I was thinking the other day…(yeah I know, very dangerous for me :P ) about the modern issues with Catholic liturgy and what happened to Christ during His Passion – because I think there is an analogy and a link for us to spiritually draw from.

Jesus endured a violent death; a death amidst a frenetic external chaos, where disorder, disarray, and disorientation reigned; a death where He was abandoned by His friends – except by a faithful few, including His Mother – and handed over to His enemies; a death where He let go, and gave Himself over to blasphemy, mockery, insults, ridicule, hatred, abuse, and intense suffering – all for love of us.

Christ’s Body was lashed, smashed, ripped apart, torn asunder, and finally nailed to the Cross where He allowed His arms to be tied, and His Body to be bound to a Tree – completely vulnerable, and receptive to that final piercing – which would open to us the secrets of His Heart.

And Mary “follows the Lamb” (Rev 14:4) – living her own agony – watching as they victimize, torture, and finally crucify Her innocent Son. She follows in the darkness of faith – with a contemplative gaze of love – through abandonment in hope to the will of the Father. She keeps silence – an interior and exterior silence – as she offers Her own oblation of love, to the Father, through Jesus Her Son. But this occurs for Her in an extreme radical poverty where, with incredible hope, She depends and relies utterly upon God in everything for Her strength, as she adheres in faith to the will of the Father, and perpetuates Her loving ‘yes’.

She receives no other consolation in this agonizing piercing of Her soul.

Christ, being true God, remains eternally united to the Father, and in a certain way, in the summit of His soul lives an interior peace through this chaos and trauma; He lives an interior contemplation and silence of love, as he runs to the Cross with joy. But in another way, being true man, He lives an intense agony at the level of His sensitivity and body, in his humanity, where every evil is hurled against Him; and in this He suffers a traumatic moral sensation of being abandoned, through the extreme physical pain of the Passion and Crucifixion. But Christ is ultimately victorious. Good Friday is where the victory is won – and it is the Victory of Love – of Infinite Merciful Love – offered in a double offering – firstly to the Father in atonement for our sins, and secondarily to humanity, to draw us into the victory of Christ, and into the very life of God. Sunday is when we see the fruits of that victory – Resurrection.

Some spiritual writers in these times have seen a particular insight for us to draw from, which actually links us with the vision found in the Apocalypse: It is that of the Church passing by Her own Passion, and being crucified with Christ, as She now enters Her final phase, Her final week (Romans 8:17).

In that sense, as we approach the last times, one can discern the demon agitating violently against the Church, and within the Church, making war against the Woman and Her offspring (Rev 12:17); and one can discern certain key characteristics of this escalating assault. In a new way, Satan is extending, intensifying, re-creating, and re-inserting us, into that chaotic environment, that disorder, that violence, that atmosphere of mockery, rebellion, abuse and insult towards God – that occurred on Calvary – not only in a broad extended sense in our modern secular world through the current atheistic ideologies (the Beast of the Earth, Rev 13) – but in an acute pointed sense – in the liturgy – in the sanctuary of the Church where Christ is offered to the Father (Rev11:1-2). It is here where there is a massive battle playing out, and we must discern it to live it well. This is one of the reasons that Pope Benedict has liberated the Traditional Mass of the Roman Rite for the Church, and interestingly, the Pope’s motu proprio was published on the 7th of the 7th of the 7th (read what you will into that).

Because for us, that is where we are present at the Mystery of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice which is re-presented to the Father, by the Church on her Altars. We kneel mystically at the foot of the Cross, and receive the fruits of that Sacrifice, as the Blood and the Water are poured out over us; and we are drawn more deeply into the secrets of the Sacred Heart of Our Lord – into that superabundance of Divine Mercy offered to the world – through our reception of the Eucharist. In that reception of Him, it is us who are received by the One who loves us; and in this God gifted divine exchange, the liturgy has become the frenetic battle ground of Calvary, and is where there is a specifically pointed attack of the devil in these times – since the post Vatican Council liturgical reform of Paul VI.

