus of amens from here to eternity.

Later . . .