[The Mass in Slow Motion] [Previous]
And they went back, each to his own home. John 7.
Now we get on to the Pater noster.
You will remember that our Lord, in the sermon on the mount, warned his disciples not to use vain repetitions when they were at their prayers. And by way of teaching them not to use vain repetitions, he taught them the Pater noster. The result of which is that we find ourselves saying the Pater noster about two dozen times a day, and rather wonder sometimes what vain repetition means, if it doesn't mean this sort of thing. Well, actually, I don't think that is what the Greek word means, and so in my version I have translated it, " Do not use many phrases "; I think it's a warning against saying complicated sort of prayers and expecting them to be effective because they are complicated, which is what the heathen did. But I suppose it remains true that most of us do find these constantly repeated prayers, the Our Father and the Hail Mary especially, become so familiar that it's almost impossible to remember what they mean while we are reciting them; they slip off our tongues by force of habit, and we don't really mean " thy kingdom come " when we say the Pater noster, any more than we feel any interest in the state of health enjoyed by the lady who has come to tea when we say " How do you do? " to her.
I expect this is very cowardly advice; but for myself I always think it's not much use trying to fight against this particular kind of distraction, trying to make ourselves feel every single petition in the Our Father every time we say it. No, I think it's meant to be a sort of taking-off-from-the-ground when we want to set free the wings of prayer. And therefore what I would recommend is getting hold of just one idea in a prayer like that, either the first idea that comes along, or the idea that appeals to us most, or the idea that appeals to us most at this particular moment, and hanging on to that all through our recitation of the prayer itself; the words OUR FATHER, for example, are quite enough by themselves to key one up, don't you think? I don't see why we shouldn't just bask in that idea, sun ourselves in that idea, of God's fatherhood, and let the rest of the prayer slip past us while we are about it. But with this recitation of the Pater noster at Mass, I'm afraid it's worse than that so far as I am concerned; I don't think I try to concentrate on any single phrase in it, I just babble it out with a delightful sense that I am TALKING TO GOD. With most of our prayers, I mean, we feel-at least I do-as if we were talking into a microphone, knowing that as a matter of fact there is Somebody listening, but not having the sense, the awareness, that our mind is in direct contact with another Mind. But the Pater noster at Mass is somehow like sitting over the fire with somebody else sitting over the fire in the opposite chimney-corner, talking about a hundred things, perhaps, important and unimportant, perhaps just sitting there and not bothering to say much, but with the sense, the awareness, of somebody else's presence. If you feel like that about the Pater noster at Mass-or about any other bit of the prayers you say in the course of the day-don't bother to disturb your intimacy with God by deliberately and laboriously thinking about this or that; just stop thinking and throw yourself into the experience of being with him.
So I'm not going to tell you what you ought to be thinking about during the Pater noster, because as I say I have a strong suspicion that one is best occupied in not thinking about anything. We will go on to the prayer which follows, the Libera nos. At the end of the Pater noster, you see, there is a bit of dialogue. The priest stops short after Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, the server is supposed to say Sed libera nos a malo. And the priest picks up that idea, as it were, and turns it over in his mind. " Deliver us from evil? Do you know, I think that's a good idea of yours." What a lot of evils you and I want to be delivered from, when you come to think of it! From past evils; that is, from sins committed long ago, which have been remitted, please God, but still have left their mark on us, left us with a debt to be paid, and bad habits to fight against. And present evils, the ones we are thinking about just now, and said we would remember in the Mass; that fountain-pen that was lost nearly a fortnight ago, and our aunt's pleurisy. And future evils, the ones we aren't thinking about just now, and aren't going to think about just now, because our Lord doesn't like us to fret about the morrow; but there are all sorts of unpleasant things that might happen to us and our friends and our country and the world at large; we won't think about them, but we do want to be delivered from them. Let's leave it to the saints. . . . That's one advantage, I always think, about invoking the blessed saints; they know. They see the world all mapped out from above like a photograph taken from an aeroplane; we only see what's in front of our noses. So it's a good thing to say, Dear St. Anthony, you know what is the grace I most need; will you please ask for that? Dear St. Anthony, you know which is the next crisis that the world is going to be up against; please stave it off. (Rather like the mother who told her daughter to go upstairs and see what Johnny was doing and tell him not to.) So we fall back on the saints again; our Lady of course, and St. Peter and St. Paul, and then the apostles, St. Andrew and ... what's that? Oh, got to get on with the Mass, have we? All right, St. Andrew and all the other saints. That, I suppose, is why St. Andrew always get his mention here; the only place in the liturgy where he is singled out like that; I'm glad, aren't you? Because he does deserve some reward for being the first saint who heard our Lord's call and said, "All right, Lord; coming".
At the word " Andrew ", the priest takes the paten out from under the corporal, where (I forgot to tell you) it has been hidden ever since the Offertory, and crosses himself with it, and slips it under the Sacred Host. Then he takes the Sacred Host itself, holds it over the Chalice, breaks it in two, puts down the right-hand half, and holds the left-hand half over the Chalice again while he detaches quite a little fragment from it; then puts down the left-hand half, but still holds the little fragment over the Chalice while he says Per omnia saecula saeculorum. The server, who is beginning to get into the swing of the thing, pipes up AMEN. And the priest says, "The peace of the Lord be always with you ". There is a lot of peace going about at this point in the .M.ass. You know how all the people in choir at High Mass start giving one another stage kisses soon afterwards. And if you do the proper thing and marry a Catholic and have a nuptial Mass, it is at this point that you and he go right up to the altar step and have a special blessing given you, which is very consoling and a great argument against mixed marriages.
