Perhaps one of the most comforting yet puzzling images of Mary is her title of the Immaculate Conception.  On the one hand it is a beautiful example of the power of God to lift Humanity out of sin and become the shining jewel of creation it was meant to be.  On the other, it seems to be an aberration in the way we usually see God operate.  In all of salvation history, the story repeated time and time again is the tale of God using sinful man or woman to bring about His great work.  The fact that God could not use a sinful woman to bring about His Son seems incoherent with the rest of Scripture.  In fact it is such an uncomfortable idea that we may be tempted to ascribe it to ignorance, a pious devotion run amok.  And yet the Church, which we believe to be led and protected by the Holy Spirit, holds the belief as dogma.

The first thing we need to do in order to understand this belief is to realize that, although the Church teaches the belief is so, it does not thereby teach that it must be so.  There is nothing inherent in the prerequisites of the Incarnation that demands God be kept at arms-length from the stain of human sin.  The life of Christ clearly demonstrates that he was not only willing but truly desired to be close to the sinners and the outcasts.  Christ could just have easily protected Himself from original sin at the moment of His incarnation, rather than backing up a generation to protect His mother as well.  Rather, what we need to consider is the radical way God chose to redeem Humanity–that He chose to set right everything that was lost in the Fall.

When sin entered the world, it did so through not just Adam, but Eve as well.  Adam’s sin was greater, but both chose to disobey God and thereby, together, deprived the rest of humanity of grace.  Christ came to redeem the fall of Adam, the loss of original Grace and therefore the loss of our inheritance in the Kingdom of God.  But what of Eve?  To be sure, Christ’s sacrifice was sufficient to bring salvation to all.  But while it was not strictly necessary to provide a new Eve to complement Christ as the new Adam, it was poetically necessary.

You see, everything God does–His work, His creation, and especially His love–is perfect.  In other words, there is no better way to do anything than the way God does it.  So what would be better than redeeming the sin of Adam?  Redeeming the sin of Eve as well, and holding up both as the restored, perfected vision of God’s original creation.  In anticipation of Christ’s redeeming work, God granted to Mary the first fruits of that redemption and gave to her the Grace of our first parents at the moment of her conception.  He did this in order that she, like Eve, might be given the choice between new life in Christ, and continued spiritual death.  And unlike Eve, Mary chose life.

So in reality this unique gift of God was not an aberration, but an indulgence.  God in His great love went “above and beyond”, as it were, what He strictly needed to do to bring about the salvation of the world.  But of course that story should seem familiar to us, because it is exactly what Christ did on the Cross.

So what is it about these services that is so appealing?  It is tempting to assume this is proof that this new generation just wants to be entertained, not fulfilled, but I am convinced that this is not the case.  It has been my experience that young people today yearn more deeply for the beauty and sacrifice of the Mass than ever before, but a more immediate need is causing this yearning to be ignored. The word I use to describe this is acclimation (not to be confused with acclamation).  Acclimation is the process by which an organism is gradually introduced to a new environment.  For example, if you purchase a goldfish it must be acclimated by placing the bag containing the fish into the aquarium.  Only once the temperatures have equalized can you release the fish into its new habitat.  If you do it correctly, the fish will thrive.  If you do it too fast, it will die even though (arguably) the new environment is better suited to raising goldfish.

The same principle is at work within the Church.  The environments within and outside a parish are much more disconnected than they were even 20 or 30 years ago.  The speed of life in general has increased significantly, and this increase has become the norm with younger generations fully acclimated to this way of life and thriving.  We still slow down occasionally, but it is typically out of physical–not spiritual–exhaustion.  If we have energy, we want to be doing something.  Thousands of people my age have been misdiagnosed with ADD simply because people have failed to understand this fact.

Consider this concept as it applies to worship.  The mega-churches understand this problem better than most parishes.  The rock band begins with high-energy music because it is what people like.  It appeals to them because they are acclimated to it.  It doesn’t take meditation or retreat or prayer to enjoy it, and the band carries the tune so it doesn’t matter how many people are singing.  The worship is eminently approachable.  Only after this does the music slow down to draw people further into the experience.  Well-known songs get people singing and instrumental solos prepare them for the sermon.  It is very easy to see the process of acclimation as it progresses toward the real message.

