Tokein on the Mass

I find this both at once immediately attractive and one of the most difficult things in the world to do.

J. R. R. Tolkien said:

I can recommend this as an exercise: make your Communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children -- from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn -- open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same as a Mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. (It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand -- after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come.) - in a letter to Michael Tolkien - November 1, 1963

Comments

[Fred]

Splendid advice! thanks . . .

[tony c]

Aw...just when I was ready to switch parishes. Thanks.

[ben]

For those of us with children, there is their religious education and inculturation into Catholic devotional life to consider.

We have a duty to seek out good liturgy for the sake of our little ones.

[tony c]

Ben's got a point. But I think that quote is speaking to whiners like me who want some fantasy parish w/ perfect liturgy and often fail to see Christ in my neighbor.

Though, if I had kids, I would keep them away from any parish w/ a "children's Mass" where they dumb the liturgy down into Barney-ville.

Looking back, I'm so grateful I grew up w/ extremely pious priests and nuns (in the 70's, can you believe it?) who let me know I was in God's house, not I-HOP.

[Stephen]

I think both are right. I think that parents do have a duty to teach their children what is a good liturgy, which is evident by the fact that Tolkein writing to his son is assuming he recognizes a bad liturgy when he sees one.

At the same time it is imperative for parents to teach their children that, because Christ is present and because the Church, his Bride is human and mystically spotless, every liturgy, despite its accidents is substantively the same beautiful event.