LENT REFLECTIONS
It was time for Holy Mass in a Mumbai church
on a Sunday evening. The parish priest came to the altar but he was disturbed
to see the empty chairs and benches in the front. For, the vast majority of
people were sitting in the last rows of the spacious church a la waiting to
watch a film in a cinema hall.
The priest was angry. "This is not a
drama or a film... please come forward," he lashed out. But the people
were nonchalant and unmoved and continued sitting in the back rows, staring at
the priest. He gave up his efforts and started the Mass.
If you
go down to Kerala, southern part of India, you can see people sitting
under coconut trees in the church compound when the Holy Mass is celebrated
inside the church. The crowd outside the church increases during the Holy Week.
Have they really joined the Holy Mass celebration? No. They forget that Eucharist
is theophany.
It’s not that people are ignoramus about the enigma
of Holy Mass. More than that, they are unappreciative and uncaring men and
women who belittle the value of what is offered to them.
Another section of people attend Mass looking
at his or her watch, as if they were at some performance, counting the minutes.
They prefer shortest Holy Mass where homily is bare minimum and the priest
really speeds up. But remember that one goes to participate in the mystery of
God. This is not a tourist excursion or drama. People gather to enter into the
mystery. And this is the liturgy.
Another common behaviour among Christians:
“How many times do we count the minutes... ‘I only have a half an hour, I have
to go to Mass...’”. This is not the right attitude that the liturgy asks of us:
the liturgy is God’s time and space, and we must put ourselves there in God’s
time, in God’s space, without looking at our watches. The liturgy is precisely
entering into the mystery of God; bringing ourselves to the mystery and being
present in the mystery," Pope Francis said about Holy Mass last week.
God's Word is recounted in the Gospels and in
the Bible; he speaks through catechesis, through homilies. "He not only
speaks to us but he makes himself present in the midst of his people, in the
midst of his Church. The Lord’s presence is there. The Lord draws close to his
people; he is present with his people and shares his time with them,” Pope
said. This is what is taking place during this liturgical celebration, which is
certainly “not a social affair” nor a gathering for the faithful to pray together.
It is something else, because “in the Eucharistic liturgy God is present” and,
if possible, he makes himself present in “the closest way”.
His presence, the Pope said, “is a real
presence”. “When I speak of liturgy I am mainly referring to the Holy Mass.
When we celebrate the Mass, we are not representing the Last Supper. The Mass
is not a representation; it is something else. It truly is the Last Supper; it
is truly living again the redemptive passion and death of Our Lord. It is a
visible manifestation: the Lord makes himself present on the altar to be
offered to the Father for the salvation of the world.”
It's very to common to hear faithful saying:
“We hear and we say, ‘I cannot now, I have to go to Mass, I have to go to
listen to Mass’. But you do not listen to Mass, you participate in it. And you
are participating in a visible manifestation, in the mystery of the Lord’s
presence among us.” It is something that is different from all other forms of
our devotion. For example, the living nativity scenes that are organized by
parishes at Christmas time or the Way of the Cross that we do during Holy Week.
These are representations. The Eucharist is “a real commemoration, a theophany.
God draws near and is with us as we participate in the mystery of redemption,”
the pontiff says.
And this is God’s time, God’s space, and the
cloud of God that surrounds all of us.
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