"I was tempted once to lose my Faith" - - - Cardinal O'Connor
It was on the lonely Pacific island of Okinawa. The sole Navy Chaplain assigned there was spiritually responsible for the pastoral care of thousands of young American service personnel. The villages were loaded and luring with carnal invitations. The boring life with swatches of "nothing to do" made the young people sitting ducks for the consolations of the flesh - which were easily available for a bit of Yankee dinero and strong cigarettes. The chapel and chaplain's quarters were primitive consisting principally of a Quonset hut, with rounded roof and corrugated, forbidding tin walls.
The evenings and nights, for the chaplain, were almost terrifying in their silence. There was no one to engage in adult conversation. After the evening chow, the quiet for him seemed profound and deafeningly empty. Few sought him out for counseling or spiritual direction. Few attended his daily Mass while many sought out the nighttime fleshpots. How much praying or reading or exercise or writing could the young Father O'Connor, Navy Chaplain, do in the face of his apparent failure to reach his spiritual charges?
Would it be surprising, in this milieu, for a spiritual man to cry out to his God....."My God, My God, WHY have You forsaken me"? No more surprising than for John of the Cross to cry out in his emotional and spiritual darkness when it seemed that ALL including God had deserted him. This became for him what spiritual writers call THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL. When one believes that he has done more than what is required, when he has given his life and sweat and talents to the Master in the best way he knows - - - and for years - - - and then to feel totally abandoned!!!!! The soul screams WHY? WHY? Is there any point to my desolation? Does it make any sense? Or is life itself a brutal and miserable joke?
If it could happen to a man of the Faith, intelligence and character of Cardinal O'Connor, what about the rest of us? If this can happen in the green wood, what happens to the dry? But how did he manage his Darkness and discouragement?
He tells us of his " wrestling with the Lord" each night in that bare "chapel", with the red Sanctuary lamp burning in the darkness witnessing to the unique Presence in the Tabernacle. It was there that he made sense out of the drab, repetitive, monotonous routine that was his life. It was there he stood in the place of the Master as he celebrated the Holy Mass each day.
Sometimes with and sometimes without a congregation.
A parallel strikes me forcefully. The Patron saint of parish ( diocescan) priests is Jean Vianny, the Cure of Ars in France. Vianny in a touching story tells us (which I describe in detail elsewhere) of his uneducated parishioner who spent hours daily before the Blessed Sacrament saying " He looks at me, and I look at Him". I can visualize the young priest in Okinawa, discouraged, disheartened, and lonely just looking at Him and letting Him look back! But then getting up from his knees, fortified and clarified for the rigors of his task. I can visualize the young priest celebrating the Mass at 0700 hours with no one in the chapel to share the experience.
But young Father O'Connor knew theology. He knew that there is no such thing basically as a " Private" Mass! He knew that before him, around him, and with him was the Heavenly Court! Doesn't the youngest kid in the average Catholic school know of the DEFINED doctrine of the Communion of the Saints? And doesn't that kid know that, as a basic obligation of the human being, God is to be worshipped? Always and everywhere? And what better way than the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass where the great Redemptive act of Jesus is re-presented?
Doesn't it follow that when the young priest said this Mass " alone" he was standing before the Lord Who is to worshipped? And that ALL the saints, Our Lady and St. Joseph, Peter and Paul, Therese of Lisieux and Teresa of Avila, Thomas More and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, as well as the angelic Band with Raphael and Gabriel and Michael with all of Heaven profoundly present? To say that a priest says Mass alone is perhaps poor word choice but certainly superficial theology and certainly nonsense.
It is difficult for me to understand how a Catholic priest will refuse to say the Mass unless he is assigned or unless he has others physically present. One hesitates to suggest that such a position might be a " cop out", that it is more comfortable to stay in bed (especially in winter) than to get up to say Mass "Alone." While this may be true for some, it may also be true, however, that a priest might not really understand Eucharistic theology. He might argue that he cannot say Mass ONLY for his own private devotion. If that were the case, he would be surely justified in not using the Mass for himself alone. Clearly, our Faith teaches that it is NOT for himself alone, even though he surely benefits each time he does say the Mass. As stated above, God is to be worshipped, which point is what the Mass is basically about. The worst possible scenario is that he basically does not believe in his own Faith - - -damning him to a life of at least unconscious duplicity.
