I was having a delightful meal recently with a bishop whom I love and respect as a father, and who has been extraordinarily kind to me. My personal policy never to even mention the extraordinary form of the Mass at the dinner table was circumvented by one of my brother priests whom I also esteem as a friend and colleague. “So what do you think of the Tridentine Mass, Bishop?” Sweat began to form on my brow as my stomach churned and the previously delectable filet mignon on my plate suddenly revolted me. “Not again,” I said to myself as I began to drown out what I knew would be an deluge of verbiage against the Missal of Pius V/John XXIII by reciting the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar from memory.
It is a scene which has happened to me many a time, and which is very familiar to young priests all over the world. All of a sudden, I was no longer just one priest among others. I was a marked man. I had committed the not very original sin of being one of “those priests,” the kind who celebrated the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. I was an enigma to the many friends I had made in the communities who enjoy exclusive use of the pre-conciliar liturgical books, who could not fathom how I could wake up every morning and say the detestable Novus Ordo, aka Nervous Disorder. And I was a mystery to my brother priests and even some of my parishioners who couldn’t square the man they knew as their friend, who seemed so jovial, fun-loving and open-minded, with a liturgy which was caricatured by many as the hobbyhorse of the Chosen Frozen, the Walking Wounded, the Integristes, and the Rigid Frigid.
Why? is the question that so many Catholics in pews and rectories all over the world have on their lips after Summorum pontificum unshackled a particular historical form of the Roman rite to work its magic (or wreak havoc, depending on your point of view) on the Church. And it is not an unimportant question.
The fact that Benedict XVI has given me the freedom to celebrate this form of the Mass caused me to sing a quiet private Te Deum in my room, but it does not provide me with answers to that question.
A cogent answer to that question can be given. Priests and laity all over the world are capable of drafting an apologia of historical, theological, and spiritual reasons for why the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite is a good thing, why its continued celebration is a good thing, and why it has a place in the Church of today and tomorrow. Maybe one day the Magisterium of the Church will propose such an apologia so that those of us who enjoy the privilege of Summorum pontificum can point to all of those reasons.
But the reasons why people are still scratching their heads about why Pope Benedict XVI would “resurrect” a supposedly dead liturgy in a supposedly dead language for what is supposedly a miniscule minority of devotees have little to do with history, theology, and spirituality. They have to do with people’s experience of the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite and those who are attached to it. At dinner, my dear father in God, the successor to the apostles, shared with us, “I remember the Tridentine Mass when I was a boy. I served that Mass. I still remember the responses: Introibo ad altare Dei; ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. But it was not beautiful. We had priests who said Low Mass in fifteen minutes and had no idea what they were saying. I lived through all of that. I am done with that. I like the English Mass, and I don’t want to go back.” One can hardly argue with another man’s experience: it is what it is, it is his experience, and you can’t discount that.
Then the priest who launched the cannonball turned the discussion to the contemporary adherents of the extraordinary Mass, “They’re all crazy. They’re just nostalgic for a past they have never known. And most of them are just the walking wounded. The Pope celebrates the current form of the Mass, so that’s good enough for me.”
My dinner companions’ opinions had been formed by their experience, and that experience had left a bad taste in their mouths. No matter what papal legislation, theological study or heartfelt testimonial would be put before them, it was unlikely that their minds would ever be changed. None of that would change the fact that they would always be my friends and mentors, and the fact that they would always see my penchant for the “Trad” thing as a character flaw, a foible, an inexplicable eccentricity. They would love the sinner even if they hated the sin!
I am a simple parish priest. I cannot provide the air-tight argumentation for the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite which would bedazzle the world into whipping out their dusty hand missals and singing the Graduale Romanum. I celebrate the “Trad” Mass because I have parishioners who want it, and because I want to celebrate it. All I can do is share why my experiences of life have given me this love for something that so many of my fellow Catholics do not love. I am sure that there are many others who will find echoes of their own faith journey towards Trent!
As a child, I was raised as a Baptist. About as non-liturgical as you can get. One day I came across a copy of the Book of Common Prayer in a bookstore. I was hooked. All of these prayers and ceremonies, what were they? I saved my allowance and bought a copy. There are boys who drool over complicated football plays, who imagine themselves in military parades with a snazzy uniform and polished rifle, who rattle off baseball stats and have an encyclopedic knowledge of Beckett’s. And then there are boys who come across Adrian Fortescue’s Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described and fall in love.
