The Greatest and the Least

The Eucharist, the Lord, and the Liturgy Wars

(Photo Credit: Divine Mercy Parish, Pittsburgh)

I want to talk about the liturgy today. The old one and the new one. And I will. Because I am crazy. But first, I need to talk about the Eucharist.

Seven years ago, right before I married Chris, I published a book called The Catholic Table. It was about food, both the natural and the supernatural kind, and all the lessons contained within the Eucharist. Those lessons, as I recounted them then, are about nourishment, community, service, sacrifice, love, and Presence. But looking back on that book, I feel like I gave short shrift to two of the most important lessons taught to us by the Eucharist: God’s greatness and God’s littleness.

As the Church sees it, the Eucharist isn’t just a meal or even just a participation in Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary (although it is both). Most fundamentally, the Eucharist is Jesus. It is Him entirely, with the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of God Himself present in every crumb of what looks like bread and every drop of what looks like wine. We believe this because Jesus said it: “This is my Body.” “This is my Blood.” “My flesh is food indeed.” “My blood is drink indeed.” “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

Those words scandalized Jesus’ disciples when He first spoke them. They scandalize people still. How can bread become Body? How can wine become Blood? And what kind of God asks His people to eat His flesh—to, literally in the original Greek, “gnaw” upon Him? It sounds like cannibalism. Or madness. Or both.

Just the same, for two thousand years, since Christ made Himself known on the road to Emmaus “in the breaking of the bread,” the Church has taken Christ at His word. We believe, in the Mass, Jesus comes again. He is there with us, giving us His very life in Holy Communion. And this is proof not just of His love—His overwhelming love—but also of His greatness … and His littleness.

Lord and Servant

The song of God’s greatness is sung throughout Scripture. The Psalmist tells us that “Worlds his mighty voice obeyed,” and recognizes that the “sun and moon,” the “shining stars,” “the angels in the heights,” and every created thing in the universe offers a chorus of praise to God (Psalm 148). Paul calls Him the One in whom “we move and live and have our being,” (Acts 17:28). When Moses would leave God’s presence, his face would glow for days, his whole being lit up from within simply from the nearness of God (Exodus 34:33-35).  

God also sings His own song in the Book of Job, putting a series of questions to Job and his faithless friends to remind them of who He is and who they are: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” he asks. “Have you commanded the morning since your days began? …“Do you give the horse his might? …"Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads his wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high? … Can you draw out Levi'athan with a fishhook, or press down his tongue with a cord?” (40:4, 12, 19, 26, 27 ,41:1)

God is great. There is none greater. And He shows us this not only in the stars and seas, but also in the Eucharist. He is the Lord of all, including the Lord of matter. He is its creator. And when He wills it, He can change the substance of matter without changing the appearance of matter. Which He does will. Bread to Body. Wine to Blood. Not just once, but a billion times. Again and again and again, from age to age, culture to culture, in every parish and every cathedral, wherever a priest configured to Him, standing in His stead, says the words first spoken at the Last Supper over bread and wine.

In the Eucharist, the Creator takes on the form of the created. The created is transubstantiated into the Creator. The Lord and God of all, the source of Being Himself, appears to us as a tiny piece of bread. No miracle in Scripture—not the raising of the dead, not the parting of the Red Sea, not the multiplication of the loaves and fishes—compares to what happens every day, sometimes two, three, four times a day, in the Liturgy of the Eucharist at your local parish.

But the greatest sign of God’s greatness is also a sign of His littleness—His utter and complete humility. It wasn’t enough for God to humble Himself by taking up residence in a woman’s womb or being born among a poor and stiff-necked people. It wasn’t enough to labor as a carpenter, keep company with prostitutes, wash the feet of His servants, suffer the words and whips of His creatures, or walk the road to Calvary, where He died a criminal’s death. None of that even came close to revealing the depths of His humility. That is only revealed in the Eucharist, where the One who spoke worlds into being, takes on the form of bread and wine and lets the broken feast upon Him.

