Ordo in the court

I found a great article at the latest edition of the Catholic Carnival-

Christus Vincit blogs about a Sunday bulletin in which the pastor borrows a line from Chesterton: "the trouble with the new Mass is not that it has been tried and found wanting; it really hasn't been tried at all."

Vincit adds his own notes to the article, which he reproduces in its entirety, so you're getting this third-hand, but I found it expresses so many of my own views. I've told my family that I'm not hunting for the most traditional and pious liturgy I can find; I'm hunting for Novus Ordo done well, with reverence, a sense of the sacred, and ritual aplomb. I'm learning to appreciate that the best liturgy is correct liturgy, and you don't have to be a rad trad to have correct liturgy that reveals the beauty and profundity of Christ as well as his Gospel poverty. As the pastor says,

"Rather than resuscitate the old Tridentine Mass, the New Order Mass of Pope Paul VI should finally be allowed to see the light of day. Cross and candles, incense and holy water, books and bells, genuflections and bows, gestures and vestments, ambience and appointments, even Greek and Latin acclamations, can be employed with equal reverence and equal effect in the new rite just as in the old rite."

I was told again and again growing up that all these things were accessory, that the content of our hearts matters more. Well, the content of our hearts does matter, which is why these "accessories" were developed over centuries of liturgical praxis. They have a way of plugging us in to the sensual nature of the Mass and causing our heart to respond. They are not mere extras unless they are done extraneously. But there have been all sorts of extras that I grew up with that have become just as tired and extraneous as the time-tested, mother-approved ritual elements that were thrown out after Vatican II by my parents' generation.

Do read the whole article. There you will find Vincit's citation of Sacramentum Caritatis #40:

"The eucharistic celebration is enhanced when priests and liturgical leaders are committed to making known the current liturgical texts and norms, making available the great riches found in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal and the Order of Readings for Mass. Perhaps we take it for granted that our ecclesial communities already know and appreciate these resources, but this is not always the case. These texts contain riches which have preserved and expressed the faith and experience of the People of God over its two-thousand-year history. Equally important for a correct ars celebrandi is an attentiveness to the various kinds of language that the liturgy employs: words and music, gestures and silence, movement, the liturgical colours of the vestments. By its very nature the liturgy operates on different levels of communication which enable it to engage the whole human person. The simplicity of its gestures and the sobriety of its orderly sequence of signs communicate and inspire more than any contrived and inappropriate additions. Attentiveness and fidelity to the specific structure of the rite express both a recognition of the nature of Eucharist as a gift and, on the part of the minister, a docile openness to receiving this ineffable gift."

Let us be docile; let us be like sheep~