Too short?

I know there are folks who will howl with laughter or frown in disagreement over me saying so, but the brevity of the Western Mass is something that seldom gets enough said about it.  Even with full choir and pews full of those to commune, the Divine Service or Western Mass does not take very long.  Count up its words in comparison to any of the Eastern Divine Liturgies.  The West has the shortest liturgy in regular use.  Aside from a few preachers who may compete with the brevity of the Western Mass form, even with sermon it does not take very long.  Between an hour and an hour and a half -- depending upon the extras sometimes introduced and the speed of the chanting and speaking -- and then you are packed up ready to go home.  It is shockingly short -- the time we spend meeting God where He has promised to be and responding to His generous grace supplying the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation!  It is, dare I say it, too short?!?!

Our age loves to shorten things and reduce nearly everything down to a set of Cliff Notes (remember those) or and an AI summation.  We immediately presume that the liturgy is too long, too complicated, and to imposing.  We need to figure out how to shorten it and how to dumb it down to the attention span and interest level of the average third grade child.  Or do we?  Is the problem the Mass is too long or the Divine Service too complicated?  I would venture to say that the liturgy is rather compact, a great deal packed into few words said and sung, and actions which say much with simple yet elegant ritual and ceremony.  Indeed, nearly everything explained takes more words and more time than the actual thing itself.  This is surely true of the liturgy.  Commentary and commentators use so many more words and so much more time to try and tell us what the liturgy says and what the ceremonies confess.  We do not need more words but we do need to pay attention to the words, rubrics, and ceremonies we have. 

Indeed, one of my complaints about most contemporary worship services done in what should be liturgical churches is that they consist of too many words and too many of the wrong words.  The discipline of the Divine Service is two-fold.  It is an economy of words but it is also a prime example of the right words.  That is worth noting at a time when the liturgy gets painted with false charges and contemporary worship services get a pass.  We are the inheritors of a rich liturgical legacy in the Western form of the mass and it is both profound in its brevity as well as profound in what it includes.  Before complaining about it, a word of caution.  Can you really do better?  Can you do better week after week after week?  And then there is the question of who checks up on what you are replacing the Divine Service with and if it meets muster?  If you cannot come up with something better or if coming up with something better means more words and more music, perhaps you ought to give the Western Mass rite another look.  It may even be too short -- not in the sense of too few words but not enough appreciation for its brevity and eloquence.