04 April 2020

A Fifth of Containment Considerations

Though there be "nothing new under the sun," we just keep on feigning innovation. Take this blog. Please!

"With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well, so dearly beloved had you become to us" (1 Thess 2:8); or this blog's byline from the Sufferer:  "Would that my words were written down" (Job 19:23).

Whether these candid admissions are prescriptive or descriptive elements of Scripture, they reveal the desire to reveal that God has installed in the heart of every person by dint of his or her unique creation in His Image, which is Heaven-bent on Self-Disclosure.

Another snippet of personal revelation occurs to me, from None Other than Our Lord Himself. How much of an eisegetical stretch is it to hear a tinge of sadness* in His Sacred Voice (≠ disappointment, as if He didn't expect it) when people backed away from Him at the mountain of John 6:

Numquid et vos vultis abire? Certainly you also don't want to go away?

A brief review of Latin interrogative conjunctions suggests the expected answer to numquid? (elision of nunc quid--"now what?") is negative. "No, Lord, we don't want to leave"--whence Simon Peter's confession:

Domine, ad quem ibimus? Lord, to whom shall we go?

We can't readily dismiss Peter's prophetic pence as pietistic. "We have, not even as a matter of choice, nowhere else to go for what You are and have and give." The words of eternal life, the real-food Flesh and real-drink Blood--it's a Jesus of Nazareth Exclusive, the only Public House in town.

Wherefore the denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance that, vapor-like, haunts the airwaves as Holy Week approaches without the offering of public Liturgy. The stage (or better, dimension) I read of most, because the Online is nothing if not a vent, is anger:

This is unacceptable, criminal, cowardly...exhibitionist!

I know that Mind-Reader isn't one of the minor orders en route to ordination. I'm reading exhibitionism into the sentiments expressed passim. 'Splain yourself, Lucy--so that your name, which means "light," might make things plain. Such is always my Desire. And I have a Ball with it.
While we're out here suffering without the Rations we need (not "deserve," we daren't say that), you're showing off your 24/7 Eucharistic access with your sloppy Novus Ordo Masses and homiletic cliches to beat the band--and that's just what they do: beat this band of banned Catholics into a condition unrecognizable.
Dramatic much? I have a history of it.

Sed contra:

By Christ's own Do-This, His Holy Sacrifice--Passover Renewed--is to be offered as the clearest expression of His ongoing Presence "until the end of the age" (Mt 28:20), for it encapsulates the Redeemer's Priestly, Prophetic, and Kingly service to a †.

Whether all the world gather for a Mass in one space or the priest alone celebrate it, everyone is present to Christ, Who is here-and-now submitting everyone to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. He re-presents that one, total, faithful, permanent, exclusive, and fruitful offering each time.

Far from dismissing the directive to "go (Ite), make disciples of all the nations," this truth reinforces  evangelical efforts. It commands everyone to live the Gospel as loudly as your volume goes. 11: looks like two towers, two swords, two books (Covenants Old and New) not meant for a shelf.

The more I read reports (whatever for?) the more I suspect COVID-19 will re-surface in waves, and not disappear in such a way that justifies the wholesale return to civilization--certainly not to Western Civilization and its consumerism of things and persons.

Said civilization's economy won't countenance further isolation before long, and maybe another Great Depression? Did such not eventually follow the Spanish flu epidemic? Our stock-markety Internet-gasoline-driven age will hasten the days.

Saint Augustine famously said every age considers its times unprecedentedly and unrepeatably evil (physical and moral). I must find the reference, as I advert to it often, but the cursory Googling mentions, self-helpily (and what else is Google?), that we are, or make, the times we live in.

The only problem is, there's too many to "we." We're not all alike, so it's hard to construe our condition confidently and concertedly. Sorry, the coffee has commandeered my consciousness.

While I'm at it, then, I will share a tidbit of the elder Father Z of the Internet, whose stalwart blog "What Does the Prayer Really Say" has gone on to say more than the prayers, if it ever so constricted itself.

This episode seized me because its title resonated with the direction I thought he'd be going, and sure enough, he lambasts the new formulary "in time of pandemic" for having said too much, [but not having] said enough. Not his words, though not mine either: it's the only R.E.M. song I ever think of.

Be thou warned: you'd better go to the bathroom before clicking.

In its 10-year-old attempts to tighten up the verbiage of the Ordinary Form of the Mass, the liturgical PTB ineluctably inject some of the same into newer collects, and this trend long pre-dates the 2011 editio typica tertia. The new wine of wordiness, and the old skins of syntax.

Speaking of wordiness (and that I do), how to strew the invisible palms of this weekend's webcasted worship ought to occupy me hereafter. We'll see, and hopefully, you'll see and hear.

+ + +

Because I am not of the "Leave Well-Enough Alone" style of resource management, I add a response from the Twitters to @teawithtolkien who is concerned about explaining the continuance of containment to her children without traumatizing them. @FrAndrewHart observed, "This is a good analogy for our bishops and some of the faithful right now ["hmmm face" emoji]."

My pesky irascible drive prompts sharp rebuke for those who smart over the current Liturgical and Sacramental drought. I pull back when I think of it in terms traumatic.

Everybody hurts, if I must retract my earlier statement regarding R.E.M., and everybody needs--deserves, regardless of appearance to eye or ear--some compassion, especially from those Jesus appointed as watchmen over the house of New Israel (cf. Ez 3:17ff).

Watchmen are lifeguards, and they need to put the mask on themselves before--admit it, while--affixing it to others.

*I say eisegetical ("reading into") because Saint John scarcely hints at sadness and uncertainty in his Gospel. Even on the Cross, Jesus is large and in-charge.

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