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I will praise thee with the angels for company, bowed low before thy holy temple. Ps 137
We have just got to the Secret prayers. Why is it that the priest says a lot of the Mass under his breath, instead of shouting out the Latin for everybody to hear? Even in a learned institution like this, where some of you have probably got on to the third conjugation. Honestly I don't know. Roughly speaking, I think it's true to say that the priest at Low Mass says aloud all the parts that are sung at a High Mass, and murmurs the rest. Roughly speaking, at a High Mass the priest only murmurs when the choir shouts. But which way about was it? Did the priest say to himself, " I can't be bothered to say this bit out loud, with those sopranos howling me down all the time "? Or did the organist say, " The holy priest doesn't seem to have much to say for himself just now; come on, boys, let 'em have it "? I don't know. I only know I always rather wish these Secret prayers after the Offertory were said out loud, because they are so very attractive, some of them. Take the one for last Sunday: " This sacrifice, Lord, we bring, to win thy favour; bring our sins, for thy mercy to pardon, bring our wavering hearts, for thee to point them to their goal "-don't tell me that isn't a jolly prayer. Or take the one on the eve of Passion Sunday:
" Lord, we beseech thee, accept these offerings, and restore us to thy favour, subduing, with merciful violence, even rebel wills like ours "- don't tell me that isn't a jolly prayer. But I've got to mumble them.
However, there's one good thing about it; it's a trap for the unwary; it catches you out if you weren't attending. I don't mean that holy Church put the Secret prayers in for that reason; holy Church wouldn't be as unsporting as that. No, it's just a lucky accident that they come here. You see, it's just halfway through the Mass, and we aren't all of us very good at keeping our attention fixed for more than a quarter of an hour. And some of us are sleepy; of course, you had a rotten night, with the girl in the next bed talking in her sleep like that. And even if you aren't actually in danger of dozing off, your attention has perhaps begun to wander; why does that girl in front of you wear plaits when they obviously don't suit her? and so on and so on per omnia saecula saeculorum! Ah, you weren't expecting that! You thought I was going on mumbling to myself. Even the server was caught napping really; he only said "Amen" because he couldn't think of anything else to say. Well, Dominus vobis cum; are you all with me now? Et cum spiritu tuo; good, that's all right. Then, Sur sum corda; lift up your hearts. That doesn't mean that you are to concentrate your attention on a particular valve somewhere inside your chest, and imagine yourself as heaving it up into the air. God isn't just up in the air; he's everywhere. It means take a deep breath and let your whole self go OUT to God. In what spirit? Penitence? No. Confidence? No. Adoration? No; but you're getting warmer. Love?
Not exactly. No-gratitude; Let us give thanks to our Lord God. All the other things too, of course, are perfectly in place; but the characteristic attitude of the Christian people in worshipping their God is thankfulness. That is why we call it the Holy Eucharist. First and foremost, the Mass means reminding ourselves of our Redemption-Jesus Christ was crucified for me. First and foremost, then, we are catching our breath at a great deliverance, and thanking God for it.
That's what I tell you when I say Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro, and you agree with me; Dignum et justum est, you say, "By all means; obviously it's the right and proper thing to do ". How disconcerting it is, now and again, to come across people who pick up your words and examine them, and turn them inside out! You know the sort of thing I mean; when an old lady says to you, " I'm very sorry to hear your mamma has broken her leg", and you say, "Yes, it is rather a bore for her, isn't it?" And then the old lady really gets going: " My dear, when you've broken your leg you will realize that it's a great deal worse than boring; it's an extremely painful and dangerous accident. Of course I know that your dear mother is a very energetic woman, and I expect she finds the time hang heavy on her hands, which I suppose is what you mean by a bore. But I hope you will realize that she is having a very painful time, and the less shrieking and jumping there is in the passages, the sooner she will get well ". Of course you know all that, and you long to say something you're too polite to say, and the incident has to be regarded as closed. I think the priest is a tiny bit like that when you say Dignum et justum est, right and proper. He goes on mumbling away, "Dignum et justum est, right and proper, I should think it WAS right and proper ". (You mustn't mind; we priests get like that.)
Dignum est; it is wortlw of our dignity as human beings, justum est, it is suited to our position as creatures, aequum est, it is only fair, since we are reprieved criminals, that we should always be giving thanks wherever we are. And there is a fourth word he uses, salutare; what does that mean?
I don't know what translation they give you in your book; probably "conducive to salvation", or something of that sort. But I don't think that's the idea, I think the meaning is, " It's a healthy sign". It's a healthy sign when a Christian finds himself, at all sorts of odd times and in all sorts of queer places, wanting to thank God. You know the sort of thing a doctor will call a healthy sign if he is talking about the condition of your body; a good appetite, for example if he's told that you got outside a couple of pancakes, when you're supposed to have measles, he says that is a healthy sign. And that's the great thing about gratitude in the Christian soul; it may not be very important in itself, but it's a healthy sign. The person who is continually grousing and nursing grievances may be all right; our temperaments and even our digestions have a good deal to do with it; you can't tell. But if a person is the other way, is always grateful to God for the small mercies and the things that do go right, I think that is a good indication that he or she is on the road to heaven.
