The Oblates of Mount Saviour Monastery

Catholic ideas about reverence are grounded, unsurprisingly, in the Old Testament, where there are two Hebrew words for it: “yare” and “shachah”. The first one usually gets translated as “fear” or “awe”; the second is, literally, “falling down” and indicates bowing or prostration (i.e., face down on the ground in humility, submission, or adoration). These are representative of the response we should have in the presence of God: utter awe; utter humility. When God summons Moses to the Burning Bush, and introduces himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we are told that “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” When God reveals himself to the prophet Elijah, not in the strong wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in a gentle whisper, Scripture says “Elijah hid his face in his cloak.” So, jumping to the New Testament, when Matthew tells us that the Magi, upon seeing the child Jesus, “prostrated themselves and did him homage,” he’s telling us they recognized that they were in the presence of God. They were reverent.

So reverence is really two profound sensations at once: an overwhelming sense of God’s immensity, power, and mystery and an equally overwhelming sense of our smallness, weakness, and insignificance. A Thought Experiment: Think of one of those images you’ve seen from the Hubble telescope; picture all those billions and billions and billions of galaxies stretching into the infinity of space; then think about how, somewhere in there, is our home galaxy, the Milky Way, 100 to 400 billion stars and solar systems, one of which is ours. Think about Earth floating around somewhere in all of that. Think about how tiny it is even in its own solar system (1,300 Earths would fit inside Jupiter; 1.3 million Earths would fit into the Sun). Then, looking at Earth, think about the nearly eight billion tiny carbon-based creatures called humans swarming all over the planet—and realize you’re just one of them. Just one teeny-tiny speck in an infinitely vast universe. And the same God who decided to make that universe also decided to make you. That’s awe. Then think about how God, out of all his creation, has always loved humans more than all the rest of it—and that we’re not really insignificant at all. We’re part of a glorious plan that’s been in place before anything even existed. And that’s humility. And when you’ve thought of all of that: Welcome to the Mass.

Awe and humility are built into the Mass. In fact, the very structure of the Mass so consistently shifts back and forth—seamlessly, gracefully—between honoring God’s majesty and owning our fallibility that, if we’re really paying attention, we should be in a constant state of reverence. We start off by acknowledging our sinfulness (“Lord, have mercy…Christ, have mercy…”) and from there go right into glorifying the all-powerful Triune God (“Glory to God in the highest…”). The Eucharistic Prayer is a profound act of supplication. We’re begging God to send the Holy Spirit on the bread and wine so that they might become the Body and Blood of Jesus. Begging. And then God does it. Every time. (And we never quite know why. We’re the very heart of Mystery, the very heart of love…) Before Communion we admit that we’re not worthy even to be in the same building as the Lord, and then are utterly transfigured as we hold him inside our body—or rather: he holds us.

Reverence, ultimately, is about not taking anything for granted, about being attentive, not getting distracted, drawn away from what’s really important. And that’s not easy. We live in a world—a culture, a city—of unceasing distraction. And while we claim we dislike it, we have in fact become used to it. It’s air we breathe. But the Bible is full of people who were busy with other things who knew enough to set them aside when God was near: people mending their nets for the next catch of fish; people collecting taxes; people tending sheep. If Moses’ cell phone had gone off during the Burning Bush; if he’d been thinking about what he was going to have for dinner; if he was worried about a project at work, it might have been a whole different salvation history. But he knew Whose presence he was in. He knew how unworthy he was to be there, to be called by name, summoned. He knew enough to listen; to speak simply and frankly with God. To savor the moment. And he knew enough to bow.