ARTICLES

"It"

Mystery Masks Monterey Liturgical Gathering

By Stephen Frankini

"Wrapped in Mystery" was the theme of the annual Monterey diocese's liturgical conference held at Madonna del Sasso church in Salinas on September 23.

The conference showcased three cutting-edge liturgies (opening, closing, and the Eucharist and two equally avante-garde lectures for the English speakers, one from Father Michael Miller, and the other by Sister Mary Boys. Benedictine father Cyprian Consiglio led the music team.

The liturgical dancers all wore black pants and shirts with white Mardi Gras-style masks (very mysterious). They also wore tan sashes -- each dancer in a unique way. The opening liturgy commenced with a procession of two dancers bearing a sheer cloth with bright colored designs, which they moved in an undulating fashion as they processed. Smiling Dancers holding censors followed, gesturing to the congregation as if to toast them or offer them a drink. The dancers then artistically rendered various sacred scenes, accompanied by background music and narration. (Throughout all the liturgies, narrators alternated in Spanish and English).

In one such sacred scene, one woman, over an acoustic guitar background, narrated a story of how she had been injured in a motorcycle accident in a foreign country. She related the agony of waking up in the hospital and of being unable to speak the language. She prayed that God would send someone with whom she could converse in English. "I opened my eyes, and saw a young woman standing near me. And she said in perfect English, [breathy tone of voice] 'hello, can I help you? My name -- is Emanuella.'" The drum cymbals swelled climactically; "God with us!" the narrator proclaimed. Lively maracas then swept away any lingering dreariness.

Both here and throughout the conference, percussion played a big role in heightening the tension or setting the mood. Swelling cymbals and wind chimes invoked a cheesy sensation of wonder. A-rhythmic bongo beats created suspense.

Two narrators read meditations on the mysteries of water, air, fire, earth, flowers, the sun, the moon, the human body, family, friendship, second chances, forgiveness, willingness to love, peace, and liberty -- to which we responded (after each meditation) with a bongo-accompanied chant: "we WRAP ourselves in MYstery; enVUELta en miSTERio."

We then recited the Our Father, Tower-of-Babel-style, some in English, some in Spanish.

After the opening liturgy, we went to the parish hall to hear Father Mike Miller, from Sacred Heart parish in Salinas, deliver a talk. Miller, as introduced, was described as director for the diocesan office of education, an admirer of theologian Karl Rahner, a director of Renew and of ongoing clergy education.

Father Miller began with a story about a wild Protestant minister named Hezekiah who would lead the people to the river for baptisms. "Why was Hezekiah so filled with 'it'?" asked Miller. "He was inoculated with 'it.' 'It' left its mark on him. Some gifted people experience and feel 'it' more easily than others."

"It" seemed to be Father's "fresh" and "re-vitalized" way of referring to God.

Father expounded on faith in "it": "They [in touch with "it"] are people with faith, not religious or capital-F Faith, nor faith in the creeds, but a faith they learned when they were small that life can be trusted and the universe isn't out to get them. Our tradition believes in infant baptism because you learn at a small age basic faith in 'it.'"

Father addressed the theme of the conference. "Our choice is not whether to live with mystery or not -- mystery is," he said. "It is whether to make ourselves available to 'it' and to experiences 'it.' One of the reasons for liturgy is to attune us to the holiness of everyday things." According to Father Mike, some things that make us predisposed to "it" are loneliness, feelings of our finiteness, and holy places, coincidences, and feelings of worthlessness. "When you go in front of the Blessed Sacrament, 'it' comes out," he said.

Father quoted from Paul Tillich: "Do you know what it means to be struck by grace? It doesn't mean we suddenly believe that God exists, or that Jesus is the Savior, or that the Bible contains the truth. Furthermore, grace is the experience of 'it' and the lovingness of 'it.' Grace does not simply imply that we're making progress in our moral self-control, in our fight against special faults in our relationships to others and to society. Moral progress may be a proof of grace, but it is not grace itself, and it can even prevent us from receiving grace. There is often a graceless acceptance of Christian doctrines, and a graceless battle against the structures of evil in our human personality."

