Una Voce America

Archbishop Donaghue Praises “Timeless Beauty” of Tridentine Mass
Excerpts from Sermon Preached July 13th, 1997 at Pontifical High Mass in Atlanta, GA

In an exrtraordinarily moving homily on the glory of the Church’s historic rite, Archbishop Donoghue described the Holy Mass as “born in the prayer of Jesus Himself, at the Last Supper, nurtured as an infant by the zeal of the Apostles and the blood of many martyrs–tended, protected, enriched, and brought to full flower over the centuries of the Church’s procession upon the earth, still fresh and unwithered. It lives again in our celebration today, for we come to the Holy Mountain of the Mass, where our Lord, our great and mighty Lord, has gone up, to rule and be adored, without question or dissent, for time everlasting. . . . Stay focused on the Mass, the archbishop proclaimed. “You cannot make success in the world your end, and at the same time save your soul. . . This is why we must place at the very center of our lives, as the focus for all our actions, this sacred action, this timeless liturgy, this elaborate but comfortable companion of our lives, the Holy Mass. “The very fact that Christ’s power is continually hedged in by the business of our mundane lives, the very fact that wealth and influence and so many other distractions are always there, always tempting us: These facts of human life made it necessary that Christ give us some protection, some ‘firm dwelling,’ as one writer put it, ‘in which the Holies would be guarded against rough hands and the dust of the streets, safe from desecration and dishonor. . . ‘ “Our firm dwelling, in the City of God, then, is the Holy Mass, the Mass of our fathers in faith, the Mass which we attend, which we guard, and which we protect as a mother her child; as a father, his family and his home. “The entirety of our spirtiual health is to be found in the Mass. It is our real home and our real universe. It is the way to Confesssion and penance and restoration. It is the outpouring of the wisdom of God’s holy words. It is the fount of all grace and the place of our most intimate communion with the ever-gracious and saving Lord, Jesus Christ. “All these gifts of the Holy Spirit of God are here in the Mass. . .” (The Wanderer, July 31, 1997)