Buildings confining

This weekend, I attended Mass at the local Maronite Catholic church. I’ve written before that you might be surprised at the diversity that is not only a part of Catholic life in Birmingham (and in many other parts of the south), but is also organic and deeply rooted. Essentially: a great many of the first Catholics in this area – in the late 19^th century when the city was born – were Syrian and Maronite Catholics – and when you toss the Greek and Russian Orthodox in there, you have a presence that was, for decades, quite representative of the global dimension of Catholicism, and is even more so now with not only the Hispanic presence, but Vietnamese, Korean and African.

(It shows up in the area’s cuisine as well.)

Anyway, that is to say that going over to St. Elias for Mass is not an exotic act here. They celebrate the Maronite liturgy regularly in some of the Catholic schools, including the high school, and it’s the home parish of many who may have settled in the suburbs.

The Maronite liturgy is perhaps the most Latin of all the Eastern Catholic liturgies – the interior of this particular church is expressive of that as well – and has been subject to various very-Latin Rite-like liturgical battles over the past few years, as well.

But it’s still distinct enough to make you pay attention, with the frequent appeals to God’s mercy, so characteristic of the East, the command to be silent and be attentive at the proclamation of God’s Word, the chanting, the form of the sharing of the peace, which involves attendant clergy and servers descending into the congregation with hands pressed together, which you embrace with your own hands, then turning to the next person to keep the action going,  the structure of the Eucharistic Prayer which involves much more back-and-forth between celebrant and congregation, and then, most movingly, the recitation of the words of consecration in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke.

As I watched and listened and prayed, I could not, of course, resist the temptation to compare and contrast.

What struck me, and not for the first time, was the sense in this liturgy that I was entering into something. That there was something present and real and solid in whose presence I had entered and was free to approach or not, from whatever place I was in. It was there yesterday, it would be there tomorrow. As a congregation, we responded to that presence in our own ways, speaking, chanting, silently. But it was always there, waiting.

This sense of the liturgy communicating an unchanging, faithful presence – compressed, condensed, offered in the Real Presence – is deemed inadequate by some, for, they say, it can lead to the People of God forgetting about the real living Presence that dwells among them – the Church of St. Winifred meets in this building – and depending, as it were, on the embodiment in the liturgy, in all of the Church things – to embody the faith and to do the work, leaving them free to come and go, to take what they can and then go out into the world, not to bring the Presence with them, alive and on the move, but conform to the world, assuming that the building with the cross on the corner will do the work.

That is to say, all the formality, the liturgy, the solidity, is an obstacle to authentic faith – there in the dark of buildings confining. You know the drill.

An attitude of course, which ignores a lot. It ignores the millions through history whose lives and faith have been formed by the liturgy which offers us the moment to encounter the Real, solid and true, just as we are, wherever we are – and have experience it, not as an obstacle, but rather as a window, and even more – a door.