Those who would minimize the role of drama in the middle ages also forget the flourishing of little dramas that flowed from the Mass like Holy Week processions, Plough Monday rituals, and other paraliturgical activities that occurred outside the Church, inspired by what happened in it.
Yes indeed, paraliturgical drama and biblical pageantry are yet more examples of the medieval liturgy's extraordinary cultural fecundity. Thank you for the comment.
Grand opera operates and is successful at all levels, music, costume, drama, makeup, stage management, sets, through a suspension of disbelief…well understood by the lovers of grand opera, if not at a conscious level. Likewise your analysis well explains the attraction or perhaps, sense of authenticity of the tlm or traditional latin mass versus the novus ordo modernist mass to those who prefer the tlm. The former never lifts the dramatic veil, the priest, celebrants, altar boys move in military precision independent of the audience in as you say a sacred drama. The new (since 70s) modernist mass shatters the suspension of disbelief, turns on the fluorescent box store lights, faces and interacts with the parishioners/audience and pierces the veil, ruining the drama, replacing it with the pedantic. You will have to get your drama elsewhere.
We could speak on multiple levels of the differences and perhaps similarities between the modernized western liturgy and the medieval liturgy. But when it comes to sacred drama and the poetic integrity of the sacramental and mystical encounter between priest, ministers, and faithful, my experience agrees with yours—there is absolutely no comparison.
As a Catholic convert, I well remember the first Good Friday service I went to. Enacting the Passion, entering into it, is high drama and it moved me enormously. A couple of years ago I was lining up to venerate the cross on Good Friday when I noticed a young woman returning to her seat, visibly moved and upset. She had experienced that moment of the crucifixion. Everything we do - the Mass, the Rosary, prayers - are means to entering into that mystery and reliving it. I learned, when I converted, under my bad catechesis, that the Mass is a memorial, a meal. It's not, it's so much more. Medieval people understood this - you are present at that moment, seeing the pain and tragedy. All the bad stuff that happens to us is linked to that one death, all our pain related to it, joined to it. Experiencing that makes our pain bearable. Great post, thanks.
And when we remember that the ancient plays were offered in honor of the gods, we begin to see a deep connection between drama and religion that is almost completely absent in modern times, to the extent that drama is seen as mere entertainment, and religion as didactic, moralistic, and legalistic. But when you experience a Solemn High Mass, you are uplifted in every faculty of your being: it is beyond entertainment but also beyond education. It is touching the edge of the heavenly Jerusalem, the worship of the angels around the throne.
A crucial point, wonderfully articulated. The dramatic experience and the religious experience have been intertwined since time immemorial. Modern society has confirmed that if we try to separate those threads, a great many things may begin to unravel.
There is no greater drama this side of Heaven than the Mass (in the aptly called extraordinary form). There cannot be.
Back in the 80s there was a traveling theater company that put on a play about the Mass. It was clearly based on the TLM. Its purpose was to show that the Mass is Calvary, the greatest drama ever enacted. I cannot recall the name of the play but I believe part of it was “Mystical Mass” or something similar.
Thank you for this comment, Father. I've never heard about the theater company you mentioned—how very interesting that they recognized the greatness of the religious drama in the traditional liturgy!
Before I saw all the comments I was going to say that in no way shape or form would the Novus Ordo Mass be adequate to provide this high and sacred drama. Only the Mass of the Ages. I regret that the TLM is not available to me right now and I often endure the NO Mass with gritted teeth and pain in my heart. What a wonder it would be to have the Mass of the Ages available everywhere as it was in the medieval times and have that Mass as the focal point of every daily activity. Thank you also, Mr Keim, for writing that piece relating to this post for the New Liturgical Movement. Very well put.
I'm glad you had a chance to read the NLM piece as well. I enjoyed writing that one. I do not think it is possible for us to fully understand how powerfully society would be affected if we had the high and sacred drama of ancient liturgy, as you say, "available everywhere ... as the focal point of every daily activity."
It's beautiful. This is why von Balthasar can talk about the “theo-drama,” in regards to what we might also call the liturgy as it plays out in Creation and Salvation History. It truly is a drama, and as Fr Corbon explains in his book Wellspring of Worship, the liturgy is now playing out eternally every day, everywhere throughout these “last times.”
The most potent, present, and essential expression of God’s drama is the Liturgy.
This, together with your previous post, presents a real "watershed" moment my understanding of the spiritual life.
