The Mass in Slow Motion is a collection of sermons delivered by Msgr. Ronald Knox to schoolgirls, published in 1948. It was, I think, Knox’s most popular work, and is part of a trilogy, if you will, which includes both the Creed and the Gospel in slow motion.
I had it on my shelf – don’t know where it came from, as per usual – so I read it the other night.
For I’m always interested in the reality – not the caricatures – of what 20th century Catholics experienced, believed and were taught before the Second Vatican Council. It’s good to get beyond the caricatures and the agendas, for that’s when things get really interesting. Caricatures and agendas are dull and predictable.
Anyway, this was an interesting little book, although I’m not really on board the Knox train. Granted, these talks were in an informal setting to young people, but (or perhaps I should say “so”), the chummy tone was more off-putting than appealing to me.
We talk a lot about “active participation” in the Mass – no, we argue about it, and wonder exactly what it is and what it looks like. It was through that prism I read this book. In a liturgy in which the only voices would be clerics, servers and choir, what were the assumptions about “participation?”
(This, of course, was a major concern and priority of the popular liturgical movement of the 20th century before the Second Vatican Council, and Knox’s sermons are one expression of that. It’s perhaps useful to reflect on this concern, which was worked out in a context in which the “dialogue Mass” was rare and not assumed. Engaging the lay faithful more deeply in the liturgy was seen primarily as a matter of educating them as to what was going on in the Mass, encouraging them to follow along the prayers of the Mass rather than private devotions, and encouraging frequent Confession and therefore more frequent reception of Communion. The Dialogue Mass and lay participation in chant was, yes, an element, but deepening interior participation was the foundation and broader goal.)
Back to Knox. His talks here are, of course, focused on the priest, and on Low Mass. His explanation of the rituals, rubrics and words aren’t generally what you’d find in a contemporary equivalent, for he doesn’t care much about the historical roots and development that might be emphasized today. His angle is organic – without going into much historical or even deeper theological detail – what is going on here? What’s the priest doing?
The tone is familiar and almost surprisingly casual at times, as if the priest were a favorite uncle who, almost by chance, stumbled into the corner to do his thing, accompanied by two (usually) bumbling cousins.
But as I said, what interested me was how he suggested his listeners enter into the priest’s action – how they “participate.” That participation, as it turns out, is to be very deep indeed. It doesn’t matter if they will not themselves say a word at the Mass, if the servers speak for them and if the priest acts for them. Knox invites them into the heart of it:
The Gloria:
In this nasty, wind-swept world, in which charity has gone cold and there is a frost of winter all about us, your life will be a glow of love; a faint glow, perhaps, but one at which other people can just warm their hands. Now, at the beginning of it, say Gloria tibi, Domine, as the server says at the beginning of the Gospel; try and dedicate it, the whole of it, to God’s glory. Then, when you come to the end of it, your last thoughts will be of thankfulness for having been allowed to live it, and you will say Laus tibi, Christe, as the server says at the end of the Gospel, “Praise be to thee, O Christ. (42)
The Offertory:
It’s all very well for you to point out that the Offertory is only concerned with unconsecrated bread and wine, and that isn’t much to get excited about. That’s quite true, of course, but I think if you will use your imagination for a moment you will see that there is good excuse for making a lot of the unconsecrated host, the unconsecrated chalice. They may have no great importance of their own at the moment, but they are going to be terrifically important. And it’s very narrow-minded of us if we think only of what things are at the moment, not of what they are going to be. Imagine yourself walking through a field of wheat; out in the park, say, by the deer-cote. All those ears of wheat are full of promise; they are going to be something. That particular ear of wheat which is sticking out on the left of the path will be threshed, ground in the mill, baked in the oven, made into a sandwich, and be eaten by somebody on a railway journey; that is the destiny which is shaping itself inside that particular set of little husks. Now look at that ear of wheat which is sticking out on the right of the path. That one will be threshed, ground in the mill–the same mill, baked in the oven–no, not in the same oven, or at any rate, not in the same batch; there will be no baking powder this time. Then it will be pressed by a Carmelite nun in a press which will give it the imprint of the crucifix; it will be sent off in a tin to the sacristan of some church; it will lie on the altar, some Latin words will be said over it, and after that it will be lifted up in a gold monstrance, and everybody who passes in front of it will go down on both knees . . . It’s the same with the chalice, only, of course, we aren’t so familiar with the process of making wine. That cluster over there will find its way into a bottle of ordinary wine; somebody will drink it over his dinner; get drunk on it, perhaps, and come to blows, and be sent to prison. That other cluster will find its way into a bottle of altar wine, will be consecrated, will be drunk by a priest, and bring him just the grace he needed to resist that temptation, to rise to that height of sanctity. And yet the two clusters grew side by side in the same vineyard, long ago.
