Newspaper Page Text
October 30,1980
PAGE 5
continuing sign that parishioners are called
to be one family of God despite their many
differences — the diversity of their
professions, homes, educational backgrounds
or social attitudes, for example.
Nonetheless, it is sometimes helpful to
complement the larger gatherings of a parish
with worship among small numbers of
parishioners who have much in common -
perhaps because they are members of the
choir, of a prayer group, of a high school
class or even simply because they live near
one another as neighbors.
The home Mass, as an occasional event
for groups with similar backgrounds, can
actually nourish the parish liturgy by
strengthening the involvement in the liturgy
on the part of various segments of the larger
congregation.
3. There is perhaps a further reason for
the attraction today of home Masses. Since
Vatican II there has been an effort to help
people center their personal spirituality
closely on the church’s liturgy and
sacraments. To accomplish this, it is
important for people to feel a part of the
liturgy.
This can be achieved to a significant
extent in celebrations of a whole parish
congregation. Such personal involvement,
however, can be enhanced by parish home
Masses.
Home Masses will never replace the parish
celebration of the Eucharist. In fact, given
the shortage of priests, they will inevitably
be rather rare events in any home.
This practical limitation is as it should be.
For in small groups, the liturgy need not be
the only form of prayer. Moreover, home
Masses should not replace the liturgical
celebrations in which we come in contact
with the members of the Christian
community in all their diversity.
A friend of mine once remarked about
the quality of well-constructed homes. He
said a home should provide room enough for
people to be together and room enough for
them to be apart - space for the family as a
community, yet privacy for the individual
family members.
This maxim might be applied to the
parish as well. For it provides activities large
enough to bring the whole parish family
together. But it also makes room for events
on a smaller scale, allowing opportunities for
individuals and small groups of the parish to
pursue their life of faith in special ways.
Discussion Points And Questions
1. What reasons does Father Philip Murnion give for the popularity
of home Masses today?
2. Why does Father Murnion indicate that home Masses will remain
only an occasional practice in parishes?
3. Dolores Leckey gives credit to her mentor for broadening her
horizons. How was her mentor able to do this?
4. Have you ever had a mentor? What did you gain from this
relationship? Have you ever been a mentor for someone?
5. Father John Castelot says that St. Paul’s letters often seem like
just one side of a dialogue. In what way does this complicate people’s
attempts to understand Paul?
6. Why does Father Castelot say that the Corinthians do not know
what true wisdom is?
7. According to Paul, where does true wisdom lie? Can people find
wisdom today?
8. Have you ever attended a home liturgy? Under what
circumstances? How did you feel about this Mass?
BY FATHER PHILLIP J. MURNION
The scene of persecuted Catholics
huddling around a makeshift altar for Mass
in a home can portray great drama and high
courage.
The scene has been repeated in various
parts of the world through the centuries,
from the earliest days of the church when
Christ’s followers had no place for public
worship, to the present. The construction of
churches where large numbers of people
could gather for Mass has often been a sign
that Christians were no longer being
persecuted.
Yet today, in many places, small groups
of Catholics are gathering again in homes for
the celebration of Mass. Since there is no
persecution in the United States or Canada,
why would people there want to have Mass
at home?
I suspect two factors account for the
trend: the desire for an intimate experience
of the Mass and the great diversity among
today’s Catholics.
1. Recent church developments have led
to the placement of altars in churches as
close as possible to the people of a
congregation. Thus the people see more
clearly the action at the altar and gain a
sense that they are a part of what is
happening. In a sense, occasional small
gatherings of parishioners for Masses in
homes reflect this development - bring the
altar and the people together.
A home Mass, often with a group’s pastor
as celebrant, can be a very powerful
experience, especially for people who
sometimes feel like anonymous members of
a community. Here, for instance, the
preaching can be more sharply focused than
is usually possible in a larger congregation.
Of course, Christians know that they
share with God and with each other in any
celebration of the Eucharist. And many
parishes are amazingly successful in creating
a feeling of unity and intimacy among
hundreds of people at Mass.
Nonetheless, parishioners often say that
during a home Mass with a small group they
have seen and experienced the Eucharist and
their connection with other Christians in a
special way.
In* addition, the home Mass helps people
see how much the home and the
neighborhood are sanctuaries of God’s
presence.
2. The parish celebration of the Mass is a
A Most Memorable
BY DOLORES LECKEY
As a young mother I was fortunate to
have a mentor - an older, experienced
person who had successfuiiy maneuvered
and weathered life’s storms.
A light of wisdom and hope for me, she
was 20 years my senior and the mother of
10 children. She considered it more
important to read than to wax floors. My
mentor never deliberately “taught.” But she
lived out of a center of conviction and
action that all could see.
For many years prior to Vatican II,
liturgy was really the heart of her life.
Family prayer in her home included eight
roughhousing boys saying vespers, the
church’s evening prayer.
The Mass of the Christian community
logically led Christians to perform works of
charity and to promote social justice in her
thinking. She believed ordinary men and
women were called to holiness, to
participation in the creative and redeeming
work of God.
In the mid-1960s she invited several
young mothers to meet in her home over
coffee, to discuss how we might deepen our
lives of prayer. Our group met to learn, to
meditate, to be comforted in silence, to pray
for our vocations in marriage and family.
For many of us, these morning meditations
opened windows to the other dimension of
life, that which “eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard.”
My mentor, now a widow with grown
children, is still in pursuit of the intellectual,
creative, artful, prayerful life. She has
chosen to continue this path in the company
of praying women - a community of nuns.
