Roman Mass: The Repugnant Bats Will Return to Their Lairs. By Tito Casini*
It may be late evening and there in St Dominic's church the friars will sing at Vespers: Iam sol recedit igneus; but in a few hours the same Dominicans, my friends, will sing at Prime: Iam lucis orto sidere, and so it will be every day.
The sun, I mean, will rise again, will return, after the night, to shine, to brighten up the earth from heaven, because... because it is the sun and God has disposed that it should be so for our life and comfort.
So, I added, it is and will be of the Mass - "our" Mass, Catholic, of always and of all: our spiritual sun, so beautiful and holy and sanctifying - against the illusion of the bats, flushed out by the Reform, that their hour, the hour of darkness, should not end; and I remember: on this large terrace of mine there were many of us, last year, watching the total eclipse of the sun.
I remember, and almost seem to feel again, the sense of coldness, of sadness and almost of dismay, at seeing and hearing the air grow colder and colder, I remember the silence that fell over the city, while the swallows, while the birds disappeared, frightened, and the repugnant bats fluttered back into the sky.
To one who said, when the sun was completely covered, "What if we never see him again? - I remember that no one answered, as if the joke didn't fit in....
In fact, the sun came out again after the brief night, as beautiful as before and, as it seemed to us, more beautiful than before, while the air was filled with birds and the bats went back to their holes.
*The author (1897-1987) is an Italian poet and writer, born in Cornacchiaia, founder of the magazine 'Il Frontespizio,' a prophet, who early on understood the disaster that began with Vatican II and therefore, like a prophet, was marginalised by official culture.