Even priests get distracted at Mass. Once, I was celebrating Mass and reached the Offertory. The priest prepares the altar and offers the bread and wine that will become the Body and Blood of Christ. The organ was playing, so the people did not have their responses. I was thinking about St. Teresa of Avila, and so instead of beginning the prayer, “Pray, brothers and sisters…” I went ahead to the Offertory Prayer that changes from one week to the next. I caught myself, but it made it that much more interesting that my distraction was not a bad one.
Facing Stress
We face stress all the time. Sometimes, we can come into situations where we feel afraid or anxious. How do we deal with all of this? Sometimes it can feel overwhelming. Personally, I find that sometimes when I am feeling especially lonely, or stressed, or overwhelmed, I experience the closeness of Christ in a special way. When we recognize our own limitations, we open the doors to God’s grace and he often chooses these moments to act.
A Helpful Distraction
This happened when I had my distraction about St. Teresa of Avila. She was a great mystic, a woman truly in love with God. She didn’t always live this way. She looked back at the first years of her religious life and saw a tendency to mediocrity. Around the age of 40, she recognized her need to change. She did so and started a reform movement within the Carmelite Order. Now, most Carmelites live inspired by the example and spirituality of St. Teresa of Avila.
After achieving a greater spiritual maturity, she criticized her own flightiness and superficiality from earlier years of religious life. In spite of her own failings, the Holy Spirit used her as a vessel to sanctify her Order and the Church. She is a great example of someone who received a grace that led to a great jump in holiness and closeness to God.
One of her poems has always fascinated me. I remember it best in Spanish.
Nada te turbe.
Nada te espante.
Todo se pasa.
Dios no se muda.
La paciencia todo lo alcanza.
Quien a Dios tiene nada le falta.
Solo Dios basta.
Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone suffices.
The last phrase came very firmly into my consciousness. Only God is enough. As we might suffer the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” God is still present, and he is enough. For me, it was a moment of grace.
Repeating a Refrain
As I reached the Offertory, that phrase “solo Dios basta” echoed in my soul. It made me think about how all we really need is God. He is present in every moment and sees everything that is happening in our lives. He is not some passive bystander, but rather someone who is pouring grace into our souls at every step of the way.
How can we foster these moments of grace? It helps to have regular prayer times where we truly put God first. It is only after many times praying the prayer in regularly scheduled times that it will pop spontaneously into my mind in moments when I am not expecting it. We need to make sure to feed our souls a lot of spiritual nourishment so that we can respond in the difficult moments.
Prayer has to be a constant in our lives. It is not enough to pray simply when we feel like it. Often, it can be helpful to begin with the words from someone else. Sacred Scripture holds a priority, but the saints are also masters and great teachers in prayer. If every day for a week, you take the words of St. Teresa in this prayer, I am sure you will experience more peace.
Circumstances
God speaks often through the circumstances of our lives. So, when we are suffering because things seem particularly hard, we should always look for the hand of God. He can use these circumstances to shape us. Sometimes, something as unexpected as a distraction in Mass can end up giving great spiritual fruit.
It is always possible to pray: The time of the Christian is that of the risen Christ who is with us always, no matter what tempests may arise (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2743).
Perhaps when it feels most like life is breaking you, it is actually God helping you arrive at your next breakthrough. Don’t give up. Persevere in love and pray to God.
I love reading reflections from priests. There is such a grace to be close to the Lord in the celebration of the Mass and yet you are human and able to be distracted all the same. I'm glad your distraction became a moment of grace. I once had to interrupt a daily Mass because the priest was accidentally distracted during the consecration and prayed the wrong prayer- if memory serves me, he had already consecrated the host but not the chalice and ended up accidentally praying the same half of the Eucharistic prayer (ie: this is my Body) and not completing the consecration, so I went up to him and told him what happened. (This was before the new translation of the Mass). I was super-embarrassed but I didn't want the consecration to not be completed or Mass to be invalid. Thankfully he was a priest I knew and was very kind about it and went back to the prayer to consecrate and completed it.
This really spoke to my heart so much so that I've shared it with my trauma therapist who's Catholic. St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us!