Tag: tradition

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How the Rosary Led Me to Christ

rosary-1024x632As a young child I was very close to God. I spoke to Him in a very natural way and He spoke plainly to me. Although I have very few memories of my early childhood, I vividly remember how close I was to God. When early puberty approached, though, I began to slip away, drifting into the rebellious and angry years of my teens. As the flesh came more alive, my spirit submerged.

The culture of the time didn’t help, either. It was the late 1960s and early 1970s and rebelliousness and the flesh were celebrated as “virtues.” Somehow we thought ourselves more mature than our pathetic forebears, who were hopelessly “repressed.” There was the attitude among the young that we had come of age somehow. We collectively deluded ourselves, aided by the messages of rock music and the haze of drug use, that we were somehow “better.”

So it was the winter of my soul. The vivid faith of my childhood gave way to a kind of indifferent agnosticism. Though I never formally left Church (my mother would never had permitted that as long as I lived in under my parents’ roof), I no longer heard God or spoke to Him. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that when I was in high school I joined the youth choir of my parish church. This was not precipitated by a religious passion, but rather by a passion of another kind: there were pretty girls in the choir and I “sought their company,” shall we say. But God has a way of using beauty to draw us to the truth. Week after week, year after year, as we sang those old religious classics a buried faith began to awaken within me.

But what to do? How to pray? I heard that I was supposed to pray. But how? As a child it had been natural to talk with God. But now He seemed distant, aloof, and likely angry with me. And I’ll admit it, prayer seemed a little “goofy” to me, a high school senior still struggling to be “cool” in his own eyes and in the eyes of his friends. Not only that, but prayer was “boring.” It seemed an unfocused, unstructured, and “goofy” thing.

But I knew someone who did pray. My paternal grandmother, “Nana,” was a real prayer warrior. Every day she took out her beads and sat by the window to pray. I had seen my mother pray now and again, but she was more private about it. But Nana, who lived with us off and on in her last years, knew how to pray and you could see it every day.

Rosary Redivivus – In my parish church of the 1970s, the rosary was non-existent. Devotions and adoration were on the outs during that sterile time. Even the Crucifix was gone. But Nana had that “old-time religion” and I learned to appreciate it through her.

Ad Jesum per Mariam – There are some, non-Catholics especially, who think that talking of Mary or focusing on her in any way takes away from Christ. It is as though they consider it a zero-sum game, in which our hearts cannot love both Mary and Jesus. But my own experience was that Mary led me to Christ. I had struggled to know and worship Christ, but somehow a mother’s love felt more natural, safer, and more accessible to me. So I began there, where I could. Simply pole-vaulting right into a mature faith from where I was did not seem possible. So I began, as a little child again, holding my Mother’s hand. And gently, Mother Mary led me to Christ, her son. Through the rosary, that “Gospel on a string,” I became reacquainted with the basic gospel story.

The thing about Marian devotion is that it opens up a whole world. For with this devotion comes an open door into so many of the other traditions and devotions of the Church: Eucharistic adoration, litanies, traditional Marian hymns, lighting candles, modesty, pious demeanor, and so forth. So as Mary led me, she also reconnected me to many things that I only vaguely remembered. The suburban Catholicism of the 1970s had all but cast these things aside, and I had lost them as well. Now in my late teens, I was going up into the Church “attic” and bringing things down. Thus, little by little, Mother Mary was helping me to put things back in place. I remember my own mother being pleased to discover that I had taken some old religious statues, stashed away in a drawer in my room, and placed them out on my dresser once again. I also took down the crazy rock-and-roll posters, one by one, and replaced them with traditional art, including a picture of Mary.

Over time, praying the Rosary and talking to Mary began to feel natural. And, sure enough, little by little, I began to speak with God. It was when I was in the middle of college that I began to sense the call to the priesthood. I had become the choir director by that time and took a new job in a city parish: you guessed it, “St. Mary’s.” There, the sterility of suburban Catholicism had never taken hold. The candles burned brightly at the side altars. The beautiful windows, marble altars, statues, and traditional novenas were all on display in Mother Mary’s parish. The rest is history. Mary cemented the deal between me and her Son, Jesus. I became His priest and now I can’t stop talking about Him! He is my hero, my savior and Lord. And praying again to God has become more natural and more deeply spiritual for me.

