I have found often that in this world of noise, I forget how to listen. I fill every moment with the endless scroll of social media, leaving little room for the quiet whisper of God. My prayer was often active, filled with my own thoughts and words of many devotions. But in 2022, I discovered the greatest prayer we have, in a silence once commonly known in every parish. The Low Mass.
It began, as many things do in the 21st Century, through a screen. I stumbled upon a YouTube video of a Traditional Latin Low Mass, celebrated by the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius in Chicago. I was immediately captivated, but not by any grand spectacle. What struck me to the core was the silence. It was not an empty, awkward silence, but a thick, reverent silence. I have always felt that God speaks to me not in grand pronouncements, but in tiny whispers and subtle signs. Here, for what I saw for the first time, was a liturgy that responded to Him in the same language. The silent prayers of the priest at the altar and the subtle gestures were a conversation held in whispers.
A month later, I attended my first Low Mass in person. The entire congregation, united in posture and attention, was listening to the one essential thing happening at the altar: the unbloody re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary. It was a silence that commanded reverence and drew the soul inward to the Lord our God who dwells in us. This was my first Mass where the focus of my prayer was not speaking to God, but creating the interior stillness necessary to hear Him speak to me.
That first Low Mass changed everything. It reoriented my entire prayer life and eventually led me to the Liturgy of the Hours and fueled my desire to serve at the altar more intentionally. The richness I found in those gestures and silence quieted the turmoil in my soul just enough for me to hear the call to the priesthood. I heard the whisper of the Lord calling me to go unto His altar: Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meam.