Sidebar
Browse Our Articles & Podcasts

Tears of Joy, and of Reparation

Editor’s note: in March, we shared the news with our readers that 1P5 contributor Dr. Brian Kopp had suffered a series of debilitating strokes that were, at the time, life-threatening. By God’s grace, Brian pulled through, and is making progress in his physical recovery. This is his first contribution since that time. Please pray for his continued healing.

13510881_1774503162785194_5089788364082218250_nI went to my parish for the Traditional Latin Mass today. It was the first time I went there with a pair of forearm crutches instead of a walker, since multiple strokes in March, so I no longer needed to sit in the handicapped pew.

I spent the whole Mass praying ardently for guidance from God and begging Our Lady to pray for me and lead me, given the circumstances with the Church and this pope on whether to stay quiet or what to do and what to say.

I’ve been working on kneeling and genuflecting at PT for two weeks. I was finally able to walk up to Communion with crutches and, for the first time since early March, I was able (with a bit of help) to kneel to receive Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist.

I started attending the TLM because 1) I wanted to kneel for the Eucharist and 2) I despised liturgical abuse and gravely mistrusted those priests who engaged in it. I don’t love Latin, and I had no attachment to that liturgy (though I do now, especially since I understand the theology of the sacrifice of the mass now given  the immensely richer and deeper theology of the old liturgy.)

The pastor stopped his usual walk from side to side to distribute the Eucharist to  come to me, so I didn’t have to wait to receive in the kneeling position, the first time I had attempted to do so since March. Then he graciously helped me to stand up from the altar rail, making sure I was steady and had my footing and my crutches before moving on to continue distributing.

When I got back to my pew and knelt in thanksgiving, tears of joy started streaming unbidden down my face. In March, I wasn’t sure if I would ever walk again, and I had just walked to the altar rail. And I knelt and got back up, something I never thought I’d be able to do again. I was thoroughly overjoyed and thankful; I’ve never experienced tears of joy and thanksgiving at Mass.

Then something strange happened. My tears of joy melted into tears of sorrow, and I began weeping. For a very long time. Again, something that I’ve just never done at a Mass, and surely didn’t want to be doing at a TLM where moments before I had experienced rare tears of joy in thanksgiving.

I just don’t cry at Mass, but in an instant I understood. While I had prayed earlier, earnestly, for guidance in the midst of this Church chaos, I realized our pope was making changes to allow those in irregular unions to have access to the Eucharist. While I was experiencing tears of joy at being able to kneel for the Holy Eucharist, at a Mass I started attending to escape liturgical abuse, we had a pope that regularly commits the liturgical abuse of not genuflecting at the Consecration, and not kneeling at Adoration. This despite abundant photos on the Internet of him kneeling to commit the liturgical abuse of washing Muslim women’s feet on Holy Thursday (before he changed the rules so his liturgical abuse became “licit.”)

Pope Francis kisses the foot of a man during the foot-washing ritual at the Castelnuovo di Porto refugees center, some 30km (18, 6 miles) from Rome, Thursday, March 24, 2016. The pontiff washed and kissed the feet of Muslim, Orthodox, Hindu and Catholic refugees Thursday, declaring them children of the same God, in a gesture of welcome and brotherhood at a time when anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment has spiked following the Brussels attacks. (L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP)
Pope Francis kisses the foot of a man during the foot-washing ritual at the Castelnuovo di Porto refugees center, some 30km (18, 6 miles) from Rome, Thursday, March 24, 2016. The pontiff washed and kissed the feet of Muslim, Orthodox, Hindu and Catholic refugees Thursday, declaring them children of the same God, in a gesture of welcome and brotherhood at a time when anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment has spiked following the Brussels attacks. (L’Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP)

These tears are shared by Our Lady that a priest, the pope, would ignore or disobey liturgical rubrics intended to give praise and glory to her Son’s Real Presence in the Eucharist, but desires to see us kneel before the presence of the poor.

My prayers were answered today. A love for the Real Presence in the Eucharist must be accompanied by corrective words and actions for those who would profane it.

My quadriceps are killing me tonight from kneeling at Mass for the first time since March, so, like every bit of suffering in this long process of strokes and recovery, I’ll actively accept that cross and offer it up to the Father, along with ardent prayers and continued fasting, for our Holy Father and his conversion to defending and preaching orthodoxy and orthopraxis.

