How the Mass of the Americas Changed Me.

Dr. Robert Gordon

It snows… And falling on the ground

Are transformed angels in my mind

I can’t see a single sound

I think I wished that I could scream

Within my dream.

The daylight sun has cooled to night

A breath invades the air it seems I think I wished that I could fly

Up to the sky. You have gone to me, but I’m not here Maybe I have come to you but scared

For angels are the Holy Ones Made of ivory white

And dread

And fear So maybe I will fall in love... Transformed like snowflakes from above.

For some reason this poem came to my mind as I sat in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception during the Mass of the Americas. Written as an 18-year-old adolescent who had never had any romantic relationships in his life, perhaps it came to mind just then since it was a cold morning, and the change of weather from Arizona to Washington D.C. was striking. Or maybe because the awe inspiring music, the monumental architecture, and the grace-filled artwork infused the space and my mind with the sense of immanent imagination. For, the entire service was effusive with a sense of longing, creativity and hope.

A shy person in general, and having went to an all-boys Catholic high school, I had very little experience in matters of the heart at the time I composed the poem. I remember thinking that I wanted a change in my life. The verses – although I didn’t know it at the time - were actually a deep-seated prayer, referencing no one in specific, but only the yearning hope for internal peace.

I believe this poetic memory emerged during the Mass because the whole experience was changing me on a deep level. The Mass seemed to have resurrected a long suppressed emotional and imaginative psychological feeling.

Important moments can do that. I realize now that I was somehow being transformed. Right there. Right then. The feeling washed over me on a plane of innocent honesty. It found me at unawares, drawing on the reservoir of emotion that was most poignantly expressed by the memory of a lonesome youth filled with longing for an unknown connection with another soul. Change is a funny thing. All things change, we’re told. Lao Tzu wrote:

It is so painful to know

That we will always be outsiders

Endlessly moving like an ocean

Aimlessly blowing like the wind (Tao Te Ching, Verse 20)

In so many words this idea permeates the modern mind and how it understands the universe. The message is rife within popular culture, it is the essence of Eastern spirituality, and is implied in Einstein’s theory of motion and relativity. However, once you make this assertion, you find yourself in a logical paradox. For the universal “all things” indexes a state of immutability, it points to something that never changes: change. The words of Malachi come to mind in this regard: “For I, the Lord, do not change.”

Christ Pantokrator, “Ruler of All”

To claim that all things change then places us in our proper place, for we are not God, but one of His creations.

Amid all of the wonders and beauties of the Mass, for me the most arresting part of the experience was the change of vestments that took place. For seven minutes, six attendants slowly and reverently robed the

Archbishop from his processional attire to that required by the Principal Celebrant. I noticed that even his miter was changed at various points in the service. Maybe because I was not expecting it, but the spiritual attention paid to these details has stayed with me. And every time that I change my own attire I think of the symbolic content involved. My desire long ago for a change of life—for a change of heart—is still with me today in many ways. There was a message in this liturgical accoutrement. I need to continue to listen to it.

If words could disguise the elegant eyes of a Casanova, and then be said of you… Sweet discourtesy might still render itself succinctly.

I have now met the angel that God has put on this earth for me. But as mentioned earlier, I would often, in my younger days, write poems to a fictitious person who I imagined falling in love with. These were spiritual acts, even though I did not consider them so at the time. My hope was that the words themselves would alter my life, would change my fortunes toward a light that I knew existed, but was somehow concealed. If the essence of time could manifest in rhyme and then conspire to thwart me. Then the bluest lie of the morning sky will gently conceal the universe. I look back in reflection and know most certainly that the poetic emanations of my solitary soul written in the past came from the Holy Spirit, directing my soul to the present sacrament of marriage within which I have dedicated my life. Sitting in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception during the Mass of the Americas, I knew how much I have changed. “Hoc est corpus meum” resounds in my spirit like a messenger from God.

My wife could not be with me at the Mass of the Americas. The Mass matched the sense of longing I had that she could be with me. The aesthetic beauty of the space and service transformed to the image of my beloved within my heart. I realized then the spiritual syllogism that was taking place: that of the relationship between God and his chosen guardian of my earthly being.

If a metaphor could cry out its irony inside, then splinter and shatter about us, forever we will stand amidst those tiny seeds of heaven.

Dr. Robert Edward Gordon is a Catholic Scholar. His works also include subjects on Buddhism and Architecture in America: Building for Enlightenment (2022). His writing can be found in The Wall Street Journal, the Athenaeum Review,Philosophies,Space and Culture, and Social Philosophy & Policy, and the Japanese American National Museum’s Traveling Exhibit. He holds a Ph.D. in the History of Art, an MA in Art History & Theory, and a B.A. in Philosophy. Dr. Gordon brings his expertise in matters of culture to a broad range of research interests: Asian art and philosophy, art and economics, freedom and aesthetics, art and poverty, and humanistic geography.