My family and I were spread out in the living room, surrounded by that comfortable cacophony of semi-clutter that makes a house a home, poised to embark on our nightly rosary…when the phone rang. (Of course.)
My brother answered in that classic teenaged, almost military style, in which his tone conveyed absolutely nothing to the rest of us eager eavesdroppers. A minute elapsed, brimming with such descriptive words as: “Okay…okay. Okay. All right. Yeah, you too. Yes. Right. Got it. Bye.”
At last, my brother hung up. “Father M. is going to be offering a Low Mass tomorrow morning,” he announced.
“Where? What time?” my sisters and I chorused.
He named a chapel we all knew, then pronounced, “Seven in the morning.”
Immediately we all began making mental calculations, in which the spirit was quite willing but the flesh was weak. Of course, seven in the morning isn’t horrendous – but for us, it requires getting up at 5:30 in order to rise, yawn eighty times, get dressed, and arrive at the chapel with enough time to snatch a few quick prayers before Mass begins. For us, 5:30 a.m. is…well, mildly horrendous. We’re no morning glories.
Be that as it may, this was still too tantalizing to pass up: aside from First Saturday Masses, this would be the first morning weekday Latin Mass we’d had the privilege of attending so far since we came to the old liturgy. (Here’s to milestones!)
I went to bed marking my missal, filled with grateful zeal. Interiorly, I was so eager to go and to assist at a Low Mass in such a special and intimate setting. Historical biographies of aristocrats with private chapels on their estates where the Latin Mass was offered daily (sigh…) had only stoked my desire to be blessed with at least a slightly similar experience (even if I don’t have that aristocratic air). What would it be like? So early, and with only my family, our two friends who had let us know of it, and the good priest, all in one tiny chapel?
It was this same type of zeal that dragged my mother, my siblings, and myself out of bed in the 5 o’clock hour the next morning. We left for the Mass in the golden, spilling light of dawn as my faithful father left for work. We yawned through our fervent declarations of how excited we were. I drank in the vividness of color that morning light reveals.
Once we arrived at the chapel grounds, the five of us unloaded from the car and wandered around for a bit before we located the right door. Outside, the early July morning was warm, humid, and still. I could feel my skin going prickly and my un-showered hair becoming a puffball…but that’s what mantillas are for. As this chapel door was still locked, we stood outside and conversed with our two friends. We were all, most likely, privately sniggering at how sleep-deprived some of us looked. At least I was.
The good priest arrived shortly afterward, his vestments encased and tucked under his arm, and we all filed inside the tiny, hushed chapel, where Heaven was shortly to meet Earth in the beautiful form of the Latin liturgy, with just the eight of us there to adore.
I stepped into the dimness (lit only by the sanctuary lamp), blessed myself, found a seat as quietly as I could, and knelt.
Immediately, I was impressed by how the smallness of the chapel, with only twelve seats and accompanying kneelers, made everything feel – not claustrophobic, yet incredibly close.
As I knelt, praying and blinking sleepily before the tabernacle, warm light shifted and fell through the stained glass windows, washing my missal pages with the colors of the Sacred Heart. Thank You, thank You, my heart prayed in quiet rhythm. And yet while I was smiling (in a very prayerful, pious, saintly way, of course) with excitement and gratitude to be able to attend this rare weekday Latin Mass, at the same time, I started feeling as if my smallest noises were obnoxiously loud.
But never mind. The Mass began, and as the prayers at the foot of the altar commenced, my ears and mind were flooded with Fr. M’s undulating voice, with his unique enunciation of the Latin (each priest’s enunciation is slightly, fascinatingly different!), and with the server’s steady responses; with the sounds of their vestments rustling, with the color of the priest’s stiff, blood-red Roman chasuble, in honor of St. Pantaleon.
And yet, oddly, they were also flooded with the creaking of the kneeler beneath my knees; with the rustling of my missal pages; with, essentially, me.
