place, would pay no attention to these notes. So you would be in very good company.
Still, I include the notes for the seeker who wants to think about God. It’s okay to want to think about God. As a public school kid on a bus in East Tennessee, I would read the Catechism of the Catholic Church every single day on the way to school. There, I discovered Augustine and Aquinas, Catherine of Siena and Hildegard of Bingen. I realized that I could pray and think, think and pray. The notes, then, are included for all those other awkward kids on a bus in Tennessee, looking to begin their burgeoning theological career (and perhaps avoid attracting too many friends).
Chapter Two
Entrance
“Lift Up Your Heads, O Gates”
(Ps 24:7)
A Sunday morning around the O’Malley household is the very performance of chaos. Rising at 6:00 a.m., our son demands that we immediately travel as a family to sit on the living room couch. There, with sleep encrusted eyes, we begin to receive the morning orders of our toddler major general. Before coffee begins to pulse through our veins, we have been told to turn on the television so that he can watch Curious George. Generally denying this order not because of deeply held principles around screen time but out of fear of being judged by much better parents, we turn on one of Elmo’s latest albums, singing and dancing along as the sun pierces through the wintry perma-cloud characteristic of South Bend winters. We also get another cup of coffee. And then another.
Soon after these morning rites, it is time for breakfast. That is, it is time for us to eat our breakfast. Our son’s relationship with eating in the morning is not quite as committed. At first, the hunger that occupies his whole being must be sated. Then, once food is available, that hunger is no more. He wants to dance and sing again. With us. When dishes are being done and his food is being thrown out, he now becomes very interested in eating not just his breakfast but all the food in the world. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first tantrum.
Now running behind after an hour-long breakfast ordeal, it is time to shower and get dressed for Mass. One of us (left unnamed to protect the civilization of love that we’re trying to cultivate in our domestic church) goes upstairs to shower, taking close to forty-five minutes. Another of us decides that he is tired, a bit fussy, and would like to play one game of Madden 2011 before departing to worship the living God. Losing track of time, the gameplayer forgets to adequately prepare food and beverages for his son to take to Mass and finally gets upstairs to shower ten minutes before we must leave to offer the Eucharistic sacrifice. In the meantime, our son has now listened to two hours of Elmo’s music, is showing signs that he would prefer to take a nap, and is hiding from us so that he does not have to get dressed.
Somehow, we get out the door with six minutes to spare, arriving merely a minute late. We schlep our son, his vast array of Mass needs ranging from food to holy cards, and ourselves to a front pew where immediately the toddler issues his second order of the day by pointing a finger at a door: “Leave!” We tell him no, and then spend the next hour of our lives alternating between participating in the Mass and discouraging our son from treating the pew as his personal jungle gym. After communion, the son again demands to leave, we whisper, “Soon,” and then we return to our now snow-covered car with everything in tow (after blessing ourselves at every holy water font in the Church). We arrive home, slightly tired, our wills weakened enough to let the sleepy toddler watch a single episode of Curious George before lunch and a nap.
In my weaker moments, just as I am about to put our son down for a Sunday morning nap, I wonder why we participate in this exhausting ritual from week to week. Among my high school and college friends—an excellent array of human beings—there are many who try to get to Mass when they can but don’t treat it as a weekly obligation. They may pray together as a family at home, which may very well be more relaxing and spiritually illuminating for all involved. But they don’t orient their entire Sundays to fulfilling this Eucharistic obligation. Why is it so important for the O’Malley family that we must be present on Sunday mornings and holy days of obligation? Couldn’t we continue to be decent Catholics by only attending now and again?
The “Catholic” Church
Of course, after I have taken a sufficient nap to defeat the Sunday morning exhaustion, I remember again why we go to such lengths to pray with Christ’s Body every Sunday morning. There are a number of religious traditions in which “being present” is less important than “authentic engagement.” Why sing a hymn with everyone else when I prefer the experience of singing alone? Why pray a psalm with the People of God when I get more out of praying in the privacy of my room? Because in Catholicism, joining together to pray, coming from all corners of our towns and villages, is an enactment of what it means to belong to the Catholic Church to begin with. To pray together, to worship together, this is what it means to belong to the Church.
Louis Bouyer, a theologian at the Second Vatican Council, wrote:
The Church exists only in these assemblies in which men meet one another as “neighbors,” who together hear the Divine Word in order to unite in a common faith by celebration of the “Lord’s Supper,” in which their love, of the Father and their brethren, is exercised inseparably in unanimous praise and charity.1
The Church comes into existence fully in this gathering of men and women to worship the living God. Every family and person gathered in that assembly, whether or not they’re fully aware of what they’re doing, are signs of Christ’s glorious body on earth. The Church only becomes what she is intended to be when all of humanity gathers together to participate in the divine praise that is the very vocation of the Church.
Going to Mass is not fundamentally about my unique spiritual experience, but about giving over part of myself in love to all other believers so that together we can manifest Christ’s love for the world. Even if I’m distracted by work, dealing with a sick toddler, or more interested in watching a football game later in the afternoon, my presence on Sunday is necessary for the Church’s mission of divine love. The Church is “Catholic” because her destiny is to gather all the human family into the peace of Christ’s love.
The Entrance Rites
In this sense, our very first act of worship at Mass occurs even before we enter that assembly. Rather, the moment that we as a family reorient our entire day to participate in the Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ’s body, we have already offered ourselves to God. Yet, the opening rites at the beginning of Mass, including the procession, are a preparation for entering fully into the presence of the Lord of heaven and earth. Psalm 24 describes a procession in which Israel climbs the mountain of the Lord, approaching the Temple courts. The Psalmist cries out to the doors of the Temple:
Lift up your heads, O gates;
rise up, you ancient portals,
that the king of glory may enter. (Ps 24:9)
The Temple itself must make room for God’s presence to dwell in the midst of the holy ones of Israel.
At the beginning of Mass, as the priest and servers, lectors, and Eucharistic ministers process down the aisle, the Church makes room for the presence of Christ in the Scriptures and the Eucharist. The incense that is used at the beginning of Mass is an image of the Shekinah, the cloud of glory representative of God’s very presence that descends into the holy of holies in the Temple. This cloud of incense sanctifies the assembly