I've often noted the need for "good entertainment" that instructs man according to his fallen state and "uplifts" him to his highest purpose.
I've often realized how the ancient Mass sets before man the realities of his fallen state and need for redemption, and how that can be accomplished, all in a solemn and captivating manner. I've even casually referred to the Mass as a sort of "drama".
But I've never "connected the dots" between the two things as you have here; and the realization of how much we need *good* drama and how much we need Redemption being seamlessly entwined and "played out" before us at every offering of the ancient Mass has, well, "boggled" my mind. Much to pray over and ponder. Exquisite! God bless you.
Thank you for taking the time to write this extremely meaningful comment. The things that I write about in this newsletter have been enlightening and transformative forces in my life, and it brings me great satisfaction to share them with others. If this essay has found special resonance in your mind and soul, thanks be to God. Medieval culture is an inexhaustible treasury of spiritual wisdom.
It seems likely that passion plays of some kind or another have been around ever since Christianity became so thoroughly woven into the fabric of European culture, in the early Middle Ages. The more formalized productions, such as the English cycle plays, developed mainly in the late Middle Ages.
You're right. Intellectual and artistic impulses never really die. They simply become redirected. Rome, for example, produced no famous mathematicians, but this does not mean that the mathematical instinct lay dormant for centuries. Instead, it was sublimated into poetry. For example --
Well said. Indeed, the relation between mathematics (properly understood) and poetry runs deep. English poets in the Renaissance actually used the term "numbers" as a synonym for "lines of poetry." In Love's Labour's Lost, for example, Longaville says, "I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move: / O sweet Maria, empress of my love! / These numbers will I tear, and write in prose."
The father of the great actor Laurence Olivier was an Anglo-Catholic parish priest in Buckinghamshire, England. It is reasonable to suppose that Laurence acquired his understanding of the dramatic art by watching his father celebrate the Mass.
Thank you for the comment. It is indeed reasonable to suppose that, and I wonder if there is any record of Laurence commenting on that aspect of his childhood.
Those who would minimize the role of drama in the middle ages also forget the flourishing of little dramas that flowed from the Mass like Holy Week processions, Plough Monday rituals, and other paraliturgical activities that occurred outside the Church, inspired by what happened in it.
Yes indeed, paraliturgical drama and biblical pageantry are yet more examples of the medieval liturgy's extraordinary cultural fecundity. Thank you for the comment.
Grand opera operates and is successful at all levels, music, costume, drama, makeup, stage management, sets, through a suspension of disbelief…well understood by the lovers of grand opera, if not at a conscious level. Likewise your analysis well explains the attraction or perhaps, sense of authenticity of the tlm or traditional latin mass versus the novus ordo modernist mass to those who prefer the tlm. The former never lifts the dramatic veil, the priest, celebrants, altar boys move in military precision independent of the audience in as you say a sacred drama. The new (since 70s) modernist mass shatters the suspension of disbelief, turns on the fluorescent box store lights, faces and interacts with the parishioners/audience and pierces the veil, ruining the drama, replacing it with the pedantic. You will have to get your drama elsewhere.
We could speak on multiple levels of the differences and perhaps similarities between the modernized western liturgy and the medieval liturgy. But when it comes to sacred drama and the poetic integrity of the sacramental and mystical encounter between priest, ministers, and faithful, my experience agrees with yours—there is absolutely no comparison.
As a Catholic convert, I well remember the first Good Friday service I went to. Enacting the Passion, entering into it, is high drama and it moved me enormously. A couple of years ago I was lining up to venerate the cross on Good Friday when I noticed a young woman returning to her seat, visibly moved and upset. She had experienced that moment of the crucifixion. Everything we do - the Mass, the Rosary, prayers - are means to entering into that mystery and reliving it. I learned, when I converted, under my bad catechesis, that the Mass is a memorial, a meal. It's not, it's so much more. Medieval people understood this - you are present at that moment, seeing the pain and tragedy. All the bad stuff that happens to us is linked to that one death, all our pain related to it, joined to it. Experiencing that makes our pain bearable. Great post, thanks.
What a lovely and meaningful contribution to this discussion, thank you.
And when we remember that the ancient plays were offered in honor of the gods, we begin to see a deep connection between drama and religion that is almost completely absent in modern times, to the extent that drama is seen as mere entertainment, and religion as didactic, moralistic, and legalistic. But when you experience a Solemn High Mass, you are uplifted in every faculty of your being: it is beyond entertainment but also beyond education. It is touching the edge of the heavenly Jerusalem, the worship of the angels around the throne.
