A big thank you goes out to M. Thomas for posting a comment on this on her Facebook wall. Let me begin by quoting from an article in the National Catholic Register. I will only quote parts, the full post is well worth reading:
I love chant. I love vaulted ceilings. I love stained glass and incense, ancient gestures and profoundly freighted silence. Beauty is more than decoration: It nourishes the soul.
More than that, architectural and liturgical beauty have a higher purpose than to feed the senses: Beauty is one of the few fitting offerings we can make to a God whose sacrifice is already complete. Beauty lifts the mind and the soul; it disposes us to grace, and it aligns our hearts with everything that is good and true. I believe these things with all my heart, and would defend beauty till the end of the world.
On the other hand …
There is a case to be made for spending some time with ugliness. Specifically, ugliness at Mass.
You really don’t have to seek it out. Unless you’re cloistered, sooner or later you will find yourself in a parish that just doesn’t get it — doesn’t get beauty, doesn’t want it, chases it out with a stick every Sunday. The tabernacle will be hidden away, while the HVAC will be proudly on display in the beige-brick sanctuary, right behind the hovering un-crucifix made of chrome and burlap. The music will jangle and irritate; the priest will act like a cross between an infomercial huckster and your creepy uncle. The whole production, from the opening joke — I mean, the Introductory Rites — to the last hurrah — I mean, Final Blessing — will seem designed to irritate, to offend, and to cause you grief and pain.
And you know what? This is your big opportunity. You can either clench your teeth, wrap your scapulars around your ears to block out the tambourines, and hightail it out of there as soon as you can . . .
Or you can think to yourself, “Christ is here. And if he can stand it, then so can I.” …
Why? Because at some point, in the middle of the noise and the irreverence and the foolish, happy-clappy songs, we’re going to have to go up for Communion. We will have to take God into our mouths. And if we have an honest bone in our bodies, we will have to think, “No, it’s not good enough. And neither am I.”
My soul is foolish. I’m cheap and jangly. I’m in poor taste, inadequate, irreverent, wanting and paltry in every way. My heart is made of little beige bricks and burlap. And for some reason, God keeps showing up anyway. He doesn’t sneer and hunker down and wait for it to be over when he comes into the tawdry temple of my soul. He doesn’t get out of there as soon as he can.
A little ugliness is good for us, folks. Taken in the proper doses in the right context, a little bad taste is something we need, because it tells us something about ourselves. Surrounded with nothing but beauty and elegance at all times, we can come to confuse good taste with good souls: We can think that we really are worthy, because here we are, chanting! It’s timeless! It’s ancient! It’s a worthy offering!
No, it’s not. …
At this point, I am sure I do not need to write much, for the article is quite self-explanatory. Do, please read it all.
I will comment that many of us Orthodox easily fall into the same trap. I realize that Lent does not begin until next month. But, this is the period of the Triodion, when Orthodox get ready for Lent. And, Lent takes some attitude adjustments to observe in a holy manner. This is one of them. You see, it does not take a Novus Ordo Mass to become ever so critical and snobbish. All it takes is for us to attend a mission church meeting in a small rented hall for us to begin comparing it to the ever so much finer music and liturgical “performance” at the cathedral.
Frankly, sometimes I wonder if we have not become like some of the Episcopalians that we claim to dislike for their superior attitude and their ever so careful manners. Ask yourself, what would be your reaction if you were to go to a small inner-city Orthodox mission? Would you be able to freely worship God there, or would you be looking around making comparisons in your mind? Given what the Lord says about the poor in spirit and about the poor, you might really be failing that comparison with God when you think you have a passing grade. I sometimes wonder whether the lack of inner-city Orthodox missions in this day in America has to do with the fact that they could never afford to truly look like Orthodox (many Episcopalians have the same disease)?
Lent is the time to examine our innermost attitudes, be sickened by what we find, and then go before God in humbleness to let him continue the work of cooperating with you in the changing of your soul into something that might even begin to resemble who he is. So, let’s gulp hard and walk forward, ready to see what the Holy Spirit wants to root out of us this year.
I think the point is Godwardness, whether that be in a rented store-front space with one priest and one chanter, or in a large cathedral with a near-professional choir and a whole host of chanters. In both cases, the priest faces the same direction everyone else faces: to the altar, to heaven itself. For my part, I have had some of the most significant spiritual experiences at low mass in a small side chapel at our parish (we are a Western rite parish), without smells, organ or choir. One thing does remain constant: the Godwardness of the mass/divine liturgy.