Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Prayer That Leads To Belief

As we move through the Bread of Life Discourse from St. John’s Gospel, I remind you that last weekend I mentioned the unsettling statistics that indicate a declining belief among Catholics in the True Presence in the Eucharist. I spoke about why belief in the True Presence matters, that it’s not an arbitrary detail. But I also asked what the causes are for this troubling change. 

For sure, at play in this are efforts among those of the new atheism, seeking to plant the seeds of skepticism and disbelief about whether there’s a God at all. To say that it has a stronghold in our culture would not be overstating it—especially in our institutions of higher learning. It seems that atheists see only what’s wrong with religious structures and ideologies, and so their efforts aim at undermining them and further hopes of ridding the world of something they regard as divisive and destructive. Much more could be said on this point for sure.

A second major cause is our failure as a church to catechize the faithful. Too many of us—especially those who eventually fell away from practice of the faith—are ignorant about what our teachings are, but also why we hold to what we teach. Part of the reason for this failure is ineffective teaching methods and catechetical programs that we employed for too long. More recently, we have changed our approach.

Both of these realities, and still more, have led to our declining belief in the True Presence, but I want to speak about one more that I think is partly to blame: it’s the loss of mystery and reverence in our worship. Some of you recall when the experience of Mass and what took place inside the parish church was very different than our current experience.

For all the good things that came with the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council, it also led to some misunderstandings of what the reforms intended. Among the good things that came from it is that we came to better understand the dignity of all the faithful by virtue of their baptism. It therefore called for the faithful to assist in the offering and prayer that is the Sacrifice of the Mass. Instead of being like mere spectators of the liturgical activity, all must be engaged in the liturgy—full, active and conscious participation.

But the unintended consequence is that the Mass came to be too much of an ordinary and casual experience. With it, the interior of the church buildings became stripped of art and architectural elements as not to distract us from focusing on ourselves. The music and so much of our worship came to be more and more about us, and less about God: We Are Many Parts; We Are the Body of Christ; Gather Us In; God Has Chosen Me; etc.

[I referenced Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s book The Spirit of Liturgy, in which he describes that like the Israelites and the golden calf, we can create a worship experience that ends up being merely a circle, closed-in on itself.]

Part of what feeds our intellectual understanding and even belief, is our senses, our imaginations, and human experience. The beauty and power of art and architecture inform us in ways that words and doctrinal statements cannot. The sensory experience of music, the smoke from incense and its smell, the resting in extended silence, all feed into our imagination and by extension, our subconscious and even our belief. There’s an expression—lex orandi, lex credendi—meaning that what is prayed, leads to belief. There’s wisdom in that.

And of course, our body postures help with this too: We genuflect when we pass the Tabernacle, we bow when we pass the altar, we sign ourselves when we enter the church, and all of this praying with our bodies, the muscle memory that comes with it, informs our subconscious that we are experiencing something beyond ourselves—even though we may find ourselves absent-mindedly genuflecting before we enter the row of seats at the movie theater!

One more thing: While I think fellowship and enjoying each other’s company is important and absolutely necessary for a Christian community, and we must have places in the parish where we gather and can visit, maybe it’s fair to say that any idle conversation or hyper-activity that goes on inside here before and after Mass, subconsciously, we tell ourselves that this place and what goes on within is ordinary.

In all this, I’m not suggesting that we need to go back to the experience of the 1950s or that we should not feel at ease here. But too often, what got sacrificed and was lost over time was the sense of mystery, transcendence and reverence.

Perhaps it’s fair to say that we unintentionally domesticated the Eucharist and in our consciousness, rendered it to seem to us like ordinary bread. We’ve needed to recover some of what was lost. It all feeds into our regard for and understanding of the Eucharist, because the Eucharist is mystery and the Mass is the one place where we come to encounter it and receive it. While rejoicing in our inherent dignity as beloved sons and daughters, let us temper it with humility, recognizing that we are in God’s house and in the presence of something greater than ourselves.

As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, it is indeed bread that comes down from heaven, the bread of life, giving way to eternal life. Ask yourself: Do I believe in these words of Jesus? If so, or if at least you desire to more deeply understand it, be attentive and engaged in his work at the altar today, as he intends to feed us with this very bread.