From the comments received about Fr. Carl Kabat's anniversary celebration, I can only express my surprise that the 'gold chalice and silk robe' crowd bothers to visit this blog.
I understand how those who believe Jesus wore fine robes and used gold dishes at the last supper must be appalled.
Some of us see it a little differently.
Which gathering would Jesus choose?
He could come to a backyard picnic in a bad neighbourhood with a ragtag bunch who gathered (some from several hundred miles) only because they love Him and each other...
Alternatively He could attend a rigidly programmed ceremony in a grand building in a fine part of town. Gold dishes and silk robes aplenty! Lots of well dressed people will be there, because some relatively modern rule book demands come or else. Alternatively, a loving God offers Hell for eternity.
3 comments:
See, I think the thing you're missing here is that He would attend both (not commenting, of course, on your woeful misrepresentation of the traditional Mass) because He is faithful to his promise.
If the proper words are used, with the proper intention, He is there. And that is the whole point of my criticism. He deserves the best we have to offer Him. He deserves to be loved and obeyed. Both at the same time. Not one or the other.
He is God, after all. So why, if you love Him, would you not follow the rubrics His own Church sets out to worship Him? I know you are not trying to insult Him, but when you ignore His Church and worship Him only on your terms, not His, that is what you do. Can you not see that?
LCR,
I don't think you have grasped my concern about your "Potluck Mass".
First of all, exercise a little bit of your famous "love and charity". Do you really think I am so thick as to think "that carpenter" wore gold and silk?
I do not. I simply think He was a Jew and that the Last Supper was a Passover meal which is of course full of rules and texts and small observances.
Just like a Mass.
My complaint is that not this Mass depicted in your photo, (I was not present), but many of these similar "pot luck masses" obscure the complete nature of Christ's sacrifice by setting common food next to the spiritual (and bodily) meat of Christ's body. They also add a casualness that belies a misunderstanding of the sacrament.
I don't see how the paschal sacrifice of the altar can be but obscured by the "Pot Luck" practice.
Having said that I believe the Novus Ordo can be said "al fresco" with reverence and obserevance of the norms. ANd a mighty meal may well follow. Just get those rubes to take their hats off would you. And you might want to clean the table which is supposed to represent a sacrificial altar, not a "steam table".
I don't know what you guys did there or how you did it. Maybe all your friends are such sturdy saints that the can make up their own rules. I'll grant you that.
But I am not and most of us in the Catholic world need our little rules. Sorry.
Understand, my complaint is less about that Mass but similar outdoor Masses which often degenerate into something less than they should and fail to make the proper symbolic statement about Christ's sacrifice which the rubrics are intended to provide.
None of that by the way requires gold and silk. It just requires reverence and common sense.
Do you have to belong to "the gold and silk crowd" to notice that open food draws flies and may detract from the meaning of the Mass' sacrifice?
By the way, I'm in that neighborhood, or one close to it, working with the poor more often than you would think.
Look, the difference between your view and mine is that I don't presume to know where Jesus would go to find friends. You seem to know this with dogmatic conviction.
I think he goes everywhere. You've restricted him to your favorite zip codes, or wherever your friends hang out.
"Lots of well dressed people will be there, because some relatively modern rule book demands come or else."
...and many large families with children who are retarded and/or have downs syndrome or cerebral palsy because our marriages are open so therefore every kind of soul in the world is there at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass...no, not in the "hip" urban areas or your sepulchre-whited Novus Ordo Churches where EVERYONE pays their indulgences for the Priest not to mention the mortal sin of contraception whether artificial or the NFP...which is also an articficial contraceptive mindset if not for grave reasons!
A BRIT
IN
BANGLADESH
And the Word was made Flesh
But does that really mesh
With authentic faith and dialogue today?
‘Cause at Eucharistic meal
Which is no big bloody deal
We smile and our mistakes are washed away.
We gather round the table
To hear a gospel fable
From Father Bob the celebrant divine.
Never kneels he always stands
But he runs to shake your hands
Then he sits a lot perhaps a weakened spine.
The ladies and the girls
Their ministry unfurls
A Eucharistic minister’s sensation.
With servers and the cantor
They have a playful banter
Then bread and wine it’s time for celebration.
As the people we all sing
But the bells they never ring
For they took away the Words that made His Flesh…
For a Corpus? That’s too rough
There’s no need for violent stuff
That’s as welcomed as a Brit in Bangladesh!
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