I think for different people, they will find different things in the TLM that are valuable for them. That’s perhaps one sign of its richness. So I’ll share what has been it for me. I think since this is a post on chant, I’ll mix in some comments about chant too.

Firstly, the *Gregorian Chant and the text of the propers*. Of course in the New Rite you can have that too. The thing is that TLM doesn’t allow these texts to be substituted – they must be sung or recited.

Having previously served in a local church choir for a while, I found that to “choose hymns”, help the choir “learning new songs”, “choose songs that people can sing along”, was tedious. I then began to ask myself, “what is the best hymn to choose for each mass?”. The answer came when I read in the rules of the liturgy! There’s no need to choose anything! The church has chosen bible verses for you and published it in a collection of chants! I later discovered that the Church has simple ways of chanting the psalms, such that everyone can sing along!

Music is my hobby. Like many people who love sports and music, we all want to get better in our skills so as to improve our enjoyment and develop our talents. Singing Gregorian chant has given me a brand-new dimension to church music, and I have found it fulfilling even though it is hard work. The way music is written reflects its purpose – this comes from my years of appreciating music. The nature of chant makes it very clear that it is meant to be prayer, not performance!

Secondly, to me it is the fact that at a TLM that is properly celebrated, the meaning of the Mass comes across very clearly to me. We come to Mass to worship God, right? I don’t come to Mass to have a dialogue with the priest, nor to engage in religious karaoke, nor to clap for my fellow parishioners, nor (bizarrely) to hear about the results of last nights football matches.

It is unfortunate that these elements have commonly become more significant and obscured the meaning of the Mass. (I don’t mean to say the new rite is bad, I certainly accept that the new rite can be celebrated well and properly).

Instead, the priest and the congregation are praying together in the TLM, that’s why the priest faces a certain direction. In many parts of the TLM, the priest recites Psalms and bible verses for his private prayers, and they are more comprehensive compared to the New Rite – what an excellent way to pray using the Word of God itself.

The thing is, some people prefer to have a ’sense of community’, but as we say in the creed, ” believe in the Community of saints”, the meaning of community is much deeper – its not just who is present in the church building at that point in time! That’s why I don’t mind the lack of a “chummy” feeling at the TLM, because I know that everyone (heaven, earth) is *still* worshipping together as a community of saints.

Finally, to answer your previous comment, there is a best way to celebrate the eucharist. That’s to follow liturgical rules whereever possible, and to do the things that reflect the meaning of the mass clearly. After all, our actions reflect our beliefs. Many people have lost sight of it, or tend to emphasise “community” (and the shallow meaning of that!) over the other things, like the sense of the sacred and the presence of God.

I hope you don’t give up on the TLM and continue to get to know it better. You may continue to prefer the vernacular, and that’s fine, after all the Eastern Catholics worship in the vernacular and still manage to do good liturgy. Don’t worry that you don’t understand it quickly. I think my journey in learning about it was rather long too, too long to share in one comment.

ok, that’s about as much as my time allows. cheers!

Haha! Yeah. The trouble arises when different people have different ideas on how best to celebrate the Eucharist, with each person thinking that he or she has the best way.

God bless,
Catholic Writer

Just my thoughts on the various comments made on your original post. I think one must understand why one goes to Church to celebrate Mass. Not only as an individual but understanding that one is part of a community to give worship. Some worshippers may have an attraction in Gregorian chants, some to captivating homilies by celebrants with good oratorical skills, some to the atmosphere of being one in the community of believers because they are well acquainted… I guess it’s all right to have these affliations why one goes to Church for Mass. Primarily, one must not forget the basic reason why we go to Church to celebrate the Eucharist. As an individual, family, community.

I agree with you. There must be a certain balance. We must be able to see Jesus in both the Blessed Sacrament and in our neighbour.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta taught her Missionaries of Charity that through their daily holy hour, our love for Jesus becomes more intimate, our love for each other more understanding, and our love for the poor more compassionate.

Our love for Jesus is what fuels our love for our neighbour, and our love for our neighbour reveals our love for God. Naturally then, both must grow together. Otherwise what is supposed to be love for our neighbour becomes merely charity work. And what is supposed to be love for Jesus becomes merely love for ritual.

God bless,
Catholic Writer

I’ll do that. Will check it out. However, based on experience, I think that if anyone already subscribes to a scriptural reflection, we should stick to the one that we feel is best for us instead of having many. More important than reading many reflections is to see how God is speaking to us through his word each day, that is to say, to do our own reflection rather than relying on others’. Others’ reflections are there to help us to apply God’s word in our lives. Don’t you think so?

I am a believer of those who should speak the truth in love, but we must speak it in love nonetheless. I say this because I believe that we can tell a true Christian from a false Christian by the way he or she loves. I also believe that there are many who are Christian in name only, because they do not love. In that sense, I agree with Protestants who say that some Catholics are not Christians. There are a good many of Catholics who are in love with the Church as an institution, or in love with the liturgy, or in love with some other part of the Church, but do not show any love for their neighbour. Such Catholics are not really Christians because a mark of a true Christian is his or her love for their neighbour.

I was writing about this yesterday (will publish it in the blog in greater detail later on) when I heard a priest’s homily. He was speaking about the part where Jesus responds to the scribe on which is the greatest commandment of all – Love God and love neighbour. The priest was saying that since God is spirit, we cannot show our love for God except through our love for our neighbour. If we don’t show love for our neighbour, it just goes to show that whatever we think we are doing, we are not really loving God.