That business about being grateful to God always, all the time, is of course leading up to the next fact which calls for our attention; the Preface isn't the same all the year round. At the different seasons of the year we commemorate the different stages by which our Lord Jesus Christ achieved our redemption. And at each of those seasons, we give a fresh twist to the great chant of thankfulness which we call the Preface. At all times and in all places we ought to be giving you thanks, Almighty God, but it does so happen that this particular time-Christmas or Easter or Pentecost, or whatever it may be-is one at which the gratitude we feel ought to be something quite exceptional, something quite out of the common. This was the time when you became a little Baby at Bethlehem; how grateful we ought to be! This was the time when you conquered death for us; how grateful we ought to be! This was the time when you sent the Holy Spirit to cheer us up on our lonely march through the world without you; how grateful we ought to be! Grateful always, of course, but more grateful than ever just now.
Why those Prefaces are so good, I don't quite know. They are not frightfully good or frightfully dear Latin, but they manage to get in a lot, somehow, in a small space. At Christmas, we have to be specially grateful, because a new light has flashed across the world, a lightning-flash in which we saw God made visible, at Bethlehem, and ever since our eyes are home-sick for the things we cannot see. At the Epiphany, we have to be specially grateful, because this sight of God made mortal is a kind of beacon star which heralds the dawn of our own immortality. In Passion-tide, we have to be specially grateful, because, on Calvary, Jesus Christ beat Satan with his own weapons; found him wielding, like a dub, the tree of Paradise which was the cause of Adam's undoing, and knocked him out with another tree, the Tree of the Cross. In Easter-tide, we have to be specially grateful, at this season when Christ himself is offered for us as our paschal Lamb, who by his blood shed for us has destroyed the sentence of death passed against us. At the Ascension, we have to be specially grateful, because, after rising again, he ascended visibly into Heaven, so that the reunion of his Manhood with the eternal Being of God might make us all divine. At Pentecost, we have to be specially grateful, because now that he sits at God's right hand, he has sent the Holy Spirit on us, his adopted children, and made the whole world thrill with that gracious influence. Strange, primitive phrases, not in the least the well-worn language of our theological copybooks; they take us back to a time when-dare we say it? theology was somehow richer because it wasn't all so terribly precise.
Even Lent has a Preface of its own, although we don't ordinarily think of Lent as something we ought to be grateful for; we always connect it with not eating sweets or something of that kind. But even in Lent we ought to be specially grateful for this opportunity of chastening our bodies, and so lending wings to our souls; of obtaining, through the observance of it, fresh strength for our struggle on earth, fresh joys of retrospect in Heaven, when it is all over. It's almost a pity, I think, that for so large a part of the year we just have to be content with two Prefaces; a common or garden Preface for week-days, and a longer one on Sundays in honour of the Blessed Trinity. There used, I fancy, to be a lot more variety. I have used a Dominican missal before now in a Dominican Church, and my impression was that in their rite-which, as I told you, has more of the Middle Ages surviving in it than ours-they had a fresh Preface for nearly every day.
After those variations, the Preface always comes round to the same point; it always invites us to think about the blessed choirs of Angels round God's throne, and to unite our praise with theirs. I like to think of it, as I told you once before, as a sort of gradual upward progress first through one rank, then through another, of celestial beings, till at last we reach the throne itself. When you are going home for the holidays, I bet some of you look out of the carriage windows and read the names of the stations to see how near you are getting to London: " Burnham, Bucks-good, we're nearly at Slough; West Drayton and Yiewsley, that's the stuff; look, there's the Underground beginning, that means Ealing Broadway; here's Han well, that's the asylum, over on the right "- and then the delicious slowing-down into the platform at Paddington. Well, it's like that, or ought to be, when we say the Preface. Here are the Angels, but we must get beyond the Angels; here are the Dominations, but we want to get to the real Ruler of the world; here are the Authorities, but we must get to the source of all authority; here are the Powers of Heaven, but we want something stronger still; here are the Seraphim, so happy in their love, but their love is only a faint glow compared with that Divine Furnace of love which kindles them. Yes, we are glad to see them, and wave to them all, but we can't stop; we want to get right into the middle of things, right up to God's throne. Their cries of adoration ring louder and louder as we go; and we join in as best we can with our ridiculous little squeaky trebles-they won't mind, and God won't mind. Supplici confessione dicentes-and then, like the engine suddenly shutting off steam just beyond Royal Oak, the priest bends down and drops his voice to a low murmur: Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth.
If you are musical, and compose Masses when you grow up, don't encourage the choir to make the Sanctus into a great hullabaloo, as some of them do; it's all wrong. There's nothing more splendid in the Mass than that bowing of the head, that dropping of the voice, when the priest gets to this point. It's like walking in a terrible blustering wind and then suddenly turning a corner and finding yourself under the lee of some great rock, in absolute stillness. The whole dance of the Mass depends, just here, on getting that effect of sudden calm, sudden dying-away of noise. The priest has been standing bolt upright, arms extended, talking in a loud voice as if he was shouting How-d'ye-do's to all the ranks of the celestial hierarchy as he shoots past them; and then quite suddenly the movement is reversed. He bends down, he talks in a murmur. Why? Thinking of his sins? No, not this time. In humility? No, not in humility this time. Not even out of reverence, quite. He bends down, now that he has reached the very door of the heavenly temple, and takes one look through the keyhole. And he says " SSSH! I've seen it! The glory of God, that fills earth and Heaven, shining in front of me. Take off your shoes, and let's go in very quietly, on tiptoe, quite close. Don't pay any more attention to those Angels and Dominations and people; come up here and take a look. There, do you see? Take off your shoes, all of you, and let's go in very quietly, on tip-toe."
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