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Ascension

As the Catholic Church in the United States celebrates the solemnity of the Ascension today, I noticed that the reading assigned to the office of Vigils for this day, Ephesians 4: 1-22, clearly relates to themes I’ve been developing in recent posts. Today would be a good opportunity to look a bit deeper at the theological underpinnings of the following themes: 1) differentiation of responsibility in a healthy community; 2) that this differentiation promotes maturity, and 3) maturity is about rationality. 

One preliminary point is of great importance: while the Church has traditionally separated the dates for the celebration of the Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost (the sending of the Holy Spirit), these should be understood as one Mystery. Thus, the Ascension is not only the enthronement of the risen Jesus at the right hand of God, it is also the birth of the Church (Christ’s resurrected Body, into which the baptized are incorporated). Liturgically, this birth of the Church is connected to the sending of the Holy Spirit, which Christ promised before His Ascension.

Paul, then, begins this meditation (which he writes from his jail cell in Rome), emphasizing the unity of the Church:

“I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” [Ephesians 4: 1-6]

In our highly polarized environment, calls to unity are often heard as covert means of suppressing diversity. Indeed, one frequent criticism of Catholic Christianity targets the heavy freight of dogma to be taken on faith. This would seem to be the opposite of the rationality that I recently claimed comes from faith. From the standpoint of this criticism, faith would be submission to an authoritarian imposition of ideas and, therefore, a stifling of personal inquiry and questioning.

Thus, it is of some importance that Paul immediately switches to diversity within the Body:

But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore, it says:

“He ascended on high and took prisoners captive;
he gave gifts to men. [N.B. “gifts” in this context refers to the Holy Spirit]”…

And he gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,” [vv. 7-8, 11-12]

Here we see the differentiation of responsibility. Not everyone is given responsibility for preaching or teaching. At Vatican II, this idea of Paul’s received a significant development. It was recognized that the Church, existing in the world, needs the expertise of lay persons who understand finance, law, medical ethics, economics, history, and so on. These can be seen genuinely as gifts from the Holy Spirit for the building up of the body of Christ. No longer does all of the responsibility fall on bishops and priests. Bishops need to consult with lay experts in a variety of fields precisely in order to hammer out theological positions.

From another perspective, dividing responsibility reduces anxiety and thus promotes mature reflection. The great sociologist, Mary Douglas, in her underappreciated book Natural Symbols makes this point from another perspective. She compares different types of community organization, and shows that small groups with a lack of differentiation of roles tend to suffer from fear of the world, witch hunts, and the like. By contrast, large, differentiated societies tend to promote intricately intertwined and symbolic understandings of the world. They tend to be quieter, more conducive to scientific and artistic achievements. This is not to say that they have no problems whatsoever. But it supports the overall principle that dividing up areas of responsibility reduces systemic anxiety. It also supports the notion that entry into the Church promotes rationality.

The next section of Ephesians amazes me:

“until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ, so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery, from their cunning in the interests of deceitful scheming. Rather, living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, with the proper functioning of each part, brings about the body’s growth and builds itself up in love.” [vv. 13-16; my emphasis]

The unity of faith and knowledge is “of the Son of God,” Who is Truth. Since “all things came to be through Him [John 1: 3],” a true understanding of the cosmos opens up in the community of faith.

In other words, unity comes not from unthinking submission to dogmas imposed by authoritarian means. We all know, of course, that sometimes each of us must make an act of faith that an expert knows more than we do, and the expert can’t explain everything about a topic quickly. This act of faith presumes that what the expert knows is true, and that if we had enough time and training and facility, we would see the same truth as the expert, precisely because a mark of Truth is that it is the same for everyone. Thus unity arises from knowledge of the truth, and this acquired knowledge is a communal, cooperative affair. None of us is responsible for knowing everything. We must rely on “faith” that others will point us to truths that we cannot investigate entirely for ourselves.