In the Eucharist, the Lord of All gives Himself without reservation. He enters into the holy and unholy, the rich and poor, the faithful and faithless. He asks those who reject Him or who are not in union with His Church to not receive Him. He asks those who are still unrepentant in sin to not take Him into their bodies for in doing so they bring condemnation on themselves. But when these souls present themselves for Communion just the same, no lightening strikes. He endures unbelief and disinterest, scorn and sacrilege, because He counted the cost and found such scandal worth it. It doesn’t matter how unworthy and how unloving a congregation is, He shows up anyhow. No matter the architecture, no matter the music, no matter the sins of the man repeating the words of the Last Supper, Jesus still shows up. He is there. Even when our hearts are not.

Necessary Reminders

Why do these lessons matter? Why is this perpetual testimony to God’s greatness and His littleness so very important?

Because we forget. We forget all the time.

We see the world and its darkness, and we fall into the trap of thinking the darkness is more powerful than the light. We see the machinations of men and demons, inside and outside of the Church, and think they can thwart the will of God Himself. We put constant demands on Him and feel wronged when our demands are not met. We fret and we worry and we feel certain that we know better than God, that we love better than God. And in all that, we make God little. Not little like He makes Himself. Not humble. But weak. Powerless. Faithless. And we despair.

We also make ourselves great. We judge ourselves more worthy, more holy, more reverent, more enlightened. We look down upon the little and the weak, the poor and the immigrant. We presume we know the particular path to which God calls particular people and fault them when they walk a different one. We rant. We wreck. We run off into the company of those we deem righteous, and become a law unto ourselves, fracturing unity within the Body of Christ.

But the Eucharist says No. The Eucharist says God is big. The Eucharist says Jesus is big. So big. He was bigger than Rome, the Avignon Papacy, and the Borgias, and He is bigger than your doubts, your fears, and your sins. He is bigger than your cancer diagnosis, and He is bigger than your grief. He is bigger than politics. He is bigger than culture. He is bigger than liturgy wars and synods on synodality, bigger than abusive priests and cowardly bishops, bigger than angry YouTubers and misogynistic podcasters. He is bigger than all the powers and principalities put together. None of it can defeat Him. Nothing can trump Him. It never has. It never will. He has seen it all, accounted for it all, and is working through it all. Not just to honor His promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His Church, but to do everything possible to ensure that the Gates of Hell do not prevail against you. He will take care of you. He will see you through. If you let Him.

But that means heeding the second lesson of the Eucharist. The servant isn’t greater than the master. So you too have to become small. You too have to be slow to take offense and quick to forgive. You too have to bear wrongs patiently, turn the other cheek, and go the extra mile. You too have to consider no job too insignificant, no task too small, no person too unimportant. You too have to walk among the little and the least, loving them and laboring with them. You too have to give your heart and your treasure to them. You too have to give yourself. You have to pour your whole life out, wherever God calls you to pour it.

You also have to realize that you are not God. You are not in control of your life. You’re not in control of your body. You are the little and the least. You have to see that in yourself. You have to see the broken parts, the hurting parts, and the sinful parts, then bring those to Him to heal and make whole. And as you do all that, you have to surrender to Him and His plans, letting Him show you the beauty of the present moment, no matter how hard the moment may be, and learn to give thanks for the absolute grace and gift that every breath you take is.

So do I. So does everyone. In different ways in different seasons. Our surrendering doesn’t always look the same. But it’s never easy. Not a bit of it. If it were, we wouldn’t need the perpetual reminder that comes to us through the Eucharist about how big God is and how little He makes himself. Love makes it easier, though. And that is the goal. Not getting everything right. Because we won’t. Rather, the goal is loving Christ—loving Him more each day and knowing Him better each day. The goal is a relationship, a real living relationship, that changes how we see the world and ourselves, that gives us an abiding awareness of how very loved we are by Love Himself, and that leads us to obey out of love, not fear.

The Eucharist helps remind us of this goal. It also makes it possible. When God gives us Himself, He gives us His love. He feeds us with it. Literally. The more we receive that gift, the more love grows within us. It takes time. We suffer setbacks. Progress in love does not happen along a straight upward line. But it does happen, as long as we keep recognizing His greatness and imitating His littleness.  