But I fear many more tears of reparation will be shed in the weeks and months ahead.

31 thoughts on “Tears of Joy, and of Reparation”

  1. Welcome back, Dr. Kopp. I’m glad to read your words here, and it’s great to learn that you’ve progressed this far in your recovery. You were one of the people who influenced my reversion, some years ago, when I was a freeper. I fear you are correct about the path of some in the church. I pray for the Holy Father’s sake and his conversion (for lack of a better way to express it), daily. You’re among my regular intentions.

    Reply
    • FR was where I first “met” BK too. Great to hear that positive things came out of that forum what with it playing a part in your “reversion”!!!!

      Its gratifying to learn that social media can be used for the good.

      Reply
      • There was a period when good apologetics could be offered there, even though it was a political forum. There were a lot of reversions and conversions that resulted from many good Catholics engaging in amateur apologetics there, praise God and pass the YOPIOS!

        One of the most satisfying “conversions” was from a strict Orthodox Presbyterian, though. He was one of the most brutal anti-Catholic posters at one time, but we struck up a friendship via private message nonetheless.

        One day he sent a PM to tell me that he and his wife were expecting, and to thank us. Because of our relentless apologetics regarding the bible and birth control, he and his wife had come to believe the Catholic teaching on that subject, gave up birth control, and were expecting.

        What a blessing! I stopped posting there years ago, and lost track of him, but I hope he has discovered the rest of the treasures of the Faith and has come to embrace them too.

        Reply
        • LOL – I had forgotten about the YOPIOS!!! Maybe that’s what Frank the Humble has been eating for breakfast all these years.

          Makes you wonder what his next adventure after Lund will be. Perhaps a weathermen convention in Utah?

          Seriously though, it is amazing (or maybe its not) how many prods start down the road to conversion after they realize the Church has been right about contraception all along. Once their eyes are opened on that its like their souls are opened to the rest of Scripture.

          Reply
  2. I predominantly attend the Ordinary Form of the Mass (I’ve been to three Masses in the Extraordinary Form in my life thus far). For the last two years I’ve received Holy Communion on the tongue and stopped serving as an Extraordinary Minister of the Communion so I would no longer touch the Holy Eucharist. I recently started kneeling to receive Communion as well. It might depend on what diocese one is a part of, but I don’t think it is necessary to exclusively attend the Extraordinary Form to escape liturgical abuse or to understand the sacrificial nature of the Holy Mass.

    Reply
    • When you need the assistance of an altar rail to get up and down its hard to kneel at the Novus Ordo. But yes, one can kneel at the Novus Ordo to receive, and I greatly admire the witness of those who do.

      Reply
    • There is so much more to the TLM than receiving kneeling on the tongue.
      In fact, when you pray the Mass through the TLM liturgy, one becomes more predisposed to receiving our Lord. It is just natural that one would absolutely have no other choice in their heart and mind, than to receive the Lord kneeling and on the tongue.

      Our family attends the TLM as it the most sacred and purest form of liturgy that is worthy of our Lord.

      Reply
      • I agree that Extraordinary Form shows the sacrificial nature of the Mass better and is more oriented to God then to man as the Ordinary Form can tend to be. However, I cannot say that I was anymore predisposed to receive Our Lord at the Extraordinary Form Masses that I have attended than at the Ordinary Form Masses. In fact, I was a little more distracted, as even with a Missal, it was hard to know what was going on at times.

        Reply
        • In 1997, a friend and I attended the Catholic Family News conference in Wilmington Delaware. We met a man who attended the TLM (SSPX) and invited us to SSPX chapel outside of Philadelphia. We accepted his invitation.

          On All Saints Day (Nov. 1 on the Latin calendar), we went to the Low Mass in the morning and sat in the first pew on the right. It was truly a “Low Mass” because you couldn’t hear the priest unless he turned to the congregation and gave the Dominus vobiscum! I kept flipping through the pages of the little red missal wondering where we were in the Mass. All in all, it was very quiet, reverent and everyone dressed modestly!

          After Mass, my friend said to me that the Mass we had just attended was 10 times more beautiful than the Mass in his parish.

          Since then I’ve grown to love the TLM. If I couldn’t attend the Divine Liturgy, I would definitely attend the TLM. (Personally, I prefer High Mass.)

          So please try attending the TLM. You’ll see – it’ll grow on you. ?

