Friday in the Sixth Week of Easter, May 10, 2024

John 16, 20-23

Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy. When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. So you also are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. On that day you will not question me about anything. Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.”

Jesus is concluding his farewell discourse to his Apostles at the Last Supper.  He reminds us that for the faithful Christian, there are no final goodbyes, just temporary separations, like job transfers.

Jesus uses the sign of a woman in labor to teach about the life of the believer.  The woman is “in anguish” during her labor and delivery, and in like manner, the believer, persevering against the temptations and persecutions in this world, is in anguish.  For the believer, the “anguish” is spiritual and prolonged, while it may also entail physical suffering.  The anguish may result from ridicule or the fear of it; hesitation in obeying our Lord’s injunction of chastity, poverty, and obedience; concern over the loss of friends and ties with family;  and, in some places, fear of surveillance and arrest for believing in Jesus.  In parts of Africa and Asia today, believers are aware that they risk injury and death simply by going to Mass.  In our country, people sometimes have to choose between the Faith and their job.

This anguish results from temptations, as well.  Very many people struggle with temptations against humility, temperance, and purity.  The fight they wage is against invisible enemies: the world, the flesh and the devil.  The world, in that worldly people encourage vice.  Partly this is economic: people enrich themselves by aiding other people’s vices.  By contrast, no one gets rich through helping another to become virtuous.  Partly, this is because worldly people cannot bear even the slightest rebuke and so they seek to make everyone to be like themselves, eliminating its possibility.  The flesh, in that our fallen human nature obscures our discernment and our judgment.  With St. Paul, we say, “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7, 18-19).  Left to ourselves, we cry out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  But the believer who relies on divine help in time of need, rejoices: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7, 24-25).  And the devil, for, as the Lord said to St. Peter at the Last Supper, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat” (Luke 22, 31).  To this horrifying revelation, the Lord says that he has prayed to the Father for him, and that later, Peter will have the strength with which to console and build up his brother Apostles.

This sign of the woman in labor is further revealed in chapter twelve of the Book of Revelation: “And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery” Revelation 12, 1-2).  This “woman” is the Church on earth, struggling to bring forth the Church Victorious in heaven.  She is harassed by a fearsome dragon with seven heads — the devil.  He attempts to devour her child the moment she bears it, but the child is “snatched up” by God: the saints enjoy divine protection and their souls enter heaven with the death of their bodies.  This divine protection is also shown in the subsequent battle in heaven, with the angels, led by Michael, casting the wicked ones down to earth.  When the devil sees that the Church in heaven is safe from him, he turns against the Church on earth, the woman who was in labor, but she is protected against him as well, though she continues to dwell in the “wilderness” of the present life.  At the end of the Book of Revelation, we see her transformed into the glittering and glowing Bride of Christ, who is prepared for her Bridegroom.

The struggle to live out the Faith, to overcome vices and grow strong in the virtues, is continuous.  It is normal.  And it can be glorious, as we see in the lives of the saints, who had to fight the same temptations as we.  

The thirtieth article in our continuing series on the Holy Mass: Gestures of the priest and people during Mass

Along with the words of the Mass, the Roman Missal contains the directions for which gestures the priest must use in offering it.  These directions are known as “rubrics”, from a Latin word meaning read, for they are printed in red ink, hence the rule: “Say the black, do the red”, which is learned in seminary.  The gestures governed by the rubrics include making the Sign of the Cross, putting out the arms in a position of prayer, elevating and lowering the Host and the chalice, kissing the altar and the book of the Gospels, and bowing the head.  Over the centuries the number and complexity of the gestures grew through the spread of local custom, which itself arose through the priest’s piety.  The use of rubrics in the missal especially after the Council of Trent helped to stabilize their use and prevented further developments.  The reform of the missal in 1970 sharply cut back and simplified the actions the priest performed at Mass.  No priest or even bishop is allowed to introduce his own changes whether to the words or to the rubrics.  For instance, the priest cannot dance during the Our Father or invite the congregation to raise their hands towards the altar during the consecration as though to consecrate with him, anymore than he can change the words of a prayer or to make up his own prayer.  Allowances are made only for what is physically difficult for the priest to do, as an elderly or sick priest is permitted to lean on the altar and not raise his arms.

The congregation is not granted many gestures or sacred actions.  They make the Sign of the Cross and the beginning of the Mass and at the Gospel, they strike their breasts with the priest during the Confiteor, and they kneel during the Eucharistic Prayer.  In various places individual members of the congregation will raise their hands in prayer in imitation of the priest, but this is forbidden.  The priest does this as a sign that he is interceding for the people in the way unique to him as the alter Christus — the “other Christ” — in whom Christ himself prayers.  The abuse of the layperson adopting this gesture has entered the Mass through the charismatic movement, which is primarily Protestant, and which does not recognize an ordained priesthood that performs a singular role in the worship of God.  Another abuse is the holding of hands during the Our Father.  While some will argue that this is a sign of unity it is not allowed by the Missal and so is ipso facto a sign of disunity with the Church.  It is also a false sign because it is often forced upon those who do not want to engage in it.  Most importantly, our unity as Christians derives not from ourselves, as the gesture presents, but from Christ who is present on the altar.

Next: music at Mass