It all began one day when I took Mary’s hand and let her lead me to Christ. And hasn’t that always been her role? She, by God’s grace, brought Christ to us, showed Him to us at Bethlehem, presented Him in the Temple, and ushered in His first miracle (even despite His reluctance). She said to the stewards that day at Cana, and to us now, “Do whatever he tells you.” The Gospel of John says, Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs in Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him (John 2:11). And so Mary’s intercession strengthened the faith of others in her Son. That has always been her role: to take us by the hand and lead us to Christ. Her rosary has been called the “Gospel on a string” because she bids us to reflect on the central mysteries of the Scripture as we pray.

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Without Our Traditions, Our Life Would be as Shaky as a Fiddler on the Roof!

"PikiWiki Israel 17388 Fiddler on the Roof in Netanya" by צילום:ד"ר אבישי טייכר. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.
“PikiWiki Israel 17388 Fiddler on the Roof in Netanya” by צילום:ד”ר אבישי טייכר. Licensed under
CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

When I was a young man, a teenager really, I did the usual crazy stuff of the early ’70s: had long hair, wore bell bottoms, wide ties, and crazy plaids, kept at least the top three buttons of my shirt open, and, of course, listened to rock-n-roll.

But through it all I had this love for older things. I think it had something to do with my grandmother, Nana, whom I loved with great affection. Often she lamented the loss of the old things and the old ways. She missed the Latin Mass; she missed when manners were better, when people remembered how to dress well, when things were more certain, when (as Archie and Edith sang at the beginning of All in the Family) “girls were girls and men were men.” She also missed when things were built to last and plastic was all but unknown.

Somehow her love for older things and older ways took hold in me, even as I indulged in the trappings of the silly seventies. My parents’ generation (born in the late ’20s and ’30s) and even more so the generation born after the War were somewhat iconoclastic generations. The motto seemed to be “Out with the old and in with the new … new and improved.”

I remember my mother often wanting to get rid of some old thing. I frequently volunteered to remove it and would then proceed to hide it in the attic instead. Old silver, Tiffany lamps, statues, and trunks began to fill our attic. In addition, I loved old buildings and hated the glass boxes that were being built in the ’70s. I remembered the old churches of my childhood in Chicago that “looked like churches” and lamented the “ugly modern church” of my ’70s suburb. And even though I liked rock music, I couldn’t stand the “hippie music” of the ’60s that predominated in the ’70s parishes: “Kumbaya,” “Sons of God”. Such dreadful lyrics, distributed to the congregation on mimeographed sheets: “… Gather around the table of the Lord. Eat his Body! Drink his blood! And we’ll sing a song of love, Allelu, Allelu, Allelu, Allelu-i-a!”

My grandmother often told me how much she missed the beautiful old songs, the incense, the veils, the priests in cassocks, and so many other things. Somehow she had my ear. I was sympathetic, hiding antiques cast aside from both my parents’ home and from the Church, too. I looked for the day when sanity would return and such cast-offs would once again be valued.

And that day has largely come. Much of the iconoclasm of the ’50s through the mid-’80s has given way and many older things are once again appreciated. As I brought some things down out of the attic in the early ’90s, my mother, strangely, appreciated them again. Other family members took some of the silver, etc. My Chalice was actually an old cast-off that I had restored. Statues have begun to return to churches; some of the old hymns have returned and the Latin Mass, once relegated to the cellar, has been dusted off and is now appreciated again by many, mostly younger, Catholics. I have also had the good fortune of being able to help restore two old churches to their former glory and to undo some of the iconoclasm from which they suffered. I even wear my cassock quite often.

For the record, I do not mind some of the more modern churches; some of them have a handsome simplicity. But nothing irks me more than to see a beautiful older church “renovated” to look like 1985, all whitewashed and stripped bare. Thankfully, I think that terrible era is largely ending.

But we have been through a time of it in the Church to be sure. Perhaps some things had to go “into the attic” for a time in order that they could be taken down again and appreciated anew. But whatever the reasons for the iconoclasm, especially of the 1960s, I sense we are now recovering a balance, a balance that does not reject the new but still appreciates the old, a balance that nods to a hermeneutic of continuity (of which the Pope speaks) rather than a rupture and radical discontinuity with the past, a balance of which Jesus says, Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old (Matt 13:52).

