Now, here is a REAL religion

Andrei Mironov, “The Last Supper”, 2009 (CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Andrei Mironov, “The Last Supper”, 2009 (CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) (photo: Public Domain)
Having just returned from a fantastic parish pilgrimage to Poland, I’ve been busy catching up in the parish and at home. I’ve jumped back into the details of building a new church, organizing a growing parish, finishing our fundraising efforts and then dealing with family life on top. 
 
As a result I have not had the chance to blog very much, and in the midst of the busy-ness, being able to stop and celebrate Mass has provided that “still point in the turning world” which is so vital to retain one’s sanity.
 
On weekdays I increasingly celebrate Mass ad orientem— this gives me the chance to pray the Mass focused more on God and not looking at the people all the time. Yesterday the sheer reality of the Mass hit home at a gut level. By the ‘reality’ of the Mass I meant that there was a certain certainty—a concreteness and solidity to it all. The conviction that HERE was reality. Here was the eternal made real in this present moment.
 
I remembered Bl. John Henry Newman’s observation soon after his conversion to Catholicism, “Now, here is a real religion.” Becoming Catholic made his former allegiances in Evangelicalism and Anglicanism seem somehow unreal. 
 
As I said Mass there was also the strange awareness of transcending time. Here I was in a simple warehouse-type building in South Carolina at the beginning of the twenty-first century wearing the robes of a Roman patrician, celebrating a Mass rooted in the liturgies not only of the ancient Church, but further back—rooted in the Scriptures and liturgies of the Jewish people. Here the ancient principle of sacrifice was still being celebrated with solemnity and seriousness in a world blind to the reality of what was happening at the altar.
 
While the faith seemed so ancient and rooted in antiquity it was also tremendously alive and fresh. Here was life. Here was youth. Here was Spring. One of our new converts was in attendance. Having come from the Assemblies of God, he has found his way into the Church. I said to him afterward, “Stay with this. The Catholic Church will sometimes seem to you to be full of human failure, incompetence, futility, fighting and frailty. But there is great treasure hidden in that muddy field. There is a great pearl buried in the dark depths of that chaotic sea.”
 
In a time of silence I saw again that this life is the heart beating—hidden within the vulgar and flashy affairs of humanity. Beneath all the politics and power and pleasure and prestige this heart beats and this plan is being worked out which is in reality the hidden history of the world—the hidden history of the world’s salvation.