In "The Heresy of Formlessness" Martin Mosebach, novelist and poet, reflects on the pre-conciliar liturgy, and what was lost in the transition to the Novus Ordo. What has been lost above all else, in Mosebach's view (and I am in complete agreement) is a sense of the real presence. As Mosebach notes,
"If people who have been kneeling for a thousand years suddenly get to their feet, they do not think, "We're doing this like the early Christians, who stood for the Consecration"; they are not aware of returning to some particularly authentic form of worship. They simply get up, brush the dust from their trouser-legs and say to themselves: "So it wasn't such a serious business after all."
And regarding communion patens, formerly a necessity, but now used in very few parishes, Mosebach writes,
"I repeat that I am not a theologian; but to me - someone whose task is to portray people and reconstruct human motivation - if someone allows all the communion patens to be melted down, he cannot possibly believe in the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament."
Amen to that.
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