The beauty of the Mass as antidote to anxiety

I once knew a lady named Madame Benjamin (pronounced the French way). She was part of what my mother fondly referred to as her International Coffee Klatch - a little group of friends formed quite organically after morning Mass at Christ the King Church. International because they hailed from Panama, Canada, Paris, China, and Haiti. I used to love to look at their missals piled up next to a jumble of lace veils tossed hurriedly on the radiator by our front door. I was only four, but the strange writing - especially the Chinese - fascinated me. They each would let me leaf through and look at the holy cards and the lovingly worn pictures of children or relatives far away. Sometimes they would tell me their names.

I have vague, though comforting, memories of these ladies around the dining room table chattering and laughing happily: Lucette, Mara, Georgette, Mrs. Shu, and sometimes Madame Benjamin. They found great joy and solace in one another’s company - which was a bit of a marvel really - since they could barely, any of them, speak English. But somehow love found a way, and they became a little oasis for each other: these gentle strangers in a strange land.

Madame Benjamin did not often come to coffee. She met the ladies at the back of Church after Mass. They always tried to make her come, but she would just smile and shake her head a bit. There were rosaries to pray. And litanies to be recited. She stayed after Mass, in that back pew, and we all gave her a hug as we passed out the door. For me, she became a sign as emphatic as the sanctuary lamp, that Jesus was there.

She had a long, black lace mantilla that framed a face with two beautifully plump, chocolatey cheeks all soft and glowing. I always wanted to touch them in the worst way. Sometimes when she hugged me I would reach up to their velvet and pat them. She always let me. She had one of those ample bosoms created exclusively for children to rest upon. Her voice was soft and low. Her eyes kindly, though sometimes sad. Her French lilted as Haitian French will, and I always wanted her to keep talking.

Much later, my mother told me that Madame Benjamin was always worried. She worried about relatives back in Haiti, she worried about her dead husband’s soul, she worried how she was to get home from Church, she worried about her health. She worried about the safety of her friends leaving Church. She worried whether she had confessed all her sins and if she was completely sorry. Her face somewhat betrayed her. She had a perpetual look of sad puzzlement in her deep, dark eyes as though wondering what was coming next and would she be able to bear it. But she loved my mom. Madame Benjamin buzzed like a bee around my mother’s innate optimism and drank it like honey. My mother’s cheer would console her and lift the cloud for a brief time.

In hindsight, I cannot seem to think of her at all unless she is surrounded by a dim, morning Church. I used to stare at her face during Mass as I poked my head up over the pew. Her eyes were closed and not worried whatsoever then. She smiled slightly and prayed the prayers silently miming the words. Her lace veil would sway slightly like a curtain letting in a soft breeze from some beautiful land beyond. I discovered that, in the end, she was only at home, at ease, when praying. As though this was her country and the saints were her people. And Jesus held her burdens for a while. She wasn’t perplexed. She had found rest for her soul.

I am thinking now that Madame Benjamin had anxiety. I can say this with some kind of confidence, as I myself recently discovered to my complete surprise that I, too, have anxiety. One didn’t talk in those exact words when I was little. Back then, you were high strung, timid, shy, easily overwhelmed by things, sensitive, perhaps scrupulous. It was just how you were. And you learned to compensate. I don’t regret having to compensate. Life needed to be lived and I had to navigate it. But I worried. I fretted with the best of them. My fingernails were always bitten to the very nub, my stomach always had that slight, tight, perpetual feeling of up-ticked watchfulness, I shook when reading aloud in class, I did not sleep very well ever, and when faced with a large group, I paced inwardly like a shy woodland animal ready to break for the trees at any moment. I hated summer day camp, open swim at the pool, and girl scout meetings. I wanted nothing more than to sit in my room and read and write poetry, to find peace in solitude. But there was a ‘rub’ to all this safe and comforting solitude - one might say a cruel, little, tricky addendum attached to the anxious personality. I did not want to be alone. I WANTED to share my thoughts, I WANTED so much to love and to be loved. Probably more so than any extrovert. I had overwhelming feelings stirring within me that needed outlet, and very much needed an answering feeling. I had moments where I reached longingly for the friendship of others in eager anticipation and then inexplicably ran for my life when they tried to reach back. I could not speak, could not express myself, tongue tied. I would retreat in tears from these encounters wondering why I did not say what I had wanted to say, or do what I had wanted to do, or tell them I needed them. Seeking friendships like this was exhausting. I fed the worry over and over again by these merciless, conversational replays in my mind. I was a frustrating mystery to myself.