At first glance, boy rubrical wizards may seem to have nothing to do with sports and army buffs. But many boys want to be in a place where they can be men with other men, where they can master something which others do not know so they compete with those who know some, where they can be on a team. Catholic liturgy traditionally has been a place where that boyhood dream can be fulfilled; the sanctuary, the sports field, the military academy all have provided that. I was introduced to the world of liturgy with its playbook, its rules, its teams, and its camaraderie. I was hooked.
Soon enough I read my way into the Catholic Church, and went dutifully to the ordinary form of the Mass in English. I became an altar server, a cantor and a lector. I sang in the choir. I had seen a Liber usualis in the choir loft, but didn’t know what the squiggles and the Latin words meant. I stole a little red book with parallel columns of Latin and Englishfrom something called the Commission in Support of Ecclesia Dei that someone had left in the church.
I came across Latin Mass Magazine in a bookstore which had articles about courageous priests and laity throughout history and today who performed heroic acts of sacrifice for what some priest called Fr Faber called “the most beautiful thing this side of heaven.”
All of a sudden my world opened up. There was more to my faith and the Mass than just what I had come to know as the Catholic Mass, which was what was celebrated in my parish every Sunday. I learned about young people from all over the world who walked from Paris to Chartres every Pentecost to pray for a return to the sacred. I was not sure what that meant, but I saw these pictures of thousands of young people like me who loved Jesus, the Catholic Church, and the Mass. There was something different about this Mass, this movement.
With the all-critical, all-knowing and all-judging eye of a sixteen year old, I began to see everything else around me in Holden Caufield terms, as “phony.” I never felt quite right about the Life Teen Mass. It just seemed like a bunch of old people desperately trying to relate to me, and we all know that old people, like 33 or so (like I am now!) just can’t understand the young. I had friends who went to Life Teen, and then just stopped going to Mass entirely. I was bored with Mass. It seemed all about the priest’s personality. It was all about jokes, felt banners, and bad music.
I stayed in the choir, and I was never happier than we sang Mozart, Gounod, and Bach. And then came the Glory and Praise and I was just, underwhelmed. And then my priest was exiled for an accusation of child molestation.
For a sixteen year old, this was a lot to take in. I felt betrayed, confused, and most of all, bored. Where was this other enchanted world of High Masses, processions and Holy Hours? Luckily, my senior year, I came across two things which changed my life. I started going to the Orthodox Churches, one Greek and one Russian, in the area, out of curiosity, which instilled in me a sense of the sacred and of liturgical worship. And I went to a conference on Gregorian chant at a Trappist abbey.
During the conference, where I came to actually understand what those squiggles and Latin words in the book I had seen years before in the choir loft were all about, I sneaked into the crypt in the middle of the night to explore and pray. In the dimly lit corridor, I heard the words, Dominus vobiscum. I turned the corner to see an ancient monk face an altar set into the wall, with a couple of people kneeling behind him. “What are they doing at four o’clock in the morning?”
I stayed for the rest of whatever it was that I was seeing, enraptured. Afterwards, I bounced up to the monk and said, “Was that the Tridentine Mass?” And he said, matter of factly, “Yes.” I asked him, “Are you going to do it again?” “Every morning, same time, same place. Can you come tomorrow and serve the Mass for me?” “But, I don’t know how.” “Here’s a little red book you can study for tomorrow. You have to start somewhere.” “Cool!” I said. All of a sudden, that little red book and a ninety-year old monk became my link to a wider world of the faith, and I was included. I was part of something new and exciting.
When I went home, I set about to learn everything I could about this Mass. And so I came across the books of Michael Davies, the figures of Archbishop Lefebvre, and the history of what happened after Vatican II. I also came across The Ratzinger Report and started to read everything I could get my hands on by this Joseph Ratzinger, who became my new hero!
By the time I went off to college, I was well-versed in the history of the crisis in the Church after Vatican II. But I had never studied philosophy or theology, never had a spiritual director, and never had a community of young Catholics where I felt I belonged. In college, I finally had access to all of those things. I had students and professors who painstakingly helped me to evaluate what I had been reading and to develop an authentically Catholic mindset and spirituality.
