Catholic during the Great Apostasy

A Catholic writer once said that he did not like Sunday. The Lord’s Day, he thought, is a day on which Christians mock their God. They are not much more serious about the Mass either. A working day is better. Each one turns out to be what it is.

On Sunday there is a lot of pretence, calculating, making up with faces, superficiality. Even in devotional exercises. The Mass lies. Not in and of itself, but the ordination of it by today’s Catholics.

It pretends to be something most profound, central, celebrating the whole world, something most important in life that plays out once a week in front of the whole earth. In reality, however, the Mass does not enter, or at least not deeply into the life and history of the world. It is not the heart and soul of Christendom, the life of Christians does not become the Mass, although the law of the Mass is the law of Christian life.

Sunday should not lie. Nor can the Mass lie. It must be a faithful expression of what we are, what we think and what we want. What we do is not only the most divine thing on earth, but also the greatest thing for human beings. Sunday with its summation is the centre and summit of life-Mass.

Living the Mass.

Therefore, the first and fundamental commandment of the Christian life is sacrifice.

Sacrifice must be. Without sacrifice there is no truly valuable life.

People today have invented everything just to make earthly existence happy and beautiful. But one thing has not been invented and nobody will ever invent it – life without the idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice has to be! This is well known to the farmer who, groaning under the burden of taxes, cultivates the land in the sweat of his own face. Without sacrifice there is no bread!

There must be sacrifice! This is well known to the miner who forgoes sunshine and fresh air and works in the underground depths. Without sacrifice there is no coal, no iron, no economic life. There must be sacrifice! This is well known to the railway engineer and the sea sailor in storms and bad weather. Without sacrifice there is no voyage!

The sacrifice must be made! The scholar and the writer dozing at his lamp knows this well. Without sacrifice there is no progress of knowledge. There must be sacrifice! This is well known to every politician and statesman who watches over the success and prosperity of his country. Without sacrifice there is no prosperity for the people, no security, no order.

There must be sacrifice! The father who works for his family, the mother who cares for her children day and night, knows this. Without sacrifice there is no family happiness.

There must be sacrifice! The priest knows this, who has to renounce so many things in order to become everything for everyone.

Without sacrifice there is no religion, no morality, no heaven.

The vital sap that circulates in the veins of the tree of humanity is the sap of the victim. The blood that flows in the arteries of society edifying and fertilising is the blood of sacrifice. Without sacrifice there is no goodness, joy and happiness on earth. Sacrifice must be! The sacrifice of individuals for the benefit of the whole.

This is not modernly conceived or said. Modern culture wants a life without sacrifice. Modern culture builds without the foundation of sacrifice. “The rain fell, the streams gushed, the winds broke and hurled themselves against this house. And it fell, and its fall was great” (Matt 7:27).

Our culture without sacrifice leads to bankruptcy, as societies today build a social order without rights and against rights.

Therefore, this central part of the Mass must also be a central part of the social, religious, political and economic order. In an hour in which universal breakdown threatens, we have nothing more important to do. All humanity of all states and professions must join in the sacrificial procession and place the best they have on the paten.

On the paten let us offer the sacrifice of reason! Let the mindless and mindless talk of unnecessary words be far from us. It is precisely the social order that demands today that, in order to save the whole, we renounce all personal reasons, short-sighted judgements, partisanship, journalistic platitudes, and stand by the ideal of natural law and Revelation, an ideal both eternal and immutable, which the infallible teaching office of the Church and the papal encyclicals proclaim to us.

Let us offer the sacrifice of self-love ! Whoever seeks himself will lose himself. All selfishness, even political and economic selfishness, is un-Christian. God wants everything that lives to be able to live, to have enough space, air and light.

…How many Catholics in the Mass of their lives do not go beyond the sermon? They listen, but they are not transfigured. And yet transfiguration is the essential and most important part of the Mass and the Mass on the altar and the Mass of life!

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Rev. Robert Mader – Back to the Mass, Apostolate of Prayer Publishing House, JESUIC BOOKS, KRAKÓW, 1948. pp.122 – 128