COVID-19 has deprived us of many things. Thankfully, in my neck of the woods, the ability to attend Mass was restored quite a while back, and I have been in the pews ever since.
Of course, I must now don a mask and stay 6 feet from others, but it is difficult to social distance when we are coming together to embrace ourselves as the Body of Christ. Wearing a mask and covering my face in the presence of God is definitely something I struggle with. For the most part I comply with this in a full Church, but tend to skimp on when the crowd is more sparse and I am distanced from other parishioners.
There have been other changes as well. There is no longer a collection, and the missals and hymnals are absent. I am now able to receive on the tongue while kneeling, as our pastor comes to us in the pews to distribute.
There is also no "Sign of Peace." Now, this is definitely something I definitely do not miss - not one bit. It is an optional part of the Mass, and for me the superficiality and ignorance associated with it makes me glad it has been omitted.
I actually think that many of the changes imposed by COVID-19 have brought a more constructive and reverent flavor to the Mass at my parish, which I have found quite efficacious. Of course, my pre-reversion self would probably not be happy with these changes, because the pre-reversion edition of me was riddled with ignorance, superficiality and self-serving serving ideas of Mass and why we come to celebrate it.
That edition of me would miss the "Sign of Peace," because it was a ritual that I individualized and defined in my own prideful practice. I formed it to meet my needs for socialization and to feel that warm fuzziness, which trivializes the deep and important meaning behind this ritual and what it represents. It is meant to be a practice that requires great virtue and humility, which is the exact opposite of what I had turned it into.
The "Sign of Peace" is meant as a symbolic act of granting Peace to those among us whom we are not at peace with. We do this because it is important to discard the burden of not being at peace with our brothers and sisters in Christ before we approach and consume the Lord into our spiritual and physical being. It is a very humbling and courageous act, because there are people out there in our communities that have hurt us, and have driven a knife through the core of our being. They have committed sin and vice against us and have damaged us in one way or another, and we are expected to make peace with them before we approach our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.
It is not a time to hug and kiss and make nice with our family and friends, although they are typically those sitting closest to us and sometimes they are the ones who have sinned against us the most, in which case offering them true peace and not a ingenuous gesture is in order and required. It is not a time to walk up and down the aisle greeting and making small talk with our neighbors. The Lord Almighty, King of the Universe and Creator of All has just made Himself present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity on the Altar, it is now a time of extreme reverence and we should be filled with awe. We should reverently be offering our peace to the person on the direct left and right of us, as they do the same, as we do this, we are making peace with everyone in the congregation. We are submitting ourselves to and offering that peace of forgiveness and acceptance to and for our neighbors, because we must make peace with those we are not at peace with to approach the Lord, who does, after all, do that for us.
What we have done to this very beautiful and poignant practice is trivialize it and make a circus of it. We deftly turn our backs on the Lord, present on the Altar to slap our buddy on the back and feel good about ourselves and our community. We totally miss the point, and so the point misses us, and we gain no peace in our hearts at all, only superficial calamity.
So, I am glad it's gone, and I hope it stays that way. I hope all the practices that have brought more of a sense of reverence to the Mass back stay, and all the ones that have been omitted to that end, stay gone. I also hope that those who only have attended Mass in the past for reasons other than to give thanks and glory to God, stay away too. God deserves better than that, from all of us. Lukewarm Catholics are the worst kind of Catholics, and need a wake up call. We all need to be re-examining our motives and our understanding of the Faith and liturgies and rituals we practice. We deserve to know and understand, because when we do, then we can become the people God made us to be.
Dying to self - that is what it is all about, that is what the Mass is all about. Giving everything we are to God, as we approach him on the altar. We don't go to Mass to get anything, we go to give everything, and by doing that, we gain everything. True and lasting peace in our hearts is way better than a superficial hug or kiss from a family member we love already anyway, way better, and it might even give us a glimpse and flavor of living in Heaven while still bound to this Earth. Is there a better reason than that for knowing and understanding the Mass and becoming the Sacrifice with Christ? I don't think so.