After she made this choice, a number of
us searched for a way to say “goodbye and
A MASS AT HOME, Delores
Leckey writes, enables her to know
and experience that the Word is,
indeed, made flesh in the people with
whom she lives out the daily rhythms
of her life. (NC Sketch by Christopher
McDonough)
TWO FACTORS that may account for Catholics’ desire experience for people overcoming the persistant anonymity
for Masses in their homes are the desire for a more intimate of the parish Mass and indicating how much the home and
experience of the Mass and the great diversity among neighborhood are sanctuaries of God’s presence. NC Photo
today’s Catholics. A home Mass can be a very powerful by Anne Bingham)
One Side Of A Dialogue
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
Sometimes reading St. Paul’s letters is like
listening to one end of a telephone
conversation.
You can hear perfectly well what the
person in the room with you is saying. But
you can only guess what is being said on the
other end of the line. That, of course,
determines to a great extent what is being
said at this end. If you could just pick up the
extension phone and hear both sides, all
would be clear.
Paul’s letters are just one side of a
dialogue. Often what he says leaves no doubt
about what the other side is up to; other
times, you can only guess - not necessarily
wildly, but guess nevertheless. This is true for
a good part of the second and the beginning
Mentor
thank you” and decided finally on a home
Mass. Gathering in one of the living rooms
where we had met so often seemed tire most
fitting way to thank God for her and for the
years of grace and giving we had received
through her.
Accordingly, a dozen middle-aged women
and men, grown children and others touched
by her active concern for social justice
joined with her pastor in celebrating the
church’s central act of worship. Afterward,
we all shared stories and memories as well as
food, song, laughter and tears.
This moment stretched my memory to
other home Masses: my son’s First
Communion; a Christmas Mass at our
dining-room table after my husband’s heart
attack; a friend’s wedding anniversary; a
welcome Mass for new neighbors.
Home Mass is not a frequent occurrence
in my life. But it is important when it
happens. As the parish liturgy brings the
breadth of Christ to my sense of Christian
community, a home Mass opens for me the
depth and intimacy of Christ in the
community.
It enables me to know and experience
that the Word indeed is made flesh in and
with the people with whom I live out the
daily rhythms of my days and nights.
What is the purpose of a home Mass? Is it
meant to be only a gathering of friends? Or
can it be the means of creating bonds of
friendship and support?
For me, when my family was challenged
to help a man re-enter society after being
paroled from jail, the home Mass was a
primary means for letting us know we were
not alone in what seemed an impossible task.
I believe that strangers can come together
for Eucharist services and discover, in new
ways, the strength of the bond established
among them by their baptism. In the early
church when people gathered together, they
“ • . .devoted themselves to the communal
life, to the breaking of bread and to
prayers.” (Acts. 2:42)
Is it possible that today too we can build
solidarity and security in relationships and
find the courage to act by occasionally
“breaking bread together” at home, with
each other and with the Lord?
of the third chapters of First Corinthians.
Many Christians in Corinth prefer the
sophisticated presentations of Apollos to the
more direct and realistic proclamation by
Paul.
This suggests that, for all their talk of
“wisdom,” the Corinthians do not really
know what true wisdom is all about. They
are still immature, still judging things,
wisdom included, according to human
standards, not divine. They have a lot of
growing up to do.
“Brothers, the trouble was that I could
not talk to you as spiritual men but only as
men of flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you
with milk, and did not give you solid food
because you were not ready for it.
“You are not ready for it even now, being
still very much in a natural condition. For as
long as there are jealously and quarrels
among you, are you not of the flesh? And is
not your behavior that of ordinary men?” (I
Cor. 3:1-3.)
Taking the prevailing philosophy as a
guide, the Corinthians had imagined
Christian wisdom in terms of high flying
speculation about the divine Lord.
Floating smugly in this stratosphere, they
congratulated themselves on being superior -
so superior that they could look down on
those less fortunate people who were still
concerned about such distasteful things as
the crucifixion; still struggling to live out
their Christian commitment in the ordinary
affairs of life; still trying to love unselfishly
and creatively.
Well, says Paul, this is precisely where
true wisdom lies. Not in self-gratifying
mental gymnastics but in lives modeled on
the selfless, creative love of the Son
incarnate, a love which reached its highest
expression in the cross.
This is the amazing wisdom of which it is
written: “Eye has not seen, ear has not
heard, nor has it so much as dawened on
man what God has prepared for those who
love him.” (I Cor. 2:9)
The Corinthians’ egocentric behavior is a
clear indication that they have failed to
grasp this wisdom. The true wisdom, says
Paul, can be expressed only in acts of love
directed toward others.
As for finding wisdom by clever reasoning
or by any other merely human means, the
Corinthians should come to realize that this
wisdom defies reason. Wisdom cannot be
found; it must be given. Just as no one can
ever know another’s real self unless the other
reveals this, so no one can know “the depths
of God.” (I Cor. 2:11) unless God reveals
himself, his wisdom.
It cannot be found; it must be given -
and accepted. But anyone who insists on
judging and living according to human
standards, no matter how apparently noble,
will not be open either to receive or to
accept.
“The natural man does not accept what is
taught by the Spirit of God. For him, that is
absurdity. He cannot come to know such
teaching because it must be appraised in a
spiritual way.” (I Cor. 2:14)
That is why Paul came preaching the
“absurdity” of the cross. For in this
“absurdity” God challenges people to see
true wisdom, creative and not destructive.
Wisdom unifies people in mature love. It
does not divide out of childish
self-centeredness.
KNOW
YOUR FAITH
a.lllti >
(AH Articles on this page Copyrighted 1980 by N. C. News Service)
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