Why are we moderns in such a hurry to be “in-‘n’-out” of liturgy?
I’m not even talking here about the Novus Ordo, which—apart from the sprawling lectionary and various indeterminate local addenda—counts as the miniskirt in the wardrobe of liturgies, if you just compare the fixed texts of the rite with any other historic Christian rite of East or West.
No, here I have in mind the contrast between the Tridentine rite (that is, what some call the “pre-55”) and the Pacellian-Roncallian rite (that is, what you will find in a 1962 missal). Compare the extravagant blessings of the palms in the “Dry Mass” to the lame abbreviation; compare the four prayers of blessing of fire with only one; the omission of the prayers at the foot of the altar whenever a procession happens before Mass (often leaving the ministers with nothing to do for a long while), and the cutting-out of the Prologue of John when something else follows Mass…
Was all this really too much for ordinary Catholics? Was it too much for the clergy?
Whenever I go to very long, complicated liturgies such as you find in the pre-55 Triduum, I see tons of families and somehow they seem to manage. Sometimes the little kids fall asleep, and that’s fine. As the psalmist says, “He pours gifts on His beloved while they slumber.” It’s a family affair: we all go there together, and we give of ourselves as best we can. For a 5-year-old, that means sleeping; for a 15-year-old boy, maybe it’s serving at the altar; for a 25-year-old, following the prayers in a missal or singing in the schola; for a 50-year-old, meditating on life and death and God.
Our Byzantine brethren have notoriously long liturgies. Why was this not one of the “Eastern features” that the West decided to copy? After all, liturgical historians tell us constantly how much was borrowed from the East, and the reformers claimed the East as their justification for certain steps they took. It seems, in reality, that they took from the East whatever chimed in with modern theology, but they passed over with a sense of relief—indeed, they stripped away, with a sense of obligation—anything that might have conflicted with modern Western habits. They said “No thanks!” to fasting, lots of prostrations, and long liturgies, but “Gimme!” to the foreign epiklesis, communion under both kinds, standing rather than kneeling, and so forth. In short: the Western liturgists sought the titillation of change, not the truth of tradition. Their arbitrainess indicts them of wilfulness; their wilfulness points to disordered passions.
Reflecting on my life as a Catholic, I can honestly say that the strongest feelings of boredom, impatience, and “get me outta here” overcame me during vernacular, horizontal Novus Ordo Masses with a seemingly endless tide of spoken verbiage: several readings, declaimed in mock-drama or flat monotony; a rambling homily; poorly composed “prayers of the faithful”; and on and on—always this flood of verbosity, like a new form of Chinese water-torture.
The contrast with the old rite couldn’t be more pronounced. In the nearly four-hour pre-55 Easter Vigil, the only words spoken the entire time are “Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi: Domine, non sum dignus,” etc., and “Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus,” etc. (I’m not counting the homily, since traditionalists don’t consider this to be part of the liturgy, for reasons explained here.) Everything else in the pre-55 Vigil is either chant or silence, punctuated with solemn actions.1 This gives a timeless, restful, mystical “glow” to everything. Even if one is tired, one is also spellbound and drawn continuously back to the pageant of symbols and ceremonies. One can freely surrender to the all-embracing worship and float along with it, in and out, rising and falling with the waves, as one’s senses and intelligence are steeped in a solemn sacred event.
In such a rite, the question “are you following everything?” doesn’t even occur to the mind. It’s so much greater and deeper than a bunch of words to be instantly grasped. It is mystery, and absorption in mystery. There is light, darkness, beauty, incomprehension. I leave on a different plane than that on which I entered. The scent of incense lingers, as if it’s penetrated my soul as well as my clothing. God was there, and I adored Him. That is the purpose for which He called me and for which I came. That is the pulsing heart of liturgy.