Are you speaking at your local synod? You should. Not because Rome is listening or anything (they aren’t), but because the importance of the opportunity to trumpet the voices of Tradition cannot be overstated. Our synod wasn’t set up in an open mic format, but if it had been, this is the speech I had in my pocket.
Good evening bishop ******, members of clergy, and my fellow brothers & sisters in Christ.
I wouldn’t have guessed that I’d be telling a baseball story tonight, much less standing here at all, but Our Lady works in amazing ways.
I’m a former altar boy who lost his way for a long time. Of all the things I’m least proud of… that takes the cake. Prior to the spring of last year, I hadn’t been to confession or weekly Mass in over 20 years.
And I grew up in a reverent novus ordo parish, but even in those days it was still always something we had to do - “Oh it’s Sunday, gotta go to Mass, it’s an obligation.” Once we got into the mid 90s though, the demonically-inspired masonic destruction of the Liturgy had become downright obscene, with female altar servers, superfun rock bands, dance routines, and protestant auditoriums masquerading as Catholic sanctuaries. It was no longer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It was a joke. And it pushed many of us away from the church, by design, because we lost respect for it. Sound familiar?
But the first time I experienced the Old Mass, while I was crawling out of a very dark hole, I knew I had found what I never knew I was missing. Today I not only want to go to Mass, I can’t live without it. I sing in the Schola at **** ****** - it’s the best thing I’ve ever done, and it’s not even close.
And it’s only because of the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima that any of this took place, I can say that without batting an eye, and I have proof in my back pocket.
This was on May 9th of last year, Mother’s Day, the same day of the year my dad died on 16 years prior. He gave me my first baseball, and maybe Our Lady allowed him to give me my last one too. On my journey back to Mass I had been researching and meditating on Fatima a lot, I got a Fatima rosary, and I’ve always been drawn to her message, even when it would come up in the years while I was away, and it felt like now I was finally making that connection.
So I was driving to Mass, and I was listening to a sermon on the Crusade Channel. A few blocks before I got there, the priest was talking about the rumors surrounding what eventually became Traditiones Custodes, and he was making a baseball analogy that was as simple as it was brilliant. He said: “In a baseball game you have certain rules, you have a batter, pitcher, catcher, fielders, 3 outs, 9 innings, etc. You can’t change the rules of a baseball game any more than you can change the rules of the Old Mass.”
I glanced down at the radio and thought, “Hey that’s a pretty good point there, Father..” and the very second I thought that, I looked ahead again and saw a baseball 20 feet in front of my truck, right there in the middle of my lane, just sitting there, and it wasn’t there a split second prior.
I picked up my jaw off the floor, and tried not to wreck. I would’ve gotten out to get it but I didn’t want to be late for Mass, and afterwards I was leaving to meet the family for Sunday supper; but the whole day I was thinking about that baseball, and what the whole thing meant. I told one of my best friends about it, one of whom I know Our Lady worked through to help bring me back to church, and she said “I have chills! You have to go back and get it!” And I said, “I know, I’m going!” So I came back that night and drove past the church again, got out in the pouring rain and walked up and down ******** Street a couple times, and then after a few minutes, right across from me, tucked up against the curb with water rushing over it, there it was.
That let me know that I’m on the right path again. But that was my path. I don’t profess to tell anybody else here which path they should take, so long as we’re all part of Christ’s church, right? I will never tell a member of a novus ordo parish that they shouldn’t go to that Mass. I’d suggest that somebody discerning the faith go to both Masses, and find out which one speaks to them. Just know that while I do that, I will also never stop attending the Mass of the Ages, I will never ask permission to attend the Mass of the Ages, and I don’t care how far I have to drive… or how far underground we have to dig.
But it never needs to come to that. We don’t need to tear down one Rite in order to preserve the other. In the name of “unity.” Let us be fishers of men in the name of Christ’s Most Sacred Heart together. Thank you and God bless.