What is it all about? Immediately after he has said "The peace of the Lord be always with you" the priest lets the little fragment fall into the Chalice, so that it remains in, and as it were becomes part of, the Precious Blood. Now, I don't know what is the true explanation of all that. But the mystical account they give of it is rather nice. They say that the breaking of the Host in two represents the breaking of our Lord's Body on the Cross, represents therefore his Passion, and the re-uniting of the two sacred Species when the fragment is dropped into the Chalice represents the Resurrection, our Lord's Soul returning to his Body. And that gives you something to think about while the fraction is being made. Because what is meant to happen to us Christian people, so that we shall be like our Lord, is that we should be broken. Our wills must somehow be broken, usually by a painful process; having to do uncongenial work, being misunderstood by other people, being let down by other people, losing those we love by death, being torn away from familiar ties and affections we thought we couldn't do without-somehow our Lord has got to break our wills and make us give in to him. Then comes peace; it isn't till our wills are broken to him that we begin to understand real peace. And then comes resurrection, the mending up again of the broken thing, so that we are infinitely stronger than ever. But I don't expect you'll understand about all that just yet.
What follows that is the Agnus Dei. Notice that we have been talking to the First Person of the Blessed Trinity all through the Mass so far, and referring to our Lord as if he wasn't in the room. Now, till the Communion is over, we talk to our Lord and to him only. We appeal to him, the Victim loaded with a world's guilt, for pardon, and then for pardon again and then for peace. We say three prayers, one asking him to unite Christendom, one asking that we may never be separated from him, one asking that when he comes to us in Communion he may find us in right dispositions, and may increase the health of our souls. I say, find us in right dispositions; not find us worthy to receive him we are never that. Never talk about receiving Communion worthily; it's a misleading phrase. Domine, non sum dignus, Domine, non sum dignus, Domine, non sum dignus; Lord, you must force your way in, not take any notice of my soul's untidiness; it's not the least bit ready for you really.
Of the Communion itself, there's no need to speak. Nor do I want to talk about the verse taken from scripture marked Communion, or the prayer marked Post-Communion; We must hurry on to the big moment when the priest turns round and says Ite missa est.
You can tell it is a big moment, because at High Mass the deacon sings it to a very long and elaborate chant which goes up and down all over the place. When I first went on as deacon, at St. Edmund's, I went out into the drive after breakfast to have a last rehearsal all by myself, and the moment I started I-i-i . . . every single rook in every tree in the drive got up and left, so I felt like St. Francis preaching to the birds. Why is it necessary to tell the people to go away? They are beginning to think about breakfast anyhow. Why is it necessary to tell them that " our massing is over ", or whatever that odd phrase Ite missa est means? Why, I think the point is what I tried to suggest in the introductory sermon: "they went back, each to his own home." Hitherto, we have been a crowd, we Mass-goers, trying to remember our solidarity in Christ. But Communion means the coming of Christ to the individual soul, and that breaks the charm; the priest wants to be alone to make his thanksgiving; each of you wants to be alone to make hers. So the Ite missa est is the signal for the breaking-up of a party.
I'm afraid that is what this sermon is, so far as I am concerned. I shall be away next Sunday, so this is the last chance I shall have of saying Thank you. Thank you, I mean, for wanting to have sermons preached to you, and for taking some interest in what the sermon was about. But, of course, the real bond between us, these last six or seven years, is not that I've been preaching sermons to you, good, bad or indifferent, but that you and I have been breaking bread together; sharing, day after day and week after week, that food whose giving and taking ought to be unforgettable, because its effects are eternal. Goodness knows how many times you've watched me turn round and greet you with the Dominus vobiscum, or pass from side to side of the sanctuary asking God to keep this and this and this soul safe till it reaches eternal life. When you have left Aldenham, there will be plenty of things to remind me of you; I shall find myself still walking warily through the passages for fear of cannoning into somebody, still keeping my window shut in case one of you should come along and exchange a few words with a friend in the dormitory upstairs; an inkstain here, a thumb-mark there, will recall the memory of your visit. But you won't find it so easy to remember me; you will grow into your new surroundings very soon, and they will be different surroundings. Only one thing is never different; the Holy Mass. Every now and then, perhaps, some gesture, some trick of manner about the priest who serves your chapel there will bring back to you memories of Aldenham; you will find yourself saying, "Do you remember how old What's-his-name always used to blow his nose during the server's Confiteor?" And that will be something, if it helps to remind you that What's-his-name exists, or anyhow existed. I will leave you with the request which St. Monica made, just before she died, of her son St. Augustine: " I only ask you to remember me at the altar of the Lord."
Destiny is always jumbling up the pattern of our lives like the patterns in a kaleidoscope. You can't avoid it, even by entering holy religion; you take a vow of stability, only to find that life is one long round of packing. The charmed circle is always being broken up; we are separated from the people we have grown accustomed to. But do let's get it clearly in our heads that there can be no real separation, in life or in death, as long as we stick to the Holy Mass. In Christ we are all one; the sacred Host is the focus in which all our rays meet, regardless of time and space. Only we must keep true to him; only we must all go on saying that prayer the priest says before his Communion, asking that though he is separated from everything else he may never be separated from our Blessed Lord; A te numquam, a te numquam, a te numquam separari permittas.
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