At college, I was able to see the Novus ordo celebrated well and beautifully and was able to participate in the “Old Mass” as well.
There was still something “edgy” about being a self-described “Traddie.” It was eccentric, it was different, it was cool. I built a huge liturgical library and began to meet other young people like me, and networks began to develop from all over the world. I was no longer bound to polemics and bitterness. As I studied the Roman liturgy, it came alive for me, and I grew to love the prayers, the ceremonies, the music of it all.
My freshman year, I concocted the bright idea that I wanted to see Holy Week in the Old Rite. So six like-minded buddies of mine and I got in a car and drove to Scranton, Pennsylvania to crash the Fraternity of St Peter’s seminary. All three Tenebrae services, the black vestments on Good Friday, the Easter Vigil and the fine party afterwards, the singing of the Haec festa dies: all of them are grafted onto my memory as beautiful and precious for me and for the whole Church. Who would not want to have all of this as part of the patrimony of the Church? I went back every year, and as word of mouth spread, by the last year, we brought 70 others with us.
The day after I graduated, I went on the famous pilgrimage to Chartres. On the middle day of the pilgrimage, we stopped in the middle of the forest for Solemn High Mass of Pentecost. The sumptuous procession of clergy, the active participation of thousands of young people singing with one voice the Latin chants of all ages, it was all a great respite from our grueling walk. And then, after the Offertory, it started to rain. I expected the stampede to find cover, the complaining, a total abandonment of what we were seeing. Nobody moved from the place, except the Scouts, who unfurled linen cloths in neat rows and held them like soldiers holding the flag over a casket.
Priests came with the Blessed Sacrament accompanied by scouts with gold and white umbrellas for the color of the Pope and the Sacred Host. And, as the rain drove down hard upon our faces and drowned out the singing, everyone knelt in the mud, clutching the linen cloths, and received their LORD and God on the tongue with great devotion and love.
This was the faith that I had been looking for my whole life. This was that beauty, ever ancient and ever new, which ravished my heart and gave me strength. There in the mud in the middle of a forest in France far from home, I knew that my vocation was to be a priest, to bring the LORD of faith and beauty to others like those priests who came to the adoring throngs covered in dirt and grime in body, but in grace and charity in soul. And that experience was during the extraordinary form of the Mass. Could I have had a similar or even the same experience in another form of the Mass, or even at some other time? Of course. But God chose that time to reveal Himself and His plan to me in a special way, and for that reason I will always be linked to the liturgy and the people who have sacrificed to encourage its celebration.
I am now a priest of God and the Catholic Church, faithful to the Pope and to the Tradition. Every time I see a young man with a missal in hand and that look of wonder and awe that comes to those who find the faith through its dignified liturgical celebration, I smile and remember. Now I even have to consult some of my spiritual daughters, whose knowledge of Fortescue and the liturgical calendars of various rites far outstrips my own. While I do not celebrate the extraordinary form of the Mass as much as I would like, as I follow the vocation God is laying out for me, I am thankful to Pope Benedict that I, and others like me, are no longer outcasts or orphans. We are Catholics, and as such, we rejoice to be such, with a beautiful liturgical heritage and a Pope to show us the way. My predilection for the “Old Mass” is not an indictment of those who do not have such a predilection, or of the Church’s power to reform the liturgy; it is an expression of something positive and wonderful I have found in the Church’s worship, and for that I am grateful to God!
If you’re wondering how the dinner ended, I kept silence because I was too busy thinking of all the things I am writing down here, of how I could respond to the Why? of my tablemates. As it happened, my steak had been whisked away and a lovely crème brulee had taken its place out of nowhere as the rest of the table were on to other topics of ecclesiastical politics. The milk and honey of the Promised Land after so much wandering was around the corner after all.
Father, may God bless you in your work. By living your ministry as you say you do, you are the best apology (in the strict sense of the word) for the Extraordinary Form. I do hope your bishop had the political sense to say "The TLM is a valid form of Holy Mass in which many find their window to the Divine. Need I say more?" I also find it puzzling that there are so many hard core traditional Catholics who cannot share the joy of Salvation with others. I understand the preference for dignity during the Mass, but outside of it, why so "frigid?" I pray that these folks AND the people who can't bear solemnity at Mass and bad-talk tradition will find the peace of Christ, which can be found in the celebration of Holy Mass in either form. Keep up the good work. You are a light that is not hidden. Thank God.
