Ronald Knox - The Mass in Slow Motion

SOMEBODY, I forget who, wrote his reminiscences of the years 191418 under the title, One Mans War. I thought I should like to plagiarize that title and make up a kind of meditation under the heading, One Priests Mass. I suppose it is the experience of all of us that the Mass, with its terrific uniformity - unvarying throughout Latin Christendom, varying so little from one feast or season to another-does not impose uniformity on our thoughts. Merely because the words and gestures are so familiar, we dont rest content with their immediate significance; we read fresh meanings of our own into them, treat them as a kind of cipher language in which we communicate our aspirations to Almighty God. Its an odd reflection, then, that when I say Mass or you hear it, though the words and the gestures are the same, and you would think there was no difference at all except the sins we thought about at the Confiteor and the intentions we remembered for the living and the dead, in fact there is a difference; the devotional overtones, the mystical nuances which the words and the ceremonies of the Mass suggest to us are not, probably, the same for you and for me. So I thought I would come clean, and try to analyse, thus publicly, the inwardness of my own Mass; talk about the odd bells that ring in my own mind, the odd vistas that open up to my own view, to close again at once, in the hope that they may have some value for other people. Let me say at once that I know nothing about liturgy, so you wont get any of the orthodox sidelights on the Mass which they give you in the books. Also that I am thinking about Low Mass; it is a long time since I had to sing High Mass, and when I did, the only thought I can remember entertaining was a vivid hope that I might die before we got to the Preface. The Psalm Judica . What a disconcerting thing it is about the idiom of Hebrew devotion, that the psalms are always saying, I am upright, I am innocent, I never did anything to deserve this punishment , whereas we are always wanting to say we are miserable sinners! Here, we prepare for the Confiteor by assuring God that we have walked innocently, and asking him to distinguish very carefully between us and the wicked. When I say this psalm, then, what should I think about? Perhaps, about myself as the representative of the Christian Church, so isolated, so shut away, in idea at least, from all the busy wickedness of the world. The Mass starts with the Church pushing the world away from her; the lodge is tiled, there are no profane onlookers, it is a cosy family party, just ourselves .

Then the Confiteor; that is more personal. Not that, I fancy, we are meant to be thinking precisely about our sins, rather about our sinfulness; not so much the sinners we are as the sinful sort of people we are; with no right to claim the sort of intimacy we are going to claim in corning before God. Well, we shall have to remember that God is Almighty and merciful, and go ahead as best we can. And then that splendid ceremony of kissing the altar as you say Quorum reliquiae hie sunt . A keyhole through which you look right back to the catacombs; Mass over the tombs of the martyrs; the Church unageing , her days bound each to each by natural piety.

The Introit gives you a nice sense of squaring your shoulders and opening out a bit; you have forgotten the fears and scruples that assailed you at the foot of the altar; you crash into the liturgy of the day in a good hearty voice. And then suddenly the old trouble comes back again, only I think in a different form. Sins or no sins, what are you, a man, a creature, that you should be standing up and talking to God like this, as if a conversation with him were the most natural thing in the world? Back you go to the middle of the altar, feeling an utter worm; Kyrie eleison , again and again, begging his pardon for your ridiculous self-sufficiency in imagining, even for a moment, that you had a right to stand up straight, instead of burying your head in your hands. You remind yourself, with the Gloria, of what God is, in a stammering, apologetic sort of way, so that you find yourself thanking him for being so glorious-not a thing you do as a rule. And from that you turn to a paean of praise in honour of our Blessed Lord, hiding behind him, covering yourself in him, to get the technique of your approach to Almighty God right after all. And so you go back to your post at the side, a little reassured, and start again with the Collects.

I rather like a lot of Collects. Its nice to have a lot of different subjects of conversation when you are going to talk to God. When people ask us to say a prayer for some particular intention, our first reaction is perhaps to think it a nuisance. But surely we ought to regard each intention as a new excuse for claiming Gods attention, like a child that thinks it fun to be sent on a message to its father, because it is so splendid to be allowed, for once, to interrupt him in his study. So with these obscurer saints, these much-thumbed imperatas ; an excellent opportunity for making our conversation with God last longer. The Collects we ought to think of perhaps as SOS messages expressing, in as brief terms as possible, the needs of the Church. Then, for the Epistle, there is a relaxing of strain. The Epistle is a letter, written quite a long time ago, to us; and we read it out in a leisurely way. For once-it is the only part of the Mass of which you can say that-you stand at ease. Your hands escape from their rigid discipline. It is an interval, a pause; accidentally protracted by one or two bits of liturgy which were so obviously meant to be sung that they do not go naturally at Low Mass. Even the Sequences, beautiful as they are, seem to cry out for the music; they are not reciting pieces.