One on the benefits of being a deacon of the Premier See is that you occasionally have the opportunity to serve at one of the Masses celebrated by the bishops of the United States during their November Meeting. It was my turn this morning.
The short version of my report is that it was on the whole exactly what I would hope to find on a weekday at a meeting of Catholic bishops in 2015: the reformed liturgy celebrated in accord with the current liturgical books and the spirit of the reformed liturgy.
Though celebrated in a temporary liturgical space set up in a hotel ballroom, the liturgy did not feel like an improvised affair. Fr. Michael Flynn, executive director of the USCCB’s Office of Divine Worship, was the MC, though in this case this did not mean (as it all too often does) usurping the deacon as the celebrant’s chief liturgical minister, but rather working unobtrusively behind the scenes to make sure things went smoothly and that the ministers of the Mass, who had all of three minutes to run through things beforehand, knew what they were supposed to do.
The Archbishop who was principal celebrant took the time before Mass to quiz me a bit on the Gospel reading, to make sure I had a grasp of the meaning of what I was reading. I suppose I could be insulted that he would think that I didn’t have a grasp of it, but I suspect that he has some experience of inept or ill-prepared readers and I was glad that he took an interest in the quality of the proclamation of the Word. He gave a well-prepared and brief homily (reading from an i-Pad).
There was little evidence of what is sometimes called the “reform of the reform.” The chief celebrant chanted some of the dialogues and led us in chanting the Our Father, but there were no chanted propers, no ad orientem, no bells or birettas or “Benedictine arrangement” of the altar. The Eucharistic Prayer was EPII. Aside from the principal celebrant, the concelebrating bishops simply wore albs and stoles—pretty much what you would expect from a liturgy celebrated in a hotel.
We sang at all the places that one would expect to sing: entrance, preparation, communion, and conclusion as well as the responsorial psalm, gospel acclamation, and eucharistic prayer acclamations (these last in Spanish). Some of the music, accompanied by electronic piano, seemed a bit “lush” for what I would expect on a weekday, and my own preference would have been something more in the chant idiom, but it was absolutely typical of what one would find in most of the parishes in the US. The bishops’ participation in the singing was not exactly robust, but the acoustics of hotel ballrooms do not exactly encourage participation so I’m inclined to be forgiving.
It was a little odd to participate in a liturgy with forty-some concelebrants (there had been a larger group at an earlier Mass), six ministers, and only eight or so lay members of the assembly. But I suppose that comes with the territory at a meeting like this.
On the whole, it was the modern Roman Rite, celebrated with dignity but without any neurotic fussiness. If the bishops are supposed to model for us how the liturgy should be celebrated, I would say that at least on this occasion they did they job.
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