Archbishop Alexander Sample discusses the role of listening in the mass and the various parts of the liturgy to which we can attentively listen.
Transcript:
Host: So we go to James in Dallas, Texas, listening online. James, your question for Archbishop Alexander Sample.
Caller: Hi there, Archbishop Sample. Anyhow, basically I was just wondering if listening is the most important role of a congregant in the pews; especially what I mean by that, listening to the homily or sermon and hopefully the priest will touch on a current topic and then what I call grounded in in solid Gospel teaching instead of so many people in the pews “praying, paying, and exiting,” as I like to call it. What is your overall view on that?
Abp. Sample: Well thank you James, that’s a very good and important question, I’m glad you asked it because listening, being receptive at at the mass is very much a part of that full, active, conscious participation in the Sacred Liturgy. And I think that’s, you know, listening and being what some might call passive during the Sacred Liturgy is like…in the minds of many liturgical people it’s sort of like the mortal sin of Mass is that you ever be in a passive mode. And by “passive” I don’t mean…that’s probably very much the wrong word to use. To be in a receptive mode, a receptive mode, to be listening, as James said, to be listening to the Word of God. To be listening to the prayers of the Mass.
I mean, how many of us, five seconds after the opening prayer of the Mass, the Collect of the Mass, can remember what the priest just prayed? Are we even listening to what that prayer says? The other texts of the liturgy are very important, and many of them deeply rooted in a long tradition. But to be in that listening mode, to be listening to the Word of God, to be listening to the prayers of the Mass, to be listening to, hopefully, what is a meaningful and spiritually uplifting homily. Sometimes also to be listening to the sacred music that is being sung. Sometimes the choir, or the schola, will be singing something that isn’t meant for congregational singing but is meant for choir.
But listening, being in a receptive listening mode to the sacred song, also is a form of active participation. This is what I was trying to get at earlier too, is this idea that we’re participating interiorly, we’re participating with our mind and our heart, but that means having open ears, open mind, open heart to be receptive to the Grace that that Christ wishes to give us through our participation in the Sacred Liturgy, so I think that’s a very important question.