Driving north on 19th Avenue, heading home from Sunday Mass last week, I was struck by one of those marquee-type signs that churches often use to hook passers-by. (Not literally struck, mind you; the family got home safely.)
The marquee’s message, “Your life is shaped by your thoughts,” was ambiguous enough, offering equal parts hope and caution. Coming oddly, as it did, below a Midas car repair sign, maybe it was meant to evoke commercial optimism: “Been thinking how great your car would sound, properly muffled? We’ll make that thought come to life.” Or perhaps it’s not so prosaic. As I’ve learned from others, contemplating cars can often lead to deeper metaphysical insights.
Maybe there’s a Midas ad campaign I’ve missed. Or maybe the sign man just had a meditative moment and tossed the script. How often in our over-stimulated world, he might have wondered, do we take the time to confront our plain thoughts? [Insert preachy critique of modern entertainment culture, including ironic condemnation of blogging] Suffice it to say, immersed in the virtual world, the wanderings of the mind can seem merely an elaborate game without boundaries. Hyperlink to hyperlink. It’s sad, but the Midas line doesn’t seem much like a truism these days. Or at least not in the way it should be. [Full disclosure: I recently got an iPod. The better to listen to audio books of Paradise Lost with, of course.]
Coming back that Sunday from an extraordinary-form “Low Mass,” where the congregation remains kneeling and silent most of the time, and the priest is often inaudible, I’d found myself confronted with my thoughts more than usual. Ordering them to meditation was my first aim; helping my wife prevent my one-year-old son from preventing others from meditating was a close second. But in the space between I realized how meandering my mind can really be: I can’t afford to let my thoughts go.
When I first went to an extraordinary-form Mass, it was primarily the Missa Cantata—Mass sung by priest and people, thick with incense—that attracted me. Back then, I didn’t see the particular value of Low Mass—the same Mass, lacking most of the sensory intensity. While the priest offers the Sacrifice for us silently, in persona Christi, we congregants have the silence to look inward and examine our souls, our thoughts. Midas called to mind how valuable that silence really can be.
Of course, according to the Roman Missal, Low Mass was always the exception rather than the norm. The Mass cannot help but be a sensory experience. But even the music and the incense only serve if they in fact aid the process of ordering our thoughts, cultivating the right attitude of mind in the presence of Mystery.
The thoughts we create and accept shape who we are, to paraphrase my meditative marquee. It’s easy to be naïve, to let thoughts come and go, unchecked. Examining conscience, silent prayer, Eucharistic adoration—there are endless other opportunities to ask for the grace of contemplation. While the Mass is perhaps not the primary place for these other devotions, a good stretch of silence and under-stimulation—even a Low Mass— cannot be a bad thing for a 21st century churchgoer like me.
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