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The venerable age of the Extraordinary Form is another aspect of its ethos. It connects us today with the Catholics of every century, back to the times of the early Church, the Age of the Fathers. Popes, Doctors, and saints prayed the very same words and listened to the same readings, and many of the things they said about the Mass make sense in the context of the Extraordinary Form as celebrated today.10 This unity, through time as well as space, gives a special sense of solidarity with our predecessors in the Faith when we participate in the EF. The overall effect of the tone and ethos of the Extraordinary Form is that of peace. When we attend the Extraordinary Form we leave the noisy and busy world, and enter a timeless oasis of calm. In this way it gives great consolation to those attached to it, and it does not make demands upon us at odds with the feelings we may have: our stress, exhaustion, grief, or, for that matter, our joy. For many people, the EF is, in its own words (speaking of heaven), ‘a place of refreshment, light, and peace’: locus refrigerii, lucis et pacis.11
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