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Producers of a popular Sunday program discuss the challenges of helping Catholics be active participants in the liturgy, even at a distance
Thierry Hubert and Catherine Pic, at the Jour du Seigneur studio, in Paris. (Photo by BRUNO LEVY for La Croix)
By Florence Chatel | France
Fra Thierry Hubert is a Dominican priest who produces a television program on Sunday called Le Jour du Seigneur (the Lord's Day).
The 90-minute slot on France 2 also includes a live-broadcast Mass.
Catherine Pic is in charge of that part of the program.
They told La Croix's Florence Chatel about their efforts to truly bring the Mass alive for television viewers and help them be active participants even at a distance.
La Croix: Each week you link a live-televised parish Mass with 600,000-800,000 viewers. Is it possible to form a single assembly without seeing each other physically?
Catherine Pic: Yes, on the condition that we prepare the parish community that receives us to render this service to the viewers. We are not there to show what they can do, but to make it possible for people who, for various reasons, do not join a parish community to experience Mass.
Today, people need to be comforted, to hear a positive word. They need to hear that we can look forward to a possible future.
Throughout the weekend, we are on site with the technical teams to help the parish community integrate the viewers into their celebration. The goal is for them to encounter Christ through a word, a song, an image.
Some directors present our work to parishioners in this way: we are going to tell your story and make it possible for viewers to enter into it.
Thierry Hubert: The televised Mass is not being covered in a way which leaves us at a distance.
The artistic choices of the director help to enter into the celebration and to feel it. It is like leaven in the dough.
Showing the faithful praying, the richness of a church's heritage and a detail of the Word helps the viewer to become caught up in the dough of the celebration and to experience it.
I think that we must go and pick out moments of truth. I remember Masses with blind people.
When we see a person reading the Word of God in Braille, it is an emotional moment because he or she is then a witness of God who reaches everyone. This is prophetic in a society where performance holds a prominent place.
We also seek to show the diversity of parish communities that gather on Sundays to celebrate the Risen Christ. They do so with their history and who they are.
This "walking together" with the parishes gives you a rather unique vision of the Catholic Church in France. What challenges do you perceive in the way of celebrating?
Thierry Hubert: Our objective is to reach the viewer at the point of his or her questioning, in the difficulties of life and in the moments of joy. To do this, we have to make sure that our celebrations are grounded.
The word "Eucharist" means "thanksgiving", but it is our entire life that must be a thanksgiving.
We know how much of a divide there is today between religious vocabulary and everyday reality. If the vocabulary we use does not make sense to those who listen to us, it falls flat.
Catherine Pic: This is the whole point of the Eucharistic celebration.
Two languages coexist in a celebration: the language of the word of welcome and of the homily that must reach the people -- we must speak their language -- and the language given to us by the Church, because a celebration has a universal character.
In spite of everything, choices are possible in the context of liturgy. All our work with the communities is about making the right choices so that people can enter into the celebration.
In the liturgy, there are no spectators. It is the action of the People of God. Everyone celebrates, not just the one behind the altar.
It is also important that it be beautiful. The Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy speaks of "noble simplicity".
Thierry Hubert: I believe that we must embrace the theatrical dimension of the liturgy. It is different from the theater where one plays a role.
The theatrical dimension can be implemented in the way the Book of the Gospels is carried, how people speak, how they move or stand still, in moments of silence...
Viewers are thus particularly attentive to the homily. Suddenly, the Word of God with a commentary comes to them in their living room.
One might think that they are not tasting the essence of the Eucharist because, while they can listen and be in communion with the Eucharistic prayer, they cannot eat the Body of Christ. But this is where there is the same reality between the Word and the bread.
During the first lockdown, we felt how much the faithful clung to a word that opened a possible road for them. They were looking for nourishment and were really experiencing the Eucharist as the bread for the journey: "Get up and eat, or the journey will be too long for you" (1 Kings 19,7).
How is listening to the Word of God taken into account in preparation for a televised Mass?
Catherine Pic: As a first step, I always invite the members of the parish involved in the preparation to meditate together on the Word of God for the Sunday on which the live event will take place. What does this Word tell us for today?
From this sharing, we can make decisions. Otherwise, the parish community risks choosing songs that it likes without much connection with the texts for the Sunday in question.
By starting from the Word of God, there is less risk that the mass will be that of one person who has taken charge of its organization.
We also work with technical teams, some of whose professionals are sometimes far removed from ecclesial reality.
There is really a "walking together" with all of us, where we try to listen to each other from the perspective of making a Catholic broadcast, so that the viewers and the parish can experience a moment of communion.
Thierry Hubert: When everyone is silent to listen to the Word of God, it becomes a person, an actor present in the room who comes to modify the constitution of the group and its way of evolving.
From then on, we are no longer polarized on our own interests, but we are moved to walk together behind this Word or with it.
Last summer, a Mass was celebrated at Mont Cenis at an altitude of 2,000 meters. I was not there, but I watched it like any other viewer.
It was so beautiful to be in the open air. There was a lake, the mountains, the crowd and the gospel of the multiplication of the loaves that suddenly became relevant.
The Mass is a great crossing from death to life.
May it be a permanent miracle that, through the Word of God, dispersed people of various ages and social conditions will suddenly succeed in forming one ecclesial body, coming from the Eucharistic body and the sharing of bread.
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