Oh, going to mass...

Sometimes (a lot of times?), the issue of going to mass seems to be the greatest one facing our Church and its believers, and lapsed believers.

Personally, I love mass, and I've never really had any time in my life when I've thought about suspending my attendance. I even made a habit of going to a daily mass once or so each week while I was in college, and here as part of community life, I go to daily mass almost every morning.

The question at this point for me is "what are you doing at mass?" I've been dealing with some feelings of getting "massed out" by the how often we go to mass. It's hit in little spats, but for the most part, I'm not plagued by it. Some weekends, the three masses in an 18-hour span can be a bit much, and that's the only major time I start to feel troubled.

We are here to bring an outside perspective of joy and commitment in our ministry, and we have to, sometimes tenuously, toe the line between accepting ingrained norms, whether "right" or "wrong," and challenging or reshaping them. Sometimes my place at the mass in the context of how I am trying live my faith and ministerial call here in this community gets skewed by questionable motivations.

We have a laptop that's connected to a projector, which enables us to project the lyrics to the music for mass, and we have added the new responses for mass to the slideshows, too. For one mass each weekend, I sit in a pew with no one else, just a computer, and run the slideshow of responses for a music-less mass. In addition, we take turns running the slideshow during masses with our choirs.

The issue isn't so much running the slideshow while trying to be present to the mass and/or the music we are leading - that comes with the territory of our job, and it's something we try to do with the most grace and focus that we can. The issue is moreso that I sometimes feel like an auditor, judging the confidence and unity of the congregation's response as I sit there administering the most helpful tool there really is toward learning the responses. We have this blessing of the laptop-projector system, but it doesn't create 100% unity. Some people can't snap out of the old words while others just space or blank on the changes. The repetition of doing this job has jaded my perspective, and I have trouble leaning toward giving the benefit of the doubt after months on end.

Part of is having to come to an extra mass just to press the spacebar 30 times in a half hour and struggling with finding it useful and necessary. It's affecting my desire to consider the beautiful cornucopia of motivations, inspirations, prayers, and pieties that people bring to mass and compile into the Body of Christ. I enjoy looking around to discover a wide array of humanity in the congregation, but the struggles with the new words, the task of running a slideshow, and the habitual indifference, laziness, or short attention span of people (sometimes I forget how I am thoroughly included in these categories) toward the words of the mass and our music (which is meant to be participated in by everyone!) skew my perspective of mass.

Then, I come to daily mass, where I am immersed in a sea of crusty, grey-haired piety. I am surrounded by people who could (and maybe do?) pray rosaries in their sleep and concelebrate the mass under their breaths, a gesture toward a lost piety of praying with the priest and for the prayers he speaks to be effective in inviting Jesus into our midst.

The mass can blow by too quickly sometimes - for example, the priest amalgamates the Gospel, homily, and Prayers of the Faithful into a tight unit that spills over into the preparation of altar. However, here I can look around and be less distracted, less jaded. Aside from lectoring once a week or so, my community and I are free of responsibilities for daily mass; we just go and be.

This morning, I found myself not only looking around but also look in and through the Eucharist. As ideas for continuing my career of ministry next year swirl - two exploratory/pre-interview conversations with retreat centers, a cover letter and resume sent on to a Catholic high school, an application to a service corps started by my favorite order, and an application for full tuition for an MAPS and a stipend-supported ministry placement - I was feeling around for a sense of those opportunities and their potential in the Eucharist. I spent most of the Eucharistic Prayer with my eyes closed and head bowed, reflecting upon the nature of these opportunities in light of the Church that they all share with me and the Eucharist before me right then and there.

I was finding bits of peace and light in the embarrassment of riches that are potentially in front of me in my formation, career, and life. I enjoyed how easily I could find that all in my heart, in my prayer. However, I have been trying to keep my foot on the brakes to keep myself firmly grounded in my current situation and the five months of work and life that remain here in Ireland.

A good friend of mine told me that she prays and thinks and reflects better in the environment of the mass. At times, it can feel too formal or feel boring or have music not everyone like. But the mass gives us a thorough, rich, broad, and deep opportunity to pray. The expanse of the Body of Christ provides so much of that for us, but that's not it. Even if I didn't do it as well as I could of, the Eucharist gives us room to see all at once the Body of Christ in the communities we've belonged to, the ones we celebrate with today, and the ones we will join with around the table in our futures. And there's more, between the opening and the sending forth rites and the richness of the Liturgy of the Word (sometimes, I feel like I kind of swing on a faith pendulum between being more drawn to the Word or the Eucharist, not in mutual exclusivity but in different ratios of complementarity).

The whole of the story is that there's no shortage of opportunity for frustration, criticism, distraction, and spacing out, for speaking, singing, and thinking, and for looking around, looking down, looking up, and looking within. And if you let that all happen honestly, offering yourself in good faith while trying to grow closer to God amid all the desolations and consolations, I'd say it all adds up to a helluva opportunity to be with God and grow closer to Him and build a better, stronger relationship. Sounds like pretty full prayer to me.