The Show Must Go On 

      The “audience” was tense and expectant, waiting anxiously for the “performing artist” to make his entry.  They sang and clapped their hands, repeating over and over a strange, Hebrew word.  Finally the “parade” began:  banners, swinging pots of incense, and last, but not least, an elderly man, all dressed up in flowing robes and carrying above his head a large book.  As he made his way down the aisle, he moved, swayed, spun, dipped, counter-spun and pirouetted onto the “stage.”  The song’s finale was completed by wild applause. 

      Broadway?  A small town drama?  A fashion show?  Nope, rather, it was the entrance procession of the celebration of the Liturgy of the Mass.  I watched a video clip of it.  The “performing artist” was, of course, the priest celebrant, and he was carrying – and waving around like a signal flag – the Book of the Gospels.  A witness of the scene, who was able to endure it to the end, thought it ironic that the priest, so jubilantly “exalting” the Book of the Gospels, would conclude in his homily that the events contained therein never really happened.  The irony of it!

      The liturgical “rubricist” would immediately object:  the celebrant is not the one to carry in the Book of the Gospels; the deacon, lector or lay reader should do that!  True enough, but, again, it’s the irony of it that intrigues me.  Believe me, I’ve seen or heard about even more extravagant liturgical shows than was put on by this prancing priest:  ballerinas leading the procession, a priest riding a bicycle down the nave, another – on Palm Sunday – plodding toward the Sanctuary on someone’s pet donkey.  Once, I as a layman attended a nuptial Mass at the end of which the celebrant danced with the bride down the aisle during the recessional.  I’ve seen a clip of an archbishop presiding from his chair on a convention hall stage, while young women danced around in front of him.  It looked for all the world like King Herod watching agile and athletic Salomes performing at the banquet of St. John the Baptist’s decapitation. 

      “We need to infuse some life into our liturgies,” one hears the attempt at justification for these church circuses.  Again, true enough…. if indeed we no longer believe in what we are supposed to be celebrating and memorializing.  Then, certainly, something needs to be done to shore things up.  But what is, really, the life of liturgy?  The very things that the prancing priest denied, and to make up for the loss, he presents to his people himself, a bit of extravaganza, a bit of entertainment, “sanctioned” by a big round of applause.

      “The show must go on!”  But Catholic liturgical worship is not a show.  And the irony is that when we forget the true content of liturgy, we are then moved to concentrate on mere show and image.  “Let me entertain you, let me make you smile” becomes the rubrical umbrella under which solemnity and substance all but vanish.  Thus our need to remember what the Mass is.  It is the memorial of Christ’s death, instituted for all time by our Lord Himself in the upper room the very evening of His arrest, the day before His trial and crucifixion in order that His people can, at every Mass, enter into Christ’s one and only Sacrifice at Calvary.  Though certainly not devoid of joy and infused with the light of the Resurrection, how “jolly” is it supposed to be? 

      The required solemnity points to the substance of liturgy.  Take away the substance, and there is then nothing to be solemn about.  Or, replace solemnity with entertainment, and a hole is formed in worship, a drain that empties it of substance.  A lack of solemnity is the sure sign of this new void, which is filled then with distractions, props, antics, and feel-good gimmicks, with a show or a performance. 

   Such shows relieve people of the burden of having to meditate on and take seriously the message and challenges of the Gospel.  Yes, the Book of the Gospels may be waved around in the air with a twirl and a dance, but this manufactured “glee” is the sedative that numbs people’s sense of what the Gospel really has to say to them.  The antics and entertainment provide the “sanction” of fulfilling one’s religious duties without ever having to genuinely ponder the weight, historical weight, of Christ’s words and those of the Evangelists and Apostles.  On the contrary – and here’s the irony – that very “weight” is watered down or denied because it would dampen and disrupt the “festivities,” which now, in some places, have become the “standard” of “good liturgy,” even as it is as ephemeral as the good feelings that, pep-rally-like, are fostered by priest and laity determined to “have a good time,” an artificial “joy.”

      The cycle of the liturgical seasons itself is enough to direct us otherwise.  The cycle begins with a time of reflection (Advent) on the end of all things – death, judgment, heaven and hell.  That’s serious.  We then move into the hope and joy of Christmas, the sorrow and penance of Lent, culminating in the resplendent hope and happiness of the Easter Vigil, the liturgy that is, by the Church’s insistence, the most solemn of all. 

      A “liturgical” show turns us into spectators or performers; solemnity moves us toward worship and to that “active [real] participation,” so frequently called for by the Church.  The measure of this participation is not activity, doing things or watching them be done, but rather by entering into the substance, the meaning of the Liturgy, by praying, worshipping, and moving toward the Father through the Son – offered on the altar – by the power of the Holy Spirit.  All this is secured by and guided by solemnity, which constantly reminds us of what liturgy is all about.  It moves us not first and foremost in the emotions, but in our reason and heart (the center of who one is), to consider deeply, meditate on intelligently, the truths of our faith, which, then, become ever more real to us and a well-spring of true joy and hope.