On the Sunday of the Octave of Christmas, December 29, 2019, I attended the most beautiful rite this side of heaven. It was my first time attending the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, also known as the Traditional Latin Mass. Given that we live in the depths of Appalachia, the travel distance was significant. So we loaded up the kids on Sunday morning and were on the road by 9am. After stopping for quick breakfast at the local McDonald’s (the kids love their pancakes) we headed down the interstate for the 2.5 hour drive to Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. Given that we didn’t know what to expect, we were all anxious, but excited. We arrived about 15 minutes early for the Mass and were happy to see others entering the Church. After entering the Church, we took a seat in the back row so we could learn without appearing to be completely lost. Holy Ghost Catholic Church was the most beautiful Church in which I had worshipped. I was fascinated by the high altar, the stained glass windows, and carvings of the Holy Family in the front of the Church. I grew up worshipping in a simple church building with only a cross for decoration as is typical in the Anabaptist tradition. My church in my childhood reflected our simple lives in a rural area with a close-knit family and community. I’m certainly not denigrating my roots. In fact, much like Thomas Howard expresses in his book Evangelical is Not Enough, I’ve found that those simple roots make me appreciate the all-encompassing faith of Catholicism even more. In fact, I feel that if I had grown up in the Catholic faith that I may have taken the depth and breadth of this beautiful faith for granted. The Mass began as we stood for the entrance processional of the priest and altar servers. The old Catholic hymn, O Come, All Ye Faithful played from the depths of an old organ and the choir sang in beautiful angelic voices that filled the sanctuary with their melody. The hymn began in English and moved into the Latin. Ironically, I had learned the Latin version of the hymn, Adeste Fideles, as a child in my rural elementary school. I still recalled the lyrics. At that moment, I was transported back to those days in the chilly gymnasium with my childhood friends standing on risers singing to parents clustered in cafeteria chairs in the Christmas cantata, yet at the same time, I felt my own children and husband beside me. On an entirely different level, I felt the joy of eternity in praise of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ in the heavenly places. At that moment, with past, present, and future converged in a single moment, I wept. I praised God through the tears. During the rest of the Mass, I attempted to keep track in my book, Treasure and Tradition, a guide to the Latin Mass, but after a while, I put the book down and abandoned myself in the sights, scents, and sounds of the Mass. The scent of incense permeated the air like the prayers of saints rising to heaven as mentioned in the book of Revelation at the heavenly Mass. The ringing bells signified that Jesus Christ was present body and divinity in the Church offering himself as a living sacrifice which through his infinite love we are saved. The angelic choir sang throughout filling the Church with the praises and prayers that were instituted centuries ago as worship worthy for our King. I was in awe imagining those Christians centuries ago as they stood worshipping God through essentially the same Mass. I wondered what they felt as they came before their Lord. The Extraordinary Form of the Mass is truly extraordinary and I believe that given the beauty and encompassing nature of the Latin Mass of the universal Church for centuries there must have been true spiritual confusion preceding the enormous content changes and deletions in the Mass after Vatican II. I wondered how mere men could change the Mass that sanctified and fortified Saints for centuries into a Novus Ordo Mass that almost fit my simple Protestant Church in which I grew up. The beauty and power of the Catholic faith was changed during the Council and we hear the results today in the decline of attendance, decline of belief in the real presence, and decrease in vocations. As we left the Church and headed home, I was reminded of the faith of those generations who were sustained by the traditional Mass. The Mass evangelized peoples from around the world who spoke their own languages, but the universal Latin Mass connected those people in ways in which nothing but sharing a common language and heavenly rite could. The restoration of the Catholic faith and the unity in our world would be fostered by a return to the truly universal components of the faith of the ages. In the end, our unity as a people depends on us having a focal point where we can share traditions, languages, and faith—the faith in Jesus Christ who offered himself to all for our salvation. Restore the faith, restore the world. Thank you, Lord, for calling me home to the Catholic faith. O Come, All Ye Faithful. O Come, Let Us Adore Him. Christ the Lord.
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Everyday I need to read at least one positive story to help re-inflate my heart, which gets the life sucked out of it by the worldliness of our daily lives. This helped for today! Thank you.
Another excellent essay Rae. I’ve been wanting to experience the TLM for a while, hut I can’t seem to find any near me.