More Afterthoughts on TLM: Benefits

• I can invite a non-Catholic friend to Mass and I don't have to 'hold his hand' to help him or guide him through the responses for the Holy Mass, because the emphasis has been taken away from the congregation's audible participation. If he asks me what he has to do in the Mass I can tell him: Pray.
  

• Mass becomes more about the interior than the functions of the exterior. I can reflect more humbly and more reverently on Who is to be consecrated on the Altar, Who I am about to receive, Who I have just received and Who now dwells within me.

• It is all too easy to forget that for over 2000 years the Church has been churning out Saints and Blesseds like a holy factory, even though She is a hospital for sinners. I am quite certain that the more exposure men and women have to TLM, the more Saints and Blesseds will be the result, because it draws the communicant deeper into the mystery of God and the Communion of the Saints. If the Church isn't churning out Saints and Blesseds, then we will know why, because like the British Government we've destroyed our manufacturing base. I guess what I am saying, is that it is easy to forget that the Saints of the Church prayed the Mass reverently, always experienced the interior devotion of TLM and would have taken it for granted that TLM was the only Mass and were they to walk into a Church today they might have a very big shock and have a few things to say to the Priest!

• This is one reason why an English Bishop's comments regarding the Mass being about the 'community' in worship is disappointing. So often, protestants talk about a 'personal relationship' with the Lord Jesus and they are often derided as a result. Yet the great irony is that the majority of protestant worship does take place in assembly, does involve a great deal of corporate singing, does involve a sense of the corporate over-riding the sense of private devotion and solemnity. If you are really seeking a personal relationship with Christ then TLM is the place to find it. If you want to go to a disco on the other hand, there's always somewhere down the road in Brighton...
  

• TLM genuinely encourages the Faithful into a deeper, personal relationship with God and quite right too. Although Heaven is a joyous company of men and women praising, adoring and loving God in eternity, and that is where we hope to belong when we die, I suppose the point is when we die we will be alone with God. We are more likely to prepare spiritually for a holy death if we are seeking God's face in the silence of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, rather than if we are all singing, all responding, all being vocal and possibly drowning out His voice entirely.

• Ooh and you are more likely to get vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life because men and women are more likely to desire to contemplate God, love God and hear His call.