My Very First Latin Mass

The first Latin Mass I went to looked nothing like this one:

or this one:

And certainly not like this one:

It was more like this one:

Only with less people (Notice the one person standing while everyone else is sitting... awkward, yet totally accurate). I found the Traditional Mass at a small parish in Wyoming that looks a lot like the one in this picture. No lace or gold vestments; no marble altars or real candlesticks; and certainly no angels bursting out of the ceiling (as far as I could tell). My personal reaction to the whole thing felt much more like this: 

I'm on the right ^

  than like this: 

                                                                          I hated it! 

I didn't understanding anything. The language was the easy part because I had a translation, but that did no good when I couldn't hear the priest or tell what was happening. I kept waiting for a, "Please stand," or a "Now let's offer one another the sign of Christ's Peace." You know, familiar things that the priest says to help you through it. Nothing. Nada. Thanks Father for leaving me in the dust! Oh, and I almost passed out from all the kneeling! The first words out of my mouth after I left the church were, "I totally understand why Vatican II happened!" That was less than five years ago... A lot can change in five years.

I got into heated arguments about how the liturgy is supposed to communicate to the people how to love through the signs and manner of its arrangement. Yes, go ahead and roll those eyes. I don't know where I came up with that claim or even if it's true, but I defended it like mad if it meant that the New Mass was better than the Old Mass.  I stood outside in a foot of snow for two hours in the pitch black arguing with three people at once about this claim and how that is why the Latin Mass is ineffective. Of course when someone asked for an example of a sign in the liturgy which communicates something more to the people my first thought was of the silence during the offertory... during the offertory of the Old Mass (which is about fifty times longer than the offertory in the New Mass). That was the first and only concession I would make for the Old Mass, or so I thought. 

A couple years later my school started offering the Latin Mass every Wednesday. Back then I was going to mass every day... So when Wednesdays would show up without warning, I would get stuck sitting (or kneeling, rather) through the Old Mass. Of course I couldn't just stand up and leave once I realized which mass it was... that would look bad. Every now and then my roommate would remind me just when I was about to go in to the church, and I was able to duck and run!

If the Old Mass had to rely on itself to make people like it, it would have no friends. My love affair with the Latin Mass did not start as love at first sight. There were no twitterpated butterflies in my stomach or visions of angels or even a sense of inner peace. But now there are... and I have no idea when they showed up or where they came from (butterflies, that is... not visions). ;) I have my suspicions though!

The Really Old Mass