Gratitude And "Gentle Steel"

Someone left a comment at Fr. Z's about what it was like to have Cardinal Zen as a parish pastor

a man of gentle steel.

And about a priest celebrating mass in a town in China that hadn't been able to have a mass since 1949.

He had relearned how to say the old Mass and was expecting be be saying Mass for about a dozen people.When he arrived in the village, there were over 1,000 people waiting to hear Mass and after the first Mass he heard confessions for 6 hours straight. The following day he heard confessions for another 6 or 7 hours before celebrating Mass at which over 700 made their Communion.

Two interesting points about that. The first from the commenter:

The faith in this area had been kept alive by families and small groups meeting to pray the Rosary and to learn the Catechism, for over 45 years.

Ahem. "Lay movements," anyone? Most of them seem to have sprung up in situations where the Church was suppressed in some fashion --they seem to be the Holy Spirit's response to the East where the Church is persecuted and the West where all authority is mocked. How to evangelize under those circumstances?

The second from Fr. Z.

Can you imagine the joy of these people at being able to have Mass?And there are many who whine "Father doesn’t wiggle his little finger at the same point in my St. Joseph’s Daily Missal like old Fr. Ralph did back at St. Ipsydipsy when I was a kid…Father is too fast… Father is too slow… I don’t like the way…."

Two things: First, when the Motu Proprio comes, even though it might not have everything some would hope for, get down on your knees and thank God for Holy Mass. Second, when you go to your parish, no matter how wreckovated, no matter how disappointing the music or lax the priest, thank God for Holy Mass.

Thank God, too, for Cardinal Zen. I'd only add that this is what the Holy Father was getting at in his urbe et orbe message. In seemingly hopeless situations, such as that of the Church in China, where priests are killed and imprisoned, the faith is suppressed and people have no access to the sacraments for 45 years --how does it happen that thousands of people come for a mass in a tiny town? How does it happen that thousands of people enter an underground Church at Easter Vigil? The Pope wasn't "dissing" anyone, he was simply showing there is more to "reality" than what we see or what we effect ourselves --Christ is alive and moving through the world.