The feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross – which occurs on Monday – is the second anniversary of the implementation of the decrees contained in the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, issued motu proprio by our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI.
The document has been among the most significant of the documents issued by the Holy Father during his pontificate and provided an overhaul of the regulations governing the celebration of the liturgy according to the Missal of John XXIII promulgated in 1962 (formerly known as the “Tridentine Rite” and now known as the Extraordinary Form of the single Roman Rite, of which the post-Vatican II Mass is the Ordinary Form). The Motu Proprio is intended to make the Extraordinary form more readily available for those people who wish for it, and for those priests who wish to celebrate it in private.
The document proved to be the source of much opining both on the Catholic blogosphere and in the back of our Churches. Those attached to the Extraordinary form celebrated a perceived victory and those opposed to the extraordinary form mourned a backwards step. Those celebrating and those mourning ranged from the people in the pews to the highest echelons on the episcopacy. Some Bishops have notably provided commentaries on the implementation of the document in their own dioceses. Some commentators have interpreted this as attempts to avoid its implementation… for my part, I don’t know if they were motivated by genuine pastoral concern or by fear.
Maybe this anniversary is an opportunity to express, in a most profound way, our communion with the Holy Father by attending a celebration of Mass in the form that we do not personally prefer. For me, this will mean attending a celebration of the Extraordinary Form. For other this will mean attending a Novus Ordo Mass. By so-doing I will express my communion with all who hold and teach the Catholic faith which comes to us from the Apostles: I will confess our One Lord and Saviour and unify myself to Christ’s body in the Barque of St Peter under the authority of his successor Benedict XVI. It is a deep means of attempting to think with the mind of the Church, casting aside my own prejudice, an identifying and repenting of my own tendency to use the liturgy as a point of division within the ecclesial Body of Christ.
At the elevation of the Sacred Body and the Precious Blood, it will be the same Christ who greets me and who I greet with the prayer of doubting St Thomas: “My Lord and my God”.