Many look back and wonder at the great rupture and cultural tsunami we have endured in the West. We wonder how and why. There are, of course, countless reasons, but I would like to single out just one: forgetfulness.

Traditions are established and endure for a reason. Fundamentally, they simplify life by giving structure, boundaries, and expectations. People know more easily how to navigate in the realm of tradition. But one sign that a tradition is in danger is when people come to forget its purpose, when people forget where it came from or why it is observed, when people forget what it means or symbolizes.

I wonder what would happen if I were to get into a time machine and go back to 1940 in this parish and ask people some questions: Why do women wear hats and veils while men do not cover their heads? Why do we kneel to receive Communion? Why is the Mass in Latin? Why does the priest face toward the altar? Why are all these things done this way? I suspect I would get answers like “I dunno, we just do it that way. Why don’t you ask the priest?”

In other words, I wonder if the first stage of losing a tradition is when it no longer makes conscious sense to people; when it is no longer clear to them why we do what we do; when all they can say about it is “That’s just what we do.”

At some point when we are dealing with traditions, we run the risk that they become wooden and rote, and we start sifting through the ashes of an old fire that has largely gone out. Unless we fan into flames the gifts of God’s love (cf 2 Tim 1:6), our love and appreciation of these things grows cold and their beauty fades. And then when someone asks, “What’s this thing?” we reply, “What, that old thing?” And thus the suggestion to “get rid of it” receives a cursory nod and the response, “Sure, that’s fine; get rid of it.”

But the process begins with forgetfulness. And forgetfulness leads to a lack of understanding, which then gives way to a lack of appreciation. All this culminates in an almost gleeful dismissal of the old things and the now-tarnished traditions that once sustained and framed our lives.

To be sure, some things need to fall away. Perhaps there is a time and place to “lose” things for a while, only to rediscover them later. But what we have experienced in the last 60 years has been more than this sort of natural process. It has been a rupture, a radical discontinuity that has shaken many of our foundations, Church and family especially.

Therefore we do well to “remember” many of our traditions. The word “remember” suggests a process of putting the pieces back together again, a process of collecting some precious things that have been severed from the body and making them once again “members” of the Body, the Church, and of our families. Remembering many of our lost traditions, even as we establish some new ones, is an important way of ensuring continuity with our past heritage and members.

Tradition is the “democracy of the dead” wherein our ancestors get a say in what we do. Tradition is a way to “remember” the Church, to honor the ways and practices of the ancients that my grandmother recalled with fondness and a sense of loss. And it was a loss, but a loss I pray we are beginning to remedy, as we remember the best of the past and recover our traditions.

I thought of all of this as I watched this video from Fiddler on the Roof. This was written at a time when the sweeping changes of the last 60 years were already underway. And this song “Tradition!” while it tips a hat to tradition, ultimately ridicules it by implying that tradition is the kind of thing that essentially keeps men in charge, women down, and forces children into arranged and unhappy marriages.

At a key moment in the song, Tevye is describing the tradition of the prayer shawl and says, “You may ask, ‘How did this tradition get started?’ I’ll tell you.” And then after a pause he says, “I don’t know, but it’s a tradition!” The first sign that a tradition is in trouble is forgetfulness.

But the musical (written in 1964) pretty well captures the iconoclastic attitudes emerging at the time that were cynical of tradition in a general sort of way. Despite that cynicism, Tevye rightly notes what we have come to discover only too well:

“Without our traditions our lives would be as shaky as a Fiddler on the Roof.” 

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CARA Reports on Religious Life Confirm Tradition

On February 2 the National Conference of Catholic Bishops released a report on Religious life. The study was conducted by the very reputable Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA).

The Bishops’ report is interesting and informative for what it says, but also has puzzling omissions in the topics covered, which seem to amount to ignoring the “elephant in the room.”  The “elephant” is the rather obvious fact that religious communities that preserve traditional elements such as the habit, common prayer, communal life, focused apostolates and strong affirmation of Church teaching, are doing well in comparison to orders that do not. Indeed some are doing quite well.

That data regarding the strength of tradition is covered in an earlier 2009 CARA report commissioned by the The National Religious Vocations Conference (NRVC). Strangely the bishop’s report did not seem to want to go near the topic of tradition. Hence I would like to look at some data from both the 2011 report and the 2009.