So what the priest is doing at the altar is to separate, to earmark, this particular lump of wheat, this particular dose of grape-juice, for a supernatural destiny.
And that, of course, is just what is happening to you and me all the time. Sooner or later we shall die, and that moment of death will be, please God, our Consecration; we shall be changed into something different, be given a spiritual body in place of our natural body, and live praising God among the Saints to all eternity. What we are doing now, all the time, is to make of our lives an Offertory to Almighty God; to separate them, set them apart for him, so that when death comes it may be our Consecration. And that is why the pious books will tell you, at the Offertory, to put yourself in imagination on the paten, between the priest’s hands. You at the moment, your body at this moment, is something ridiculously cheap and unimportant; open one artery of it, choke up one airpassage for a few minutes, and it is done for; it will be buried away in the ground and rot there. That’s what it is, but the point is not what it is but what it’s going to be. Please God, when it has been consecrated as he means it to be consecrated–and he has all that planned out for you and me already–it is going to be a glowing focus of his praise, a mirror which will reflect his uncreated loveliness, for all eternity.
We mustn’t despise, then, the unconsecrated host which the priest is holding up in front of the crucifix, the drops of wine which are trickling down into the chalice; we must think of what they are going to be. You have all of you heard about good King Wenceslas, because a clergyman wrote a rather inaccurate carol about him, which thousands of people will be singing this next fortnight. You know all about his making the page carry pine-logs to the poor man’s house, although as it was right against the forest fence, you would have thought it would have been simpler to chop him up a dead branch or two on the spot. What you don’t know is that King Wenceslas always insisted on making the altar-breads for his chapel with his own hands, because he thought even a king ought to be proud to do that. And the whole idea of the Offertory is that the bread and wine are something which YOU hand over to ME, which the laity hand over to the priest, to see what he can make of them. That’s why I say that this is the point where YOU come in. Those two small boys in red cassocks, one of them with hiccoughs and the other with his shoe-lace undone, represent you, represent the congregation. In theory, you are all crowding on to the sanctuary, turning the priest’s solitary dance into a tumultuous round-dance; all holding out pieces of bread and shouting, “Father Knox! Father Knox! Do bless this one!” That’s what the Offertory really is; only you aren’t actually expected to do quite that. You are expected to place your body, in imagination, beside the host on the paten, and to say, “Dear God, this ridiculous thing is all I have to offer you; please make something of it, if even you can make something even of a person like me”.
Yes, let us get excited about the unconsecrated bread and wine, because of what they are going to be; but don’t let’s lose sight of the fact that what they are going to be depends entirely on what God is going to do with them; WE could wave them about in the air and repeat Latin sentences over them from morning to night, and they would be just ordinary bread and wine still; it’s only because God is going to take a hand that they are going to become something quite different.
Finally:
When you see me standing up there, mumbling to myself and apparently taking no notice of you,all dressed up in silk like a great pin cushion, you mustn’t think of me as something quite apart, at a distance from you, uninterested in your feelings and your concerns. On the contrary, I am standing there like a great pin cushion for you to stick pins into me—all the things you want to pray about, all the things you want for yourself and all the worries that are going on at home, are part of the prayer that I am saying, and I couldn’t prevent them being part of my intentions in saying the Mass, even if I wanted to.