Note: On Fridays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Oh, how quick we are to play God—when someone else is involved.
There I was at Mass last Sunday, smiling and chuckling when the earnest young transitional deacon referred to Little Shop of Horrors and said, “Now, that might be before your time for some of you. In fact, it’s before my time.” There 
was something so sweet, so tender, so vulnerable about it.
My smile turned to a frown when the celebrant said the Breaking of the Bread/Agnus Dei in Latin. Some folks joined in; people my age and younger either mumbled through it or stood quietly. Now that’s before my time, I thought, thinking nothing sweet, tender, or vulnerable about it. Why was he choosing an option that so obviously excluded so many of us? Should he even be mixing Latin and English at a Mass? Is that even allowed?
In short, I was focusing more on the particulars instead of letting God be God through the celebrant. How different my reaction to these two men, neither of whom know me by name, both of whom are called to a special vocation. After all, the Mass is a remembrance and celebration of Jesus’s sacrifice and resurrection, His winning of eternal life for us. I know the response in English, and saying it that way regardless of the language the celebrant used fills me with awe.
I was reminded of today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, of Jesus’s response when the Pharisees chastised him because the disciples had picked heads of grain and ate them on the sabbath:
“I say to you, something greater than the temple is here. If you knew what this meant, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned these innocent men. For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.”
Something greater than the temple or the celebrant is here—if we get our pettiness out of the way.
