Monday Musings - Come Join the Saints and Angels

[We MUST listen to Blessed John Henry Newman. 

We MUST conduct ourselves with the utmost reverence every time we enter a Catholic Church since our loving Lord is really and substantially present there. It is His House!  

We MUST understand why we come to, who is really present at, and what is actually happening during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Our continued failure to address these issues  jeopardizes the salvation of lost and confused souls.]

 

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

“…all we do in Church is done on a principle of reverence; it is done with the thought that we are in God's presence. But irreverent persons, not understanding this, when they come into Church, and find nothing there of a striking kind, when they find everything is read from a book, and in a calm, quiet way, and still more, when they come a second and a third time, and find everything just the same, over and over again, they are offended and tired. "There is nothing," they say, "to rouse or interest them." They think God's service dull and tiresome, if I may use such words; for they do not come to Church to honor God, but to please themselves. They want something new. They think the prayers are long, and wish that there was more preaching, and that in a striking oratorical way, with loud voice and florid style.

And when they observe that the worshipers in Church are serious and subdued in their manner, and will not look, and speak, and move as much at their ease as out of doors, or in their own houses, then (if they are very profane) they ridicule them, as weak and superstitious. Now is it not plain that those who are thus tired, and wearied, and made impatient by our Sacred services below, would most certainly get tired and wearied with heaven above? because there the Cherubim and Seraphim “rest not the night," saying, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty." Such as this, too, will be the way of the Saints in glory, for we are told that there will be a great voice of much people saying, Alleluia; and again they said Alleluia, and the four-and-twenty elders said Alleluia, and a voice of many waters and of mighty thunderings said Alleluia.

Such, too, was our Lord’s way, when in His agony He three times repeated the same words, “Thy will, not Mine, be done.” It is the delight of all holy beings, who stand around the Throne, to use one and the same form of worship; they are not tired, it is ever new pleasure to them to say the words anew. They are never tired; but surely all those persons would be soon tired of hearing them, instead of taking part in their glorious chant, who are weaned of Church now, and seek for something more attractive and rousing.

Let all persons, then, know for certain and be assured beforehand, that if they come to Church to have their hearts put into strange and new forms, and their feelings moved and agitated, they come for what they will not find. We wish them to join Saints and Angels in worshipping God…”

(Blessed John Henry Newman from Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. III)