Father asked us to sit for 30 seconds and think of a time that each of us experienced "it." We then shared our experience with others.

Turning to the Nicene Creed, Miller said it "more or less" declares that "Jesus Christ is true 'it' of true 'it,' begotten not made, consubstantial with 'it.'" Father explained that to make Church doctrines relevant, one might look at them as metaphors. "All the Church mysteries, all the natural mysteries, all the 15 and 20 mysteries of the rosary are all expressions of God," said Miller. "For instance, we've all had our Immaculate Conceptions. We were conceived immaculate in the mind of God. God's picture of us is immaculate. We all have angels at certain times in our lives to send us messages. We all have remarkable Visitations with people that change us, or we change them. We are often asked to give birth to Jesus in strange, difficult places. In the great temple, our Church, don't we often get lost and found there? And doesn't God often get lost and found there? We have transfiguring moments and great crucifixions, and of course, resurrections, and we look forward to an Ascension. The mystery comes to Catholics and non-Catholics, and to atheists -- because 'it' is universal love."

Father concluded with some practical advice for our liturgies. "We should not," he said, "over-plan or over-choreograph our liturgies. We need to allow them a little wiggle room."

After Miller's talk, we proceeded to the "Eucharistic Liturgy," over which Bishop Sylvester Ryan presided. The Mass had no confiteor or kyrie. A marimba played during the Prayer of the Faithful. The chanted preface was broken up with snippets from the "Holy Holy," Caribbean-style. The marimba ostinato continued through the fourth Eucharistic Prayer until just before the consecration, after which it resumed. The prayer was broken up by the choir director, singing call-and-response excerpts from the Holy Holy. The congregation sang a Latin Agnus Dei hymn, while the director sang a descant part in English.

In his sermon, Bishop Ryan asked, "so what does it mean when we say 'a parish wrapped in mystery?' Hospitality, welcoming contains and reveals the mystery of Christ present in our midst, reveals the Father, and sends forth the Spirit." Ryan sternly warned that if "there is no welcome of others, [then there is] no welcoming of the Father, the Son, or the Spirit. God is not selfish. God is love. And the heart of love is relationships. Anytime we greet, receive, or catechize anyone in our parish, we receive Christ. This is what it means to be a parish. We all are transforming the Body of Christ along with the bread and wine. Where is Christ present in the celebration of the Liturgy? In the celebrant, in the word proclaimed, in the Eucharist of bread broken and the cup shared, and in the assembly. That is the solemn teaching of the Church in the beautiful document on the liturgy at the Second Vatican Council. Is there more to a parish wrapped in mystery? Of course there is. But if it doesn't start with you receiving others as Christ, it can't go any further."

Our afternoon speaker, Sister Mary Boys, was introduced as a professor at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City and an adjunct member of the faculty of Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Teachers College Columbia University. She is also, we learned, the author of the book, Has God only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self Understanding. An elected member of the Christian Scholars Group on Judaism and the Jewish people. Sister Mary Boys is also active in Call to Action (though this was not mentioned at the conference.

Sister set the tone for her talk by beginning with the questions: how can we "revitalize our parishes such that they transcend the narrowness of our own parochial interests?" "How could the Liturgy pull us out of our comfort zones?"

When discussing the long meetings of preparation for the conference, Sister Boys stated she is not one for indulgences in the Church. "I find the theology behind them problematic," she said. She said she resonated with a note given to her explaining the purpose of the conference: "Our theme for our meeting comes from our desire to explore an anti-fundamentalist perspective. We live in a culture of absolutes where everyone pretends they have an answer to almost every perplexing circumstance."

"Religious fundamentalism," said Sister Boys, "has become a serious problem in our world, not only in the Christian world, but across all religious traditions, and even within our own Catholic Church." She defined "religious fundamentalism" as "a discernible pattern of religious militancy by which self-styled true-believers attempt to arrest the erosion of religious identity, fortify the borders of the religious community, and create viable alternatives to secular institutions and behaviors." Fundamentalism, according to Boys, goes far beyond anything about which we should be certain, though she was not at all certain about what we should be certain. "If you knew," she said, "why would you need faith? Certitude and faith do not belong on the same page."