Most weekday mornings, my family and I stream Mass live out of Sarasota, Florida, thanks to the FSSP’s wonderful apostolate LiveMass.net. Praying along with the Mass every morning, even though it’s across a distance, is a tremendous blessing – but there is still the inevitable separation of my physical presence from the Mass’s location, where I’m not conscious of my own presence at the Mass, so to speak. In a similar way, at our nearly 100-year-old parish where Latin Mass is offered every Sunday, we have a spacious nave, beautiful side altars along the transept, and a majestically domed sanctuary; thus, a person can easily feel diminished and obscured by the sacred loftiness of the Church, and the beauty and wonder of the Mass being offered there. Self-consciousness is almost nonexistent.
This chapel was different.
Although I couldn’t clearly articulate it to myself then, I was struck and humbled by the reality of my own ordinary humanity – of the priest’s humanity, the server’s humanity, the humanity of the eight of us. We were there, at the sublime sacrifice of the Mass, in the midst of a host of invisible angels and saints, in the glory of God preparing to come down upon the altar. I was there, with my frizzy hair, my feet itching from mosquito bites after a barefoot volleyball game the week before, with my hungry stomach, my suddenly loud swallows. How to describe it other than this? I was there. Or, perhaps better put, I was allowed to be there. Even though my heart was so grateful for that moment, and I united myself as best I could to the Mass, I nevertheless felt clumsy, thick-minded, and unable to comprehend what was happening.
My fantasized dreams of being able to attend a morning Low Mass in a setting such as this had seemingly forgotten the reality of me. I had forgotten how the Mass does not simply erase the sometimes awkward quirkiness of my possessing the nature of a human being.
And yet…the Mass was happening, all the same. In fact, it was happening because the consecrated priest, in all his humanity – the same humanity as mine – was there, offering it.
The Latin Mass first captured my heart with its ancient beauty, with its clear and vibrant witness to the Truth through the form of its sacred liturgy. I truly was awed, and I was humbled, because it proclaimed to me how great God is and how much reverential adoration He is due. It taught me to forget myself during the liturgy and simply to adore God and to surrender my heart to Him.
But there, in that small chapel, I began to also realize the unspeakably condescending love of God toward me – toward all of us – in the Mass. I began to see how God explicitly deigned to take His Holy Mass, the highest prayer and greatest miracle, and to attach it and to wrap it up in the physical actions of simple, faulty human beings.
Somehow, I don’t think I’d ever really contemplated that before.
The Mass is sublime, because it comes from God; it gives us God and gives us to God. And yet it will always involve our humanity, require our humanity, for the simple reason that He fashioned it that way.
The Mass’s existence ultimately relies on the divinely ordained priest, who swallows, breathes, shifts, rustles, sniffs, coughs, and is susceptible to making mistakes, as we all are. And while the Sacrifice of the Mass certainly does not rely on the laity in the same way, it is nevertheless ordered, in its very nature, to receive us and require us to give all that we are, body and soul, to God.
The Mass embraces our physical presences, our wandering minds, our growling stomachs. The very fact that God – surrounded by His angels of fathomless beauty, radiance, and grace, and by the glorified souls of His saints – desires to be surrounded by His often awkward, clumsy human creatures (including me) in this Most Holy Sacrifice, to the point where the Mass cannot be offered and the Eucharist cannot be confected but for the ministration of a human being, of the priest in persona Christi…this is dumbfounding.
This is love.
So in that tiny chapel, the Mass progressed; I received Our Lord in Holy Communion along with my family and our friends; I stood for the reverent proclamation of the Last Gospel; and soon enough, I was kneeling in quiet again. The peace “which passeth all understanding,” the peace that comes only from the Eucharist, seeped into my soul, even as I contemplated and wondered at all these new realizations and questions that I would work to articulate later in this over-written, over-edited article.
Faintly, birds chirped out beyond the stained glass windows; small animals shuffled through the outdoor mulch. Eventually, we all filed out of the chapel; the good priest hurried on his way to his next destination, and our friends left for work. My family and I headed back home to the rousing tunes of Switchfoot (we still had a little waking up to do, after all) and with a quick stop for breakfast.
The Mass had happened, just like that, with me and for me. For all of us. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it had been different from my romantic daydreams of an early morning Mass – and yet, of course, it had been better. It had shown me a tiny, clearer glimpse of the beautiful, infinite condescension of Our Lord’s divine love toward me – body and soul – in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I pray I will never again forget it.
Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum.
ah the hidden Church, I need to make more effort to get plugged in to this. There is a 6:30 am near me that might as well be hidden, it’s lovely.
