Seeking Beauty

The Extraordinary Form celebrated at the Birmingham Oratory. (Picture from LMS)

A reflection on the Extraodinary Form of the Roman Rite by Charles Bradshaw, 21, Archdiocese of Birmingham.

Throughout the centuries man has been on a quest to seek out perfect beauty. We are surrounded with a culture where the search for beauty was ever present: in art, in literature, in music, even in the objects of everyday life: it only takes a glimpse into an antique shop to understand what it is I mean. And if man was asked what the point of it all was, we would realise that he was ultimately searching for perfection: in fact for God!  We live in an age where beauty seems no longer to matter, not even in our churches and our Faith, even our Christian culture is in danger of being left behind. Sometimes you can ask yourself: is it really even a culture that kills off its future children!  I want to reflect on how we can find anew this beauty even in our Catholic Faith especially in this year of Faith and how we can keep our Christian culture alive.

It is rare for anyone these days to be able to say I was brought up with what we now call the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. I am 21 and extremely grateful to have been brought up all my life with this culture. If we look at the word culture, we find its Latin root is “cultus” and as Catholic’s the “cultus” that we really know and understand is that of the Mass, of the Liturgy. That is at the heart of our culture for it to make sense. So, why the Latin Mass as perhaps most people would call it? Why would one go?

I will try to explain things a little: We are all called to enter into a relationship with our Lord and Saviour. The more we enter into a relationship with Him, the more we grow to know and love Him. Love is about giving; a relationship is about giving, if not then even in human terms it breaks down. The more we love, the more we give, our heart, our time, and our thoughts. Love then becomes a deep union, a union of the heart. The deeper the love, the deeper the union.  Our relationship with God then is about giving, but what exactly? The answer is simple: God wants our best!

The culture of the Latin Mass is the culture of relationship, the culture of giving. It only takes a moment to look at the great churches of our country and their architecture to understand the culture of the Latin Mass. Those beautiful altars, paintings, organs, windows, soaring structures and cathedrals, and their great spires, and the glorious peal of bells all point towards giving the best we have to God.  It doesn’t rely on noises and human fabrications but on silence. The silence of these places is enough to exude centuries of relationship with God, centuries of prayer and silence, of love! That sense of awe and mystery, that sense of the sacred, the beautiful, and the silent all converges in the Mass of ages even the detail of vestments point it out as does the deep symbolism of every gesture.

It is there that we can understand the meaning of beauty, in those places and in that spirit. It is only in uniting ourselves with centuries of worship that we will once again find the meaning of beauty, the meaning of giving. If we stop just for one moment breaking from the past then we will find the future, a future that stands together and alongside what has gone before us in harmony. Our Holy Father Pope Benedict points out that “What was sacred for prior generations remains sacred and great for us today!” That is why I love the Latin Mass, because it is our culture, the culture of the West, a culture that is SO valid it changes hearts and calls people out of themselves, to the point that they cannot turn back.

I believe we will find beauty if we give our hearts to Him in the Sacrament of the altar, the lamb that was slain, the child of Bethlehem. I challenge you to unite yourselves to the Sacrifice of Calvary made present on our altars, the Mass of ages and to give Him our hearts and our best, and I promise you there we will find beauty, love, union. How can we not but love Him! It is not you see just a Form of the Roman rite we are at risk of losing, but the whole of our culture as well!