I shared this with a Protestant friend yesterday and she was surprised. “You mean you didn’t know that?” she asked me. Sometimes we forget what it means to be Christian. Sometimes we feel protected that being in the Catholic Church, we think we hold the full and complete truth etc etc, but we don’t really love like a Christian. Like St. Paul writes, “If I have the gift of prophecy, understanding all the mysteries there are, and knowing everything, and if I have faith in all its fullness, to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing at all.”

A Traddie, no matter how right and how Catholic he is, if he does not speak with love to others, is simply not a Christian, and he cannot hope to convince others unless he speaks with love. Love changes the hearts of others and opens them up to receiving the truth. Without love, we are just a gong booming or a cymbal clashing, as St. Paul says. No wonder people don’t want to listen to the noise we make, because it really is just noise if spoken without love.

You are absolutely right when in order for progress to take place, it must be done slowly and respectfully with enough time and catechesis. For what good would it be if suddenly the entire Roman Catholic Church starts to celebrate the TLM? We would run into the same problem that the pre-Vatican II Church encountered – where people didn’t understand what is going on in Mass.

Some Traddies like to say that in communities where the Tridentine Mass is regularly celebrated, there are plenty of vocations and reverence at Mass. But we forget that it is not the Tridentine Mass itself that makes the difference but the catechesis as well. We need only speak to the previous generations, the one that grew up with the Tridentine Mass, to find that the way the new Mass is being celebrated today, with all its liturgical abuses, was the way the old Mass was celebrated in the past, with all its liturgical abuses. It’s not the form of the Mass that is most important, but the catechesis and formation that takes place.

Unfortunately, Traddies can often be the worst witnesses for the TLM. When people like me encounter the bad-hat Traddies (of which there seems to be a lot of), we think to ourselves, “If this is what the people who attend the Tridentine Mass are like, then it is better that I do not attend it.” No wonder we find it difficult to talk to others about the beauty of the TLM. We have to assume that the people (especially if they are clergy) we speak to have already gotten a bad impression of all Traddies, and are probably closed to what we have to say. Speaking the truth to them makes no difference unless it is spoken with love, the love that warms their hearts and opens them up.

You are also right in saying that Latin can be a great bridging tool for parishes that are multi-lingual. There was this point at World Youth Day when I thought to myself, “How good it would be if the World Youth Day song was written in Latin! That way, all can sing the same international song.” The international version of the song was written in different languages, Italian, Spanish, and another language. So the only part that most could sing was the English chorus (since Australians are English-speaking, and World Youth Day was in Australia).

Of course it must be done in love, which means going the extra mile to provide translations for the song as well as to teach each person the meaning of the song. What peeves me a lot is when a Traddie uses Latin to say something and does not provide the translation. It may not be the intention, but to someone like me who already has a bad impression of Traddies, that action is rude and reeks of arrogance, at least to the one that does not understand Latin. It becomes much worse when the person who uses the Latin phrase knows this. Little wonder why people like me tend to have a negative impression of Traddies as people who like to show off.

In Singapore, which is multi-racial but predominantly Chinese, sometimes we forget ourselves and speak Mandarin in the presence of Malay or Indian friends. Then someone would remind us that it is rude to speak in a language where our friends cannot understand and out of love for our non-Chinese neighbour (or sometimes just plain politeness) we speak English, our common language. If this is not possible, like say a Chinese friend whose command of English is very poor, someone else will offer translations for the one who does not understand Mandarin.

It can be difficult and tiring to keep on doing this, but that is what love is all about – going the extra mile, isn’t it? That’s how we show our love for our neighbour, which in turn shows our love for God. If we don’t love our neighbour enough to go the extra mile, then we probably don’t love God either. It’s just lipservice.

God bless,
Catholic Writer

That is so true. Just living a simple “normal” Catholic life that is true to the magestirium and obedient to the Pope is getting harder and harder by the day. My recent sad experience was just a few months ago when after receiving communion, just before I turned to exit, the priest quickly whispered into my ear saying… “in this church we do not kneel down to take communion” .. you can just imagine what I felt, the Holy Host was not even melted yet in my mouth. I guess I was still lucky that I was not refused communion. I know lot of us have our own horror stories and I fully understand what you refer to as the “battle weary” feeling that we all have.
However I can also relate to CW’s view that love should always be in the picture. For me knowing more about Catechism made me more able to define and understand the true meaning of LOVE. Not just the cuddly warm feeling but more towards the spiritual love (of God and of fellowmen). Putting all these in practice was my next big question mark. To solve this, I just figured out that if it is after all a “battle with the principalities of evil” then there is one nuclear bomb I can use…. “confession”. I thought that if I can blast away all the loads that weighing me down I can breath better. Sure enough after ignoring the Sacrament of Reconciliation for YEARS, I went back home to the joy of being with my Lord and my God. I am just sharing this since I really understood what CW said about putting it in action. To me this is the biggest action one can do. Since then, I do what people call ‘devotional confession’ where you really do it regularly, not waiting for when”it” gets too much. Obviously also going to mass as often as possible (daily).
Living in a constant ’state of grace’ is my way of coping in this big spiritual warfare.
I love the discussions here and thank you to all who posted their views. I’m learning a lot from this blog lately. I love the links it’s nice of you guys to maximize this web technology.
Thanks CW keep up the good work. Take it easy, as you can tell, a lot of people love you and taking good care of you here…
I’m praying for all of you.