Even we who serve on the altar have developed a certain malaise, notwithstanding the Eucharistic Presence of God Himself mere feet away. Too often we move and speak through the liturgy, acting more out of rote than out of devotion. If we really apprehended the startling truth that God Himself feeds us week after week (and if you are able, day after day), we would be awestruck not unlike Paul on his way to Damascus. Thrown from our feet and asked each by name, "Why do you fail to adore Me who loves you relentlessly?"
Even our priests fall sometimes into a routine, uninspired celebration in persona Christi, fast mumbling the words from Collect to Consecration and seeking a quick escape from the exiting gathered. A kind of folie a deux of religious boredom, a loss of the Center. Perhaps it is something endemic to a society of plenty where a big crisis is who got "snubbed" for a Oscar nomination, or whether Bruce Jenner is a transsexual in progress or whether the smoking age should be raised to 21. We forget about the people out there, all over the world, whose very day is consumed with survival. We forget about our respective missions in God's plan or we deny that there is a God with any plan at all. Smugly, we opine, since there is suffering, there must be no God.
And then, a single individual appears for a moment and explodes us out of our complacency. And reminds us that our lives are not about us (credit to Fr. Robert Barron for this line).
When I came into the sacristy today a visiting priest was in the sanctuary praying. Fr. Thomas Cahill, MJ, a priest of Miles Jesus, a not terribly well known group that runs schools and parishes in places like India, was to be the celebrant, the day before his return to Mumbai (Bombay) and his work for 10 months out of every year. I understand he has been doing this for many years. He left a life in Beverly Hills to be formed a priest and a missionary.
I found this photograph of Fr. Cahill being ordained by Saint John Paul the II. This is an old photograph. He appears now to be roughly my age, and so, his hair is gray and he wasn't wearing glasses. That this photograph represents the young Fr. Cahill is not only because the photograph said so (and there could easily be other Thomas Cahill's) but because there was a little article with it that described his history which I recognized after speaking with him and others about him today.
His stance was particularly reverent and his pace from the moment of the Greeting was unhurried. Lovely. But God was to provide more. Fr. Cahill's homily began unassumingly. Today, he reminded us, was Super Bowl Sunday (it occurred to me that this missionary priest probably pays little attention to that which has nearly become a national holiday in the United States) but there was another Super Bowl Sunday, the one every week, the one which pits the forces of light against the forces of darkness. It is a contest which we all fight, but he told us a story of a woman who was brought out of utter darkness, not of her own making, into the Light. The place where Father works has lately found that a number of those known as "untouchables" are coming to spend the nights, or as often as they can. If you remember your sixth grade world history class if you are a person of my generation, you might also remember that in the caste system of India, these people are considered less than dirt by the four castes, beginning with the Brahmin, the most rich and noble and ending with the shudra, the semi or unskilled laborers. The untouchables don't rate a caste. This is not the stuff of the past. It is a legacy to today. A dark legacy. They are surrounded by Hindu gods of great darkness as well. And cursed as far as the people of the land believe.
Father talked of one such woman. She was married at 13 and immediately had children, five of them, all girls. As girls are not wanted, her husband and her family believed her irrevocably cursed and she would be "hammered". This is not a figurative word in this context. Her husband would take a hammer to her, as would others in her family, in more than one case opening large wounds, one on her face that required over 20 stitches. At some point, she managed to have a boy. Because she couldn't support the family, three of the girls died. From the time she had these children, a child herself, to her 60th year, she lived this life. But somehow, somehow, she found the oasis of the place in which Fr. Cahill works and lives, in Mumbai.
She was drawn there by a vision of Christ. He did not say how this woman, Akkuabai, came to have a vision that brought her there and there she has come regularly. Something in her, interiorly, changed also. It was so evident even to her abusive (although in that world such a man would not be considered abusive) husband that something dramatic had happened to her in coming to this Christian place, that his curiosity was piqued and he also began to come.
They are two of about 20 untouchables who attend Mass, although they are not officially Christian. On at least one occasion, when Father said Mass, he noticed that the entire group stood as if transfixed. He could not imagine what their expressions meant. When he asked, they told him that they felt as if they were struck by lightning; they could not move. The experience of this place, this Mass, this Christian God had altered them in some essential way. In the battle of dark against light, of the devil against the Creator of the Universe, Akkubai and these others had been brought out of the darkness.
That was the homily. One of my fellow parishioners told me that two people in front of him who had taken the bulletin had begun to read it as Fr. began his homily. This is not unusual. People often do not listen to the priest preaching. Partly that is a disrespect. Partly, although happily in my parish this is not usually the case, it is the result of poor homilists. But as Fr. Cahill spoke, quietly, a little haltingly in the beginning as he found his place in his notes, they looked up and found themselves unable to do anything other than to listen.
As Fr. returned to the presider's chair, he read the announcements. He said that he wanted to read them now so that, when we recited the creed and as the liturgy of the Eucharist was celebrated, we would not be distracted, that we would be focused fully on Our Lord.
I would doubt that there were many, if any, not giving their full attention to the celebration of the Mass by this time. Somehow, this single priest had restored us to our attention to the Transcendent becoming Present in the room. When he raised the Host to consecration he did so with a selfless slow motion that drew our eyes to the Bread of Life. Today was the first Sunday and at our parish, the Eucharist is exposed. This means, if one believes, that God is fully and truly Present to those that pray before Him as much as any material item we can feel or taste or see. Before he place Our Lord into the Monstrance (the holder of the Consecrated Host) Fr. reminded us of the joyful gravity of what we had and what it requires of us.
I talked to at least two individuals who had been in tears. God is always there in exactly the same Powerful and Loving way, but so often we miss him, worse, ignore Him.
This American priest, these days a visitor to his own country, was quite the mediator today--putting our eyes on Christ the Lord, reminding us that we have a place in the contest between dark and light, and that we cannot fall into a cozy sleep as if it has nothing to do with us. And oddly, he had given us hope that there was still some fervor within us. Or that there ought to be.
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