My First Traditional Latin Mass

Today I took the plunge and took an opportunity to do something that I had kinda of wanted to do in the past, but had been completely turned off to the idea of in recent months, I went to a Traditional Latin Mass. It wasn't something that I did off of a whim either; I had been rather dead set against ever going after dealing with time after time of Traditionalists telling me I was going to Hell, that I was undeserving of the "glorious nature of the TLM", and hurling insults and accusations at me about the nature of my sins and my lack of faith in God.

However, the option came up last week, and tentatively I started talking to the Catholic Student Association's resident traditionalist (well one of the two, the other is new). He convinced me to give it a try, for the Solemn High Mass for the Feast of Christ the King, that was taking place on October 30th. I asked some Traditionalist friends online what their advice was on the day before, and I took it all to heart (although some, like sitting in the back or reading a missal beforehand, turned out to be impossible to implement).

I got up early to go to where we were meeting. Unfortunately, neither of us had each other's contact info, so I spent an hour and a half waiting before he showed up late, because he had been cooking for the potluck to be held after the Traditional Latin Mass. We took off to pick up his agnostic friend who hadn't been to a church in a decade and isn't sure where she stands with belief in God right now. Once we picked her up, we were on our way.

We parked, we ran the stuff up to the potluck area for after the Mass, and then we went in a side door to find...Father An. in the midst of pre-Mass announcements. Fortunately there was an empty pew right in front of us, that both the agnostic friend and I assumed we'd be taking, until our friend led us through the cloud of altar boys in the back and to the left side of the church. It was like, "hmm, okay. So he wants to sit on the left side, but I don't see anything back here where we could easily slide in." Then we started walking up the side, and as we drew closer to the front, the agnostic woman leaned back, "He's not taking us up there, is he?" Sure enough, we were in the second row!

He genuflected, she didn't, and I genuflected. I had about a minute to pray, before we began. I've never seen so many altar boys in one place at the same time; I mean altar boys too, because there was not one single female server among the more than one dozen of them. We sang an opening hymn, and the procession went through, shutting the altar rail doors behind them. This was already a bit different than I'm used to, because of two things: One, there were altar rails and two, they shut them to completely separate what was going on from the people.

Now, intellectually I know this happens, even when we don't have altar rails. Yet it was something else to actually watch it happen. I thought, going in, that the priest celebrating Ad Orientum might take some getting used to. What really happened was that I didn't blink an eye at it. I didn't feel any sort of emotion that the priests had their backs to me, because we were all facing the same direction in worship towards the Tabernacle.

Perhaps the most oft repeated advice I received in preparing to go to the TLM, was to not try to follow along in the missal, lest I spend more time being confused than actually participating in the Mass. Whenever I looked at the agnostic friend of my friend out of the corner of my eye, she was frantically flipping page to page trying to keep pace with where we were. I'll admit, I wasn't keeping track during the Liturgy of the Word, not very well. I just did as others did; knelt when they knelt, crossed myself when they did, and prayed.

Funny enough, I have to admit I thought they had a CD going for the polyphony, because it was that stunning and crystal clear. It would only be after the Mass that I discovered there was a choir doing all the singing from a local college!

Once we reached the Liturgy of the Eucharist, I was far better off in managing to follow along. I even knew a few of the responses I was to make in Latin. The sheer amount that had to be done before we could even see beyond the curtain into the Tabernacle was fascinating to me in a number of ways. Compared to simply being locked, there was a tablet, then a curtain, then two sets of doors prior to the actual locked door of the Tabernacle.

During the Consecration, you could have heard a pin drop; even the crying babies in the back fell silent as the priest chanted in Latin and an altar boy rang a bell. This is also the point where I nearly hyperventilated. It hit me right then, that I was going to be among the first to receive Holy Communion because of where my friend had placed us.

I asked God to take away my fear and give me the backbone to go up to that altar rail and not screw up. He answers prayers; as we rose to go up, with the traditionalist asking the agnostic friend not to receive, my fear melted away and I stood with my thoughts. As we approached I told myself that I had done this so many times since converting, it was no different at an altar rail on the tongue than it was in my Novus Ordo Mass. The Eucharist transcends where we receive it. Jesus Christ is the same today, tomorrow, and forever.

Fortified with that knowledge, my heart ceased to race as I moved to kneel down. I prayed briefly, noting that as always, I am unworthy of the gift I am about to be given. I didn't screw up, and after a few moments of prayer, rose and returned to my seat.

Once back, we knelt for a while as people went forward for Holy Communion. One thing I hate more than anything about my weight, is that if I kneel for extended periods, my back begins to spasm. I offered it up for a kiddo who has been having some complications from a really important surgery and told myself that I had just eaten the Body of Christ, and that my sufferings, offered up as they were, still paled in comparison to His Passion.

Everything after that blurred together, and before I knew it, we were singing a recessional hymn. After the priests and altar boys recessed, my Traditionalist friend and I knelt for prayer as his agnostic friend took in the architectural beauty of the church. "I may not have known what ta make of all that, but this place sure is beautiful".

I assumed, after our prayers were done, we would leave. I had forgotten about the potluck. We ended up walking over, and I found more women in ankle length denim skirts in one place than I had ever witnessed in my life. Excluding the crowds of kids running about the room, there were easily more adults there than had actually attended the Mass. We mostly ate by ourselves, with people stopping by once in a while to chat. The food was amazing, and watching the kids play was heartwarming as the three of us swapped stories.

Once we left the potluck, it would be another six hours before I managed to make it home, but that wasn't related to Mass. I found, however, that things were interesting. Much of what I had heard some Traditionalist state as being a Novus Ordo problem was alive and well at the Traditional Latin Mass: The women behind us talked nonstop in hushed whispers. Cell phones were still an issue. Children still cried without being taken out.

All of these things though, I treated as I would at my usual Novus Ordo. We are human, and such things happen. We get excited and want to tell someone something, it might detract from our participating in the Mass, but that's between us and God, not the people in front of or behind us. It's easy to forget to silence a phone, I might have had the three of us not turned ours off at the same time. Last, Jesus said to let the little children come unto Him, and I react badly to anyone who would dare hurt a child's faith in those formulative years; I was happy the kids stayed, even though their parents took them to the back of the nave.

I almost missed the bells ringing halfway through to signal it was noon; Mass went from 11am to 1pm (a random aside, I had nowhere to put it). All in all, I think I'll definitely have to go back sometime. Maybe next time I can try to follow along in a Missal, but as I said about the Charismatic Renewal and my first exposure to it, I can't pass judgment on anything after only one experience. I will say, however, that it most definitely wasn't a bad experience.