Let’s start with the 2011 Bishop’s Report. The Full report is HERE. The numbers are from CARA and refer to sisters who made their Solemn Vows in 2010. The comments are just my own.

  1. Scope – 311 Superiors responded to the survey and this represents 63% of Religious Congregations in the USA
  2. Most lay fallow – It is striking that the report indicates that 84% of Religious Communities had no one profess solemn vows in 2010.  13% had one woman profess solemn vows and only 3% had between 2 and 9 women profess solemn vows. While this is only a picture of one year it shows that a large number of communities are in very serious shape.
  3. Missing Data? The report must have excluded some of the more fruitful congregations since I personally know of two communities that had more than 9 women enter.
  4. Diversity – 62% of newly professed sisters are Caucasian, 19% are Asian or Pacific Islander, 10% are Hispanic. This suggests a lot of work needs to be done to reach the Hispanic (Latino) Catholic communities in the US which are very underrepresented in the numbers entering.
  5. Older sisters less diverse – An astonishing 94% of sisters overall are Caucasian but this number is sure to drop a bit as the numbers in point four begin to shift forward in the years ahead.
  6. Converts – 13% of newly professed sister in 2010 were converts.
  7. Big Families Factor – A remarkable 64% came from families of 5 or more children. See pie chart at upper right. This confirms the long held notion that decreased family size is a significant factor in the decline of religious vocations.
  8. School Connections – 51% of new professed sisters attended Catholic elementary school. For decades Catholic Schools had been an engine of vocations for sisters. That seems a wash today and is likely due to the fact that most schools have few if nay Sisters teaching.
  9. Parish connections – 2/3 of the Sisters had participated in parish youth ministry programs and/or young adult ministry or Newman clubs.
  10. Liturgical Connections – 57% had been involved in some sort of liturgical ministry.
  11. Devotional Connection – 74% of the New Sisters had participated in Parish retreats, 65% prayed the rosary frequently, 64% participated regularly in Eucharistic Adoration. 57% had taken part in regular Bible Study programs. Hence parish life and traditional pious factors play and important role as does more more modern forms such as liturgical ministry and Bible Study.
  12. Encouragements – 52% of new sisters report being encourged to enter religious life by another sister,  44% by a friend  39% by a parish priest.
  13. Only 26% say their mother encouraged them on only 16% say their father encouraged them.
  14. Discouragements! – An astonishing 51% say their parents or family members actively discouraged them from entering!  This is quite an awful statistic actually. The very ones who should encourage are off message.

OK a lot of good information. But in the end the report seems to dodge the question as to why 84% of Religious Congregations had no one profess vows. I do not blame CARA for this since they likely received the scope of the survey from their patrons at the USCCB. The question remains though, why do some congregations show success and others not? What are the factors that most influence women to enter certain orders and not others?

Fortunately another CARA study mentioned above was commissioned by NRVC in 2009 and it does explore such questions. The full report is HERE and the findings are these:

