“Worthy Is the Lamb That Was Slain”
“Today This Scripture Passage Is Fulfilled in Your Hearing”
“My Father Was a Wandering Aramean”
“Go in Peace, Glorifying the Lord by Your Life”
Chapter One
In Praise of (Some) Boredom
When I was young, my family went on what seemed like an indeterminable number of road trips through Florida. Constantly approaching boredom, my mind would create ways to entertain itself as we cruised past the swampy landscape of the state. In the morning, the rising sun slowly illuminating the Florida Turnpike provided a welcome distraction. In the afternoon, when the inevitable thunderstorms struck, I watched with wonder as raindrops on the windows expanded and then dissipated. On those rare occasions in which we left the state, I delighted in the changing colors of trees and soil that met us as we passed into the rich clay of southern Georgia. On these road trips, boredom was not something to be avoided at all costs. It was an opportunity to let my mind wander through the delights of creation.
We no longer dwell in an era in which boredom is an occasion for the play of the mind. While on the very same road trips that we endured, our children are occupied by portable DVD players, games available on tablet computers, and devices that are connected to the Internet. And even those of us reared before the dawn of the smart phone are taken in by its siren call to escape boredom at all costs. When boredom rears its humdrum head, we check the latest sports scores or our various social media accounts. We escape into the bliss of constant entertainment and, soon enough, the threat of boredom is eliminated.
What happens, though, when we are no longer bored? What art will no longer be created? What novels will remain unwritten? What scientific theories not be explored? Will young men and women cease imagining what it would be like to fall in love with each other, to create a life together?
While the entire human family should undoubtedly ask these questions, we Catholics should be especially concerned about the disappearance of boredom from our lives. Within the Catholic imagination, boredom is not something that is to be avoided but rather is essential to the spiritual life. The Spiritual Canticle, by St. John of the Cross, was composed as he endured the mind-numbing boredom of being wrongfully locked away in prison, internally composing poetry addressed to the God whose voice he longed to hear. With our growing aversion to boredom, it is possible that we as Catholics are losing the capacity to receive such spiritual insight. Or perhaps, even, to pray at all. Spiritual formation should re-form us to seek anew the saving and sweet gift of boredom.
The Mass is Boring
Our fear of boredom is in fact most perilous to fruitful participation in the Mass. It often seems that what we desire most in the celebration of the Mass is an occasion to be entertained. We want a homilist who can make jokes and tell engaging stories about his life. We want music that is upbeat, a liturgical equivalent to what we listen to while working out at the gym. We want liturgies that are short so that we can resume our busy schedules. Yet in this desire for entertainment we distract ourselves from the contemplative encounter that each celebration of the Mass offers.
Boredom at Mass is not something that should be eliminated. The moment in which we find ourselves bored while listening to the readings and the homily, bored while hearing the same Eucharistic Prayer offered once again, and bored while singing this same hymn we chant every Advent, is also the moment in which we are invited to participate more fully in the love of God poured out in Christ.
To let our minds be distracted by the way that incense fractures the colored light, revealing the beauty of a beautiful God, or to let our imaginations wander during the homily, may be less a matter of frittering away the time and more often a moment in which God’s voice speaks in the stillness of our hearts. To lose our attention during the praying of the Eucharistic Prayer and find ourselves fascinated by the crucifix is not something that should be stopped but is instead our own particular way of participating in the Mass this day. For Catholics, fruitful