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I post this personal account in this forum to give a concrete example of the intimate relationship between parish life and evangelization.

I am resurrecting a very old account.

Despite the name, I am in fact a Latin Catholic. My first experience of the Divine Liturgy was in 2005, at a Ruthenian parish in West Virginia, on the Feast of the Dormition. Hence, I chose this name as having been the locus of my encounter with Eastern Christianity, which, I must say, has changed and is still changing my life.

In the interval since that liturgy, I very nearly became Orthodox. In 2009, as I was about to graduate high school, I was contemplating such a switch. When I snapped out of that, I became very leery of the East, and had really nothing to do with it until, well, about two weeks ago. I quit reading anything here, I quit listening to the sacred music of the East. I limited my exposure to nothing but Western Christianity.

During this period, I fell back upon liturgical traditionalism in the West, remaining however well under the umbrella of papal authority. Thanks be to God I did not fall inextricably in with any schismatic groups, although, I confess, the myopia resulting from the complete elimination of the East from my vision of the Church made some of them appear quite attractive. It was at an SSPV chapel that I saw, really for the first time in the West, the marriage of liturgical conservatism with a real sense of brotherhood and common purpose, and I admit that it looked quite beautiful to me (that's a long story--I did not attend one of their Masses deliberately, but arrived for a different purpose somewhat too early; as a result of this purpose, I came to know many of them). Otherwise, it was, I must say, depressing.

Attending a liturgy simply for the rubrics takes its toll on the soul when done for long enough. I need not detail the utter dysfunction of nearly every traditional community I encountered, and even the dysfunction within small groups, such as choirs, in these communities, the sense that there was a constant state of warfare between these communities (in which one member could barely tolerate another) and the successors to the Holy Apostles that God had set over us to shepherd and govern, the constant resentment of and sneering at any and all pronouncements of the living Magisterium, from the Constitutions and Decrees of the last General Council to the most routine Apostolic letters.

The symptoms which my sick soul presented during this period (I needn't tell you how indebted I am to the East for the imagery of the Divine Physician) were bleak. I struggled mightily with great sins, not the least of which was a growing inability to understand or even tolerate the brethren. And as St. John says, "If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother; he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not?"

I was (and still largely am, I am sure) at the very bottom of the bottom-most pit. The Masses were surely efficacious, surely beautiful, but they were offered in such a spirit of contention, such a spirit of division, and, as the years waxed plenty on the liturgical reform, and as 2007 entered the more remote past, with no signs of any further development in the direction of Summorum Pontificum, in such a spirit of growing desperation and isolation (remember, for these people nothing short of complete, unequivocal restoration of the Tridentine Mass is even really to be considered as good), that they were not, it seems, very efficacious for me, and certainly the circumstances around them in part wrought me into the hideous caricature of a Christian soul that I had become.

It was at the end of an academic break which perhaps represented my lowest descent from divine charity yet that I, by some miracle of God's grace, decided to attend a Divine Liturgy at yet another Ruthenian parish.

Now, I am given to understand that the RDL is not universally popular. Obviously I can sympathize with many of these concerns, having spent much time as a more radical traditionalist than anyone advocating any sort of vernacular liturgy could ever hope to be. Nevertheless, I must say, the experience of it was the greatest spiritual consolation I think that I have ever received.

The way that parish prayed the liturgy together, and it certainly was not flawless, touched me more deeply than I can express. There was a beauty and a great deal of tradition married to a real sense of fraternal charity that I had never seen before. It little surprised me in the wake of this to discover that the very rubrics of the Liturgy prescribe that the priest ought to be reconciled to everybody and bear animosity towards none before offering the Sacrifice. The frequent exhortations to love one another, to commit ourselves and one another and our whole lives unto Christ Our God, the rich and musical fabric of the liturgy, driven more by the enthusiastic congregation than the mediocre choir, wrapped me up in an experience of the love of the living God for His people, of the good God who loves mankind and wants to heal us of our spiritual sickness.

During those two hours, my animosity towards the modern Church slipped away. I saw here a community which did not flourish in spite of Vatican II, but in large measure because of it, which at the urging of the recent Magisterium had truly recovered its proper traditions, which to whatever extent (it was greater than I had seen a Western parish do) loved them and lived them without losing sight of the love of God. I had fortunately confessed my sins prior to that Liturgy, and so received worthily the Body and Blood of Our Lord. The ministers of that Sacrament, perhaps really, perhaps just to me, seemed to emanate a holy joy. I was moved to tears several times.

The gesture of standing on Sundays is so ennobling when it is done in the fabric of a living tradition, rather than as the contra-rubrical spirit of rebellion in which it is done in the West. The singing of the people, too, when it is not forced upon them against their will, is more beautiful than the most polished choirs and scholae I have ever heard, and I am a church musician, organist, and lover of music. I gained a sense of a holiness that is not about excessive individual accomplishment, but the humble living out of the Christian life in the community of believers.

I left that liturgy at peace with God and with the Church. And that is a peace I have not lost, poor sinner though I am, in the short weeks since that liturgy. I see, first of all, the result which was (somewhat ham-handedly) attempted in the Western liturgical reform, and my sympathies have broadened on that topic. My sense of the sacrality of space was restored by the experience of that simple parish church, and when I walk into any temple in the West, I find myself viewing it in the light of the East. My architectural aversions, although I retain them as preferences and as rational beliefs, have quit affecting my spiritual life, as has my musical fundamentalism. A sacred music that is not in Latin, that is congregational, is possible and desirable (fear not, there is still no love lost between me and the secularized banality which the major publishing houses in the West consistently spew).

I could ramble on some more, but suffice it to say that the spirit of contention that was within me seems to have been quelled by the parish life, the fervent prayer, and the visible charity of two Ruthenian communities. The first, in '05, gave me the context which would make my recent revisit so meaningful and powerful.

For these, I want to thank you, to encourage you, to beg your prayers, and to ensure you of mine.

-Uspenije

Thanks, for this, Uspenije

Indeed. Great post.

May I be so bold as to ask if you have a spiritual father you are able to share these thoughts with, and from whom you receive spiritual counsel?

My pleasure, Lester, to tell it. "For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard."

Slavophile,

I have thrice attempted spiritual direction with a priest. My first spiritual father, a very dear old friend who was here at school with me, was unexpectedly transferred early in my career, and, although I occassionally ask after his advice, has too many pressing obligations to really direct me now. After he left, I tried to undertake direction with a priest I respect very much, but he is back at home, not here at school, and exceedingly elderly. At one point I asked another priest, who replaced my first director here at school, but he seemed annoyed at the request, and he was soon transferred out anyway.

The man I tend to approach for counsel on these things is, oddly enough, my Latin professor, who is a very prayerful and devout man, with whom I am able to speak openly and at length about these matters. He has been my primary help in discernment, together with some long-distance advice from my first spiritual director.

I do need to speak with him, don't I?

Uspenije,

You bring up a good point, a spiritual father or mother need not be clergy. In His love for you and with your reciprocal love, God has led you to a good guide.

May the Holy Spirit continue to grant you the Gift of Tears!