Having prayed this morning with my parish community in the POF "that social media … not be used for bullying, criticizing others or spreading harmful and unkind words" I will confine myself here to mere reportage - of the kind not so often seen now in the print media - of the unvarnished facts.
This morning at St Joseph's, Waipukurau it fell, as is not unusual, to the same individual to 'do the Welcome' and to be a Minister to the Sick. His son proclaimed the Readings. His wife had been rostered as organist but had asked someone else to play, which might be construed as A Good Thing, as otherwise it could have looked like a takeover, a bit of a family production.
His wife had hoped to attend the Latin Mass at Ashhurst, to avoid being present while her husband performed his third ministry at this morning's Eucharistic Liturgy, which was to give the congregation the benefit of his Reflections on the Readings. It's fair to say the Reflections would have gone down well. They'd have gone down well at St Mary's and St Andrew's too.
No, it wasn't a Liturgy of the Word. Father was presiding, and Mass was celebrated. Holy Trinity is practising, you see, for the Liturgies of the Word which will take place in January when Father goes on holiday and when, he assures us, there is no priest available to celebrate Holy Mass in the parish.
It was quite warm this morning. Father's collar was undone. When he referred in his opening remarks to 'Laudate Sunday', quoting (as he thought) the chap who'd given the Welcome, he was corrected by same chap, who called out from his pew, "I didn't say that, I said "Gaudete"."
"Gaudete," said Father. "What does that mean?" I couldn't help myself. "Rejoice," I replied from my pew.
"Means the same thing," said Father. And in a way, it does.
There were no children to help Father decorate the 'Jesse tree'. As the bread and wine were placed on the credence table at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer, a cockroach was discovered on the altar which caused the altar girls much merriment.
After the final Blessing, Father read out statistics from the 1950s pertaining to St Vincent's, the erstwhile third church in the parish, which had suggested to me as Parish Council chairperson (yes, truly!), at the time our three Eucharistic communities amalgamated, the name of Holy Trinity. St Vincent's was closed some time ago, although not to my knowledge deconsecrated, and was transported to Orua Wharo, Takapau's stately home where now, expensively furnished with amazing modern light fittings and called 'Vincent's', it serves as a wedding and function venue.
Next year, said Father, we will 'celebrate' its125th anniversary. Presumably that function will take place in the rehabilitated 'Vincent's', but it would take wild horses to get me there.
Anyway, the statistics were riveting. I can't be sure of the figures - they sound incredible - but I think Father said that in the 1950s, the Sunday Mass attendance at that St Vincent's in Takapau,a/, that little church now revamped as a restaurant was in the 600s. Not only that, but in Ormondville 10 miles away, there were some 100s more and 15 minutes away in Onga Onga, whose church is now also defunct, a third not far away, 60+.
"Times have changed," said Father. He didn't say, "the Church has changed," or "the Mass has changed"; he said, "times have changed".
I didn't join in singing the Recessional. It was a Christmas carol - Te Harinui, which I wouldn't want to sing even during Christmastide. As soon as Father and the altar girls reached the foyer, I knelt down and got out my rosary beads.
I actually cried a little - and I'm not a weeper. I stopped when a chap shoulder-tapped me and said, could he ask me a question? I smiled and began getting to my feet, trying to indicate I'd answer his question in the foyer. (I tell people I'm trying to get out of the habit of talking in church, because Our Lady told the Fatima seer, Lucy, that talking in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament deeply offends her Son, but it hasn't caught on.)
"Oh, I'm sorry," this nice chap said, as I held up my rosary, "am I interrupting you?" I can't remember what I said in reply; I think I tried with the assistance of the rosary beads to mime it, and the nice chap vanished.
I resumed my Rosary of thanksgiving. The usual post-Mass chatter and laughter (subdued, they're polite people, and they could see I was trying to pray) died down. Then Father struck up a conversation, mid-pew, with an events organizer and a parishioner with historical ties and family ties to Orua Wharo and St Vincent's, the church which in the '50s had 600 Massgoers.
I wasn't listening to the conversation, but apparently it was about history. Church history as well as local. I couldn't help overhearing Father say, very clearly, emphatically even: "For the first 300 years, the Mass was a meal. It was just an evening meal."
Now, St Justin
Martyr, a philosopher and Christian
apologist who lived between 100 and 165, didn't see the Mass quite like that. This is how he described it:
"And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather
together to one place, and the memoirs [letters] of the apostles or the
writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the
reader has ceased, the president [the presiding priest or bishop] verbally
instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good
things.
"Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our
prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in
like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the
people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a
participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are
absent a portion is sent by the deacons.
"And they who are well to do, and
willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the
president, who succors the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness
or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers
sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.
"But
Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the
first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter,
made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead.
For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the
day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His
apostles and disciples, He taught them these things.
"And this food
is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the
man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been
washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto
regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.
"For not as common
bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ
our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood
for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is
blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by
transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made
flesh.
"For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called
Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus
took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, This do in remembrance of Me,
[Luke 22:19] this is My body; and that, after the same manner, having taken the
cup and given thanks, He said, This is My blood; and gave it to them alone -https://aleteia.org/2017/04/13/what-was-mass-like-for-the-early-christians/
Doesn't sound like an evening meal to me.
As to social media and its use or misuse, we could remember the words of Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko, a Polish priest who in 1984 was executed by the Communists:
"To serve God is to speak out about evil as a sickness which should be brought to light so it can be cured."
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