Why We Prefer the Traditional Mass

Here is the second half of the homily delivered by Bishop Fernando Rifan at the ushering in of the Year of the Priesthood on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, 19 June 2009, Saint Jean Baptiste, New York City, in which he explains the reasons traditionalists love and prefer the traditional form of the Mass.

...But the most important demonstration of the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the Holy Eucharist. “Jesus . . . having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end." (John 13:1)

Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is the companion of our exile, by His real presence: “Come to Me, all you that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you.” (Matthew 11:28) He is our friend, our brother, our Father, our consolation in our life.

Jesus in Holy Communion is the food of our souls and, by this food, we live in Him and He in us: “He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood, abideth in Me, and I in him.” (John 6:57) So, in the Holy Communion, we enter into the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And this Sacred Heart is open, like we pray in the Preface of this Mass, “ut apértum Cor divínæ largitátis sacrárium, torréntes nobis fúnderet miseratiónis et grátiæ, et quod amóre nostri flagráre numquam déstitit, piis esset réquies et pœnítentibus patéret salútis refúgium” (“from His opened Heart, the sacred Treasury of divine bounty, streams of mercy and grace might pour out upon us; a resting place of peace for the devout and a refuge of salvation to the penitent”).

And more! Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is a Victim perpetually offered for us. This is the miracle of the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He renews continually in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, although unbloody, the same offering which He made on Calvary.

In the Holy Sacrifice, Jesus is both priest and victim, offering Himself by the hands of His ministers.

Because of all that, the Eucharist is something so great, so magnificent, so wonderful that it is worth the highest respect, the greatest sense of the sacred, the best demonstration of our worship and adoration.

As Pope John Paul II said in his Encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, the Eucharist is something so great that it cannot be made the object of ambiguities, liberties, creativities, adaptations, reductions and instrumentalizations.1

Because of all that, we conserve the traditional liturgical form of the Holy Mass.

And let us put the question: Why do we love, preserve, conserve and prefer the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, the so called Traditional Mass?

Would it be only because we are nostalgic or sentimentally attached to the past forms of the liturgy? Would it be because we deny the power of the Pope to modify and promulgate liturgical law? Would it be because we consider the new Mass, Paul VI’s Mass, invalid, heterodox, sinful, sacrilegious or not Catholic? Not at all! We are Catholic, of course.

It is not for these bad and mistaken reasons, but for a question of better and more precise expression of our Faith in the Eurcharistic dogmas: for safety; for protection against abuse; for the good of the whole Church, for contribution to the liturgical crisis’ reform; for wealth and solemnity of rites; for better precision and rigidity of rubrics, giving no space to manipulations as complained the Pope John Paul II; for the sense of sacredness; for the greater wealth and precision of the prayers’ formulas; for reverence, for personal and ritual humility; for elevation and nobility of ceremonies; for respect, beauty, good taste, piety, sacred language, tradition and legitimate right recognized by the Church’s Supreme Authority, and in perfect communion with the Holy Father, that is, with the Church. We love the old form of the Roman Rite, as a treasure of the Catholic Liturgy.

My dear brethren, how we are happy being Catholics! Every day, in our Church, it is Christmas, because Jesus born on the altar. Every day in our Church it is Good Friday, because Jesus renews his passion on the altar. Every day it is Easter, because Jesus, in the altar, is alive, resurrected, as He is in Heaven. Really, we are very rich!

St. Augustine said: God, even being almighty, the most powerful, cannot or could not give more; even being the wisest, did not know how to give more; even being (the) richest, did not have more to give than Himself in the Eucharist.

As the Eucharist is the summit and the center of the Church, and the greatest demonstration of the love of God, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, present in the Eucharist, must be the summit, the center of our lives forever. Amen.

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1. “The Eucharist is too great a gift to tolerate ambiguity and depreciation.” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, No. 10). “It must be lamented that, especially in the years following the post-conciliar liturgical reform, as a result of a misguided sense of creativity and adaptation there have been a number of abuses which have been a source of suffering for many.” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, No. 52). “The mystery of the Eucharist­ . . . does not allow for reduction or exploitation.” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, No. 61 (emphasis in original)).