Liturgical Amnesia

I have sometimes heard the comment from various priests that they can not remember the confessions they hear and very quickly forget them. Now whether this is a genuine charism of the priesthood or something more akin to hearing the same things over and over and tuning it out I don’t know.

I do have personal experience with something related, but certainly not a charism. That is within minutes of hearing a homily I pretty much have forgotten it. If there was a pop quiz at the end of the Mass I would almost certainly fail it. It is really quite annoying to try to recall what was said and to experience liturgical amnesia. No doubt much of it is my fault as my mind wanders during Mass moving from distraction to distraction. Although I also suspect I seek distractions during homilies because what is being said is not thought-provoking, but distraction-provoking. Sometimes a homily will momentarily grab my attention such as like yesterday when the Gospel concerned the Canaanite woman. Unfortunately in cases such as this it is because of the numerous ways the preaching about this can go wrong and it seems all those ways are explored. There are riches in the Church Fathers regarding this passage, especially Augustine, but instead the explanation was rather confusing. Maybe it is a blessing that most homilies in my experience are easily forgotten.

I also hope they never have a pop quiz about all three readings for the Sunday Mass. I could probably get the Gospel correct as I have other sources such as podcast homilies, blog posts, and Church news to help reinforce what the Gospel was for that date in the Liturgical Year. But if called to reference the Old Testament reading I would be very hard-pressed to recall what it was. That also goes for the New Testament letters. This is really embarrassing as I really do want to be able to reflect on these passages and to discern the reason the Church picked out the three readings in some connected theme.

So I am not very happy with having liturgical amnesia regarding the readings and the homily. Now if only I could have liturgical amnesia regarding most of the hymns used.