Mass doesn’t need add-ons. For example, I don’t like, “Good morning,” as a greeting at Mass. It’s too small.
“Good morning.” What if it’s the worst morning of your life?
The tests came back and the cancer has spread?
He’s still using.
She’s back in jail.
My husband has left.
My child is dead.
It is a bad morning.
There’s a Journey Blessing from the Outer Hebrides. It goes like this:
May God shield you on every steep.
May Christ keep you in every path,
May Spirit bathe you in every pass.
This blessing assumes there is a steep and we will be asked to climb it. There is a path and we will be asked to travel it. There is a pass and we will be asked to cross over. There is no other way. But we ask that God go with us, shielding us, keeping us, and, ah, so lovely, bathing us.
This blessing has its companion in the greeting, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” That greeting opens to all, embraces all, supports all. Each of us can stand in that greeting, find our place in that greeting. We can mourn in that greeting and we can dance in that greeting.
I think of this each time I bring communion to a homebound brother or sister. There’s no “Good morning” anywhere in the rite. The ritual allows me to begin, rather, “Peace be to this house and all who live in it.” Yes. Peace be to those on every steep, in every path and in every pass. Which is to say, all of us.
I thought of this last Sunday when the Feast of Ascension got the add-on of Mother’s Day. Each one of us assembled could gather to keep the Ascension of Christ. It’s a story with many doors, many ways in. Some could tremble with the apostles asked to watch Jesus leave their sight. What next? Drive out demons? Me, who’d just been found mourning and weeping? Me, who refused to believe Mary Magdalene’s testimony that she had seen the risen Christ? Some could share Mary’s disappointment when her brothers refused to believe, refused to accept the good news she brought to them. Some could take courage from Christ’s pledge that we would be given the strength to do his bidding, bearing the gospel and sharing it. That we — afraid, discouraged, weak — could, and would go out with power in Christ’ name, teaching and healing.
For some in the assembly, Mother’s Day has no door. We all have mothers and many of us women are mothers, but this spring event works best — or, perhaps, at all — for those whose mothers were good, or good enough, and for those who wanted to, and were able to, become mothers, and those whose children are alive, healthy and thriving. I think of a mother whose beautiful son was found dead far from home. I think of a mother whose beloved son is in a mental hospital, a hospital where she’s fighting to keep him, not because she doesn’t want him home, but because she knows the danger he poses to himself if he is not restrained and monitored. I think of the women who have tried to conceive and could not; who have tried to carry a child to term and could not; who have tried to adopt and could not. There is no Mother’s Day greeting card for these women.
I’m not calling for the end of Mother’s Day. Let a thousand brunches bloom. Bring on the supermarket bouquets and the handmade gifts and the burnt-toast-rubbery-egg-breakfasts-in-bed. I’ve enjoyed decades of such sweetness.
But don’t try to incorporate this, or any, civil and commercial holiday into the Mass, where we are welcomed into the deep mystery of a feast set for us by God’s own hands. It is a table we, none of us, sets. We are not the hosts and we do not, cannot, provide the rich fare. Each of us, powerful and powerless, grieving and rejoicing, comes open-handed, empty-handed. We come as beggars beseeching, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” And, as beggars welcomed to the eucharistic feast, we are one. Let us be one at Mass, one in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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