Mass starts. The drummer has a solo. Some kid, because he looked “cute,” is asked to do the reading. He totally botches Galatians 2:20, and for some reason, the responsorial psalm takes 10 minutes. Oh no, it’s time for the sign of peace; people are giving me dirty looks because I didn’t want to shake their hand. Did the altar girl just fall asleep?

Awesome. Finally. It’s time for communion. Wait… did I just see a man with a yarmulke receive? Fourteen eucharistic ministers, even though there is a priest and a deacon? Literally, every person from each pew goes up and receives our Lord on their hands. Men no longer take their hats off in Church; women wear clothes that should not be worn outside a swimming pool.

While I admit the title of this piece is a tad hyperbolic, this is a genuine feeling that I have had attending certain Novus Ordo parishes. I fell away from the Church when I was around sixteen. I was in the parish “rock mass” and played electric guitar during the liturgy. The whole idea behind it was that “if you have this modern music, it would be more appealing to kids,” boy, were they wrong.

Do you know what teenage boys like? Mystery, War, Masculinity, Confidence, and Being with “the boys.” Fellowship. Young boys look up to older boys to be accepted and do what they perceive as “cool.” Yet, there are no older boys to be found at Church because serving the altar has been trivialized by modernist and feminist moral psychology. This new-age view of “participation in liturgy” crushes the entire pipeline for vocations. We like being part of something “cool” that isn’t just open to everyone. The Varsity soccer team was esteemed because you had to try out and be accepted, your dad let you drive for the first time, play Call of Duty with the older kids, etc. This dynamic of the older boys influencing the younger ones has been lost in most Novus Ordo parish communities. When I serve the TLM, I notice how excited the younger guys get when they can do bells and be the crucifer, thurifer, or acolyte. The fact that it isn’t just an all-you-can-eat buffet and that this is serious leaves a sense of wanting. A desire to learn and take the priesthood, something that is not for women, earnestly.

Going to Church growing up, I never saw incense at mass, I barely saw the priest do readings, homilies didn’t talk about mortal sin, and there were no after-mass socials. Like Shia Lebouf said, it was like they were “trying to sell me something.” We went to mass, received, and usually left before the final blessing. Every Sunday. It was always a dredge going. The more enticing they tried to make it, the more I wanted to peace out on Catholicism altogether. And then, they installed the giant projector screen that ironically covered a Statue of Christ when it projected. I was in shock. How could the priest be that clueless/checked out? The short films they played in mass also made me feel more uneasy. I can go on for hours, but the reality is this: the only thing that mattered then was not the community writ large but the parish in-crowd that surrounded the priest. That is how it felt, and how it felt, I will never forget, but do you know what else I will never forget?

I will never forget the first time I begrudgingly went to a TLM ten minutes late to appease my mother. But I instantly felt something I never felt at mass before. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it: the order, the reverence, the INCENSE, the MUSIC. At the time, I had no clue what reverence meant, but still, THE MUSIC. THE INCENSE. I HEAR AND FEEL, SEE, SMELL ALL THINGS HONORING GOD. It was like fireworks going off in my brain. Not every mass you go to will be this awe-inspiring; Christ is still present as long as the consecration is valid by a valid priest. But this gave me the DESIRE to learn. What is this language? Why this language? Why is the priest not facing me? Why are there no girls in the sanctuary? It was the rolling stone that led me back to Christ. If this is the most important prayer of the Church, shouldn’t it be taken with utmost reverence and solemnity? The answer is obvious.

So whenever I am back at an irreverent mass with my newfound knowledge of the eucharistic, it rips me apart. When I see people receiving on the hand, dropping the host, etc, I feel the body of Christ being torn apart. When I hear horrible jazz chords, progressive rock ballads, and clapping during mass, I think of Christ being mocked on his way to be crucified; when I see altar girls, I witness a spiritual transgenderism that is obfuscating the sacredness of holy orders. These are the things that, at the time, inadvertently led me to atheism. When I see these horrors, I think back to myself as a young boy and the different path I could have taken if I never let Christ out of my life.

Reading this, think of your children, siblings, and cousins. I say this out of love, not out of malintent. This is how I found Christ: through the beauty of the liturgy, and I know others will the same way. We are Catholic, blessed to have liturgy, and we must never let it be trivialized.

Christ is my King, and I will honor and defend his name till death. As Philippians 2:20 says, “that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in Heaven and on Earth, and under the Earth.”