Father – thank you for an inspiring tale.
I hate to be pedantic after such a beautiful post, one that I truly enjoyed, but the rites of the Holy Week that you experienced with the FSSP would not accurately be described as being of the "Old Rite", but rather of the new 1955 Holy Week rites of Pius XII.
Loved the post, hope to hear more from you Father.
Dear Father, Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful story! I was so blessed and edified by it. Your love for the priesthood is so evident and so appealing. May God continue to bless you!
shhhh ben
Thank you Father. It's such a joy for me to see that other people also share the same experience of the beautiful Traditional Mass which I cannot even describe with words.
And I thought it was just me. I can't come up with the entire 'why', but I do know Who, and I feel more drawn to Him and connected with Him in the EF. Like you, Father, I feel this is the faith I've been looking for all my life.
Thanks for your post. I have a hunch that your perspective represents a growing number of the faithful, too.
Should you visit us in San Diego, my husband and I promise to prepare a nice filet mignon for you, over which we can explore this topic. BTW, he was also living as a Baptist before conversion, and has felt the same pull to the EF.
Thanks for your priesthood!
Mary Ann Carr Wilson
This is a good reminder for us faithful how much priests can suffer from the coldness of their brother priests for appreciating tradition.
Very often priests take a political and fraternal risk in celebrating the EF- let the faithful always express a joyful gratitude to these men.
MACW
I always pray that there will have more available churches that will celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass here in Los Angeles> I seldom attend the Latin mass I know it's not a good excuse but the church where the Latin mass is celebrated every Sunday is almost an hour drive from us. Just to share you my experience > I always feel the spirituality and holiness everytime I attend the Latin mass.The mass reminds me how our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, how our Blessed Mother Mary felt, and these always give me teary eyes and even cry during the mass. I love the chanting or the singingin Latin. I pray that the Lord will hear my prayer that there will be more churches in LA that will celebrate our Traditional Latin Mass.
The extraordinary form, like any liturgy, is a lived liturgy, so it has to be experienced. The bishop obviously had a negative experience of it which, sadly, he took to be sufficient to judge it once and for all. I myself argued for years with friends, all the while stuck in the same attitude as the other priest at the table – but I had never experienced even a single high mass in the traditional rite! It was only when I started going on a regular basis (under the influence of the woman who is now my wife) that I really appreciated it for what it was.
The whole scenario reminds me of the disciples' first meeting with Jesus in the first chapter of St. John's gospel. Jesus didn't give arguments or explanations; he just offered an invitation: "Come and see." Philip, confronted with Nathaniel's prejudice ("Can anything good come out of Nazareth?") said the same to him: "Come and see." I know it worked for me.
There is a further factor that needs to be considered here, namely, that to some people:
Sacred Tradition = Sexism and Racism
Let me give you an example.
Back when SP was announced, I posted my support for it, and for my hope of its expansion, on a listserv I participated in. Someone else on the listserv went ballistic. Her reaction:
"Let's NOT take the Mass back to a time when no one understood the Mass, a time when there was a separation in both the hierarchy and the laity of the Church in such a way that we were not partners or responsible for our faith. [He, that is, me] is, respectfully, out of his mind. I have lived in a world of both Churches, and if Catholics want to offend the rest of the world (which didn't our Pope do well enough with his out of line comments regarding Mohammed and Islam?) and the majority if Catholics, this would do it.
"That was a time when people considered their faith as something magical and mysterious, (not mystical as in something filled with awe and reverence) which also then made them less responsible for their participation. They didn't understand the Mass, but it sounded good, and Mass and faith were not necessarily in the same ballpark.It was something you had to do for an hour on Sunday and then you were done.
"It was also a time when women had even less of a role in the Church than present. I am not a feminist, but I do resent my Church being blind to the needs, wants, worries, fears, and desires of women who call themselves Catholic. I am insulted when my concerns are dismissed, along with other women, by a male clergy with no concept of the lack of respect for the dignity of women in their care. So let's NOT go back in time. Let's not rejoice in such a way that ignores 50% of Catholics (or maybe more).