An uplifting article for this feast of Our Lady’s Assumption. Thank you.
The best time for the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass, bedside any time it is lawful to do so, is first thing in the Morning. Beginning the day in the Sacred Presence, contemplating the Divine in the Presence of the Divine, while being enveloped in Sacred Silence so that the Word of God Incarnate can speak the Eternal Truth to one’s Soul is the greatest gift there is outside of the Beatific Vision.
It amazes me how many ‘good’ Catholics won’t come to Mass because they would rather sleep in, or take a leisurely morning with the paper and coffee (I’m not referring to those who must leave for work early, or those who must work early in the home because their vocation calls them to: so please no one leap to their defense as they are not being assaulted.)
One of the most pleasant gifts I have had at my current assignment is that the numbers at daily Mass have increased steadily over time. When I first arrived it might be 3-5 people, now it’s about fifteen (good day 20, bad day 10.)
If you have a daily Mass near you that is offered first thing in the morning and you can attend, then do everything possible to do so as it will bless your day and life more than you know.
We have daily Mass available here in town, but not until 8 am. If it were 7 am, we could attend daily before work/school.
Probably one of the few people in town that wish it were earlier, rather than later. At least we have daily mass available – small blessings.
Rather large blessings—though one agrees it would be nice to have ever greater access to them.
What Father said.
Even when I was going to daily novus ordo mass, it would be at 7 a.m.
In the dark.
Or fighting your way there during or after a snowstorm, snow melting off your boots puddling in dingy pools on the floor underneath the kneeler.
In the silence.
In the quiet.
Watching the stained glass windows appear in the gloam of the dim morning.
I’d love for our TLM to add a 7 a.m. daily low mass. Someday.
One priest actually thanked the handful of us who would be there every morning that early.
He told us that our presence there that early for daily mass inspired him and other priests. He was sincere.
Sorry to disagree, Father. It is much more likely that the number at daily Mass has increased steadily because of you. We forget that the Mass is the highest and greatest euangelion, and a Mass reverently and properly offered is an immensely powerful tool to spread the Gospel. I might go so far as to say that, if I am a Christian today, it is because of those quiet, holy Masses that seeped into my soul so many years ago, in the first blush of my newly-cleansed soul. It is because that καιρός can never be expunged by the weight of χρόνος. Imaging that – a silence which cannot be filled with the cacophony of the everyday world?
God bless you, Father, and grant you many years in the vineyard.
I
SAY
THE
MASS
Bathed his tiny
Little hands
At the lake
Picked shells in sands.
When he fell
And scraped his palms
Soothed them with
Some healing balms.
First time that
He went away
Was his kindergarten
Day
My hand he clasped
Tightly so
Unclenching them
Said, “Time to go.
You’ll have to trust
You’ll learn in class
And here you’re safe
With Holy Mass.”
Now his hands
He lays on me
As I bow down
On bended knee.
I kiss his hands
Then clasp them so
Unclenching them
He says to, “Go.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/75fc33a49694580a5baaefdd7a0febb013e62eff9b0bf197cc9eb26c82fd6455.jpg
You’ll have to trust
I learned in class
I’m always safe…
I say the Mass.”
That picture of your priest grandson blessing you took my breath away.
O God, grant us priests!
O God, grant us holy priests!
O God, grant us many holy priests!
O God, grant us many holy religious vocations!
St. Pius X, pray for us!
St. John Chrysostom, pray for us!
St. Josaphat, pray for us!
Ha, ha, ha, ha, oh, Margaret, he’s our son, the seventh child!
Your son? That’s even better! Do you have 3 sons who are priests? That’s the idea I got from the family photo you posted earlier.
We have one Priest, son, and one daughter who is a Franciscan associated with the SSPX. Merci Marcel!!!
Many prayers for Fr. Rabij. One of our other sons, just got back from Kiev, Ukraine, working as an Intern in the American Embassy. He loved it over there. Many blessed years to you, too!!