Contrast this with a typical Catholic Mass.  If we are lucky, the processional hymn has some energy, but after 3 minutes the priest has finished the opening prayer and we’re already droning “Lord have mercy”.  Whether anyone consciously realizes it or not, the experience is spiritually disorienting.  Being used to moving and acting and communicating at light speed, we’re expected to hit the brakes and focus on one thing at a time for an hour.  I’m not saying this is a bad idea, just that it is very difficult to do instantly.  We become like goldfish dumped in a tank of warm water–not sure exactly what’s going on but suddenly experiencing an overwhelming desire to take a nap.  Take this with the fact that 99% of my under-catechized age group has no idea what “liturgy” means and even less an idea why it’s happening, and you have created the perfect neuro-chemical signal for BRAIN=OFF.  Is it any wonder no one goes to Mass anymore?

What our protestant friends have been able to do, sans-liturgy, is innovate a better method of bringing young people into a sacred space.  I’m not advocating an overhaul of the Mass.  We tried that 40 years ago and most people would say (so far) that the results have been problematic at best.  What I am saying is that the Mass in its current form does not meet many of us where we are.  At its outset the Mass assumes a level of tranquility that we rarely experience, let alone bring with us to worship.  There must be something to gently ease us into this mode of being.  The Praise & Worship model seems to at least be a starting point to do that.  The problem with the mega-churches is not that they go too far, it’s that they don’t go far enough.  Once the people are ready to begin true worship (via sacrifice and not just praise), the service ends.  As Catholics we have the fullness of worship through the Eucharist, but we are losing young members long before we get there in the Mass.

It seems to me that the solution to all of this is three-fold.  The first is to remember that although the Mass is the “source and summit of the Christian life” (cf. Lumen Gentium para. 11), it is not the end-all, be-all of our Faith.  There is a true need that is filled by extra-Eucharistic praise and worship.  Some churches have begun to provide opportunities to experience this outside the Mass but they are currently in the minority.  Perhaps we should consider Wednesday or Friday night services in some form to provide the opportunity to sing praise to God in a format that is more accessible.  Of course we must be cautious that this is not seen an alternative to Mass, but those who would view it as such are probably not coming to Mass anyway.

The second part of this would be to provide a run-up to the Mass proper.  Perhaps in a separate building, this would be a praise and worship session with a set form, taking cues from liturgy to shape the form and direction of the session, possibly even with prayers specific to the liturgical season or the readings for the day.  Great care would of course have to be taken that clerical functions such as blessings were not performed by the laity, but a short 15-20 minute “para-liturgical” celebration might be enough so that people would actually be ready to pray when they enter the church.

Finally, we need a renewed focus on catechesis and liturgical instruction.  All the mental preparation in the world is not going to help anyone get something out of the Mass if they don’t understand it.  And I’m sad to say that almost no one understands the Mass anymore.  How many know that the Mass is styled after Jewish Temple worship in the Old Testament?  That the visuals elements reference the Book of Revelation?  That everything from the vestments to the actions to the very layout of the church are designed specifically to recall a Scripture or Tradition?  Even among those who know all of that, how many can identify the context of all those connections?  Providing some of that context before Mass would begin to help anchor the experience.

The task is set before us to bring the Lost back into the fold.  There is a great treasure of our faith hidden in plain sight at every Mass in every parish.  If we don’t help new generations to see that, is it any wonder they don’t come back?

Image from http://www.briandanielboyd.com

It can be frustrating trying to connect with the generation that is currently fumbling its way through adolescence and young adulthood.  That’s certainly not unique in human history, and yet occasionally we get the nagging feeling that there is something different about this age.  We have the sense that our communication challenges have not been faced before.  Generation gaps are getting larger.  Communication breakdowns common to adult/teenage relationships are continuing long after teens grow up, move out, get a job, get married and have kids–things that used to help new generations relate to old ones.  For some reason none of these things are having the impact that they used to on a large scale.  How is it that the very basic, universal threads that unite all of human life fail to give entire generations something in common with ones that came before it?