"In an area which has had to deal with the public drunkenness and lewdness of their clergy, who have had to bear the terrible financial / guilt burdens their pastors, who don't pay taxes, thrust upon them from the pulpit and call it a blessing for us to suffer, let us not go backwards."
This attitude is still out there, and it still occupies key decision makers out there. So we still have to be aware of it, and have the courage to challenge it directly.
What a treat that was to read! I love spiritual odysseys. Come to Florida – we serve excellent creme brulee!
Well tommorrow morning I have an appointment with my 74 year old archbishop. He hates the Extraordinary Rite while it is th central reason I am seeing him. I am applying to enter the seminary as a 49 year old late vocation. Pope Benedict has allowed me/ encouraged me to no longer run. I have found the New Mass and all it expresses and represents nothing but nourishment to me inner atheist. In the Traditional liturgy I see something else. A chain on continiuty in which tradition meant preserving and passing on. Not editing and twisting, censoring and manipulating that long line on continuity protected and cherished by the Church up until it was purged by Bugnini and his ilk. Pray for me! As Our Lord said "be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves"! That is the only way to survive the times in which the Church finds itself! Right now I am reading "the Banished Heart by Geoffrey Hull.
When I swam the Tiber a little under three years ago, I was fortunate enough to find myself in the only parish in the greater DC area that offers the Mass in the Extraordinary Form weekly. Once I got over the initial unfamiliarity and hesitancy to offer my voice in the chant, in other words when I was no longer scared to death of making a fool of myself and started really paying attention, I quite literally fell in love with it.
I, too, have not yet come up with a coherent explanation of my love for the form. The ceremony? The solemnity? The ancient tradition? The music? Some combination of them all, probably. All I know is that for ninety-odd minutes every Sunday, I step out of myself, out of this world and into His presence with an intensity that I have never experienced anywhere else.
Thank you Father, for a wonderful column. My eldest daughter and I went to her first, and my first since age six, Tridentine Latin Mass two months ago. It was a thing of beauty, and I cannot accurately express how much I had missed it in those intervening 40 years. I cannot condemn those who favor the Novus Ordo. I felt at home, and at peace in a way I've not for many years. In the time since then, we've purchased a Church Veil for her and a pair of Missals for us. We look forward to every chance we have to attend. To those who prefer the Novus Ordo, I have no quarrel with them. If they are inclined to disparage, I don't really mind them too much. To me, the prize is that I can make the trip (~30 miles isn't so bad), for the Mass of All Ages. Anyway, forgive my rambling. Well done article.
wonderful reflection, Father Smith. God Bless you in your important work.
I planted, Appolos watered, and God brought forth the growth.
I can't explain it either, other than to be reminded of St. Augustine, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O Lord."
I'm a post VII Catholic who had no idea about the old Mass. I was extremely restless with the N.O. Mass I attended. I thought, "is this the best we can do after 2,000 years?" I'd come out of Church each Sunday at best disappointed and sometimes angry. I wasn't going to be able to go on. I was a recent revert and didn't yet have the spiritual strength.
The Holy Ghost brought me where I needed to be. I will never forget my first TLM. Even though I struggled to follow along, at once I knew I was home. My soul rejoiced. I'm reminded of the Visitation where St. John the Baptist leapt for Joy being in the very presence of the Truth.
Also, how many of us when reading Father's account of the Mass in the middle of the woods, in the pouring rain, didn't have a physical reaction to that and feeling of longing, wishing that you could have been there to kneel in the mud during a hard rain, and receive our Lord?
Why? Because as St. Augustine said, it's hard wired into us by our Creator. And powerful for those who open themselves up and submit to Him.
Anonymous (@September 6, 2010 6:44 PM)
It is difficult to know where to start with that quotation. Anyone who thinks that the new liturgy has somehow lessened the problems she mentions – or that the older liturgy was somehow responsible them – seems beyond the reach of rational persuasion.
Friends, google for this excellent article:
The Case for the Latin Mass by Dietrich von Hildebrand
I was quite moved to read this commentary from Fr Christopher Smith. I pray that the Lord of the Harvest will send more such labourers into the Harvest.
There is a beautiful video presentation of a Pontifical High Mass which can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6AOvStZS64 – I was so moved by this video that I made it a central feature on my http://www.capd.com.au website.
