Catholics Don't Go to Mass to Listen to Sermons!
From "The Christianisation of Norway and the Catholic Church"
Olav Tryggvason and St Olav Haraldsson appointed priests to churches that they had built. We Catholics fully understand what that meant. Their first task was not to preach to the people, for who could imagine that people in the Viking era would become Christian through an invitation to sit and listen to an hour-long sermon every Sunday morning? When we say that the Catholic Church is not a preaching church, we do not mean that there were no sermons in our churches. In fact, there was much preaching throughout all of the Middle Ages; at times, even more that after the Reformation. If we say that our home is not a dining hall, we do not mean that no food is eaten there, It is an essential part of home life, but only a part. If a home is truly to be a home, it needs much more than that. Likewise, Catholics in every age understood that a church is not first and foremost a space where people come together to hear sermons. That space is a church because the Eucharist is present and the other sacraments are administered there. People do not participate in worship by sitting and listening to someone but by participating in the Sacrifice of the Mass, each one praying as a community and as an individual.
This is how life streams out through every member and through the whole Body of the Church. It has been said that the Catholic Mass is unintelligible because the priest reads it in Latin. However, we are no less intelligent than our ancestors, and Catholics in all times and over the whole world actively participated in the Mass. As the action of the Mass is celebrated the same way every day, Sunday and weekday, the faithful were intimately acquainted with it. They were brought to the Mass in the arms of their parents and attended the same worship on every holy day. Many in the cities attended the Mass every day of their lives. Everyone could receive instruction from parents and godparents, and the priest in preparation for confirmation or in confession; also on ember days when lessons on church history and liturgy was often given. Missals in most European vernaculars were available – translations into verse or prose of the fixed prayers the priest prays or sings in Latin before the altar. An old English missal from about 1300, attributed to Richard Rolle of Hampole,[1] is the most beautiful and spiritual rendering of the Mass that can be found. The people read the Mass prayers softly for themselves as the priest’s movements, the ringing bells and the actions at the altar indicated what was happening. Whether there was such missal in Norwegian, I do not know – it is possible that one day fragments of one might be discovered. In some places there were priests who were against people’s learning the Mass prayers by heart. Their reasoning was that, having already received instruction, they should use their own words when speaking to God in prayer.
[1] Richard Rolle of Hampole (c. 1290-1349), an English hermit and mystic who was among the first religious authors to write in the vernacular.
Comments