The answer lies in the medium, not the message, and the key to understanding this is the microchip.  Even more radical than the invention of the printing press or the internal combustion engine or the radio, the microchip not only revolutionized how we live; it revolutionized how we think.  Anthropologists and historians referring to our time as the Information Age have it exactly right.  Members of Generation Y (the “Millennials”) are the first people to grow up having never known a world without ubiquitous light-speed communication.  I was born in 1983 and therefore ended up in the vanguard of the Millennial generation.  My family had a computer by the time I was two, Internet by 7th grade, and broadband and cell phones before my Freshman year.  Email, social networking, instant messaging, text messaging simply are.  They are not “tools” any more than we think of phones and pencils and the Postal Service as tools.  They just exist.  No one thinks about when to use them because it’s second nature.  Most importantly, these things not just a means of communication, they are the primary means.  That nagging feeling is real: generations no longer connect because the very fabric of communication has changed.  Anyone who does not use or understand these new tools simply cannot be heard by the people who do.  Imagine your grandparents trying to communicate with you via telegraph and you will get an idea of the shift.

I often hear the lament that the “art of conversation” has been lost.  I maintain that this is positively, unequivocally not true.  What has been lost is the old definition of “conversation” (and good riddance!).  For Millennials, our entire lives are one continuous conversation.  We know more about our friends than any generation is history.  Fulfilling the perennial human need for community is now effortless.  Let me give you a typical example.  Yesterday two of my High School youth group girls came to hang out in our youth room.  When they walked in one of them was filming the other with their camera phone.  They told me about a rap song one of them had written.  The other girl brought up the lyrics on her phone and performed the rap.  When they were done the girl who was filming pulled out her laptop while they talked with me about what they had been doing that day.  Within five minutes the rap performance was up on Facebook, all the while the girls kept joking and talking with each other.  Several text messages were also received and sent by all of us during this period.  We probably looked at our cell phones and computer screens more than we looked at each other, but no one felt that the other wasn’t paying attention.  The conversation was simply bigger than the three of us in the room.

Once we begin to see technology in this light, it’s easy to understand why it’s so hard to reach the digital generation.  Imagine being at a party talking with a group of friends.  If someone came in and tried to pull you aside for some one-on-one time, would you go willingly or prefer to stay in the group?  Unless that person wanted to discuss the fact that the building was on fire, you probably wouldn’t care to leave the current conversation.  But at the same time, you probably also wouldn’t mind if they joined the group.  The great social conversation of our generation is the same.

Consider those touching moments at wedding or funeral receptions when the noise dies down and people are just left talking.  Three and sometimes four generations of people end up in a circle talking.  People forget their roles as authority figures or rebellious teenagers and they just talk. Their shared love for a family member or friend makes them all equals.

Social media tends to have the same effect.  Everyone is equal on the Internet.  Perhaps this is why older generations feel out of place.  They live their lives in an “elder” mindset and have difficulty setting it down.  But when people do forget themselves and just join in, people begin to connect.  A grandmother may find a note from a grandson in her email.  Parents suddenly know what is going on in their kids lives.  Kids realize that their parents may actually know a thing or two about life.  All the wonderful realizations that happen when growing up have a place to happen.  The huge gap suddenly doesn’t seem so daunting.

Of course, there is a balance that must be found in all things.  Teens still have a need to be private.  Kids still won’t want you trying to be “buddies” with their friends (but it may be okay if you friend them on Facebook).  Adults may still have to lay down the law from time to time, even online.  But these are the same things that every generation faces.  Once we’ve gotten the digital part handled, I think we’ll figure out the rest.

As long as I manage to avoid summoning Cthulu I think I’m okay with that.

The fact is that our Church is home to an incredible range of tastes, styles and methods of worship.  As James Joyce famously complained, the Catholic Church can accurately be described as “here comes everybody”.  I’m not going to debate here the appropriateness of any specific examples but I will wager a guess that, whatever your preference, you have it for one reason: it brings you joy.  I’ll also add that the reasons for this joy are completely invisible to people on the opposite side of the spectrum.  “How can you like that?!?!”, they say, “that’s not what Mass is supposed to be about!”

