However low you feel, go to Mass

I went to Sunday Mass under the clasps of melancholy. Prayer failed, or at least failed to be directed by my intentions. Our new priest, with his heavy accent, didn’t help; I hardly heard a word he said. By the time Mass was over, I was stiff with unexplainable anger.

As I walked home, I saw a bistro that advertised authentic European food, selling brunch for R50. I ordered a Coburger Rostbratwurst – a black sausage with a cable of mustard hanging over both sides of a palm-sized roll. There were about a hundred types of mustard to choose from. I just asked for something with fewer condiments.

A woman, wearing earphones, jogged past, deaf to the world. I was again angrily thinking how the hand of materialism and political power is overshadowing religion.

Jesus too has now become a magic potent, invoked against evil spirits when one sneezes, for instance. Or a potion to be applied when one is looking for a marital partner, or is down on one’s luck. In short, Jesus has become an idol for the superstitious. The clubbers go to nightclubs for their fix, and the born-again go to church. Inside, there isn’t much difference really; the levels of noise, the dress-to-impress code and vying for attention through dance or braying praise.

My order came. I had also ordered a soup with a complicated name. It was an intolerably rich soup of peas and lentils with flamboyant and exotic additions. We’ve no simplicity nor humility in such simple things as making soup, I thought to myself.

I noticed the mosaic of the world around me. Seated opposite me was a lady who talked incessantly on a cellphone. It seems we do our best to cut each other off; after all, there I was, having run away from attending a youth activity in our parish just to isolate myself on a Sunday afternoon. I know writers are supposed to live skull-numbingly solitary lives. But this?

I watched a movie titled Adam, about an autistic guy who meets a kind woman after his father’s death. They develop a relationship that is doomed from the start because it’s based on his relying too much on her to get by in the world. She needed him to love her. He wanted someone dependable. Somehow, they couldn’t make it work, though they both wanted to be together. I tried to think why.

The trouble with our modern aspirations is, even where our love is not selfish, our needs tend to be stronger than our sacrifices, and our anger stronger than our capacity for forgiveness.

Kindness is not enough in these things if you don’t cross over to the sacrificial part, where you make yourself vulnerable to the other. Our age thinks vulnerability and kindness are signs of weakness. It idolises independence and self-sufficiency. Kindness creates interdependence, which is why it is not so popular in our era. I’m guilty of being of our age.

Later, I thought about my own problems. What saves me is that I’ve never been really able to master my internal dissent to worldly things in general, and tend to insist on actualising ideals, no matter how many times. I tend to open myself to constant existential confrontations, which perhaps is why my weaknesses are constantly conspicuously before me, especially against the living standards of the Living God.

I despise idols (the failure to merge your life with vital values that expose your own weakness). Walking before the face of God, we moderns call it living by conscience, is the purpose that justifies religion, and so I go to Mass despite my moods. And no, you cannot walk before God on your own: you were created to be social, to learn and teach each other through your relations.

Whether you feel like it or not, go to Mass; for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright and godly.