Now, at last, let’s talk about the liturgy. For these lessons about bigness and littleness come to us in the context of the Liturgy, which means they need to be lived in the context of the liturgy.

The Servant and the Master

This liturgical turn may seem disconnected, but it’s not. It’s actually what set my brain running along the path I’ve laid out for you here.

Over the past 15 years, I have attended Mass almost as often in the Extraordinary Form (commonly referred to as the Latin Mass) as I have in the Ordinary Form ( also known as the Novus Ordo).  For years, I belonged to a parish that offered both, and when we moved to Pittsburgh, we spent the better part of a year almost exclusively attending the Latin Mass. Today, we belong to a very traditional, very reverent, very joyful Novus Ordo parish, but we still attend the Latin Mass from time to time. And I love them both. I love the Mass of my ancestors and the saints. And I love the Mass that I grew up with, the Mass that, however imperfect it may be, feels like home.

I know, on social media these days, I’m not supposed to say I love both Masses. Everyone wants you to take sides–against the rigid traddies or against the faithless innovators. But I do love both. I love the beauty, the history, and the theological richness of the Old Mass. And I love the accessibility, familiarity, and Scriptural richness of the new Mass. But most of all, with both the Old Mass and the New, what I love is that Jesus is there. In the Mass, regardless of which form it might be, I get to be where He is. And there is nothing more wonderful than that.

I am (in case you’re wondering), aware of the insanity that went on after the Second Vatican Council. I know the changes to the liturgy are rife with problems, and that Bugnini’s reforms were as subtle as a bull in a china shop (and as well intentioned, too). The new Mass is impoverished in many ways. It is also easily (and frequently) abused. But it is where I have encountered Jesus, encountered grace, and encountered truth, for the better part of my life. And so I can’t help but love it, even while recognizing how far short it falls of the vision laid out for the Mass by the Fathers of Vatican II.

Over the past year, as access to the Latin Mass has been increasingly restricted, I’ve grieved with my Latin Mass going friends. I’ve shared their frustration and their anger. No matter how difficult, annoying, and borderline schismatic some members of some Latin Mass congregations might be, it’s not the fault of the Latin Mass. It’s the fault of the people guilty of those particular sins. And you don’t suppress a rite simply because sinful people worship according to it. Following that line of reasoning, every rite in the Church would need to be suppressed.

The slow suppression of the old rite is also not going to solve the problem it’s trying to solve; it’s only going to make it worse, both by increasing the disaffection of the disaffected and by adding to their ranks.

It already is doing that, at least in my small circles, where, among some, I‘ve seen love for the Latin Mass become hate for the new Mass, so much so that in recent months I’ve heard an increasing number of people say that they will not darken the door of a parish where the Novus Ordo Mass is celebrated.

 These aren’t people who reject the validity of the new Mass. They accept that it’s valid. They know Jesus gave His Church the power to bind and loose, and they recognize that power includes the crafting of the liturgy. They also know that as long as a validly ordained priest says the correct words over the correct matter, transubstantiation occurs. No matter if the Mass is in Latin or English, Jesus still shows up. But they refuse to go just the same. One person in particular expressed that this was because they believe the new Mass was intentionally designed to destroy people’s faith and they didn’t want it destroying theirs. When I heard that, my first thought, my first reaction, was, “How weak does she think Jesus is?”

Without even realizing it, this woman has bought into the lie that mere men can stop Jesus’ love and grace from flowing to His people. She thinks a petty Vatican bureaucrat is more powerful than Jesus, that someone like Bugnini could make Christ impotent. She has forgotten—or never really known—God’s greatness and God’s littleness.

We need to be on our guard against falling into the same trap.

We need to remember God’s greatness, so that we worship Him in spirit and truth, giving Him our very best and doing it with reverence and honor. But we also need to remember God’s greatness, so that even when reverence and honor are lacking, we can see that He is still there. We need to remember that God’s greatness cannot be diminished by our failure to honor Him rightly, nor can it be diminished by bad translations, petty ecclesial bureaucrats, and liturgical hatch jobs. Even when the liturgy is not as it was or as it ought to be, His grace can still reach us and transform us. And it does.

