James
Saint Augustine: tolle, lege
When Mass is celebrated in Latin, it is a splendid reminder of the Catholicity or universality of the Church across space and time, that all of us, past, present and future, belong to one great family, the people of God. Latin, with its poetry, majesty and economy, is, along with Greek and Hebrew, a sacred language that is a sacramental that places us before God’s transcendence. And this is a vital corrective to the modern tendency to stress immanence with the danger of reducing God to a false god, namely a ‘warm feeling’ within.
Indeed I might add that although unfamiliar with it myself, the Extraordinary Form expressly reminds us that Mass in either form is not merely a communion meal but a ritual of love, a sacrifice at Calvary, by which, for you and for me, yes, here and now, Jesus Christ lays down his life. ~Bishop Philip Egan, Bishop of Portsmouth