Kwasniewski's last chapter is a summation of the rest of the work he has written. He explains how much of it has been his personal experience. In my summary, I have also added my own personal thoughts as both a Traditionalist and a Greek Catholic. I am sympathetic toward the Tridentine movement because when I see the harm that the West has done to itself, I can only begin to fathom what the harm the West could do to the East. I entered into the Eastern tradition because the East has historically been known to resist both change and development in Liturgy and theology. Though the East has certainly grown the Liturgy and appropriately cultivated adding flowers here and there. St. Pulcheria and her brother Theodosius II gave us the "Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal" hymn of the Trisagion, the Holy Emperor Justinian the Great gave us the "Only Begotten" hymn, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Nicholas Chrysoverges and wrote down the hymn "It is Truly Meet", and Patriarch Nektarios of Aegina gave us the hymn "O Virgin Pure". For the East, when liturgical changes occurred, we added them. There was no clinging to a pseudo-antiquarianism as with these Novus Ordo proponents. That is appropriate for Tradition because when a seed is planted, it grows into a flower. It's supposed to. It's not supposed to be cut back down and de-rooted to an extent it becomes a seed again or mutated into something that it's not supposed to be. That's anti-traditional.
Kwasniewski summarizes then, in what way, the Mass points to the future while encompassing both Tradition and the present.
"1. Our Eucharistic worship signifies Christ as a past reality, since He has already come into the World as the Word-made-flesh and has accomplished plentiful redemption. This may be called the principle of tradition, or the handing down of that which is already given: hoc facite in meam commorationem.2. The Mass signifies Christ as a present reality, the One who irrupts into our time and space in the miracle of transubstantiation, taking the gifts we give Him here and now and changing them into Himself. ...3. The Mass signifies Christ as one who, having come, and being in our midst, is awaited in His glorious coming to judge the living and the dead and to bring to completion the whole of history and the entire cosmos, from prime matter to the loftiest seraphim." (279-280)
This is the three-fold nature of Christ. He is the one who was, is, and always shall be. He is the one who is ever-existent, eternally with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This is where the Mass is oriented to point us toward. Anything less simply isn't Catholic.
There is a tremendous push-back against the traditional liturgy in the West as covered by the previous chapters of Kwasniewski's Noble Beauty. Kwasniewski defends the position in this last chapter why we need the traditional Mass. He asserts, with Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, that "if we desire an increase in priestly and religious vocations, if we seek conversions to the Faith, we need 'hard-identity Catholicism'" (284). This is the summarization of everything that has culminated in the pages of these works. We can have a Catholic identity or we can refuse a Catholic identity and look like the world. But what is it we are converting to when the Catholic creed simply just reiterates the talking points of the world? I had a discussion a while back with a parishioner who made statements masked in theological nuances which sounded more like the re-hashed claims of the New Age spiritual movement and secular humanist doctrines than what I've read in the writings of the saints. I made the point that at my baptism, I renounced Satan and all of his works and the works of this world. I renounced secular humanism which I once held to. I renounced the New Age cult rubbish that my mom reads. What is it I exactly converted to if I must hold this garbage still in order to be an orthodox Catholic? Conversion requires a change in heart. If there is no significant difference between being a Catholic Christian and a worldly human being, then what point is there in becoming a Catholic? This is what our Novus Ordo friends seem to fail to see because they live in the garbage dump of individualism masked as anti-liberalism. They live in an American-centered tradition, not a Catholic Tradition. The Liturgy is our Catholic identity.
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