Tomorrow, being Christmas, I’m sure pretty most of us will be attending some type of service, and many of us will be attending Mass. Is it so wrong to choose masses based on the liturgical content, music, homily? Personally I don’t think so – at such a rich liturgical time, I want all my senses to be feed so as to awaken my heart and to truly enjoy this beautiful season in the Church’s calendar. To truly celebrate in a liturgical sense. So when a good friend of mine passed on the reflection below from a good man who many of us know, I found myself nodding in agreement.
The Catholic Church historically has been at the centre of great festivals that have richly marked and shaped many cultures. Her liturgical life calls for festival and naturally overflows into it. Musical dramas emerged in the late middle ages to extend the celebration of feast days, especially around Easter and Christmas. Colourful processions have marked the life of the Church from the early centuries, while ballades and songs were often the natural accompaniment of long pilgrimages. The holiday is truly a holy day not simply because of Holy Mass, but also for the time set aside for communitarian celebration, in both banquet and art. Shared celebration such as this over generations is the stuff cultures are eventually made of.
Today there are some signs of festival returning to the Church in New Zealand – with the ten day Catholic summer school for young adults, “Hearts Aflame” just after Christmas; the “Eucharistic Convention” in Auckland in the Easter Octave each year; and the Family Life International bi-annual convention. There are Rosary Processions each year in October in some dioceses and an annual Stations of the Cross in Auckland on Good Friday from the seminary to the Cathedral. Certain parishes also mark special days with family days of food, games and entertainment.
Yet in the main, we remain relatively impoverished in New Zealand at the level of festival, in comparison to countries with a stronger Catholic heritage, such as Spain, Poland, Malta and central and South America.
It seems to me that there is an attempt to compensate for this void by the increasing insertion of creative entertainment and cultural display in the liturgy of the Mass. The procession of the gifts or that of the gospel is often used to insert a cultural or dramatic moment. This year I have seen Irish, Philippino and Tongan dancing groups take centre stage at some moment of the Mass – as well as dramas presenting the lives of saints or themes from the gospel, not to mention post-communion dances. One day a pig might be carried in; another time there might be a symbolic procession of tiki and punga, along with explanatory commentaries, as a sort of extended ‘prayers of the faithful’.
Yet each time, one has the sense that the Mass is being interrupted for a moment of festival. The priest or bishop watching from the presider’s chair begins to give the impression of a visiting dignitary being entertained at Waitangi or Government House, after which the Mass tries to pick up again where it left off, with the readings or the Eucharistic prayer.
Festival is a wonderful thing, and we need it – especially around our big Catholic feasts. On those occasions – all the colour in the world is justified, full cultural displays, dance, drama, all kinds of traditional music, food and wine – all combine to express the joy that the occasion calls for and the unity in diversity of the people of God. Our world is crying out for such festival – for as it busily tries to forget its religious roots, it loses all reason for celebration. And festival has a hidden religious source – and for Catholics this is all the richer in the Eucharistic gift of Christ Himself. From this holy of holies, all our holidays spring.
We make a tragic mistake though if we try to incorporate the celebration of festival into the sacred celebration of the mysteries. In a very genuine attempt to heighten the occasion, we end up diminishing both the sense of sacredness in the Mass and the sense of joy in the festival – because we are caught in a no-man’s-land of being entertained without being fully able to clap and cheer – without being able to join in the dance spontaneously, without being able to let our hair down, as festival calls for. Somehow we are still semi-conscious that that kind of abandon does not belong in the Mass. Let us be more than semi-conscious then – and enter into more of that full consciousness that Vatican II insisted on when it spoke of the liturgy. Let us allow festival to have its full life by giving it back its rightful place as an overflow from the Mass – extending each Holy Day into holiday. But for the Mass to overflow, let it find again its deep sacred character of mystery and not become our creative platform.