  1. Scope – The response rate in this survey was higher, about 80% of Religious in the US had their community respond to the survey. Most of the communities that did not respond were small larelgly contemplative communities.
  2. The Survey includes both men and women.
  3. How many in Formation – Three-fourths of institutes of men (78 percent) and two-thirds of institutes of women (66 percent) have at least one person currently in initial formation (candidate or postulant, novice, or temporary professed). However, almost half of the institutes that have someone in initial formation have no more than one or two. About 20% of the responding institutes currently have more than five people in initial formation.
  4. Aging – Over all religious are an aging population. 75% of Men are over 60 and an astonishing 91% of women are over 60.
  5. More diverse – Compared to men and women religious in the last century, those coming to religious life today are much more diverse in terms of their age, racial and ethnic background, and life experience. 21% are Hispanic/Latino, 14% are Asian/Pacific Islander, and 6% are African/African American. About 58% are Caucasian/white, compared to about 94% of older professed  members. This show a significantly higher percentage of Latinos than the smaller 2010 survey above.
  6. Critical Factors – Younger respondents are more likely than older respondents to say they were attracted to religious life by a desire to be more committed to the Church and to their particular  institute by its fidelity to the Church. Many also report that their decision to enter their  institute was influenced by its practice regarding a religious habit. Significant generational gaps, especially between the Millennial Generation (born in 1982 or later) and the Vatican II Generation (born between 1943 and 1960), are evident throughout the study on questions involving the Church and the habit. Differences between the two generations also extend to questions about community life as well as styles and types of prayer. Ah, so here is the elephant that the 2011 report chose to leave unexplored. The italics in this sixth point are a direct quote from the CARA report and it makes it clear that data confirms what we already know anecdotally. Tradition and the respect for it is an important factor for younger vocations, as is fidelity to the Church.
  7. Generation Gap – Millennial Generation respondents are much more likely than other respondents – especially those from the Vatican II Generation – to say that daily Eucharist,  Liturgy of the Hours, Eucharistic Adoration, and other devotional prayers are “very” important to them. Pay attention Religious orders.
  8. Communal life – When asked about their decision to enter their particular religious institute, new members cite the community life in the institute as the most influential factor in their decision (followed closely by the prayer life or prayer styles in the community). Most new members indicate that they want to live, work, and pray with other members of their religious institute, with the last being especially important to them. Responses to an open-ended question about what most attracted them to their religious institute reinforce the importance new members place on this aspect of religious life. When asked about various living arrangements, most new members prefer to live in a large (eight or more) or medium-sized (four to seven) community and to live only with other members of their institute. Younger respondents express even stronger preferences for living with members of their institute in large community settings. Findings from the survey of religious institutes suggest that that new membership is negatively correlated with the number of members living alone. That is, the higher the number of members who live alone, the less likely an institute is to have new members. Imagine wanting to live in community when you enter religious life. Here too we see that tradition is  confirmed and the loose knit apartment style, dispersed living of many dying congregations is simply being rejected by younger people seeking religious life and to live, work and pray in community
  9. The Habit – The responses to the open-ended question about what attracted them to their religious institute reveal that having a religious habit was an important factor for a significant number of new members.

Thus, the data of this earlier CARA report confirms what most Catholics already know: those who have vocations to religious life have a strong preference for the practices of tradition. A strong and enthusiastic love of Christ and his Church, fidelity to his teachings expressed through the magisterium, the wearing of the religious habit, vigorous common life and common prayer, a focused apostolate, joyful and faithful members of the community, all these are essential in attracting new vocations.  Of course.

Death wish? This has been clear for some time now and why some religious communities do see the obvious and adapt is mystifying to say the least. The clear message of the Holy Spirit who inspires vocations, the clear admonition of Rome which has strongly requested the return to the habit and other reforms, and the obvious preference of the young people who vote with their  feet, is a clarion call. Communities that follow these simple truths are growing, some are growing rapidly.  Communities that refuse to follow these simple truths would appear to have a death wish.

Picture – My own parish convent is occupied by an order that does follow these truths and they are bursting at the seams. They have just out-grown our convent which housed over 25 of them. They have now moved to another larger convent and left four sisters behind here. I have no doubt that our convent will fill again soon for the Servant Sisters of the Lord are a growing order who obey well the Holy Spirit and thus attract many many vocations. Their picture solemn vows is posted above. God is faithful, he is also clear as to what it takes for a religious community to thrive.

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"You Just Put Your Hand in Mary’s and Let Her Lead you to Christ"

As a young very young child I was so close to God. I spoke to him in a very natural way and He too spoke plainly to me. I have very few memories of early childhood but surely one of my most vivid is how close I was to God. But somewhere, as early puberty approached, I slipped away from God, drifting into the rebellious and angry years of my teens. As the flesh came more alive, my spirit submerged.

The culture of the time didn’t help. It was the late 1960s and early 1970s and rebelliousness and the flesh were celebrated as “virtues.” Somehow we thought ourselves as being more mature than our pathetic forbearers who were “repressed.” But at that time there was the attitude around among the young  that we had come of age somehow and we collectively deluded ourselves through the message of rock music and haze of drug use that we were somehow better.

So it was the winter of my soul. The vivid faith of childhood gave way to a kind of indifferent agnosticism. Though I never formally left Church (mother would never had permitted that as long as I lived in under my parents roof!) I no longer heard God or spoke to him. I may have told you that I joined the Church Youth Choir in High School. This was not religious passion but passion of another kind. There were pretty girls in the choir and I sought their company, shall we say. But God has a way of using beauty to draw us to the truth and week after week, year after year as we sang those old religious classics a buried faith began to awaken.

