Bishop Robert Vasa

 

05/06/2004

BEND — The travelogue for this week is not excessively exciting, and I am always grateful when my trips are relatively uneventful. The advancement of spring has made this week’s trip a bit more colorful and even refreshing. The cancellation of a Saturday-morning meeting in Baker City meant a few additional free hours on Saturday, which I gratefully accepted as a kind of gift. This did not eliminate the need to travel but it did postpone it just a bit.

The afternoon drive took me to Pendleton, which served as a staging point for the rest of Saturday and Sunday. Early Sunday morning I traveled to La Grande, Our Lady of the Valley, for Mass and then on to St. Mary’s in Elgin for Mass there. Prior to Mass at Elgin, I was treated to a very lovely May crowning ceremony led by the young people of the parish. Following Mass, I was treated to a wonderful potluck dinner and a delightful gathering of parishioners. The life of a priest or a bishop, with things like May crownings and potlucks to endure, is certainly hard, but we persevere. The old timers would say, “We offer it up for the glory of God.” While there are certainly difficult elements to the clerical state, I find it very difficult, even on genuinely hard days, to claim that my life is “hard.”

The trip from Elgin back to Pendleton offered the possibility of a shortcut, which as the natives described it was shorter but took just as long. The route is known as the Weston-Elgin Highway, unless you are from Elgin, in which case I am quite sure it is the Elgin-Weston Highway. It is also commonly known as the Tollgate road because it goes through a wide spot on the road known as Tollgate. I puzzled a bit over the name since, there was certainly no toll, and I do not recall any particular gate. Apparently in the 1870s the proprietor of the road established a gate and charged a toll to pass over the top of the Blue Mountains. The name stuck. I have tried, really in vain, to visualize a man sitting in a toll booth, on the edge of nowhere, waiting for an occasional wagonload of immigrants to happen by so that he could collect his road tax. The truth of the matter is that even today there is not an abundance of traffic on the Weston-Elgin Highway, and I would be surprised if it was much greater in 1870. With or without a toll, however, it is a very grand drive and perfect for a Sunday afternoon. Life is so hard.

I needed to be back in Pendleton for it was there that the second round of FaithWorks presentations was being sponsored. More than 130 folks gathered from the parishes of the area to listen and reflect upon the very significant roles of the laity in the sacred liturgy, particularly that of reader and extraordinary minister of holy Communion. As I have told several different groups already, a part of my goal in this second round of FaithWorks seminars is to reinforce and strengthen the notion of the truly sacred in the liturgy, particularly the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There is a very challenging and inspiring paragraph in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, which I believe can be a source of reflection for us all. Paragraph 3: “Moreover, the wondrous mystery of the Lord’s real presence under the Eucharistic species, reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council and other documents of the Church’s Magisterium in the same sense and with the same words that the Council of Trent had proposed as a matter of faith, is proclaimed in the celebration of the Mass not only by means of the very words of consecration, by which Christ becomes present through transubstantiation, but also by that interior disposition and outward expression of supreme reverence and adoration in which the Eucharistic Liturgy is carried out.”

The reverence, attention and devotion of the priest are key to assuring a proper solemnity of the sacred liturgy, but this paragraph does not restrict itself only to the priest. Certainly the priest alone says the words of consecration which cause the miraculous presence of the Lord under the form of bread and wine but the proclamation of the truth of what takes place is also made “by that interior disposition and outward expression of supreme reverence and adoration.” It is up to each of us to reflect upon and evaluate our own interior disposition and outward expression as we participate in the sacred liturgy. Each needs to ask: “Would someone watching me as I attend Mass recognize in my ‘supreme reverence and adoration’ that I am in the midst of the most sacred of all sacred things, the most holy of all holy things?” I reflected on this as I stood at the altar in a parish and looked out over the congregation after the consecration and saw many rapt in attention and devotion and some nonchalantly looking at their watches as they chewed gum, or chitchatted with their neighbor about something of supreme importance. Our demeanor, our actions, our dress, our posture, our attitude, our speech, our silence, proclaims or denies “the wondrous mystery of the Lord’s real presence under the Eucharistic species.”

I am struck by that term “supreme.” It is not just routine reverence and adoration to which we are called but rather a reverence and adoration that is “supreme.” Such a reverence and such an adoring spirit would have to transform us. It would not be possible for us to put ourselves into the presence of the All Holy, with an attitude of “supreme reverence and adoration,” without being deeply affected and changed. It would not be possible for us to consider missing Mass on a Sunday for some trivial reason if we spent a moment or two with our Lord in “supreme reverence and adoration.”

This reverential and adoring spirit would also, of necessity, have an impact on those around us and proclaim to them that which we know by faith to be true. It is imperative that those who work more closely around the altar during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass set the tone and example of this “supreme reverence and adoration.” It must start in the sanctuary. There the Church insists that the vessels be truly dignified and worthy and not ordinary. There the Church insists that the altar cloths be neat, clean, white. There the Church insists that the priest be properly vested. There the Church insists that the various lay ministers be well disposed. There the Church insists on an “interior disposition and outward expression of supreme reverence and adoration.”