What we need in parish life

by Letters Editor · Published March 14, 2013 · Updated August 5, 2017

From Bishop Edward Risi OMI, Keimoes-Upington

The letter of Fritz Rijkenberg Format of Mass loses followers (February 13) highlights a fundamental need in all parish life. His observation that the Mass is the only spiritual support most churchgoers receive underscores the challenge. I am sure that every parish priest would consider the parish quite dead if all that happened was only the Sunday Mass.

” I am sure that every parish priest would consider the parish quite dead if all that happened was only the Sunday Mass.”

From the earliest times of the Church, the celebration of the liturgy was surrounded by other forms of prayer and communal life.

In the time of St Augustine, for example, monastic prayer and cathedral chapters would be examples of such. In the medieval Church there was a multiplicity of devotional life and social celebrations of an ecclesial nature which inspired people to prayer and living of their faith.

Examples which straddle medieval and modern times are the sodality and the parish missions.

One may consider the place of the charismatic movement in parish life since Vatican II. The Bible apostolate, where people pray the scriptures and prepare themselves ahead of the Sunday liturgy, has place of pride in rural and urban communities.

There is the family apostolate, student and youth apostolate, workers’ apostolate all create occasions where people can pray and reflect on life together, at times celebrate Mass in their groups, but always providing for a deepened experience of the Sunday Mass.

The reforms of Vatican II kept the ritual of the Mass to a minimum, something which its critics did not welcome. The most fundamental ritual remains as we read in the Acts of the Apostles: they met for the prayers and the Breaking of the Bread. The synoptic gospels and St Paul already record the outline of the ritual for the Breaking of the Bread: Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke and gave it. And he did the same with the wine.

I recommend reading The Supper of the Lamb by Scott Hahn which is also available in DVD form. The Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference made a DVD-ROM available, Becoming One Bread One Body in Christ, as a resource for helping Catholics relate to the liturgy of the Mass and its reform by Vatican II so as to answer the very questions of the correspondent.

The Sunday Mass brings everyone together from all walks of life to celebrate the mystery of faith. It is the climax of all Christian prayer and service that leads up to it and flows out from it.