Rod Dreher comments on the favorable references to the Traditional Mass by recent convert Shia LeBoeuf. Mr. Dreher compares it to his own experiences with the Eastern liturgy. I can “relate to” what Mr. Dreher says, since I participated in the Byzantine (Russian) liturgy for years before the Traditional Mass became widely available.
Mr. Dreher writes:
For me, it was attending my first Orthodox Divine Liturgy that made such a difference. Like the actor says later in the interview, it doesn’t feel like a performance designed to coax you into belief; it rather feels like you are being let into something special. I can easily recognize that some Catholics feel that way legitimately about the Latin mass (and not the contemporary Novus Ordo mass) because after sixteen years as an Orthodox Christian, I feel the same way about the Divine Liturgy. When I began attending the Divine Liturgy, I realized soon that this feeling of liturgical beauty and spiritual transcendence is what I thought I was going to get when, in my twenties, I converted to Catholicism.
At the first few Liturgies, I had scarcely any idea what was going on. It generally follows the traditional liturgical pattern of the ancient churches: liturgy of the Word, and then the Eucharist. But it’s different enough from the Western model to confuse one.
That’s fine. It’s a strength, actually. The Divine Liturgy has been in its current form for many centuries. It is called “The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom” because it was refined and defined in Constantinople under Chrysostom’s patriarchal leadership in the early fifth century. This is a thing of great antiquity. You don’t mess with it. It doesn’t try to conform itself to you, but calls you out of yourself, calls you to mold yourself around it — and to therefore allow it to mold you. Why is this a strength? Because we live in a world in which everybody is trying to sell you something, everybody — including far too many churches — are trying to make it super-easy for you to sign the contract, so they can make the sale. The Liturgy says: This Christian life is hard, but it is beautiful, and it is a pearl of great price. If you give yourself over to Christ as this community has worshipped him for well over one thousand years, you will go to places you could scarcely have imagined. Join us — leave yourself, and be raised up to heaven.
Seriously, it does. It’s not easy to get used to the Divine Liturgy, but once you “get it,” you wonder how anybody could worship in any other way, if this is what Christian worship is. The prayers, the chants, the prostrations, the incense, the candles — they all work together to bring the soul closer to God’s presence. The Liturgy is a thing out of this world. I want to invite everyone I know to come and see for themselves what it’s like. Be careful, though: once seen, you can’t unsee it, and for many people it will be difficult to go back to their modern worship elsewhere.
The Secret of the Latin Mass (the American Conservative)
We could not have a better depiction of Christian (Catholic and Orthodox) liturgical worship, which forms such a drastic contrast to the woship of both the official Catholic Church and protestant denominations. Yet the influence of the liturgy does not end at the church door. As Mr. Dreher points out – and as I myself have experienced – in so many respects making a commitment to Tradition will indeed take the believer to places he could not have imagined. Yet to understand this, one must live the liturgy, given its contrast with the world of today. As Martin Mosebach wrote just the other day:
Goethe calls attention to the anthropological fact that reverence is not a natural characteristic of man, but that he must acquire it. In the formlessness of modern society, the old liturgy is really a foreign body. She attracts those who have an internal readiness for resistance. These will always only be a small elite, not in the sense of academic titles or economic power but of spiritual force and independence of mind. It is to be found at all levels of the society.
A Traditionalist should long for a Schism of the German Church
For, though it is true that “modern man” must work to conform himself to it, this liturgy is nevertheless not the property of some “remnant” or esoteric group, but stands open to all people whatever may be their educational level, ethnicity, financial resources etc. One can verify this every Sunday and indeed every day by visiting those churches where the traditional liturgy is celebrated. The makeup of the congregations that the visitor will see will give the most eloquent possible testimony.
It seems that, under the influence of the liturgy, Mr. Dreher too has gone to places he scarcely could have imagined. I first enountered his writing when he was a “conservative Catholic” zealot raging against abuses in the “American Catholic Church.” From there he turned to Orthodoxy. Starting from a quasi-Anabaptist “remnant” theology he eventually moved to a much more systematic and explicitly Traditionalist Christian /Orthodox critique of the governing institutions and ideology of the United States and the West. One can trace this progession from The Benedict Option to Live Not By Lies to his recent full-blown enthusiasm for Viktor Orban. Mr. Dreher admittedly has been careful over the years not to step over the redlines set by the establishment. He has denounced Trump, and expressed his horror at Putin. Yet I am amazed he is able to get away with his current exposes of the deviations of American “woke” ideology. Truly, the Traditional liturgy (both Western and Eastern) can trigger major political consequences – both in the philosophy of an individual and in the life of a nation!
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