I hope you all have a blessed Chrismas and if you are interested in feeding your senses then I would personally recommend Midnight Mass at St Mary’s Avodale in Auckland. I hope the baby Jesus brings you everything you need at this very special time.
afternoon filia, and other beingfrank buddies
on this Christmass eve ! when the Word became Flesh – oh what a mystery!
what a wonderful time in our Christian calendar
filia, your friend’s reflection is excellent!
what a wondeful insight into what is being confused in recent times with respect to inculturation
i think that even at the highest levels of the church, this stuff is not understand that well – and the Church has yet to develop and mature her thought in this area – and is why we have had quite a bit of uncertainty in terms of what is true inculturation in the liturgy
i think that this confusion has come about because we have lost our sense of festivity; and especially that true festivity flows out of our religious sense – because we have become so secularised and industrialised and “controlled” by the culture of efficiency – which looks to fill even our Liturgy with movement, noise, activity, and dynamism – but in the wrong way – so that we no longer feel immersed in God after Mass, and resting in Him, but we end up feeling affronted by activity, drums, dancing, and restlesness
how many of us have had to sit there in Mass while cultural stuff goes on – as a kind of entertainment show – and often there is no mature reflection from those in charge as to what it is doing to the liturgy, to our worship of God, to our sense of the sacred mysteries, and to our experience of worship
unfortunately, it just ends up banal-izing the liturgy and making it all about “man” and “man’s culture”, rather than about God, and properly focussed upon entering into deep relationship with Him – through adoration, contemplation, thanksgiving, and petition, but in the properly developed ecclesial rituals which have been hallowed down through the centuries, passed on, and approved by the authority of the Church, and ultimately approved by Christ etc
it almost always, in my experience, lowers the horizon, and people forget about God and begin to just celebrate the little “show” that has just occurred; and everybody pats each other on the back, and feels all warm and tingly that “these good people got to show off their culture to everybody” because this is wha the Church is all about
well, let’s really allow these beautiful cultures, in all their diversity, to have their place – and manifest their dignity, and touch the hearts others – but after Mass
the other thing that happens is that often the cultural expressions within Mass are not done that well, so it feels very much like parents watching their children put on a theatre-performance at the local school hall – and everybody smiles – knowing that everybody has tried their best, but really it was an amaturish performance in truth
so, even in Mass, the cultural performances that we do see often leave us feeling kind of embarrased and awkward and thinking “this is kind of tacky” for in a Church, and during Mass
Amen filia! let your friend know that his reflection/article thingy should be promoted elsewhere. i think he’s onto something very important for our times.
peace all
merry Xmas
ciao ciao
Dave
I was always taught that the greeting was happy Christmas as Xmas takes Christ out of Christmas!
Have a good one
the “x” symbolises the cross which is the fountain of our salvation
hi helen,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas
Xmas, is the same as Xtemas, is the same as Christmas
different ways of writing Christ
so, he’s still there
peace helen, merry Christmas
being frank has taken out the greek word and replaced it with ??????? (as above)
go to the link on wikipedia to see the greek word and characters
Christmas blessings and greetings everyone.
Has anyone who lives in Auckland been to Holy Mass at Tyburn Monastery at Bombay? it is a Mass full of peace and reverence … 9.30 am 24/7.
Shallom
OOPS !!!
That should read daily Mass in #6.
apologies.
Shallom.
I think the best way to undo the confusion here between festival and liturgy is to have some good festivals around the big feast days – and to have some good liturgies before them. Then people will realise the beauty of something done well in its proper place.
What makes a festival good and what makes a liturgy good aren’t the same things.
For the liturgy to breathe deeply it needs reverence, solemnity, breadth, dignity …. – the architecture and art should be pointing upward to the holy mysteries and the music should be embodying the prayer in a way that is enhancing reverence, solemnity, breadth and dignity.
For a festival to be good it needs a good reason to be – and the feast day provides that …. it needs authentic cultural elements (not the pop culture produced by media forces, but real culture that has evolved from shared life over generations), it can embrace expressions of splendour but also humour, light-heartedness, abandon; it needs a decent experience of shared time together which includes good food and no sense of rush, a sense that there is time to hang out all day and enjoy it.
I think if a Mass could be celebrated with beautiful chant and polyphony (with the help of a choir); a good choice of music that wasn’t in anyway trivialising (avoided the corny show-type music and the musac that is being mass-produced for any type of “worship” experience – with worship in inverted commas because not much of it can go on while such trivial music is undermining it), with a sense of reverence from everyone, including the servers – perhaps enhanced by incense, by dignified vessels and vestments, etc etc….. in a building that actually speaks of the mysteries in its art and architecture…. then we would be able to begin to experience something of the power of the liturgy to evangelise through a beauty that points upwards. Also, to follow it with real festival, dances, dramas, banquets, music of all varieties…. cultural displays etc… allows the joyful overflow from the deep communion expressed in the liturgy to have its fuller life in our lives.