Eschatological Liturgy, 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), November 14, 2010

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA
Thirty-Third Sunday in OT, Year C
November 14, 2010
Mal 3:19-20; 2 Thes 3:7-12; Lk 21:5-19

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• Today’s readings focus on the end times, the day of the Lord which the prophet Malachi in the first reading tells will be blazing like an oven when the sun of justice arises with his healing rays. In the Gospel, that Sun of Justice, Jesus, spoke about how the stones of the temple would be overturned, when there will be impostors claiming to be the Chosen one and asking us to follow them, when there will be wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues, persecutions, hatred and betrayals even from some of those we loved. Jesus’ listeners asked, “Master, when will this happen?” Jesus didn’t answer that question directly, because not only was the time of the second coming known only to the Father alone, but in some sense all of these things are already a part of every age, when there’s destruction, natural disasters, wars, famines, illness, betrayal. Jesus tells us at the end of the passage that he will give us a power from on high to help us and that we will be saved through our perseverance in living the faith.
• I’d like to focus today on that help from on high and how we’re called to persevere, not just with grit and determination, but also with joy. I mentioned last week in a homily on the four last things that the greatest means by which we can prepare well for death, judgment and the eternal division between heaven and hell is here as we live out what John Paul II called a “Christocentric eschatology” in our encounter with Him at Mass. It’s here we’re called to die to ourselves so that he may live in us and we may live forever. It’s our preparation for encountering Christ here that we judge ourselves and go to receive God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Confession. It’s here that we reflect on the fundamental choice of our life, whether to live in loving communion with him or push him to the periphery of our lives, our choices, our aspirations, living practically as if we don’t need him or want him.
• The greatest power from on high that God gives us to sustain us through all the difficulties of life, come whatever disasters may, is in our encounter with Jesus in his word and in his body and blood in the Mass. The greatest help for our perseverance, the greatest preparation we have for the things that will last forever happens here at the Mass. Pope John Paul II wrote very powerfully about the connection between the Mass and heaven in his 2004 encyclical on the Eucharist. Here’s what he wrote:
  • The acclamation of the assembly following the consecration — “Dying, you destroyed our death; Rising you restored our life; Lord Jesus come in glory” or “Lord, by your Cross and Resurrection, you have set us free; you are the savior of the world; Lord, Jesus, come in glory” — appropriately ends by expressing the eschatological thrust that marks the celebration of the Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor 11:26): “until you come in glory.” The Eucharist is a straining towards the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn 15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven, the “pledge of future glory.” In the Eucharist, everything speaks of confident waiting “in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ”. Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. For in the Eucharist we also receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6:54). This pledge of the future resurrection comes from the fact that the flesh of the Son of Man, given as food, is his body in its glorious state after the resurrection. With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the “secret” of the resurrection. For this reason Saint Ignatius of Antioch rightly defined the Eucharistic Bread as “a medicine of immortality, an antidote to death.”
  • The eschatological tension kindled by the Eucharist expresses and reinforces our communion with the Church in heaven. It is not by chance that the Eastern Anaphoras and the Latin Eucharistic Prayers honour Mary, the ever-Virgin Mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and God, the angels, the holy apostles, the glorious martyrs and all the saints. This is an aspect of the Eucharist that merits greater attention: in celebrating the sacrifice of the Lamb, we are united to the heavenly “liturgy” and become part of that great multitude which cries out: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev 7:10). The Eucharist is truly a glimpse of heaven appearing on earth. It is a glorious ray of the heavenly Jerusalem that pierces the clouds of our history and lights up our journey.
• The reality is that, for many Catholics, the celebration of Mass is not something that reminds them of heaven. It’s become banal, boring, routine. It’s not meant to be this way and we all need to work to make sure it doesn’t become this way. When you read texts from the beginning of last century, when there was the Tridentine Mass in Latin, many would comment on the sense of the sacred, on the mystery, on the majesty of a Mass celebrated well. With the reforms of the Mass 40 years ago, much of this sense of a sacred and majestic mystery was lost. The principles of translation for the Latin was to render the language as simple as possible so that everyone could understand it, feel it accessible and literally “down-to-earth.” The people meant well, but in effectively bringing the language, the music, the art and everything else “down-to-earth,” we lost in many places the experience of how the Mass is meant to bring us up to heaven.
• The Church has seen this and is trying to remedy it. For the last decade, the bishops of the English-speaking world have been working on a new translation of the Roman Missal in which the English will preserve much more of the sacred language of the Mass, to help us all be more conscious of God’s majesty, of the links to Scripture, or how the entire Mass is a prayer to God the Father. We have a series of eight pamphlets around the Church that describes what’s changing. We will have a chance over the course of the next year to discuss all of these changes in detail and how and why they’re going to help us recover this sense of the Sacred in the Mass, this sense of heaven, and allow us to take that sense of the sacred and desire for heaven into our daily lives.