But when looking at the Mass (or any facet of the Church for that matter) from the perspective of Joy, it becomes much easier to see what is attractive about various forms of worship.  A Mass filled with simple melodies played on guitar may not have the theological depth or beauty of the ancient hymns accompanied by a massive pipe organ, but it has an immediacy and a personal intimacy (Kumbaya anyone?) that appeals to someone looking for an experiential kind of joy.  It fosters a feeling of familiarity, of visceral closeness to what is happening on the Altar.  It is the same kind of joy experienced in seeing a loved one for the first time after a long absence.   It doesn’t take any thought or historical understanding.  It is a raw, emotional experience.  But it is no less a valid experience of Joy.

In contrast, those who prefer a Latin High Mass with every part solemnly chanted experience a starkly different, but equally valid Joy.  The joy is a reaction to Beauty in a nearly perfect form, like a marble statue honed lovingly and skillfully for years by a master worker.  It is precisely the unfamiliarity, the other-worldliness of the spectacle that brings joy.  Every part of the worship is designed, not to be approachable, but, as C.S. Lewis said, to call a soul “farther up and farther in” to the experience of God’s love and grace.  It is a form of worship not content to leave us where we are, but to challenge and stretch us to the limits of what we were created to be.  And being able to do so, even slightly, brings us that incredible joy.

As always for anyone honestly trying to serve God and His Church, the key lies in the balance between these two extremes.  A High Mass, for all its beauty, cannot edify the faithful if they do not understand it.  A folk mass, for all its approachability, cannot draw us closer to God if it does not draw us out of the everyday world and challenge us to grow.  I don’t know how to make the Mass or the Church as universal as it is called to be.  But I believe the first step is to acknowledge and affirm what brings joy in every form.  Then perhaps the joy of Christ will truly be in us, and our joy will be complete.

And the thing is, she’s probably right.  Thanks to a woeful lack of proper catechesis most people don’t realize anymore that missing Mass is a mortal sin, and full knowledge is one of the three conditions required to commit a mortal sin.  But the question I have to ask is, when did “living a Christian life” morph into just “successfully avoiding eternal hellfire”?  Obviously we want to steer clear of hell, but this is the very minimum one is called to do as a Christian.  Heck, barring a major screw-up later in life we manage that much just being baptized.  Surely Jesus meant something more when He said “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

There is an interesting philosophy that is prevalent in Western–and particularly American–thought that can be summed up in one sentence:  “It doesn’t matter what I do, as long as I’m basically a good person.”  This mode of thinking can be found in every facet of life whether spiritual or secular.  It is especially visible to anyone who has grown up Catholic.  We even have our own shorthand for parishioners who follow this line of thinking:

CEO’s (Christmas and Easter Only)
Hatched, Matched and Dispatched (who only darken Church doors for baptisms, weddings and funerals)
CINOs (Catholics In Name Only)

What all these groups have in common is the presumption that because they are “basically good people”, they will do just fine at their final judgment and don’t really need to worry too much about it on a daily basis.  The rest of us aren’t often much different.  Sure, we go to church on Sundays and dutifully line up for Confession when we sin, and politely tsk tsk the less committed in our communities, lamenting that they don’t take their faith more seriously.  But then we go on with our lives.  Unless it’s an immediate family member (and sometimes not even then), we put them out of our mind and assure ourselves, “they’re basically good people”.

We cannot fall into this mindset that “as long as everyone gets to heaven it’s okay”. First of all it is a dangerous mindset that ignores the very real possibility of hell.  Ignorance may mitigate the sin of disobedience, but willful ignorance or disobedience can send a person to hell just as surely as any other sin.  Secondly, The Kingdom of God has always been in heaven.  Christ came to bring it here, on this Earth, right now.  He came so that we could have complete joy both in this life and the next (John 15:11).  He came so that suffering, while not always avoidable, might be filled with meaning when united to Christ on His Cross.

Are we going to deny others (and ourselves) these incredible graces, just because we’ll all probably make it to heaven anyway?  Will we condemn others to suffer with “restless hearts”, as St. Augustine said, when they could have rested in the Lord if we showed others how to find and follow Him?  We are called to make sure everyone hears the Good News, the whole Gospel.  In modeling Christ we can never settle for “good enough”.

The inspiration for the blog’s name comes from the Parable of the 10 Virgins (Matthew 25: 1-13).  Five were wise and kept enough fuel for their lamps so that they would be ready when the master (Jesus) came home.  The other five were foolish and let their lamps burn out.  When the master did return, they begged the first group for oil, but they would not give it to them because they only had enough for themselves.