          Reply
  3. ‘before he changed the rules so his liturgical abuse became “licit.”.’
    *
    He changed them then went ahead and broke them.
    *
    When Pope Francis did his own thing as regards the washing of the feet in the Liturgy of Holy Thursday in 2014 the opposing arguments were that he couldn’t do it unless he first changed the law [I supported this argument] and he could do it because as pope he is the Supreme Law giver in the Church. I saw it another way because since we know he did this when he was still Card. Bergoglio, Abp of Buenos Aires [https://thewarourtime.com/2014/03/12/cardinalbergolio-washes-the-feet-of-a-unidentified-woman-on-holy-thursday-at-the-buenos-aires-sarda-maternity-hospital-on-march-24-2005/], I saw it as an act of disobedience. As Dr. Anna M. Silvas articulated very well recently, ‘a Pope too, is called to obedience—indeed, preeminently so.’ Indeed isn’t one of the popes’s titles servant of the servants of God?

    Where he could change the law, for two seasons he didn’t, and where he can’t change Church discipline and teaching deriving from divinely revealed truths, with 2 Synods and an exhortation he has just attempted to do that. He surely does exemplify what he tells young people to go out and do, and that is ‘to go and make a mess’.

    Reply
  4. I wish you easier kneeling and joy. Thank you for your realistic comments about our Pope. He may be the Pope for some reason that we do not understand, but I do have to say that at least the corruption, of soul and mind, are out in the open. That in itself is worthwhile. There is an interesting article about the Argentines and their growing displeasure with PF because of his long meddling in politics in Argentina. You will find it eye opening if you read the article at http://nypost.com/2016/07/04/pope-francis-star-is-fading-back-home-and-heres-why-it-matters/

    Reply
  5. God bless and keep you Dr. Kopp! I hope and pray thing go well for you or at least that you stay strong and courageous during any suffering you may have. May God reward you.

    Reply
  6. Dr Kopp! Welcome back. Your work is not done. May Our Lord and Our Lady bless you and your family abundantly and may you soon experience a full recovery. Your brain seems “spot on” and that is no little thing after multiple cerebral vascular accidents.

    Reply
    • Good to “see” you Deacon! Thanks for your kind words.

      We always knew things would get bad, but we never dreamed a bad pope would constitute a central part of the Divine punishment inflicted upon us. Things are obviously far worse than we thought.

      Reply
      • On April 29, 2015, God touched two men. He took +Fr. Nicholas Gruner to his eternal reward and my manager had a heart attack. He took one and spared another.

        He spared us for a reason. He needs good soldiers of Christ like you, me and all who read your story to keep defending the Catholic Faith (cf. Eph. 6).

        We’re just assigned to different posts (pun intended). ?

        Reply
  7. I feel your pain. I lost my left foot and several inches of leg from an injury in Iraq in 2004. When I was first moving around I was confined to a wheelchair. Getting out and kneeling was a pain but at no point would I EVER have remained sitting in it to receive our Lord. What is our pain compared to His? Bear your discomfort with joy my friend. It is a gift from God to be able to suffer, even in something so slight as kneeling, for Him.

    Reply
  8. What a beautiful beautiful article. I completely understand and share your tears. I’ve been there (tears and all) and it was actually a bit embarassing for me (ashamedly) even though it’s so necessary- and such heart felt sorrow and/or gratitude. Thank you for your courage. You will need it many times and be challenged to show it repeatedly, but your courage will grow each time you lovingly, accurately and openly defend the Faith. God bless your offering+

    Reply
  9. Dr Kopp – Truly it is delightful that your recovery is better and faster than expected! I cannot imagine the difficulties that you bear, but clearly you face them with a dignity and Christ centered humility that is inspiring, and dare I say, uplifting! You have our prayers for continued and complete recovery.

    Reply
  10. crushed w/Christ, dissolved by Holy Ghost, water and blood. the tears of the olive garden, over Jerusalem, and her oppressors. this Eucharist is the gift of Christ’s own being, so are the pain and the tears, His own. your joy is your sorrow unmasked. who said that? and, who mistakes this man, “Francis”, for a prophet? Christ will humble us to His divinity, by the sword, by the cross, or by His obedient love for the Father, God. i love you, too.

    Reply
  11. I am so happy to hear of your recovery thus far! May God bless you and your loved ones, and please keep us informed. And educated!

    Reply

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Popular on OnePeterFive

Share to...