• What I want to speak about today, however, is one part of what was lost. Part of the sense of the sacred is to help us to realize readily that what we do here is not something ordinary, but special. From the beginning of the reform, the way this was done was through sacred music. The beautiful Masses prior to the Council were always sung. There was a “low Mass,” a “missa cantata,” in which all of the parts of the Mass were sung, and a “missa solemnis,” when all the parts were sung and there were three clerics serving in different roles. The Sung Mass was not just a Mass with some singing but a Mass in which the Mass itself was sung. That should have been retained but it wasn’t. We’ve lost to a degree this sense of the Sacred. The Church, as we institute these new liturgical translations that will feature a more sacred and Biblical language, also wants parishes to create more of a sense of the sacred by singing the Mass with great beauty.
• In Musicam Sacram, the Church’s instruction on music in the liturgy released after the Second Vatican Council, it says, “Liturgical worship is given a more noble form when it is celebrated in song, with the ministers of each degree fulfilling their ministry and the people participating in it. Indeed, through this form, prayer is expressed in a more attractive way, the mystery of the Liturgy, with its hierarchical and community nature, is more openly shown, the unity of hearts is more profoundly achieved by the union of voices, minds are more easily raised to heavenly things by the beauty of the sacred rites, and the whole celebration more clearly prefigures that heavenly Liturgy which is enacted in the holy city of Jerusalem. Pastors of souls will therefore do all they can to achieve this form of celebration.”
• That document says that depending upon the solemnity of the occasion, there can be variety in the use of music at Mass, from Masses in which there is no singing at all (like daily Masses or very early Sunday Masses) to those in which almost the entire Mass is sung. It stresses, however: “In selecting the parts which are to be sung, one should start with those that are by their nature of greater importance, and especially those which are to be sung by the priest or by the ministers, with the people replying, or those which are to be sung by the priest and people together. The other parts may be gradually added according as they are proper to the people alone or to the choir alone.”
• It may surprise you what the Church believes the sung parts of “greater importance” are. Most Catholics from experience might think that the hymns are the most important. The Church categorizes the music at Mass in three “degrees.”
  • The first and most important degree includes the entrance rites (the greeting of the priest together with the reply of the people and the opening prayer), the acclamations at the Gospel, the prayer over the gifts, the preface dialogue, the preface and sanctus, the doxology (through Him, with Him…), the Lord’s Prayer through the “For the Kingdom…”, the Sign of Peace, the prayer after Communion, the blessing and dismissal.
  • In the second degree are listed the typical “Mass parts,” the Kyrie, Gloria and Agnus Dei, but also the Creed and the Prayer of the Faithful (which the Church wishes to have sung, just like on Good Friday).
  • In the third degree are the songs at the Entrance, the Offertory and Communion, the Responsorial Psalm, the Alleluia before the Gospel, and the sung readings of Sacred Scripture.
  • In many ways, as you can see, Catholic parishes in the United States have it backward, singing things considered by the Church to be of “lower” degree and not singing the things of higher degree.
• So as we get ready for the new translations in a year, we are going to be gradually practicing some of them through music. In two weeks, we’re going to begin starting to sing the Creed. We’re also going to start singing some new memorial acclamations. There will be a parish supplementary hymnal with all the sung parts for us to follow. To help you get ready, I’ve also prepared a CD with all of the new chants on it that you can pick up for free after Mass in the sacristy. Please take it home with you and begin to listen to it, so that when you come to Mass, you’re able to pray along with us in song.
• Augustine once said, “quis cantat, bis orat,” “the one who sings prays twice!” When we sing, it’s easier to unite ourselves as a choir with all the other participants in Mass. We’re able to pour more of ourselves into the prayers. It’s able to transform us more powerfully and deeply.
• We know that in heaven, there will be a great deal of singing. The book of revelation, which is a partial and symbolic glimpse into heaven, says:
  • 4:8 the four living day and night they never cease to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”
  • 4:10 the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing, “Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were created.”
  • Rev 14:4 They sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who had been redeemed from the earth.
  • 15:3 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and wonderful are thy deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are thy ways, O King of the ages! Who shall not fear and glorify thy name, O Lord? For thou alone art holy. All nations shall come and worship thee, for thy judgments have been revealed.”
• Mass is supposed to be a foretaste in heaven, not just because we literally taste the risen body and blood of the Lord under the appearances of bread and wine but because we’re somehow singing here what we’re supposed to be singing there.
• Let’s ask God for the grace to begin to approach Mass ever more as the sacred reality it is, and through our singing like the angels and saints sing in heaven, may we give God greater glory and be helped by him with power from on high to persevere in our faith through all difficulties with the joy that comes from our contact with heaven-incarnate here at Mass.

The readings for today’s Mass were: