So, for eighty years, the priest and the altar boy at the church of my childhood prepared for Mass in prayer apart from the congregation. Anyone who had once served at the altar, and anyone who had a missal handy, as most people did, would be aware that the prayer was going on. Otherwise, people were silent. They prayed, or they let their minds wander, or they did a little of both.
But there was no need always to be “public, like a frog,” as Emily Dickinson aptly puts it. Indeed, old films show Catholic churches in two lights. Either a Mass is going on, and that can be glorious, or there is silence and warmth, not because the church is empty, but because it is indwelt by a spirit of prayer.
As I grow older, I cherish that verse from the psalm more and more. I imagine what it might feel like to a priest whose knees can hardly bend without trembling, to hear the response, “to God, who gives joy to my youth,” from the voice of a lad such as he himself once was, and perhaps such as he yet aspires to be.
“For unless ye become as little children,” we might say, “ye shall not go in unto the altar of God.” What does the verse mean?
It is inexhaustible. The child, more than the adult with all manner of responsibilities in the world, the adult who must make some show in public, like a frog, encounters the world as an immense mystery. He has not yet reduced it to inconsequence, or to material to be labeled, used, cleared away, or disregarded. He does not need the Mississippi River. He has a creek in the back yard. He does not wish to cut down the big half-dead willow. He wishes to climb it and perch in its crook, and if there is a hole there, so much the better, for secreting things away. He does not strive for glory. He has the sky.
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