The Second Vatican Council opened and finished with great fanfare, optimism, and acclaim, with many thinking that this was the greatest event in the history of the Church, as She turned to face the modern world. Indeed Paul VI had said, “It was believed that after the Council a sunny day in the Church’s history would dawn.” It was believed by many as such, but was it as we or they imagined or hoped it would be? Can we not discern a parallel here? Upon entry into Jerusalem, Christ is received triumphantly, with many acclaiming the great moment for Israel, as she welcomed her Messiah, and deliverance was expected. A week later they string Him up and cruelly murder Him.

Since the Vatican Council, what has unfolded, especially in the liturgy, to use the words of Paul VI, has been like a “disturbed period” of “self-demolition” with “the opening to the world… [becoming] …a veritable invasion of the Church by worldly thinking” where “we have perhaps been too weak and imprudent” allowing the “smoke of Satan” to enter “through some strange crack into the Temple of God” where in the Church a “state of uncertainty reigns.” **

Indeed, “…it was believed that after the Council a sunny day in the Church’s history would dawn, but instead there came a day of clouds, storms, and darkness.” ***

As Christ entered His final week with His entry into Jerusalem, is it possible that the Church has entered Her own with the inauguration of the Second Vatican Council?…And now we seem to be in the throws of the confusion and mayhem of the dolorous Passion of the Body of Christ, the Church, as She heads towards a seeming defeat, amidst the great apostasy prophesized in Scripture and the Third Secret of Fatima. But from this purification and seeming failure, victory and renewal will come.

To combat this, so as to personally and collectively emerge victorious, we must urgently rediscover the sense of adoration in the Liturgy, living it well so as to enter into silent contemplation, in a gaze of love towards the Crucified Lord. For us who are members of the Church, we must take Mary, figure and prototype of the Church, as our guide in this regard, and look to how She lived her compassion on Calvary in union with Jesus. She who “was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she could fly to the desert”: The two wings of Adoration and Contemplation. ‘Flying to the desert’ – symbolic language revealing a key aspect of the mystery of interior poverty: In the desert one is stripped of one’s attachments, consolations, strengths, and supports; one must live completely in dependence upon God (Rev 12:14).

We must ask Her to help us to pray the Mass deeply, to adore Him, and to gaze with love upon the Pierced One; even when He is pierced over and over and over again by widespread serious liturgical abuse and neglect (even from Christ’s own ministers, implicitly sanctioned by local bishops) which is expressed all around us in a type of liturgical chaos and turbulence; where brazen noise, flippancy, casualness, carelessness, negligence, and indifference insult Our Lord, Who, in a certain way, is mystically crucified afresh by our ill-treatment. We must not allow this betrayal of others in internals and externals (sometimes through ignorance) to lead us to our own interior (heart and mind) betrayal of the Lord – in our own personal living of the Liturgy. This is not easy to ensure or endure, but we can take consolation that it wasn’t easy for Mary either; but She trusted and gave Herself over to the will of the Father.

This is a great mystery, where Christ has given Himself, in His Body, and in the Liturgy, over to the possibility of insults, mockery, abuse, chaos, confusion, and seeming defeat in the Church, where one constantly wonders with the disciples on that night of all nights: “How could this happen to Christ?…” and we could add “…in the Liturgy?”

With the liturgical reforms on Pope Benedict well under way, and more to come, and greater freedom given to the extra-ordinary form of Mass, we have hopefully begun to emerge from this ‘40 years in the liturgical desert’ (1967-2007)… and the Church will express more fully in Her prayer what She believes.

This truth was first enunciated by Pope Celestine I in 422 when he addressed some bishops from Gaul: “Legem credendi, lex statuit supplicandi” – “let the law of prayer establish/express the law of belief”: often simplified to “lex orandi lex credendi”. If, in our Liturgies we don’t authentically express, in a beautiful and deep way, what the Church believes, people will begin to lose the Faith. Has not a great apostasy already taken place? Pope John Paul II, in 2003, spoke of a silent apostasy taking place in Europe.

