Living the Liturgy: The Mass as Personal Spiritual Growth

I found this book in Adoration. I consider myself to be very involved in the Mass. I teach Catechesis of the Good Shepherd and am always helping to drawn my children and others to the meanings of the gestures. I strive to teach my children to truly appreciate God's presence. This book was very helpful to me. Although I do appreciate and revere many parts of the Mass, there is still plenty of room for me to improve and grow. This book helped draw my attention to other areas of the Mass that we all tend to gloss over. The Catholic Mass is so beautiful and rich with symbolism. Every Catholic should have a copy.

Marilyn Gustin did the church a wonderful service when she wrote this book. She emphasizes that the mass has become too routine and second nature for many of us. She says: "Too often we accept the views and values of the media, and even those of us who remember a sacred space called church have lost our alertness to it." If you recall the parable about the seeds, this would fall under the seeds that fell: "...among thorns and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit" (Mark 4:7). In a way, Jen Garner's movie "13 Going On 30" reflected this. If I may be allowed to digress a moment, Jen Garner's character wished for things that society seems to fill us with the desire for. Well, her wish came true, and she was happy for a short while. But then she realized she did NOT like the person she became when she got her wish. She also realized that getting what society seems to make us want destroyed her moral values. This movie would actually be great to watch after you read Gustin's book. What Gustin does is she takes each part of the mass and gives a few paragraphs on the significance of it. The procession, the Old Testament Reading, the New Testament Reading, the Gospel, the homily, the profession of faith, the offering of the gifts, the 'Our Father,' the exchange of peace, the consecration of the host and the wine, the prayer of penance before communion, the communion, and the moment of silence after communion. She wisely points out: "If we go to mass only as an obligation or a social habit, very little will happen in us or for us. If we sit dully in our pews daydreaming about yesterday's shopping or this afternoon's football game, that the most holy moment, the consecration will go by without our notice." As if this were not enough, Gustin gives a nice rundown of the times of the church year. (Advent, Christmas, a moment of ordinary time, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost.) She concludes by saying: "...all of that wonderful nourishment can go right through us and out the back door if we go to Mass only because we are obliged to, or if we just want to get through it as quickly as possible." Reading this book would suggest that Marilyn Gustin would have been a great nun. In my opinion, no Roman Catholic or Anglo Catholic should be without this book. Marilyn Gustin really did a great job of putting so much profound and essential material into a book that is under 100 pages.