But what to do? How to pray? I heard I was supposed to pray. But how? As a child it was natural to talk with God. But now he seemed distant, aloof, and likely angry with me. And I’ll admit it, prayer seemed a little goofy to high school senior still struggling to be “cool” in the sight of his friends and in his own eyes. Not only that but prayer was “boring.” an unfocused, unstructured and “goofy” thing.

But I knew someone who did pray. My paternal grandmother “Nana” was a real prayer warrior. Everyday she took out her beads and sat by the window to pray. I had seen my mother pray now and again, but she was more private about it. But Nana, who lived with us off and on in her last years just knew how to pray and you could see it every day.

Rosary Redivivus – In my parish church of the 1970s the rosary was non-existent. Devotions and adoration were on the outs in that sterile time. Even the Crucifix was gone. But Nana had that old time religion. So I asked her one day to show me how to pray the rosary. My mother had taught me as a little child but that was over ten years back. Nana gave the technical details but more importantly she gave me the vision. She said, “Holding these beads is like holding Mary’s hand. You just put your hand in hers and let her lead to Christ.” She went on to say, “You’ll be fine.”

Ad Jesum per Mariam – There are those, non-Catholics especially, who think that talking of Mary and focusing on her at all takes away from Christ. It is as though our hearts were a zero-sum game and we could not do both. But my own experience was that, just as my grandmother said, Mary led me to Christ. I had struggled to know and worship Christ but somehow a mother’s love felt natural, safer, more accessible to me. So I began there, where I could. Simply pole-vaulting into a mature faith from where I was did not seem possible. So I began, a little child again, holding my mother’s hand. And gently, Mother Mary led me on to Christ, her son. And through the rosary, that “Gospel on a String,” I became reacquainted with the basic gospel story.

The thing about Marian devotion is that it opens a whole world to you. For with this devotion comes an open door into so many of the other traditions and devotions of the Church: Eucharistic adoration, litanies, traditional marian hymns, lighting candles, modesty, pious demeanor and so forth. So as she led, she also reconnected me to many things I only vaguely remembered. The 1970s suburban Catholicism had all but cast these things aside and I too had lost them. Now in my late teens I was going into the “Church attic” and taking things down. Thus, little by little,  Mother Mary was helping me put things back in place. I remember my own mother being pleased to discover that I had take some old religious statues out of a drawer in my room and placed them again on my dresser. I also took down the crazy rock and roll posters one by one and replaced them with traditional art, to include a picture of Mary.

Praying the Rosary and talking to Mary began to feel natural. And, sure enough, little by little, I began to speak with God. In the middle of College I began to sense the call to the priesthood. I had become choir director by now and took a new job in a city parish at, you guessed it, “St Mary’s Parish.” There the sterility of suburban Catholicism had never taken hold. The candles burned brightly at the side altars. The beautiful windows, marble altars,  statues and the traditional novenas were all on display in Mother Mary’s Parish. The rest is history. Mary cemented the deal between me and her Son, Jesus. I became his priest and can’t stop talking about him. He is my hero, savior and Lord. And praying again to God has become more natural and deeply spiritual for me.

It all began one day when I took Mary’s hand and let her lead me to Christ. And hasn’t that always been her role? She, by God’s grace, brought Christ to us and showed him to us at Bethlehem, presented him in the Temple, ushered in his first miracle even despite his reluctance. Said to the stewards that day and to us now, “Do whatever he tells you.” And on account of that miracle the text says. Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs in Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him  (John 2:11). And so her intercession strengthened the faith of others in her Son. That has always been her role, to take us by the hand and lead us to Christ.

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Liturgy at the End of an Era

Author’s note: I am away this week preaching a retreat for priests in Connecticut. I may post some new material this week but I also thought in my absence to re post some of my older articles that some newer readers may have missed. Here is one I posted back in Sept 2009:

I received my First Holy Communion in 1968 on my knees at the altar rail in our parish church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help  in a suburb North of Chicago called Glenview. I received from a very elderly pastor, Fr. Dussman, whose hands shook from Parkinson’s. It was an awesome and fearsome event. I was more nervous since Father’s hands shook and receiving communion from him could be a challenge, especially for the first time.