But I learned to live with it. These ups and downs, these brief and anxious forays in search of love, the sleepless nights, the shaking hands. I compensated. I made the effort. I discovered theater and, shake or not, I loved it. I found a teacher in high school who drew me out of the covert long enough to read the poems I had written and pronounce them good. And wonder of wonders I believed him. I found a few writer friends who were easy to be around one on one and kindly overlooked my quirks. I married a very patient man, who loved just what I was. I made him giddily happy. And from him I miraculously did not run. I cannot tell you why. He taught me how love felt at last and became my rock of refuge in many ways. He learned to meet my anxiety with cheerful optimism. We had seven beautiful, confident children. They filled my world with a consoling familiarity that only happens in the heart of a family.

Yet, if truth be told, most of my life I have rebelled against my nature. My anxiety. Perhaps I rebelled against God in the secret of my soul for creating me like this. For one just doesn’t rid oneself of anxiety. It is here to stay. But why, was my constant, hurt response. Why would God DO such a thing? For many years I thought it was my fault and that sheer will power was needed to make sense of it all, and I simply needed to exorcise anxiety into oblivion. I overcompensated with a forced and tiring extroversion to meet an extroverted world head on. I lived much unhappiness with all this useless striving. Anxiety remained. God waited for me to accept it. Sometimes he still waits.

Slowly, I have begun to consider my anxiety a gift. Or perhaps more specifically a proverbial, Pauline thorn-in-the-side. These restless, sleepless nights of worry, the forays into friendship that still cause upheavals of doubt, the constant churning of thoughts within. I am, quite simply, a mess. And acknowledging the mess is the beginning of humility - and it is only the humble who get into the Heavenly banquet. Anxiety is a cross like any other cross. It must be carried.

There is no greater certitude to the chronically anxious than ‘here there is no lasting city’. We are the poster children of this certitude. Our awkward, worried response to the bold and hurrying world is a sign of that. By very nature we cannot for the life of us roost long and peacefully in worldly surroundings. It is painful and exhausting for us. But it is what C.S. Lewis would call a “severe mercy”. Anxiety tells us that we have not reached home yet. So, suddenly the feeling makes perfect sense. Our hearts are uneasy until they fall into the arms of the Divine Heart where all find rest.

God has not abandoned me as I journey. He knows I need respite from myself. That my worry needs rest. That my thoughts need to be laid down. That I am in need, as He was long ago, of a Simon of Cyrene to help me bear the cross I carry.

He helped me to remember Madame Benjamin. Her face at Mass. Her peaceful presence surrounded and only understood within the context of a Church. That is where my peace, too would be found. My oasis on the journey I take with my anxious self in tow.

When I step into my Church on Sunday evenings, l leave anxiety at the door. Literally. As soon as I enter the cool, dark, incensed air I know peace. How odd that I have come full circle to my days with the coffee klatch ladies and Madame Benjamin. I now, by some lovely meandering grace, wear my own veil of lace and have discovered the wonder of the Traditional Latin Mass. I love many liturgies for many different reasons. But this Mass, the Traditional Latin Mass is the balm of Gilead for the restless, anxious soul. It was this Mass that made anxious Madame Benjamin rest easy long ago. It has done the same for me.

When I first attended Sunday Evening Mass, I fell asleep for a very brief space during the Canon so calmly and gently was it prayed. And I suddenly woke up about five minutes later feeling utterly refreshed. More refreshed than I had felt in years. This was what it was like to lack all anxiety. I almost cried for joy.

This Mass is my oasis. It is my context. It is where I find rest for my soul. No expectant demand for reaction, for overt community responses, no interruptions that demand an anxious, artificial extroversion. Everyone faces the altar. Priest. Servers. People. You are not asked to do anything but bask in the glory of God and His mysteries lulled by the deep and steady chants that call to your deepest and truest feelings - but make no cheap demands on lesser emotions. You sink deeply into eternity and discover that here is where anxiety flees. That here friends are easily made and kept among the saints who have washed their robes of worry and make you believe it is possible that one day you will as well. They are home and for one brief shining hour so are you. It is the Traditional Latin Mass that does not ask you to do anything but pray and accept. It moves in gentle, predictable sway - always the same like a familiar embrace that calms your shaking humanity. You do not feel in the least alone, but the love among priest and people does not clang like a cymbal. It enfolds you in the peace of Christ. In His love that does not demand anything at that moment but that you let it engulf your heart and give you courage for the journey.

I don’t know what happened to Madame Benjamin. But I have found her secret. The anecdote for anxiety’s burden. Sometimes I like to wander a Church after Mass and think of her doing the same. Of hearing her lovely French accent lilting a litany. Perhaps I will become that Lady for another, younger soul struggling with an anxious heart. To be the lady whose context is a Church surrounding her. A lady who will show them the secret door to peace.

I will always have anxiety. But I lift its weight knowing I do not carry it by some cruel, random act of the universe. I am a sign that we have here no lasting city. That we will never feel at ease here. I have grown to understand that this mercy, though severe, is sweet. And I have found rest for my soul even now in a foretaste. In the cool, dark incensed air of Heaven come to earth for an hour each day in all the Churches of the world even to the end of time.