A crucial point, wonderfully articulated. The dramatic experience and the religious experience have been intertwined since time immemorial. Modern society has confirmed that if we try to separate those threads, a great many things may begin to unravel.
There is no greater drama this side of Heaven than the Mass (in the aptly called extraordinary form). There cannot be.
Back in the 80s there was a traveling theater company that put on a play about the Mass. It was clearly based on the TLM. Its purpose was to show that the Mass is Calvary, the greatest drama ever enacted. I cannot recall the name of the play but I believe part of it was “Mystical Mass” or something similar.
Thank you for this comment, Father. I've never heard about the theater company you mentioned—how very interesting that they recognized the greatness of the religious drama in the traditional liturgy!
Before I saw all the comments I was going to say that in no way shape or form would the Novus Ordo Mass be adequate to provide this high and sacred drama. Only the Mass of the Ages. I regret that the TLM is not available to me right now and I often endure the NO Mass with gritted teeth and pain in my heart. What a wonder it would be to have the Mass of the Ages available everywhere as it was in the medieval times and have that Mass as the focal point of every daily activity. Thank you also, Mr Keim, for writing that piece relating to this post for the New Liturgical Movement. Very well put.
I'm glad you had a chance to read the NLM piece as well. I enjoyed writing that one. I do not think it is possible for us to fully understand how powerfully society would be affected if we had the high and sacred drama of ancient liturgy, as you say, "available everywhere ... as the focal point of every daily activity."
It's beautiful. This is why von Balthasar can talk about the “theo-drama,” in regards to what we might also call the liturgy as it plays out in Creation and Salvation History. It truly is a drama, and as Fr Corbon explains in his book Wellspring of Worship, the liturgy is now playing out eternally every day, everywhere throughout these “last times.”
The most potent, present, and essential expression of God’s drama is the Liturgy.
"The most potent, present, and essential expression of God’s drama is the Liturgy"—well said!
This, together with your previous post, presents a real "watershed" moment my understanding of the spiritual life.
I've often noted the need for "good entertainment" that instructs man according to his fallen state and "uplifts" him to his highest purpose.
I've often realized how the ancient Mass sets before man the realities of his fallen state and need for redemption, and how that can be accomplished, all in a solemn and captivating manner. I've even casually referred to the Mass as a sort of "drama".
But I've never "connected the dots" between the two things as you have here; and the realization of how much we need *good* drama and how much we need Redemption being seamlessly entwined and "played out" before us at every offering of the ancient Mass has, well, "boggled" my mind. Much to pray over and ponder. Exquisite! God bless you.
Thank you for taking the time to write this extremely meaningful comment. The things that I write about in this newsletter have been enlightening and transformative forces in my life, and it brings me great satisfaction to share them with others. If this essay has found special resonance in your mind and soul, thanks be to God. Medieval culture is an inexhaustible treasury of spiritual wisdom.
I remember Thomas Merton said that he experienced the Mass as theatre and I think this is what he meant.
Do you recall where he wrote that? I'd be interested to read his thoughts, if he elaborated on the idea in some way.
I think it was in Seven Story Mountain
Alongside the Mass of the Ages, I wonder when did Passion Plays arise? I can imagine they must go far back.
It seems likely that passion plays of some kind or another have been around ever since Christianity became so thoroughly woven into the fabric of European culture, in the early Middle Ages. The more formalized productions, such as the English cycle plays, developed mainly in the late Middle Ages.
You're right. Intellectual and artistic impulses never really die. They simply become redirected. Rome, for example, produced no famous mathematicians, but this does not mean that the mathematical instinct lay dormant for centuries. Instead, it was sublimated into poetry. For example --
https://fatrabbitiron.substack.com/p/be-eclogue-8
Well said. Indeed, the relation between mathematics (properly understood) and poetry runs deep. English poets in the Renaissance actually used the term "numbers" as a synonym for "lines of poetry." In Love's Labour's Lost, for example, Longaville says, "I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move: / O sweet Maria, empress of my love! / These numbers will I tear, and write in prose."
The father of the great actor Laurence Olivier was an Anglo-Catholic parish priest in Buckinghamshire, England. It is reasonable to suppose that Laurence acquired his understanding of the dramatic art by watching his father celebrate the Mass.
Thank you for the comment. It is indeed reasonable to suppose that, and I wonder if there is any record of Laurence commenting on that aspect of his childhood.