_ St. Joseph’s is the only parish in our Diocese that offers a Latin High Mass (Extraordinary Form) every Sunday. I have invested much of my own time, work, and money into providing this form of the Mass (learning the prayers, chants, and gestures), as have dozens of others in our parish. Why are we going through all this effort? Is it just a personal interest in a kind of liturgical museum piece?

  The short answer is that Pope Benedict has encouraged the wider use of the Latin Mass. He asks that at least some pastors in every Diocese provide the Extraordinary Form for people who request it. Since I have a fairly good knowledge of Latin, I volunteered (Fr. Peter Carota also provides a Latin Low Mass every Sunday at St. Patrick’s in Ripon).

   The long answer is this: the “Latin Mass” provides a deeper, and I would say necessary, understanding of our Sacred Liturgy. The simple fact of praying in a “sacred language” helps us approach the Mass as sacred, mysterious, and beyond our complete understanding. One of our parishioners observed that the Latin Mass identified a control issue for her. “In the Latin Mass,” she said. “you have to give up trying to understand and control everything.” In the Latin Mass, the priest prays to God facing God (the altar) instead of facing the people—he prays to God with the people. The Latin Mass also offers a precise structure that avoids abuses. The priest’s personality and local customs become less important than the eternal presence of God.

    Recently I celebrated Mass in La Paz, Bolivia. Although the people’s simple faith was strong, there was much abuse of the liturgy. The priest imposed much of his own personality, drowning out the quiet depth of the Mass. The music was like South American Pop Music. The Gloria was rewritten, cutting out its depth and beauty. The priest read a list of 80-100 people’s names who had given a Mass offering, which took twice as long as the entire Eucharistic Prayer. Most of these South Americans looked so bored that I wondered how long they could remain Catholic. The Extraordinary Form serves as a corrective to these kinds of abuses. Both forms of the Mass, done well, are beautiful, but we truly need the Latin Mass to purify the terrible abuses that have overcome the Ordinary Form in so many places.

I feel like I owe some of you an explanation. At least some of you used to attend the 9am Mass but might now be considered refugees from the Latin Mass. While many may by now be quite happy getting the day started a little earlier at the 7am Mass or later at the 10:30am Mass, the question remains: why is St. Joseph’s celebrating one of its Masses in a dead language? Isn’t this going backward, to a time when people didn’t understand the Mass?

The answer to the last question is “no.”  It’s going forward. Pope Benedict issued an instruction in 2007 entitled Summorum Pontificum, in which he directs pastors to “willingly accept” the requests of those who ask for the Latin Mass. If their pastor does not provide the Latin Mass, the Pope even says that the Bishop himself is “strongly requested to satisfy their wishes.”

But why does Pope Benedict encourage, even require, pastors to offer the Latin Mass? The Latin Mass, technically called the “Extraordinary Form,” provides us with a dimension of worship that is easily missed: the dimension of mystery, awe, and reverence. In the Extraordinary Form, it is clear that we are not in control. We don’t see exactly what’s going on, and we don’t understand every word that is spoken. And in precisely this way, the Latin Mass gently softens our illusion that we can and must control things. It is hard for most of us to accept this surrender of control, but once we’ve let go, and God sweeps us out of ourselves, it is simply otherworldly. It is beautiful.

Our culture belittles those who do not manage their surroundings. Most of the apps on my new smartphone are entitled “manager”—wireless manager, download manager, outlook manager, etc. Certainly we must be good stewards, or managers, of what has been entrusted to us. But we can’t manage everything. Some of our lives, in fact, most of it, we entrust to the Big Manager Upstairs. The divine beauty of the Mass comes from realizing that someone Else is in control, someone who knows everything, and loves us unconditionally.

I have been accused of micromanaging the parish, and rightly so. It is my tendency to butt in and tell others how to do their job. It’s hard for me to let go and trust that things will work out. The first time I went to a Latin Mass, I despised it. “You can’t see what’s happening on the altar,” I complained. “You can’t understand what’s going on.” It wasn’t until I felt obliged, by obedience to the Pope, to spend a week in training for the Extraordinary Form, that I began to understand why this form is so important to us, especially now. And each time I offer Mass in this form, I come to love it a little bit more. For control freaks like me, like us, it provides a vital corrective.

When the TV says that we must “own it” (as in the latest DVD or smartphone), the Mass says that we don’t own God. He owns us. In fact, we don’t really own anything. He owns it all. When the TV says that channel 3 gives us all the news we need to have when we need it, the Mass says that we don’t need to know everything. When the world says that we can and must control every aspect of our lives, the Mass says that God cares for us, even when we are sleeping, or unemployed, or divorced, or broken, or dying.

I think the Church is recovering this sense of mystery, this beauty, this sense of trust in God’s providence, in both forms of the Mass. You may know that the Bishops have retranslated the English prayers for Mass, which will go into effect this November. In today’s gospel, John the Baptist says “Behold the Lamb of God.” Behold a mystery, behold a man who is also the Son of God. For the last 40 years the priest has said “This is the Lamb of God,” when he holds up the host. From November of this year, the priest will say “Behold the Lamb of God.” What is the difference? “Behold” indicates a mystery. “This is” simply presents a fact. A subtle, but very telling, distinction.

In the Latin Mass, the priest faces east, toward the crucifix, not toward the people. It’s not that he turns his back on the people, but that he faces God on behalf of and with the entire community. The beauty of the Extraordinary Form—the Latin Mass—is that we all face God together. The words of Christ are veiled in the beautiful Latin tongue, lest we think we understand what he is saying.  

Two common misunderstandings:
 
1.    I have to know Latin to get anything out of the Latin Mass. No. There is a beauty in simply hearing the sacred, veiled language. We understand some, but not all. Lest we think we understand what This Is My Body means, after all.

2.    I have to understand all the parts of the Latin Mass, and what the priest is doing at the altar, to effectively participate in it. Let it flow over you. Let it sweep you up. This is the Mass for 1500 years, of St. Augustine, St. Benedict, St. Francis, and St. Padre Pio.

So why does St. Joseph’s offer the Latin Mass at 9am? The short answer is that we do it because the Pope asks us to. The longer answer is that the Latin Mass provides a dimension often missing in our lives: a refuge from our control-driven world, a place to surrender control to Another who loves us infinitely, and will care for us, now and at the hour of our death. May He be praised, glorified, and adored, now and forever.