Edit: we're not sure what's going on in a nave where there's a lot of idle chit chat before and after Mass, but it's probabaly not holy. The Sisters of St. Joseph Crandolet, even as they were declining in the seventies used to whack us and give us severe looks for talking before and after Mass. This is probabaly before Father Whackadoodle had instilled a sense of celebration and secular merriment in their minds. This article is long overdue:
[Liturgy Guy] I remember the general quiet and stillness associated with test taking back when I was in school. Everyone understood the necessity of maintaining silence in order to allow for each student to achieve his or her best possible results. Teachers for their part facilitated this by establishing an atmosphere conducive to learning through limiting noise and movement.
Schools of Prayer
What do you experience when you participate in the Holy Mass each Sunday? Do you enter into the sacred, thereby experiencing the same comparable stillness that you would expect to have in a classroom at school? Is noise and motion minimized so that concentration and silence can be maximized? Does your parish allow for the necessary environment that is conducive to deep prayer?
In his 2001 Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Inuente Pope St. John Paul called for our christian communities to become “genuine schools of prayer”. He continued:
https://liturgyguy.com/2016/01/12/why-silence-is-important-to-the-mass/Learning this Trinitarian shape of Christian prayer and living it fully, above all in the liturgy, the summit and source of the Church’s life…is the secret of a truly vital Christianity, which has no reason to fear the future, because it returns continually to the sources and finds in them new life. (NMI, 32)
AMDG
It is supposed to be a house of prayer, but they have no prayer books. If you don't have one, or a lot of memorized prayers, you say a rosary or talk or just stare.
ReplyDeletebuy a missal; take it and use it....
Deletehttp://angeluspress.org/1962-Roman-Catholic-Daily-Missal
https://www.baroniuspress.com/book.php?wid=56&bid=4#tab=tab-1
http://search.catholiccompany.com/search?w=missal&aid=583&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=ppc&utm_term=missal&utm_campaign=Books&creative=6756064135&device=c&matchtype=p
Fr.Lasance Missal or St.Andrews Missal are better in my opinion.
Deletewhichever....all I'm saying is that it's not hard to obtain a missal (and to not expect others to provide one for you), and then to use that missal to 'actively participate' in the Liturgy thru deep, silent, mystical prayer.
DeleteTrue
DeleteYou can talk to God in your own words, or heart. You can unite yourself to all the prayers the priest is offering in the Mass. You can buy yourself a prayer book/missal. Until Vatican II and its aftermath wrecked everything, we all took our own missals to Mass. Now everyone expects the parish to furnish them. Perhaps this is a spin-off of the welfare state.
ReplyDeleteGood point and its also made Catholics very lazy.
DeleteThe People in my life expect rewards and peace in life yet never assist at holy mass nor receive sacraments.Their children are sometimes baptized at 18 months - 2 years old.When they complain & I ask them if they have been active in the faith its always
'I'm busy I don't have time you don't understand. Besides my kids are bad they wouldn't behave at church'
My father took me outside of church when I was 3 & taught me a lesson.From that day forward I behaved in church.