It is worthwhile, however, to note that the Holy Father, himself, Pope John Paul II, in his recent inspiring encyclical (Eucharistia in Ecclcesia) pointed out in extremely clear terms (# 31) that priests should say Mass daily EVEN IF THERE IS NO CONGREGATION PRESENT! Such a recommendation seems obvious to a dinosaur like me but apparently seems incomprehensible to the more liberalized if inexperienced modern cleric.
Decades ago, a Scottish physician turned novelist, Dr. A.J. Cronin, wrote a fascinating story of a mythical Fr. Chisholm who is sent to China as a young, gawky newly Ordained priest. They said the Oils were hardly dry on his hands. The story, entitled THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM, describes the arrival of this apprehensive and insecure young man. He opens his " Mass kit" and offers the Holy Sacrifice all " alone" at the conclusion of which he " feels better...." The implications for survival and inner meaning are enormous.
This resonates with me as I recall my own assignment to Africa, likewise just ordained, knowing no one on the Dark Continent, apprehensive, insecure and disoriented. But I said Mass on a 9,000 ton freighter, the Greece Victory, in the gun crew quarters over the stern, 17 days for three Marist Brothers who spoke little English and each time, like Father Chisholm, I felt better. Was the Mass to honor God, or for the three Brothers, or to unite with the Communion of Saints, or for me? As is said in educational testing: All of the above.
What was it that helped that young Naval chaplain to come through his Dark Night to become probably the outstanding Catholic prelate in America? Personally, I think it was the Mass and the Eucharistic relationship he had with Jesus. William Sloane Coffin, the great Protestant minister at Yale University stated publicly: "There is NO substitute for the Mass - - - - - - (but then) if those guys could only preach." Apart from the debatable second half of his statement, I would pray that liberalized priests take note!
The forces of evil have always known that the power of Catholicism derives from the Mass, not our social programs or our street demonstrations or our fancy recreation policies. Whenever the Church has been in danger, we are told, in one way or another that we may have the Maypole type dances and the job fairs and the like but NEVER the Mass because Evil knows without the Mass we are truly dead. The priest who contemns what he calls the "Mass priest" has probably lost the meaning of his own soul.
My active days in the priesthood are about over. I have had my share of crises and darkness but like most of my generation I depended on the O'Connor prescription. Those priests I knew and loved were noisy, colorful, opinionated and interesting. When they sinned, they sinned BIG with passion and gusto but capable of huge contrition because of their active belief. Is there a link in that they generally said Mass EVERY day?
May the Lord forgive me, but my IMPRESSION of the liberalized cleric is that he is bland, mask like and almost without passion. I worry for him. How will he or how does he handle his darkness and discouragement? How does he handle his self-- questioning about identity and union with the Church in the face of conflicts? I wonder about the real, if hidden, values the pathetic priest homosexuals hold - - old AND young!
With all the excessive gorilla-like chest thumping of the past and the alleged Catholic repression and guilt, it does appear that the " characters" who led us then were more real when compared with the moderns who substitute wheat stalks waving in the wind and sand slipping through one's fingers and brooks flowing over rocks and rills--- for doctrine.
What is it that I see each morning when I look out from the altar? I see enlightened lay persons who attend Mass daily in all kinds of weather, often at great personal inconvenience. Who are these people? What do they seek? What do they see? Who are these old nuns and creaky Brothers who WANT to be at Mass daily? Why is it important that they be there? Have they been to the Mountaintop? Have they seen the glory of the Lord?
Perhaps, because every one gets a "Dark Night" of the soul sometime in life, we all have to find some way to deal with darkness and loneliness and terror. But If one's Dark Night is to become the steppingstone to spiritual maturity in the manner of John J. O'Connor, it is best (for the Catholic, priest or layperson) to follow the insight of a Protestant divine:
THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE MASS.
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