I remember well how seriously we took Church in those days. We had special Church clothes (always a coat and tie), special Sunday shoes and approaching the altar rail was something quite wonderful but very formal: hands folded before the chest, fingers straight, right thumb crossed over left. Kneeling and waiting for the priest and altar boy to pass by was a time of anticipation, a kind of distracted prayer, alert and ready, don’t make the priest wait! Suddenly a altar boy slid a Paten under your chin. Head back, tongue out (not too far!) just over the lower lip! The priest spoke in an ancient language (Latin). Only years later did I learn exactly what he said. I am sure the Sisters taught me but I couldn’t remember(I was only 7 going on 8): Corpus Domini Nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam (May the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ guard your soul unto life eternal). And suddenly there he was, Jesus in Holy Communion. Pretty awesome, very special, beyond my comprehension but no doubt this was holy, this was serious and sacred.

But little did I know I was at the end of an era. Within a year strange things began to occur that I did not understand, things that did not comport with my training. I remember my mother telling me that we were going to a special youth mass. I had heard of a school mass, but not a youth Mass. We got there early and I noticed something that confused me. “Mom!” I whispered, (you always whispered in Church in those days), “What are those drums doing there? Right in front of the Mary Altar, behind the rail too, were electric guitars, a drum set and chairs. Then out came these guys I had never seen before, a couple of them were wearing jeans too (a major no-no in the old days). After Church my mother asked me if I liked it. I said no and she was surprised. “But Mom, I don’t know those songs and they were so loud.” I was confused. The sisters said we should dress well, be very quiet in Church so others could pray and only talk or sing when it was time to do that. It all seemed “a violation of my training.” But an era had ended. Something was taking its place. Little by little the familiar gave way to the new. The transition was at times startling, at times exciting.

I do not write this post to “bash” the liturgical changes. Just to document an experience. I have become quite accustomed to the “new” Mass. I am also privileged to say the Traditional Latin Mass. I guess I am blessed to enjoy the best of both worlds. I am proud of the glory of the new Mass as it is celebrated in my parish. We have a wonderful gospel choir which also does classical very well. There is great joy at every Mass. I am also  so happy to be able to celebrate ancient Latin Mass that reminds me of the joy of my youth (qui laetificat juventutem meam).  I merely document here, I leave the judgements to you my faithful readers.

The following video depicts a Mass in the year 1969. It is from an Elvis movie entitled “Change of Habit.”  What an amazing little video for me! It’s just as I remember it as the changes set it. Notice the still strong presence of traditions: people all dressed up for Church, nuns in traditional habits, the priest at the high altar facing east. But notice too the guitars and “informality”  of the musicians. The music is up front not back in the choir loft. And many struggle to understand the new lay of the land. It was 1969. It was the end of an era.

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Assumption of Mary into Heaven

To be “assumed” means to be taken up by God bodily into heaven. It happened to Enoch in the Old Testament (Gen. 5:24) and it also happened to Elijah (2 Kings 2:11 ). Some say Moses too was taken up since his grave is not known but the text is not clear as to that fact (cf Dt. 34:6).

Church Tradition and teaching going back as far as we can remember hold that Mary too, at her death was taken up, body and soul, into heaven. There is no earthly tomb containing her body, neither are there relics of her body to be found among the Christian faithful.  She like Enoch and Elijah was taken up bodily to heaven.

It this recorded in Scripture? Yes and no. No the historical event of Mary’s assumption is not recorded. But the Bible does indicate her place in heaven. In Rev. 11 John records his sighting of the Ark of God!

Rev 11:19Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm.

John then goes on to describe the Ark as he sees it and he describes the Ark as none other than Mary for this woman gives birth to a Son who is none other than Jesus:

A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads… The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. (Rev 12:1-5)

The Woman is clearly Mary since the child is clearly Jesus. And where is Mary seen? In heaven. Hence Scripture confirms what is taught by the solemn Tradition of the Church that Mary, whose body is the Ark of the New Covenant is in heaven. Mary has been taken up to heaven.

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Well?

This video is a little hokey, in a kind of charming way. But it gets some of the truths out about really old time religion! Enjoy this rather quirky little remake of an old classic.  😉