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Sunday, May 25, 2008
Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: Chains
Apologies for the lateness of this Rumination. The C.S.O. and I are in the Berkshires this weekend, doing touristy things and enjoying a little unavailability. We’ve only just returned from Shelburne Falls, a beauty spot on the Mohawk Trail that runs along the Vermont-Massachusetts border. If only Massachusetts drivers were inclined to signal before they maneuver, the experience would have been perfect.
But enough of the frivolities. Today is a special feast day: Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. It’s rooted in the Eucharistic tradition, which started at the Last Supper and is preserved for Catholics of our time through the Miracle of Transubstantiation. I wrote about its theological significance three years ago, in a piece I find myself unable to improve upon. So hie thee hence, if you’re inclined toward such things.
That doesn’t mean I have nothing to say on matters religious, of course.
On the way up Route 20 from the Massachusetts Turnpike, the C.S.O, and I made note of the changes we could detect since our last visit. Most were very minor, as the lower Berkshires are an “old,” well settled area, and distant from the commercial frontier. But there was one we noted with surprise and some pleasure: a restaurant at which we’d received poor food and slow, slovenly service had closed down, to be replaced by an instance of one of the regional chain restaurants.
Not many people reflect on the socioeconomic significance of the restaurant chains: TGI Friday’s; Ruby Tuesday; Houlihan’s, Bennigan’s, Applebee’s, and so forth. Time was, Americans near their own homes very rarely went out to dinner—and not because of the cost. Restaurants were regarded as an institution whose proper clientele was people far from home: vacationers, traveling salesmen, circuit-riding judges, itinerant preachers, and other varieties of traveler-by-trade. Honest folk resident in their own homes ate at home, period.
That was the case a century ago. The rise of our modern commercial / technological culture, and the associated migration of American women into the labor force, changed things greatly. Restauranteurs sensed the emergence of a new mass clientele, the middle-class family with disposable income, whose income earners wanted frequent respites from kitchen duties. They moved swiftly to capitalize on it. But there arose a new consideration that proved important to the success of the family-oriented restaurants: the importance of serving food Mom could be sure the children would eat.
Chain restaurants arose in answer to this demand. Each instance of a chain restaurant implicitly guarantees that the menu, and the quality of the items on it, will be the same as are found in any other instance of the chain. Thus, Americans can be certain that what they’ve enjoyed at one Bennigan’s or TGI Friday’s will be available at any other—or at least that great departures from the chain’s standard are frowned upon by the central management and will be punished if not corrected.
Chains proved appealing to the traveling clientele, too. They make it possible to predict what sustenance the traveler would have available, and at what cost, which satisfies both dietary and budgetary concerns. The franchise conception has permeated our national hoteliers, many of whom are closely associated with one of the restaurant chains. Their guests appreciate the predictability thus maintained.
If you’re a middle-class American, you probably dine on the fare of a chain restaurant several times a year. More, if your spouse works outside the home. Even more, if you have children. They’re an enormous boon to a culture that repeatedly flirts with overwork and the consequent exhaustion. We really don’t appreciate them as much as they deserve.
But there are other chains operating among us that we appreciate even less.
I attended Mass this morning at St. Ann’s in Lenox. From first to last it was the Mass with which I’m familiar. The only deviation was the selection of liturgical music, and, as my voice sounds like a moose farting through a rusty bullhorn, that doesn’t matter much to me anyway. It was in all ways a familiar, uplifting, and comforting ceremony, especially as the celebrant made a special effort to welcome guests who were far from home.
(Of course the Eucharist was the body of the same Christ! Get serious.)
No, a Catholic church doesn’t have much else in common with a restaurant chain. But there is that sameness of ritual, practiced in the vernacular language of the host country. There is that feeling of welcome and Christian fellowship. There is that sense that, though you’re far from all that’s familiar to you, all the same this is an element in the Mystical Body of Christ, to which every sincere believer belongs no matter how far he might roam. These are indispensable samenesses to the traveling Christian.
One of the key exhortations of Christ and His Church to the faithful is the command to build communities. Leaving national languages and regional accents aside, those communities are all alike: gatherings of Christians committed to the acceptance and succor of all believers, no matter from where they hail, in full and open hospitality. Given the nature of Christianity, the only wholly trans-national, trans-racial, trans-heritage faith, it could not be otherwise.
A Christian’s commitment to the ethic of open acceptance makes him a link in a chain: one that extends around the world. More, it links him through the ages to all the Christians who’ve lived and have yet to live. Though the chain is made of nothing but faith sustained by will, yet it is stronger than any bond any tyrant ever laid upon his subjects. It lives and breathes with the life of its two-billion-plus allegiants.
I felt the chain this morning, at Mass in St. Ann’s. I hope the other attendees far from home, however many there might have been, felt it too. For me at least, it added to the value of the Eucharist in a unique way.
But we don’t own the chain in any sense. We haven’t the power to alter it, and certainly could never destroy it. It’s anchored by Jesus Himself. Were all the Christians in the world to die at once save for one, the chain would still be there. Were that one to expire, the next man to discover the Gospels and pledge himself to Christ would be linked to the chain immediately, just as each Christian in history has been.
The Eucharist is a transmission of grace that passes along the chain from Christ our Savior to each of us. In our willed bonds with other Christians everywhere, we spread that grace horizontally through space, enhanced by our dedication to our fellowship and the obligation of hospitality it entails.
It’s the lightest of burdens, yet the most important a man can possibly elect to bear.
May God bless and keep you all.
Comments
Francis,
We are both about the same age so you probably remember this.
When I was a young child, pre Vatican II, the mass and the responses were said in Latin. At the time, my siblings and I all carried a thing called “The St. Joseph Missal”. I remember it had the Latin text on the left and the English text on the right.
During the upheaval of the 60’s folks started asking: “Why Latin?”
Why indeed. And the Latin mass was soon discarded in favor of the vernacular.
Your analogy of the chain restaurant is appropriate. And today, I can go to mass anywhere in the USA and get essentially the same “service”. The thing is, back when the mass was in Latin, I could take that missal anywhere in the *world* - from St Peter’s in Rome to a small country church in Poland - and get the exact same thing.
Changes are not always for the better.
I always look forward to your Sunday post.
Posted by on 05/26/2008 at 12:44 PM
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