Beautiful Things

I just saw an ad for a parish which uses an image of a church which clearly does not belong to the parish itself. Instead of the modern, plain, glorified recreation room featuring a few replica paintings, the ad showed a majestic, Gothic cathedral with beautiful columns. The church in the image, is truly majestic.

Now the point of this post is not to highlight hypocrisy or even false advertising; I simply want to illuminate that beauty matters when it comes to liturgy. And it is a great discredit to our faith, and to our religion in general when that part of liturgy is ignored, or even worse, forgotten.

I mean, when was the last time you went to Mass and felt anything resembling positive awe? When was the last time you went to Mass and felt like something bigger than your own perception was happening? When was the last time the Liturgy lifted your heart to Almighty God?

Yes, as Catholics, we must never forget we are sojourners, and that the ultimate goal, the ultimate beauty, the ultimate liturgy is in heaven, but the Liturgy must be a window to heaven. And yes, it is very difficult, let alone inexpensive, to find and purchase the beautiful, magnificent art that adorns the old cathedrals and basilicas in Europe. It is difficult to learn Latin, let alone Gregorian Chant.

But if the mindset going into Liturgy is simply to get through it, to be good enough, for choirs simply to get through the hymns; for art to be good enough; for altar servers to stand at the right spot and just do what whatever they need to do at the correct time, then liturgy will just get done; it will just be 'good enough.'

If there was a more concerted effort to recognize the sacredness of music, if there was a more vested interest in training altar servers to be more attentive to what and how they participate in heaven on earth, if there was a greater push and desire for more beautiful art and churches, then that effort would reflect into a more beautiful liturgy.

Of course, I understand that we cannot add to the intrinsic value of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, but that does not mean our own personal effort cannot add to others' ability to recognize, and even more importantly, be taken into that sacrifice. It takes just a little more effort, beginning with ourselves.

Our own interior disposition is more important than any art piece or chant; but that disposition, at least my experience, tends to move towards the beautiful.

the Joy of Losing

The tradition on American Thanksgiving points to what professional sports is supposed to be, and I pray, nothing more. This point came to me while I sat on a bench overlooking a small valley lamenting my poor sports luck in 2011, and again when I saw the Canucks live against the powerhouse Penguins and Jets in the last two months.

But first, some context.

I entered a monastery in Southern California in 2010 so you can understand the sinking ironic feeling, when I discovered that not only were my beloved Vancouver Canucks good, they were dominant. In my then 27 years of being a fan, my beloved Canucks reached the Stanley Cup only once, in glorious 1994. In fact, there had been so many years of frustration, it is not immediately clear to me if they had even got past the 2nd round of the playoffs in all those years. 

The other teams I follow performed somewhat similarly in the following years: the Pittsburgh Steelers ended up in another Super Bowl; the Notre Dame Fighting Irish reached the BCS National Championship; the Pac-10 turned into the Pac-12, and somehow, several teams ended up taking center stage in the national championship; the Seattle Seahawks created a dynasty-worthy team, and even my high school won the provincial championship after being a perennial contender.

It was humorously frustrating; I leave the world, and all of a sudden, the teams which I followed all flourished in some way.

I realized, however, that what I truly love about sports, is not the sports themselves: it's the camaraderie; it's the sharing of joys and sorrows seeing teams succeed or fail; it's the discussion and playful argumentation of who's the greatest; it's the instant discussion starter, the emotional connection and identification. It was, simply speaking, not merely the sports themselves.

Being back in the world has allowed me to follow sports again, and not ironically enough, the Canucks are back to being terrible. But winning isn't what's desirable: it's going through the wide arrange of success and failure with with those happy enough to share it with you.