But it is when everything seems most lost, that Christ will save the Church and the world, and the victory and restoration will come. But the suffering passion of the Body of Christ and all that that entails must come first…and in that we must suffer faithfully with Jesus and Mary.

In and through all of this, we must look to plunge ourselves into Christ’s merciful Heart, the pierced Heart of the Lamb, to receive that Mercy that He offers from the Cross, and therefore from the Altar. But in these times, the Immaculate Heart of Mary is offered to us in a special way for us to achieve this. Hidden in Her Heart, we have to go further in love, beyond the bewilderment of the often stupefying accidental externals – further than the turmoil around us – and by the aid of grace, penetrate further into the Mystery of the Liturgy – which is the Mystery of the Trinity’s salvific work in time, the work and fruit of Infinite Mercy for us – accomplished at the Cross by Jesus and Mary. We must pray to be able to pass beyond the abuse, ignorance, banal festivity, misplaced cultural plays, tacky dances, silly skits, and a general lack of respect and prayer, to be able to contemplate Christ in His last hours, and, like Mary and John, remain with Him in fidelity.

But to do this, to enter Christ’s Heart and be faithful to Him amidst this ruckus, we need Mary’s help. We need to rest in Her Heart, to be close to Jesus, to be able to look upon Him with love, and guard that union, amidst the distracting chaos going on all around us. We must give ourselves to Her during this time of Passion and Crucifixion of the Body of Christ, especially in the Liturgy. This doesn’t mean that it will be easy. It will still be a type of interior agony – but with Her and in Her – we can cultivate authentic adoration of Christ, and enter contemplation – that union with our ultimate finality – God – and therefore find peace, and especially rest.

Let us ask Her to draw us into Her Immaculate Heart, to live of Her silent gaze of contemplation in a deep love for Her Son and the Father; so that in the depths of our intelligences and hearts, we remain humble, poor, serene, recollected, and tranquil in the Liturgy – as we offer ourselves in love – and draw of its sweet fruits – even though, before our very eyes it is often torn apart, abused, and subjected to a type of Roman-era pagan anarchy; sometimes even by bishops, legitimate successors of Apostles.

Let us follow Mary, as She contemplates Her Son. Let us enter Her Heart, be enshrined in Her, and in that sacred temple of the Holy Spirit, we can live of Her merits and virtues, participate in the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart that has been prophesized so many times, and enter more deeply into Christ’s victory of Love. In Her, like in the Church our Mother in grace, she gives birth to the victory of Christ in us; we can be born more deeply in the Holy Spirit, and live of Christ’s union with the Father (Rev 12); and in that Mystery of Love, bear lasting fruit for the Kingdom.

Mary, our hope, our Mother, our peace, pray for us.

Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for the Liturgy, and protect your priests.

** quoted words are of Paul VI from 1968, 1972, and 1973. See also here

**“The Church finds herself in an hour of disquiet, of self-criticism, one might even say of self-destruction. It is like an acute and complex interior upheaval, which no one expected after the Council. One thought of a blossoming, a serene expansion of the mature concepts of the Council. The Church still has this aspect of blossoming. But since “bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu,” the aspect of sorrow has become most notable. The Church is also being wounded by those who are part of her.”

(Paul VI, Allocution to the students of the Lombard Seminary, Dec. 7, 1968).

***This does not mean that the Second Vatican Council is necessarily at fault. The official intentions and authentic spirit (properly understood) of the Council were excellent – to renew and present the Mystery and Mercy of Christ to the world in a beautiful way; the documents, by and large, were very good (of course any church document can be prudentially expressed better, be structured more coherently, or be developed more beautifully), but many of the interpretations of the Council, have been defective, or false. However, legitimate questions can be asked about the wisdom, prudence, and juridical legitimacy of the Liturgical reform of Pope Paul VI.