Moreover, we need to remember that the most stunning, reverent, theologically rich Extraordinary Form Liturgy we will ever see, can only convey a fraction of the glory of what is really taking place in the Mass. We don’t have the eyes to see that beauty. We barely have the minds to imagine it. Likewise, the most banal, boring, badly executed but validly celebrated Novus Ordo Mass we have ever attended, is still a sea of grace, where Christ’s love for His people overflows and where choruses of angels and saints are present, worshipping the Lord of hosts and giving Him every ounce of honor and respect He is due. It’s all a miracle. It’s all Heaven. No matter how it seems.

Remembering God’s greatness, though, isn’t enough. We also need to remember God’s littleness. And we need to join Him in it, embracing our littleness, too. In the liturgy, this means humbling ourselves by confessing our sins and going to Mass with a spirit of repentance and receptivity. But it also means taking a step back from the raging liturgy wars and putting first things first, recognizing that if Jesus can show up at a parish filled with difficult people and irreverent worship, so can we.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go the Latin Mass if that’s where you’re best being fed; you should. This also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t seek out a reverent parish in which to worship. My family certainly has. And it absolutely doesn’t mean you should tolerate every level and kind of abuse within the Mass. I don’t; I have walked out of plenty of Masses where the liturgical abuses were so grave that I had good reason to doubt the consecration would be valid.

But it does mean if Jesus can show up at the Novus Ordo parish, so can we. If the Novus Ordo parish is good enough for Jesus to show up at, it’s good enough for us to show up at. We are not greater than our Master. We are not more pure than the angels and the saints. We are not endangering our souls by going to the Mass of the pope, the Mass of John Paul II and Benedict and Francis. But if we’re skipping Mass or attending an illicit Mass rather than attend a Novus Ordo Mass, we are very much endangering our souls. There are few spiritual dangers greater than refusing to go where Jesus is.

Two thousand years ago, eleven of the apostles would not follow Jesus to Calvary. They could have adored Him while He was mocked and reviled. They could have consoled Him with their reverence and love. But they abandoned Him. They forsook Him. And we do the same when we refuse to step foot in a place where the Eucharistic Christ is. We abandon Him. We forsake Him. And in doing so, we walk away from a chance to join the angels and saints in adoring Him and consoling His Sacred Heart. That wounds our relationship with Christ. It also wounds the Church, sowing the seeds of schism and making it more difficult, not less, for the hope Pope Benedict expressed in Summorum Pontificum to be realized: that “the two Forms of the usage of the Roman Rite can be mutually enriching.”

No matter which rite you attend, don’t forget how big Jesus is. Don’t doubt His power, majesty, and love. But also don’t forget how humble He is. He knew what He was getting into when He put fallen humans in charge of His Church and entrusted Himself to human hands. He chose all this with full knowledge and full freedom. Again, He counted the cost and considered it worth it. Trust in His greatness. Imitate His littleness. And hold fast to Him. The Church can never be what Christ wants her to be, nor can the Liturgy be what it is truly supposed to be, unless we do that.

Thank you for supporting Through a Glass Darkly. As a full subscriber to this newsletter, you make it possible for me to take the time to craft reflections on faith and the Christian life that go deeper and are more nuanced than what I can do anywhere else. I don't think Christ or the Church are well served by click bait headlines and shallow discussions. Getting to the heart of what ails us and finding a way out of the troubles of the present moment requires more than tweets and posts. I hope this newsletter, both through these monthly essays and my weekly studies and Q&A’s, is giving you something of value,. If you think it is and want to share it with someone else, please consider giving a gift subscription. You can do that by clicking here.

In Case You Missed It

The Deep Work of Homemaking: The Difference Between Housework and Heart Work (Full Subscribers Only)

Misplaced Hope, Discerning God's Will, Assessing Vatican II, and Navigating Challenging Seasons (Free for All)

A Wounding Church: A Short Catechesis on Sin, Grace, and Christ’s Body on Earth Full Subscribers Only)