Modernity has trained us to use our senses for consumption rather than contemplation. Instead of engaging our senses to pull the beauty and meaning out of our lives, we increasingly use them as a means to score a momentary dopamine hit.
When we do this, we are not only not using our senses in the manner that God intended us to utilize them, but we are selling ourselves wildly short. As Doctor of the Church St. Irenaeus said back in the second century, “The glory of God is man, fully alive.” If this is true, then the human task is not merely to live, but to live fully, which means to take up every faculty we have and direct them towards God.
This would include not only acknowledging the obvious fact that the five senses are the primary means by which humans experience life, but also challenging our own concept of our faculties by asking how we can better utilize them to glorify the Creator.
When we resolve to better use our senses, the question becomes, how should we use our senses? Is there a perfect form of their use that we can look to as a gauge for our benefit? The answer for many, as of recently, has been a resounding yes. Yes, there most assuredly is a pinnacle of the usage of our senses, and it is found in Traditional Catholicism and the Tridentine Mass.
Over the past three to five years, the number of Catholic students I have has risen. The Catholicism of my students has also taken on a noticeably different character than in the decade prior. Many are not simply identifying as Catholic; they are also gravitating toward a more traditional expression of the Faith. At school Masses, the change is very noticeable. The casual approach to Mass, which was once common, has quietly receded, replaced by a more deliberate reverence: genuflections are made with the knee to the floor, hands are folded, and an increasing number of students are receiving the Eucharist on the tongue rather than in the hand.
These are not isolated preferences but clear signs of a broader shift. Something real is happening, and it is happening relatively quickly.
Two years ago, a student who is now a seminarian for the Diocese of Bridgeport organized a Tridentine Mass at the high school where I teach. Students and faculty were invited, and the Mass ended up being very well-attended. After the Mass, instead of distributing a questionnaire, I engaged in pressure-free conversation with my students about what they experienced and, more importantly, what they enjoyed most about the Mass.
The elements of the Latin Mass had come together to create an experience for them that transcended what they had grown used to in their own parishes week in and week out. None of them denigrated the Novus Ordo, nor did they claim that the Latin Mass was superior. Still, there was a clear movement of the Holy Spirit within them, as was evident in their desire to attend more traditional Masses to reexperience what they had.
What they had done, without realizing it, was engage all five of their senses in worship. What they experienced was the reawakening of the senses in a spiritually profound manner: the smell of the incense, the feel of their knees on the floor, the sound of Latin echoing in the school’s gymnasium, the sight of carefully choreographed ritual, and the taste of Our Lord on their tongues at the apex of the Mass. They could not deny the peace and transcendent beauty they experienced, and it had fueled something in them that they had not experienced before.
Our senses are important to our story. We rely on them to help us not only navigate life but also to fully enjoy life and see the divine at work in it. From the peaceful solitude of a Winter walk in the woods to the exhilarating experience of observing the chaos of a coastal system lashing the shore with wind and waves, we interact with the natural world in ways that not only perform the practical work of keeping us alive but also the metaphysical work of inspiring the soul to faith, awe, and worship.
In a sacred space, we engage those senses in an even more profound way. When the faithful come to adore Christ with the knowledge that worship finds its divinely destined form by engaging the essential mediums through which they interact with the world, prayer becomes an exercise of both the body and the soul. From the natural to the preternatural, we are equipped with senses to experience the Divine in a manner that takes our natural inclination for faith and turns it into a deep, abiding desire to enter into a personal relationship with God.
Our senses are our own, and for that reason, their application should be seen as a gift, placed into the human condition by a God who designed them as the clearest path to recognizing an eternal existence with Him.
It is impossible to observe the natural world and not feel a clear sense of wonder at creation. That is because we are supposed to experience the majesty and glory of God in the world around us, and we cannot do so without the gift of our senses.
Traditional Catholicism offers new converts to the Church a method that they can employ, which heightens their senses to enter into a deeper relationship with Christ. St. Leonard of Port Maurice said, “The Mass is the sun of the Church.” And what does that mean for a modern, weary world that is thirsting for grace? First, we can feel the sun’s heat, and we notice when that heat isn’t plentiful on a cloudy day. We can see the sun’s light and use that light to see the world around us more clearly. We see the sun’s energy at work in the growth of vegetation around us and the life the vegetation sustains.
While St. Leonard was correct, he could have gone a step further by pointing to not only the Mass as the sun of the Church, but the Church as the true sun of a world in desperate need of light. Whether it is the use of incense or the beauty of Mass celebrated in a church carved, sculpted, painted, and built for the noble reason of offering Our Lord our very best, the Church has always been, and will always be, the sun.
It should not shock anyone that Catholicism is experiencing a rejuvenating uptick in converts and those returning to the Faith. It is a product of the soul’s natural inclination to want to come closer to its God. Nor should it shock anyone that those who are returning are returning to a more traditional form of Catholicism, as it is true that, regardless of the number of distractions designed to titillate the senses that are available to modern people, in the liturgy, the human senses find their highest participation in the worship for which they were created. Mass is the most profound way we can experience the love and mercy of Christ. Traditional Catholicism offers the faithful the opportunity not only to be part of that worship but also to do so in a manner that engages the natural gifts given to us, ensuring that we fully experience God. The soul is not satisfied by distraction. It is satisfied by encounter. In the Mass, the senses are gathered, ordered, and offered back to God, and in that offering, the soul begins to remember what it was made for.
Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash
