How we can receive more from the Mass - 16 (Creed - the Church is holy)

“I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” 

The Church is holy because God is holy, and because the Church is the Body of Christ with Jesus as the head.  And the Church and her sacraments help to make us holy. 

This does not mean that all members of the Church are sin free – we are, all of us, sinners.  But there is a universal call to holiness; we are called to strive for sainthood, to be like God.  That is what we were created to be, and God took human flesh in Jesus that we might, like him, be holy. "The Son of God became man so that man might become God." (St Athanasius)

Holiness does not diminish us, it enhances us.  There can a temptation to see holiness as negative, as merely being the absence of sin, maybe a bit worthy or dull.  But Jesus said that he came that we may have life, and have it abundantly (Jn 10:10).  When you meet a truly holy person there is a transparent radiance of joy, of goodness, and a resilience that enables them to face all that the world throws at them.  

But we do not grow in holiness by chance.  It comes through being open to and cooperating with the grace of God.  We cooperate with God’s grace through our day-to-day living of the Christian life, through prayer, through reflection, through reading the Scriptures, through celebrating Holy Mass, and receiving the sacraments.  Holiness comes through being orientated towards God in everything that we think, everything that we do, and everything that we say.  Our lives are to be an ongoing conversion to holiness.

But how hard it can be to start those good habits!

When we strive towards holiness in our day-to-day living then our celebration of Holy Mass makes more sense and becomes more complete.  It truly becomes the source and summit of our lives.

People came to Jesus, and through him to the Father, because they responded to his evident holiness.  Do the people that we meet in our lives see that holiness in us also?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not "either/or" but "both/and"....

Although of less importance than other elements of the Mass, the reality is that the first thing that most parishes will consider when preparing music for a Mass is the hymns to be sung – the oft-derided "hymn sandwich".  Building up a repertoire of hymns, rather than just singing the same old-same old, is good and healthy on so many levels – for both the music group and the Assembly.   The learning-curve for our Vigil Mass congregation, the Music Group and myself has been very steep over the last 4+ years. There is no great secret but, for what it’s worth, here is how I work. The first criterion for me, as much as possible, is that the hymns we use are relevant to the season and/or “theme” of the Mass.   Unless you have an encyclopaedic mind then you need some help here and I use two sources; the suggestions at the back of the hymnal and suggestions provided within the pages of “Music and Liturgy” – the periodical produced by the Society of St Gregory.   I n...
Read more

Gospel Acclamation

Image
I have said  previously that I don't like Gospel Acclamations and Responsorial Psalms to be too lively - rapidly switching between exuberant singing and attentive, "heart"-listening doesn't come easily to me.  However, after some years I began to feel that the standard, triple-Alleluia was in need of some......enhancement; and, after getting an idea from watching a Papal Mass on TV, we began to make use of a short fanfare to introduce the Gospel Acclamation. Two flautists play this simple fanfare (the top line is the melody, the bottom line is a harmony that I came up with), then the cantor sings unaccompanied followed by choir and congregation (with the harmony); the cantor then sings the verse and all repeat the Alleluia (again, with harmony). It's a simple embellishment but it does to serve to highlight the Gospel Acclamation a little more. As well as this we have also been introducing Gospel Acclamation tones from John Ainslie's  Sing the Psalms Si...
Read more

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog. It has been suggested to me for a while to start this blog.   But I was reluctant for a number of reasons; not least of these being (I must admit) that I didn’t really have an idea of what a blog is as I don’t follow any myself.   When I started looking at some liturgical blogs there were a couple of things that struck me – it seems that virtually all of them are somewhere between “rather” and “very” traditionalist; and more often than not they aspire to a “quality” (for want of a better word) of music than most parish groups (in my experience) are incapable of – much as I love a bit of Byrd, Palestrina and Allegri I have never been involved in a parish where we had the resources and skills to pull it off. So, deeply influenced by the Dirty Harry philosophy of life (“A man’s got to know his limitations!”), this blog is aimed at grassroot liturgists like myself.   Based on my own experiences – successes and failures – it will contain refl...
Read more