So, who are numbered among the "religious fundamentalists," according to Sister Boys? It wasn't entirely clear. Fundamentalism, she said, "also seems to assume that because revelation is fixed and utterly clear, the tradition must be handed on without change. Change is to pervert the tradition." She also noted that "a faith in which beliefs are guarded with zeal and proclaimed with no sense of mystery of the deep mystery to which they point distorts the very notion of faith in God."

To illustrate her point, Sister Boys told an anecdote about the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston, built in 1899. One of the conditions in Gardner's will was that everything in the museum must be kept as it is in perpetuity, allowing neither rearrangement nor additions. So, at certain times of the day paintings had to be covered so the sun wouldn't shine on them. Also, some great masterpieces were stolen from the gallery because proper security measures could not be taken. Isabella Stuart Gardner, Boys opined, thought that she was ensuring stability in her collection. Ironically, by not allowing the staff to adapt to conditions, she jeopardized the whole collection. "So too in the life of faith," said Boys. "Simply repeating formulae from era to era does not ensure that their meaning will remain fresh."

Sister Boys gave a very practical reason why we should abandon the concept of fundamentalism. "Strong religion, or fundamentalism," she said, "also sets religions against one another. And this is a conflict our world can ill afford." Sister called upon the Church to lead the way. "The Catholic Church in particular," she said," must be on watch against patterns of thought that disparage people of other faiths.... And here is a way of looking at liturgy as a counter to this."

Sister said that Catholics often use the term "mystery" as an excuse not to face the hard questions in life. She then encouraged us to look for deeper understandings of fixed Catholic truths. "Do we dutifully recite the creed without wishing to know how or why Jesus Christ bears significance in our world today?" she asked. "Are we not obliged to push beyond formulas that may once have been appropriate for us as children but are no longer able to engage us as adults? Over and over again at church we hear these big words -- salvation, incarnation, redemption -- but they cease to be big words that shock us, that get us out of our comfort zones. We've heard them so often, there's no freshness or depth left in their meaning. Sometimes in homilies I think the priest is just saying 'blah, blah, blah, yadi, yadi, ya.'

"What does the force of salvation mean in our lives? How do we connect the liturgy with what we do everyday, with what we long for, with what we fear?"

Sister said she first began really to understand and appreciate the Eucharist in 1968 when she was in college. Having learned of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, Tennessee, she said she was drained of all her energy. At Mass, she said, "just after the priest said, 'this is my blood' -- in a gesture, who knows how or why it happened, he accidentally knocked over a chalice, which in turn knocked over the rest of them. The blood splattered to the ground. The juxtaposition of the blood shed for us, for the greater humanity in our world in Memphis Tennessee that afternoon. That was a mystery no liturgy planner can or would make. From that point forwards, whatever Eucharist meant, it had to do with my life force, not just Jesus'. So making connections is both a gift and work. But it is saving work because it enables us to enter mystery."

In speaking of scripture (and lamenting the average Catholic's ignorance of it) Sister quoted Frederick Buechner's "wonderful" definition of the Bible: "A disorderly collection of books, which are often tedious, barbaric, obscure, and teeming with contradictions and inconsistencies. It's a swarming composite of a book. An Irish stew of poetry and propaganda, law and legalism, myth and murk, history and hysteria, hopelessly associated with tub-thumping evangelism and dreary piety, super-annuated superstition, blue-nosed moralizing with ecclesiastical authoritarianism and crippling literalism."

Sister finally instructed us, "Don't talk to God with piety, talk to God with honesty."

There was no question-and-answer section.

We returned to the Church for the closing liturgy, which was mostly a reprise of the previous liturgies, with mysterious masked dancers bearing cloth and incense. While we sang "Enter the Mystery, Welcome the Mystery, Sing of the Paschal Sacrifice," Bishop Ryan read a prayer. The grand finale began with a musical reprise. The liturgical dancers processed around the periphery of the church, starting a liturgical conga line which all were directed to follow.

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