When the Eucharistic Liturgy sings.
By John Heard
We cannot help attaching an outsize weight to coincidence and synchronicity. These are the clever names that we give, of course, to quite simple events that seem to hold much greater meaning.
In the course of an otherwise ordinary day, something will happen, and it will seem to overflow the normal limits of meaning.
The bare facts might never suggest some great wonder, and when retold, they seem to lose their spark, they are hard to communicate – but for a moment, a wondrous moment, some very magnificent thing rises before us.
Try this one. A young man, not yet thirty, attends the holy sacrifice of the Mass.
It is close to the Feast of the Sacred Heart, and he has a particular devotion to the Sacred Heart, but otherwise there is nothing outwardly starling about the event.
The choir sings to the usual standard. The priest offers the Mass, and the faithful worship.
As much as any of these things can be described as ordinary, this Sunday is ordinary. It would not qualify for inclusion in a Catholic’s list of the “most memorable Sundays”.
Except, of course, that this Mass is different for the young man.
For, you see, in the midst of all the wonder and meaning, all the miraculous liturgical “wow” otherwise associated with a faithfully and beautifully offered Mass, there seems to be something in a minor key, a barely perceptible, but nagging melody – and it seems to sing just for him.
At first he simply spies a note in the bulletin indicating that the organist will play J.S. Bach’s Fugue in C (BWV 564) for the Recessional.
Oh, the young man thinks. Very good. He has been listening to Bach’s The Art of Fugue all week. The coincidence, as most are wont to be, is most surprising. He smiles.
He sits still. He follows prayerfully as the Mass unfolds. The first reading is from the Book of Job. Strange, again, he thinks.
He told a friend just last night that he likes the name Job, and he was set to thinking then about the man God tested so severely.
Now he hears some of Job’s story. The reading – as it is declaimed – is undeniably wondrous. God sets the boundaries of the sea, and works other miracles. It feels as though the reading answers the minor melody, and the whole thing is gaining force.
What can it mean?
The readings, summarised on the bulletin, run like this:
Here I have set the boundaries of the sea (Job 3:1.8-11
Give thanks to the Lord, His love is everlasting (Psalm 106:23-26. 28-31)
All things are made new (2 Corinthians 5:14-17)
Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him. (Mark 4:35-41)
As each is proclaimed, and culminating in the Gospel, the young man is transfixed.
There is a private meaning here, and a sense of purpose, that he feels he cannot ignore.
Even the entrance hymn, and the motets are apposite.
They seem to modify the metaphorical melody, and take it to new places. He feels enormous gratitude. Meaning washes over him.
It is as if the whole cathedral is ringing for him, well – not for Him, the sacrifice is Christ’s, the sacrifice is Christ – but the young man feels the weight of that love coming down on him, specifically on him.
He looks around to see if anyone else is enraptured. He breathes. He can’t tell. He wonders if others can see anything unusual on his face.
He is smiling gently, but there is no call for arm-flapping, and it would be wrong to shout. Still, he feels he must radiate. Now, the Mass is drawing to its end.
How can a man parse that sort of experience?
Psychologists, and those philosophers who believe there is nothing more to the world than matter (and perhaps time/space) would turn to narrow readings.
It was neuronal activity, something sparked in the man’s hard wiring, and it produced an effect like déjà vu.
I don’t know about that, and I don’t know what to think of the experience. It was mine, of course. I am the young man.
On so-called personal revelation, the Church teaches that nothing that separates us from God can come from Him, but otherwise leaves it to the individual to “discern the spirits” (with the aid of a spiritual advisor), if prudent.
I would not say that I had been blessed with any serious revelation, just the particular, and welcome sense that I am loved, and that the holy sacrifice of the Mass reaches out for me, that I am included among “the many”.
A Catholic must not get carried away. We are not superstitious. Still, the feeling is fresh on me, and the melody rings – in a key I now know by heart.
“Do not forgot His mercies”, it trills, “poured out in love for one so unworthy”.