Tradition and Charity: The Face of Renewal

For some time now my family and I have been attending Mass in the Extraordinary Form – also known as the Tridentine Mass or the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) – in the city near us. This is at a parish different than the one where we are registered. Our home parish is for the most part very reverent and liturgically minded. The church itself is over 200 years old and still has an altar rail (though it isn’t used), pews facing the altar, and patens at Communion. So, it’s not like we were fleeing a heterodox Mass rife with liturgical abuses.

Rules and rituals

I often wonder what it was that led us to the TLM. Now that we are considering making the switch to be fully registered at this new parish, it seems strange that I don’t have a water-tight answer. I grew up attending the Divine Liturgy in the Ukrainian Rite with my dad occasionally, so traditional liturgy is more familiar than it is exotic or new.

Actually, I was never really attracted to it in the first place, as I felt (at least in the Byzantine liturgy) that it was all about the externals – the incense, the chanting, the constant bowing and crossing. When people speak about the TLM being “heaven on earth”, these kinds of things are attractions, not deterrents. I can appreciate beauty and formality, of course; but the “beauty will save the world” argument is not what drew me.

In a way, traditional Catholicism has more in common liturgically with “deed over creed” Judaism than it does with contemporary Protestant Christianity. As A.J. Jacobs writes in his book, The Year of Living Biblically:

There’s an emphasis on behavior; follow the rules of the Torah, and eventually you’ll come to believe. But evangelical Christianity says you must first believe in Jesus, then the good works will naturally follow. Charity and kindness alone cannot save you. You must, as the saying goes, be “justified by faith.”

Of course whether you attend the TLM or the Novus Ordo (I still have trouble writing that without it feeling pejorative), we are one in our faith, which theologically is still consistent with the rest of Christianity in being “creed over deed.” But liturgically speaking, it is apparent in attending the Latin Mass that the rituals, the words, the language, even the orientation of the worship, matters. Right worship leads to right belief, or so I’m told.

A paradigm shift

I’m starting to see there might be something to this. What is so radically different about the TLM is that it does not take my feelings, my understanding, or my participation into account. It took a little while for me to realize what is actually happening, but one almost needs to go through a paradigm shift in liturgical sensibility to appreciate it.

We are not “sharing in a communal meal” as is sometimes the conceptualization in the Novus Ordo Mass. Rather, we are witnessing the priest offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Even as I write, I recognize how new I am to this way of thinking, given how unsure I am in getting the terminology (and by extension, the theology) correct. And I have been Catholic for over twenty years!

But there is something to this, obviously. Dr. Peter Kwasniewski writes in his article, “Why I Love the Extraordinary Form of the Mass”:

This is the challenge that the traditional Roman liturgy makes to us again and again, in its prayers, its ceremonies, its calendar, and its ethos. It is not accommodated to our worldly compromises… It proclaims unequivocally the primacy of things heavenly and spiritual. It is the luminous expression of an ageless tradition of worship, as carried out by men and women who made this worship their primary work in life. As such, it does the opposite of pandering to us moderns; it confronts us with our need for radical conversion. The old Missal is the unwavering, undying repository of the radical message of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God. Are we ready to hear this Gospel and take up the Cross?

There’s more. “Distrust of self,” writes Dom Lorenzo Scupoli in The Spiritual Combat,

is so absolutely requisite in the spiritual combat, that without this virtue we cannot expect to defeat our weakest passions, much less gain a complete victory. This important truth should be deeply imbedded in our hearts; for, although in ourselves we are nothing, we are too apt to overestimate our own abilities and to conclude falsely that we are of some importance.

When reading Scupoli’s book years ago, I remember making a mental note of the order of the four weapons necessary for the fight (distrust of one’s self; confidence in God; proper use of the faculties of body and mind; and the duty of prayer). Why did he list “distrust of self” first? Did he feel it necessary to lay the groundwork of human weakness before extolling the virtue of confidence in God? Did it matter?

Liturgy and the commandments

Additionally, we see another example of this ordering when it comes to the Commandments in Matthew 22. When an expert in the law asks him, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Mt 22:36-39)

The Lord tells the expert in the law that all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments, while acknowledging that “the first and greatest” commandment is to love the Lord God with all one’s heart, soul, and mind. When speaking of the necessary temporal goods that we fret over so much – food, shelter, clothing – our Lord reasserts the proper order of things: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Mt 6:33).

