By
Ann Barnhardt at
Barnhardt.biz
HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD.
Those are the words engraved on the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington
National Cemetery. Here is a video of the Changing of the Guard.
I think we can all agree that the Tomb of the Unknowns, the 24/7
guarding of the Tomb, and the intense precision of the ceremonial
rubrics are one of the most excellent things in American culture. The
old saying goes, "You may judge a nation by how it treats its fallen
warriors." In an otherwise degraded and despair-inducing society, the
Tomb of the Unknowns is a beacon of cultural light and hope.
The
Tomb of the Unknowns is also extremely instructive, and believe it or
not, it instructs us about . . . the Mass. The reason the Tomb of the
Unknowns instructs us today about the Mass is because the Tomb of the
Unknowns rubrics originally came FROM the Mass. For those of you who
have never seen a pre-1968 Tridentine Mass and are used to the clownish,
degraded, irreverent Novus Ordo Masses of the last 45 years, or of
Superfun Rockband church, I hope the sense of reverent awe and solemnity
you feel when watching the ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns helps
you understand what exactly it is that has been robbed from you.
After watching the ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns above, I want
you to imagine the guards walking about casually, maybe wearing a
partial uniform jacket, but with jeans and sandals. Imagine the guards
walking out and introducing themselves, "Hi, my name is Lieutenant
Jones, but you can call me Jake." Then the guard might say something
like, "Isn't it a beautiful day today? It sure was rainy yesterday. I
had to wear a rain jacket. I'm so glad you all could make to my shift
today. I'm going to be guarding the tomb for the next few hours, and I
know that it can sure get BOOOORING! That's why I have asked a local
band to come in and play some music for you guys, because I want this to
be A FUN EXPERIENCE for all of us!"
If this happened, you would
be shocked and disgusted, right? Do you understand that what I have
just described is a watered-down comparison of what has happened to the
Mass? The Mass went from being even more reverent than the rubrics of
the Tomb Guard to what I just described above - and many times even
worse than what I described above.
Let's walk through some of the many parallels.
The soldiers are in full dress uniform, meticulously turned-out and
maintained. They are not in combat gear that soldiers would use to walk
a patrol in Afghanistan. The Tomb guards are doing something
DIFFERENT, and thus their uniforms reflect that. Really, what the
ceremonies surrounding the Tomb are is the highest form of ART. It is
living ART, not consisting of a mere two-dimensional representation, not
consisting of inanimate objects, but ART consisting of human beings in
action. The uniforms, the gait, the precise rubrics, words, gestures
and movements - these all combine into a perpetual work of art that not
only moves and inspires the people who witness it, but also accomplishes
the goal of making tangible a RESPECT for and a REMEMBRANCE of all of
the fallen unknown soldiers. The Tomb Guards walk their patrol whether
anyone is there to see them do it or not. It isn't a show. It is a
service. It is a liturgy.
Here Rests in Honored Glory . . . Part 2
Posted by
Ann Barnhardt - May 28, AD 2012 12:09 PM MST
The Mass is exactly what I just described, except
that the Mass is the most perfect artistic action in the universe
because the Mass is the artistic creation of God Himself. The Holy
Spirit taught the Church the Mass. The Mass is art that is so perfect
that it actually causes something to happen - it causes Heaven and Earth
to touch, it causes time to be bent such that the moment of "now"
touches and intersects with the moment of Calvary 1979 years ago, and it
causes bread and wine to be transubstantiated into the Body, Blood,
Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, made PHYSICALLY PRESENT. Man calls
down God, and God, in His infinite love, responds and fully submits in
complete love, making Himself present on the Altar both at the moment of
His death, and in His resurrection, so that He may go into us
physically as Food.
In the Tridentine Mass, the priest observes
"custody of the eyes", never looking around and NEVER looking out at the
people. Like the guards, priests are supposed to keep their eyes on
exactly what they are doing without distraction. The Guards at the Tomb
wear mirrored sunglasses to block out all eye contact. Priests are
supposed to keep their eyes DOWN or CLOSED, with a couple of exceptions
such as just before the consecration when they are to look up to Heaven.
This is like the Guards' rubric of looking from side-to-side very
deliberately when inspecting the rifle and the relieving officer. Did
you catch that?
Priests are also supposed to walk with a very
deliberate gait - slow, measured and reverent in exactly the same way
the Tomb Guards walk in a slow, deliberate, reverent gait.
Priests are only supposed to say very specific words - no improvisation,
no modifications. The Guards are the same way. They have a very
strict announcement that they make at the changing, and they have very
strict words that they say when telling people to be quiet and observe
reverent silence (there is a YouTube video of that happening, look it
up.) There is no chatting or extemporaneous speech. In the Church, the
command is "Say the black, do the red," in reference to the layout of
the Roman Missal with the words of prayer in black and the instructions
for the intensely precise rubrics, down to every gesture, in red.
I would analogize the exaggerated heel-clicking movement that the
Guards do to the genuflecting of the Priest (and servers, and laity,
ahem) to the rubric of ALWAYS genuflecting to the right knee EACH AND
EVERY TIME the axis of the Tabernacle is crossed. In many Catholic
Churches, the Tabernacle, which is the center of the Church - heck, it
is the center of the universe - has been moved off to the side, or even
hidden in a sacristy. Where a Tabernacle is present, Our Lord,
physically present inside, is largely ignored. I have never seen a
Novus Ordo priest consistently observe the loving rubric of genuflecting
to the Tabernacle every time the plane is crossed. In fact, most Novus
Ordo priests wander around the sanctuary with their backs turned to the
Tabernacle while they put on their "performance." This would be
analogous to the Tomb itself at Arlington being moved "out of the way"
and instead a stage being erected upon which the Guards would perform.
It makes you sick to think of that happening at Arlington - but that is
largely what has happened to the Mass.
There is even an
analogue in the Changing of the Guard ceremony to the Consecration of
the Host in the Mass. Did you hear it when you watched the video above?
It comes at the 2:36 mark. A rifle is fired, its report thus
commemorating the moment of death of the Unknowns. In the Mass, the
moment of consecration and transubstantiation are the report of Christ's
words spoken by the priest:
HOC EST ENIM CORPUS MEUM.
(This is My Body.)
Finally, the words engraved on the Tomb of the Unknowns:
HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD
This is analogous to the words of the Mass:
ECCE AGNUS DEI, ECCE QUI TOLLIT PECCATA MUNDI.
(Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world.)
In the Mass, Christ is alive, physically present in the Eucharist,
veiled under the mere appearance of bread and wine. At the Tomb, the
Unknowns remain dead - only their memory, veiled in anonymity, is
honored and made present.
The point is this: if we all know and
understand and FEEL the power of the excellent, excellent ceremonial
rubrics of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, if we understand the power
of "living art", and we understand how important the concepts of
reverence, solemnity, precision, dignity and beauty in movement and
action are in the context of the Tomb, why, oh why, do we continue to
tolerate the lack of reverence, the lack of solemnity, the absence of
liturgical precision and dignity and the resulting UGLINESS that has
been unleashed on the Mass, which is not just a mere memorial of
Calvary, but is Calvary Itself, physically present, and Our Resurrected
Lord physically present?
The Tomb of the Unknowns merits the excellent, beautiful, solemn, reverent, disciplined ceremony of the Guards.
Our Lord, Crucified, Risen and physically present to us deserves
INFINITELY MORE excellence, beauty, solemnity, reverence, discipline and
dignity in His Mass.
Demand it. Now.
Link: