by Lucy O'Connell

IN THE end, it was not the beauty or the appearance of the Latin Mass that convinced me, at all.

A few encounters with some painfully trivialised Low Masses reminded me that neither need one attend the Novus Ordo in order to sing off-key, nor need one be a Latin-riter in order to use beautiful altar frontals.

Neither was it the splendor of orthodoxy in Latin Mass centres which convinced me, for Novus Ordo Catholics continued to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, serve the pro-life movement, and read St Thomas, despite what some of my more vehement Old Rite acquaintances insisted about them.

It took me two-and-a-half years to decide that I liked the Latin Mass, and what prompted this decision was four months in a sickbed with the Old Missal as my Sunday reading matter. Separated from the irritations, which, though they are not the Old Mass, often accompany it, I read my Mass in peace, until it dawned on me that these were the prayers which I wanted to pray, and that I dearly wanted to be well enough to pray them in a church, where they belonged.

Why? I had become quite adept at defending the Old Rite before a New-riter, while dismembering traditionalist arguments before their adherents. What finally convinced me was not argument, but the gentle persuasion of my missal, for I love language, and the language of the Old Missal, including the translations, enabled me to pray as I had not previously been able.

My university campus sucks language dry; makes it clinical in its essays, turgid in its lectures, and hysterical in its student publications. The language of work is purely functional, and housecleaning has never inspired deathless prose in me. But in this Mass, I found myself furnished with a new vocabulary; prayers by turns lyrical and emphatic, and always dignified. Some demanded very hearty singing (the Gloria, or the Preface), others to be heard with profound attention, others (nearly every Introit) to be turned over and over on the tongue and in the heart.

When I hold my missal, I am holding the prayers of centuries gathered together for my possession. These prayers are more than a treasury of cadence and phoneme, of sound exposition of doctrine (ideas that you can really think about); they are a treasury of time and space, for latent in them are all the prayers of all the souls who have prayed the prayers and read the readings which greet me every Sunday. At each reading, when I come to them for the first time, the prayers are new. When I have received from them all that I can, with all their history behind them, they are ageless.

This quality of the rite puts my participation at Mass into a marvelous perspective. When I go to Mass, I enter into something that transcends the limits of my daily experience, and, by drawing me deeper inwards, expands my contact with the Divine. For Mass is more than the individuals who attend it; a liturgy that merely reflected my experience would be stifling. To worship at that which is so much more than I am, increases my understanding by decreasing my view of myself. I am not the centre of the universe; the Mass shows me Who is, and gives Him to me. The prayers in the Old Missal enable me to be aware of, and to express His eternity to a perfect degree. Outside of my chapel, I cannot help being a particular person fixed in a certain era; once Mass begins, I am able to be young, and ageless, at the same time.
 

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