Radical witness

In my experience, that radical witness of God first as expressed in the traditional liturgy sets the tone for everything else. This is what can be intimidating about the community – the seriousness and “set-apartness” of everything.

You would be forgiven for thinking you had wandered into a kind of Catholic Hutterite country if you didn’t know better. At the very first Latin Mass we attended, I could not get over my self-consciousness. Our kids were behaving badly that particular day, while virtually all of the other kids were not.

You could almost hear a pin drop; there was no idle chitchat but, instead, a reverent attitude. The women’s veils were a curiosity I had heard about, though not all women were wearing them, so it didn’t seem like you would be kicked out for not wearing one. But it is that very seriousness and intentionality that, I think, is part of the attraction. Generally speaking, there are no casual Catholics at a Latin Mass. From what I gathered, most have significant buy-in and commitment and have usually made sacrifices to be there. Some have suffered for it as well.

The power of an invitation

So what did get us there in the first place, and why have we continued to attend the TLM to the point of considering making it our permanent parish? I’d say it all started with…an invitation. We had friends of friends, very warm and hospitable people, who attended and who extended an invitation for us to “come and see.” We took them up on their offer.

The first TLM we attended happened to be on a Sunday when they offered hospitality afterwards – coffee, donuts and pastries, and a chance to mingle. There were lots of kids running around, young families, and older folks. As Catholics, we tend to say, “It’s not about the fellowship, that’s for Protestants,” yet, having a community to be a part of is important for some people, and I think we may fall into that camp. The community is small, but everyone seems to know one another and everyone is friendly. The pastor himself is a deeply humble and holy man, and he made time to get to know us as well.

I think there is a tendency, in the age of identity politics, to delineate into false dichotomies. Those less traditionally minded – as seen in liberal churches, Catholic or Protestant – may compensate by being more active in parish activities, service, and social justice initiatives, while traditionalists are all about the Mass and not as concerned with those other things.

I consider myself and my family more as guests in someone’s house at this point when it comes to the Latin Mass community, so I don’t feel like I have any right to make such judgments about a community that is not yet our own.

Faith and charity

But I will say one of the most important things, one of the primary motivators besides an integrity in worship and learning to subject my ego to Almighty God, is that we pass on the faith to our children, and I feel that the TLM community is the best place in which to do this. Our son has already expressed an interest in being a server, and the fact that there is no formal training or manual but that the other boys (and boys only) learn simply by observations and teaching each other with help from the priest is impressive. They serve with military precision, which appeals to male sensibilities, I think.

I think traditionalism combined with charity has the potential to be an unstoppable force for renewal. On the point of charity, it wasn’t until listening to a conference of Fr. Chad Ripperger that I realized that the “love” in 1 Corinthians 13 is more accurately translated as charity.

I considered that generous invitation (from a friend of a friend) to attend a Latin Mass as an act of charity. I had until then considered the Latin Mass community to be more or less insular and an island by choice, not open to outsiders. All it took was an invitation to get us there, a kind of gentle and innocuous evangelization in its ordinariness. Coffee and donuts as a way of connecting with other families and homeschoolers once a month was an added bonus.

Openness to grace

Coming from a more left-leaning Catholicism in my early years as a Catholic, serving the poor was an important part of my spiritual practice and faith, one that I have no intention of abandoning. I also do not want to fall into the trap of denigrating or comparing Masses or the people that attend them. Although we have made the decision to attend the Latin Mass when we are able (which is most Sundays) because we feel this is where God is leading us as a family, I still attend the Novus Ordo for daily Mass and have no qualms about it (unless there are serious liturgical abuses).

I’m a “both/and” rather than an “either/or” guy at heart, and this applies as much liturgically as it does to charity, service to the poor, evangelization, practicing the Works of Mercy, and loving people.

When it comes to loving, we love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). The greatest commandment, the “Big Stone First”, is to love the Lord God with everything we have. And yet we also see in 1 John that

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also (1 John 4:20-21).

Love of God together with love of neighbor – in other words, true charity.