I was watching this sspx video yesterday, this young nun is so impressive, I thought if the Church had 1,000 of her spread around the world there would be no more problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no7_pD6XvFI
We have to fight this crisis in the Church today but also come to the aid of Orders, especially like the SSPX, where they are not only willing to give us Priests for daily Mass confected as the true Sacrifice but many, many young willing to join religious orders to teach our children. They are nurturing us with the WHOLE Faith, which of course the modernist absolutely detest. The modernist want us to complain and fight each other NOT them. Catholic souls MUST discern the truth about supporting the Society of St. Pius X willing to lay down their lives for us as True Shepherds.
just to clarify, I didn’t mean to imply that we don’t have awesome nuns all over the world in the Church just that there are so many fewer than are needed. Vatican II did it’s job well unfortunately.
Long Skirts, thank you for the poetry and thank you MORE for the priests.
You’re welcome!
Thank you, Mary. An absolutely beautiful reflection on the Mass. How I would love to be that priest offering the Latin Mass each morning. Pray for priests!
I do. And I have a feeling, you will be, perhaps not as picturesque as in this article; but it will be just as beautiful.
Dear Father,
The SSPX has a program where they train diocesan priests to offer the TLM.
Also, if you have a used book store near you, see if they have an old Missal. In 2015, my friends and I went to Pittsburgh on vacation and the used book store there had a large Missal. I couldn’t get it because it was $ 84.00. This is what it looked like:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/513255364b0012b4763128f01d4f33b5fc0c8338373869bc8e4a7e75e55641f6.jpg
The TLM is your birthright as a Roman Catholic. It is the birthright of all the Latin faithful. God bless!
In Christ the King,
Margaret
Dear Margaret, Thanks so much for your reply. I already celebrate TLM but not as often as I would like. In fact i would like to celebrate it almost exclusively and the NO, when I am really needed. Now it’s the exact opposite. Maybe the Lord will arrange otherwise. Please pray for me. God bless you.
Will pray for you Father Richard! God bless!
I love this article! Beautiful in every way.
LOL! TLM priests love their 6 and 7 am time slots. 8 am is a sleep-in!
Thank you for this beautiful article. God bless you. Stay faithful to Catholic Tradition and it will bring you blessings you never imagined possible.
While this is a beautiful article, I think it is important to realize that many, if not most, do not have access to a morning Latin Mass. In fact, most of families, like mine, never even knew the TLM existed until recently.
So for those like me, who only have Novus Ordo Masses near home base in morning, one fairly illicit, the other, fairly cheap, ( I know the Eucharistic is consecrated), but oh, one needs the patience of Job not to squirm.
I do hope people take advantage of the morning Mass, if able to find a reverent one nearby.
My husband and I are even thinking of relocating our home to be closer to the FSSP so that we can take advantage of the early Masses and so many beautiful devotions, and many young families, even those our not so young anymore.
This article I shall be printing off, as I do many of the wonderful articles that deepen my faith.
Thank you.
–Historical biographies of aristocrats with private chapels on their estates where the Latin Mass was offered daily (sigh…) had only stoked my desire to be blessed with at least a slightly similar experience–
YES! I know exactly what you mean! I have often felt a certain jealousy (Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. ) when I read about those early morning Masses every single day in the private chapels of the aristocracy. And I long for a world in which the aristocracy start they day with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass!!
I can relate to this article in many, many ways!! We used to have a 7 am TLM every Thursday an hour from my house. (We had to arrive 1/2 hour early since my sons were altar boys.) I bundled up the family — toddlers, tiny children, teens and all. And we loved it! My children still wish they had that beautiful early morning Mass. After we prayed our rosary in the car on the drive we would listen to gorgeous music — Mozart, Vivaldi — and watch the sunrise. The kids still reminisce about that Mass when they hear Mozarts Symphony No. 41 in C, K 551 (Jupiter)! The Mass was in a beautiful 100-year-old church — everything miraculously kept intact after the 2nd Vatican Revolution. The light peaking through the extraordinary stained glass was absolutely breathtaking. Thank you God for the Mass!!
AT
MASS
ALONE
November’s frost
Warmth melts the chill
At Mass alone
On Calvary’s hill.
Where from its heights
Fierce, sleety, rains
Beat down upon
Stained-window panes.
At the Mass of all times
The Faith’s never frozen
“Many are called…
But few are chosen”.
…our SSPX priests start at 7:15 am, Deo gratias!!
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