Catholic Register Book Review Bored Again Catholic
Growing up my parents made me and my siblings go to Mass every Sunday. As a teenager I remember thinking it was mode too much church. Almost of my friends didn't get to church at all. They went waterskiing in the summertime, snowfall skiing in the winter, or simply hung out on Sundays and slept in. And withal at that place I was in church praying the Lord'due south Prayer for the 1000th fourth dimension while my little brother painfully squeezed my hand.
Of form the near cute readings or songs or liturgies spoke to me, but many Sundays left me flat. It didn't assistance that much of the 2,000-year-old liturgy was opaque to me. I didn't even know that the liturgy was 2,000 years old. It might take fabricated me feel awe to know that a teenage girl in the year 300 had stood in an associates and prayed these aforementioned words and used these same gestures. I went to public school. I never learned the canon or went to Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. I don't call back a homily about the existent presence or the communion of saints. A lot of the beauty and mystery of the Mass was lost on me.
When I wanted my "feel good" God set up, I went to the evangelical megachurch with my friends from middle school. Their praise and worship services were immediately attainable to me in a style that the silence of the Mass was not. I didn't yet know what to do with all that silence. I didn't yet know how to quiet my mind.
The Mass became more than meaningful to me the more I read and understood what it meant, the more I learned how to pray and pay attending.
Now I'm the coordinator of Catholic life at a liberal arts schoolhouse and, like myself, my students oft struggle with the Mass. In the tranquility of the chapel I hear their pockets buzzing with messages and notifications. It'south hard for them to commit to even this one hour a calendar week of fourth dimension outside of fourth dimension. Ane Sunday night a student leaving Mass told me that in the hour abroad from her phone she had received 35 group texts. In the context of constant noise and the acedia of "busyness" the ancient rhythms of the Mass are mayhap stranger and more necessary than ever.
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I wonder at how challenging our Sun nighttime, mostly chanted and candlelit liturgies, must be for these students. How odd it must be for them to begin each liturgy by confessing their sins on a campus where sin, if it exists at all, is always commonage, always structural, never about me, what I have done or failed to do. The hardness of my own heart. I once heard an instructor where I work explicate that "the point of organized religion was cocky-care." So much for adoration, so much for reconciliation, and so much for repairing the world.
I was reminded of these experiences reading Timothy P. O'Malley'south book Bored Once more Catholic (Our Sunday Visitor, 2017), a series of reflections on each function of the Mass. O'Malley'southward volume takes the main critique of many people, that the Mass is deadening and repetitive, head on, calling it "expert boredom," a gift that opens us up to an encounter with the divine. He writes, "Boredom is not something that is to be avoided but rather is essential to the spiritual life." Like a chief teacher, O'Malley illuminates what is happening during each role of the Mass, both its history and significance.
Even cradle Catholics volition acquire new things, which in turn will deepen their experience of the liturgy of the Word and the Eucharist. In one of my favorite passages O'Malley describes why "Catholics do weird things with books." He writes,
Nosotros paint them, creating illuminated images alongside the text. Nosotros kiss them, as if they are an encounter with our dearest spouse. We incense the Book of the Gospels and process with it aslope candles. Not once in my bookish career have I adored a copy of the complete works of William Shakespeare. Yet every Sunday, as the Book of the Gospels is processed from chantry to ambo, I sing a hymn of praise to God. What are we doing every Lord's day? Why exercise we put fume all over a book? Why do we adore information technology, kiss it, and even greet it as a dear friend of ours? It is, of form, because this book is no book. It Is the presence of Jesus Christ in our midst.
Of course, the practiced magic of the sacraments and the liturgy is withal present fifty-fifty if we remain unaware of it. God is present in the Word, in the Eucharist, and in the people gathered, even if no one teaches us to look for God at that place. But if our attention is express, and it is, information technology helps to know where to direct it.
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Like many 21st-century American Catholics, and similar myself as a teenager, my students often don't know their own tradition and tend to borrow scraps from all the world's religions because they were never taught how to enter into the mysteries of their own.
Bored Again Catholic answers questions about the Mass you never knew you had, so that you don't have to just "make it upward" every bit you keep or search for meaning everywhere but in Christ and his mystical body.
O'Malley'south volume makes us curious again. Why does the priest say in the Eucharistic prayer, "Lord transport down your Spirit similar the dewfall"? O'Malley writes, "The reference to dewfall is related to Israel being fed with manna in the desert."
Why does the presider say, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the earth" when he elevates the Host? Considering after Jesus was baptized, John the Baptist said the same: "Behold the Lamb of God…" So much of the Mass is scripture. "Lord I am not worthy that you should enter nether my roof."
Bored Again Cosmic is an indispensable resource for all Catholics. Information technology's full of beautiful quotations and each chapter ends with discussion questions for small groups. It'south besides O'Malley's almost personal work. He includes his own struggles with infertility and accepting God'south will and learning how to pray and live eucharistic dearest.
Bored Again Cosmic is, finally, a defence of the liturgy itself, because let's be honest, if you're a Roman Catholic the Mass is both a living work of fine art and an obligation. Making space in our lives for God isn't without discomfort or worse. We demand books to remind us why nosotros bother to show up for the Eucharist at all. O'Malley'southward reply is succinct: "Because Christ is wonderful." And it makes you experience small, because it places you in a river of people who for two,000 years have been professing Christ'south death and proclaiming his resurrection until he comes once again.
Image: Ben White on Unsplash
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Source: https://uscatholic.org/articles/201710/required-reading-for-bored-again-catholics/