My latest column for Inside Catholic went up last night. It’s entitled “The Rubrics of Coffee“, and appeared in a slightly different form on a prior version of this blog.
For those of you who weren’t around back then, I hope you’ll find it interesting. It’s a look at the way God has imbued sacramentality into every day things - like coffee - through natural processes. Our daily lives, particularly when it comes to things like preparing food, are filled with a certain sort of ritual - rubrics, really - that are required to get the best out flavors and textures and to really enjoy the essence of the thing.
Coffee is not alone in this, but its preparation (and the process that gets it from coffee bush to cup, which is extremely complex) is exemplary in this regard. It takes a certain expertise, precision and care to get really good coffee.
Sure, you can do it the sloppy way, but what you’ll get will likely be pretty gross, and you’ll likely have to overload it with sugar and milk just to make it palatable.
Liturgy is the same way - sloppy liturgy has to be overwhelmed with filler and sweetener to try to get people to put up with it. Good liturgy doesn’t need those things - it’s rich, complex, robust, and subtle, all at the same time.
Anecdotally, I once overheard Fr. George Rutler, as he was preparing to give a talk, making comments on the selection of teas at the refreshment table. A large selection of decaffeinated teas was keeping him from finding what he was looking for, and he exclaimed, “These are all novus ordo teas…I want the Tridentine tea.”
I wasn’t a traditional Catholic at the time, but I must admit that I found it to be an apt analogy.