Not so long ago, in fact on WYD Sydney 2008, when I was on my way to show my support for Pope Benedict XVI for his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum on 7/7/7, I was publicly castigated and abused by a Novus Ordo seminarian and accused of being a Schismatic…it was a humiliating experience and it made me fearful that any good can come from the New Church…we ended up singing Salve Regina and some semblance of peace descended on the railway carriage in which my wife and I were travelling.
As a Christian Activist I am at the forefront of the Restoration of Tradition to the Catholic Church.
Please accept my admiration for a job well done Father.
Yours in Christ
Laurie Myers
email: info@capd.com.au
8 September 2010
This is a wonderful article on the Tridentine Mass and your journey home into the true faith. It is always a divine privilege to serve the EF Mass. I have been doing so for a year now and am discerning a call from God to be a priest.
Sit nomen Domine Benedictum et hosque nunc et in saeculum! Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domine qui fecit caelum et terram Amen
Well I have just discovered unfortunately that because I attend the Extraordinary Form which is only allowed once a month in this archdiocese I cannot be accepted as a seminarian. The Archbishop does not want to encourage it! Polite 1 hour conversation but there is the attitude Father Smith talks about in this article!
Latin is the language of the church, just like your country's language– for example , where ever you go in your country there will be it's own language, same with the church , where ever you go to church there will be latin because it's is it's language, it has nothing to do with radical or sexism, it the way the church has always been snice it was founded.. According to Pope Pius XII when the church abounds it's latin language it will be the day the church returns to the catacombs. The mass is a weounderful prayer, sacrifice and offering to god and thats whats it is about.
Dear Annonymous Wannabe Seminarian:
My advice to you is don't give up so easily. Look into some of the orders which use the Tridentine Mass exclusively. I am sorry to have to say it, but these older prelates will die off and then we can honestly look at Vatican II and the new ligurgy. This council and its bad fruit will be forgotten in the not too distant future.
Dear Seminarian Aspirant,
I agree don't give up. Your archbishop and archiocese are a disgrace to the Church and in a just world, your archbishop would be fired. But there are many venues. Try the Society of St. John Cantius in Chicago which offers both the OF and EF.
Well said and much better addressed than my previous comment. I had a head cold yesterday and couldn't think of a better term; I even spelled anonymous incorrectly. Mea culpa!
Thank you, Father, for this consoling article.
I grew up with the Tridentine Mass (I'm 67) and was devastated when it was completely banned after Vatican II, but determined to love the Novus Ordo anyway.
I served the NO as lector and cantor for many years and later as "liturgist" with the intent of introducing a few Latin hymns, and lately, the chant Sanctus and Agnus Dei. I explained to our congregation that since the English text was going to change in a few months, it would be a good idea to learn the Ordinary in the original language while waiting for new music settings of the new English translations.
The result: One woman complained and the pastor fired me as cantor, a very humiliating experience since it was mostly due to a thrump charge that I was allegedly telling people that the Mass was going back to Latin. As a result, I switched to going to the Spanish Mass and so shamed, I couldn't bring myself to attending the English Mass again. I felt bad toward my pastor and wondered if I have offended God Himself.
But the Lord intervened, Glory be! Suddenly, out of nowhere and without any kind of announcement from the parish, the Extraordinary Form is being offered in our mission chapel by a travelling priest sent by the Bishop! As my Father confessor told me, "When the Lord closes the front door, He opens the back door!"
I'm now happily chanting all the Ordinary parts that I learned as a child and my beloved Latin hymns. What a miracle! I love the Lord for He has heard the sound of my appeal.
God bless you, Father. Thank you for your inspiring and comforting story.
Father,
I came across your story by accident. A thousand thanks for what you said.
A religious.
yes we love what we were used to and what can make us feel holy or is new, and we all need something to feed our soul; BUT how does all this lovely rite help us bring Christ's Kingdom to the world ??
Who is this? Joachim of Fiore?
I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6b I thank God for His Son, Jesus Christ, and the fact that because of Christ's atoning death and resurrection, having split the veil separating the Holy of Holies from top to bottom, I have access to Him at 4 a.m. or any other time of day, any place, all by myself. My faith is placed in Him alone. He is strong enough to keep me and says no one can take me out of His hand. Praise God for His mercy and grace. A personal relationship with Christ is what it is all about.