10/6/22

I went to Seattle over the weekend for a mini-vacation and while I was there I visited St. James Cathedral for mass. I always like visiting churches wherever I go when I have the chance, and I had time for the 8am mass before Rebecca and I hit up Pike PLace Market, so off I went. It was an impressive building with an impressive turnout. But it reminded me of the things I don't like about church and some forms of Catholic worship. For one, it felt very perfunctory and impersonal. Part of that was due to the size of the church and the congregation. It's hard to have that intimate feeling with hundreds of people in all four corners of the church. And then you have the typical trappings of traditional Catholic clericalism, with the priest sitting on a large throne in all their finery. And while I realize this is to represent Christ and ultimately the authority of God, it always seems strange to me that they sit on a throne adorned with fine robes and jewelry when Jesus sat with his disciples and the poor, eating with them and washing their feet and wearing simple clothes. It's like they flipped Christ on his head and made him the Emperor of Rome rather than the humble servant found in places like Mark 10:35-45 and John 13:1-17.

However, I did enjoy aspects of the liturgy as well, because in many ways it's familiar and comforting. And I also appreciated the homily by Fr. Michael Ryan, which hit on something I've been thinking about myself lately, the way God works in the world. On the one hand, you have the miraculous, events that are mirrored in the liturgical year by the special seasons and feast days when the presence of God is "not only apparent, but overpowering." And then you have "ordinary time," which takes up the majority of the liturgical year when, at the end of the day, nothing spectacular or miraculous makes the day stand out. But God is at work in these times as well in what we'd call the holy spirit, which "moves through the corridors and pathways of ordinary time," opening the future for us and the "possibilities of peace, justice, right relationships, healing, and reconciliation," the "future that Jesus calls the kingdom of God." And in every moment, the holy spirit "entices and attracts us to take a small step into that future." So that at the end of the day, "nothing spectacular may have happened but we have done what God has asked of us." He also noted how God primarily works through natural processes, mentioning the passage in which mountains may be thrown into the sea if one does not have doubt in their hearts (miraculous), but noting that the erosion of mountains over time has the same effect of depositing mountains into the very same sea (ordinary). And our task in the midst of "ordinary time" is to keep the vision of that future alive. Just as God works through natural processes, God works in us through time as well, bringing to mind the wisdom of St. Theresa of Avila:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.