I posted the story about my son, mostly as a meditation on irony and unintended consequences, not as a paean to walking out of Mass. Given the fact that he left to simply head over to the (later) Mass he usually attends anyway, I didn’t see that as the focus.

The focus was, as I said, the irony, that the young person with cultural tastes that are, let’s say, pretty far from mine, who wouldn’t throw on any Chant on his car CD player, and is a quite socially active, engaged young adult, was, as he said, "offended" by this liturgy. It wasn’t his aesthetics that were insulted, it was this, as I wrote to someone associated with the parish who wrote to me.

What he finds insulting (as he told me last night) is the assumption that this is what it takes to engage young adults in their faith. He’s likes to have a good time as much as anyone – more, perhaps – but he’s been through stuff, and he’s got a rather serious, reflective core. He’s also busy, and Sunday Mass is the time during the week when he can – because he’s forced to – sit still, be quiet, and lay out his life before God. In this, I would suggest, he’s thoroughly typical. He understands that Mass isn’t a me-n-God thing to the exclusion of the total Body of Christ (not that he would put it that way!) but you can probably see his point.

What he wants, is a time when the connections between all of this  – the mysteries of his life, God, and the rest of the world – are clarified, rather than obscured. A baptism during the Sunday liturgy can certainly help in that regard, as it puts before our eyes the beginnings, not just of someone else’s journey, but the reality of ours as well. This is what it means to belong to Christ. This is how it began. How’s it going for me now? How will it end? What are my responsibilities towards others like this new little one just brought into Christ?

But not when the seriousness of the sacrament and its real meaning is obscured.

That’s it. It’s not about leave me alone. It is, as we have discussed so frequently here, is trust the liturgy, trust God to work, trust in His Real Presence…and get out of the way.