Blog for Lent Week Two - 'Lord, it is wonderful for us to be here!'

I remember my first missal. It had a white shiny cover like mother-of-pearl, and 1,465 flimsy pages. The Ordinary of the Mass was printed in two columns, Latin on the left and English on the right. At last I had the key to this mysterious language and I followed it avidly. As soon as the celebrant began the “Mass of the Catechumens”, I was following the English translation: “I will go in unto the altar of God”. To which the altar server replied, “Unto God, who gives joy to my youth.”
 
I found this exchange puzzling. The God of my youth had little to do with joy and everything to do with judgement and penance. The Church of my youth was a house of prayer, of awe and majesty, but never of celebration. This was a Church of “solemnities” rather than of “feast days”. The liturgy was at its richest and most dramatic in the fasting seasons of Lent and Advent. There were no Christmas trees in our churches then, or harvest baskets, or colourful montages by First Communion and Confirmation classes. The brightest events seemed to be the Marian feasts – the crowning of the Queen of the May and the May processions.
 
It was in the great requiem Masses and in the pageantry of Holy Week that the Church seemed to come into its own. I can still hear the subdued thunder of the organ, the terrifying rhythms of the “Dies Irae”, the militant “Faith of our Fathers”, the haunting Tenebrae - “service of the shadows”. I can still see the eerie humped shapes of the statues shrouded in the colours of mourning in Holy Week, the gaping tabernacle on Good Friday. I can smell the air, heavy with incense. The church was a holy place, majestic, awe-inspiring, a sombre theatre of unending war against the forces of darkness. Church penitential, Church militant, Church triumphant, – but never Church jubilant.  

Then on the second Sunday of Lent many decades later, a sentence from the Gospel penetrated the layers of my apathy. Peter, witnessing Christ's transfiguration, cries out, "Lord! it is wonderful for us to be here!"

King David was completely connected with the created world. It pervades his psalms and it shines through the great song of praise which he sings after dancing and making merry before the Ark: 
 
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let them say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!”
Let the sea roar, and the fullness of it;
let the field exult, and all that is therein;
Then shall the trees of the wood sing for joy before the Lord…
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures for ever!
 
All the assembled people cry “Amen” to this explosion of hope and gratitude. (1 Chr 16:31-36). 
​
​According to Thomas Merton, the more we try to analyse life, the more we involve ourselves in sadness. “But it does not matter much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not”. [1]
 
It may beat in our blood, but we still deny it. It is too easy to live in the created world as though in a transparent capsule - seeing, but feeling no sense of identity with, creation. There have been so many times when I have felt no real sense of being constantly in the Creator’s presence, let alone belonging there; no sense of interconnectedness with the rest of creation. I glided along the surface of the spinning earth, never listening to its heartbeat. I looked into the depths of the universe, and never heard the singing of the stars. Unlike the Psalmist, I never saw the mountains skipping like rams (Ps 114) or watched the wilderness bloom. I lived beside the sea, but without sharing the Psalmist’s wonder at “its vast expanses teeming with countless creatures, creatures both great and small; there ships pass to and fro, and Leviathan whom you made to sport with.” (Ps 104:25-26)
 
King David was completely connected with the created world. It pervades his psalms and it shines through the great song of praise which he sings after dancing and making merry before the Ark: 
 
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let them say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!”
Let the sea roar, and the fullness of it;
let the field exult, and all that is therein;
Then shall the trees of the wood sing for joy before the Lord…
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures for ever!
 
All the assembled people cry “Amen” to this explosion of hope and gratitude. (1 Chr 16:31-36).
 
Nietzsche had it right when he said “I could never believe in a God who didn’t dance”...


[1] Merton, Thomas, OCSO, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: Penguin Books (New Directions Paperback) 1972)  pp 296-7.