Caravaggio’s depiction of Christ presented by Pilate. “Behold the man,” ironically points to the fulfillment of what God initiates in Genesis 1: 26. Whereas all other creatures spring to life when God says, “Let there be…” in the case of “man,” God says “Let us make man.” Here He is.

What is more, this faith and knowledge moves us toward maturity. “To mature manhood,” translates the Greek phrase, eis andra teleion. Knowing precisely what Paul means here is not easy because of the elasticity of the word andra, the dative form of the word for an adult man. We could, for example, translate this as “to mature adulthood.” However, it is also possible that andra is being used as a synonym for the more common Greek noun anthropos, which appears later in this same chapter, verses 23-24:

“be renewed in the spirit of your minds,and put on the new [man],* created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.”

This “new man” is Jesus Christ Himself, the goal [telos, from which we get teleion, or “matured”] of all creation. By our incorporation into His Body, we enter into that new society in which reason is allowed fully to flourish by faith. 

It is of Christ that Pilate says, “Behold the man [anthropos]” just before His Crucifixion. In John’s Gospel, this is the hour in which all things are “finished” [tetelestai–from the same root as “mature” above]. It is also the moment at which Christ gives over the Spirit [John 19: 30].”**

Mature adulthood then, arises from our discovery of ourselves as members of a new community, rooted in Truth and Love. When we accept this new identity (the “new name” of Revelation 2: 17), and stay at our assigned posts, we can trust that God will mysteriously bring about the fulfillment of the resurrection by the renewal of our minds by the Truth. This will allow us to live authentically and avoid being taken in by human trickery–a valuable skill at any time, but perhaps especially in our present moment.

* The New American Bible Revised Edition unhelpfully translates this as “new self.” I’ve inserted “man” instead of “self,” for reasons that should be fairly clear.

** I am indebted to Fr. John Behr for this paragraph.

Many Dwelling Places

Have you ever purchased a gift for someone—since it’s Mother’s Day, let’s say it’s for your mother—and you were so excited about it that you had to call her and say, “I’ve got your present, and I think you’re going to like it”? Or has someone ever said that to you?

When we know that a gift is on the way, and that the giver is really excited about it, don’t we look forward to the day when we will get to open the gift and celebrate with the person who made the gift? Doesn’t the wait grow somehow sweeter as it is prolonged, and doesn’t the rest of our life seem less important when we think about what we has been promised to us?

Our Lord is promising us an eternal gift, a dwelling place, a room prepared in the home of the Creator of the universe. This home will never be visited by death or mourning, sickness or fear. Do we take the time to desire this gift? How would our lives change if we thought about our eternal home more frequently, if we genuinely longed for heaven, and stored up spiritual treasure to adorn our dwelling? Wouldn’t the struggles of this life seem small, as Saint Paul has said?

Reconciliation: the fisherman Peter and the intellectual tentmaker Paul

“I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory to be revealed in us.”

Saint Paul was a man who lived in constant gratitude for the gift of life and sight that he had received from a merciful Jesus Christ. And this gratitude made him long for heaven. “My desire is to depart and be with Christ!” This desire strengthened Paul to endure all of his sufferings, to make light of them even. He kept his eyes fixed on the goal, on what had been promised to him.

It is significant that Paul is the Apostle to the Gentiles, and this brings out a second part of today’s gospel that I wish to share with you. There are many dwelling places in the Father’s house, so it is a gift being offered to many. In today’s first reading, we hear about a dispute that arose in the early church. It’s seems that the Greek-speaking widows were being neglected. They complained about this. Now Saint Benedict condemns complaining, but he also admits that it can be justified, and this is probably an instance of justified complaint. From our perspective, it is easy to be critical of this situation, but isn’t it just natural? The Apostles and their closest disciples at this point were all Jews, and it wasn’t necessarily ill-will or even prejudice that led to the neglect of the non-Jews in the group. There were probably problems in communication, language, customary behaviors that determined how to share needs with each other. Everyone had to be patient learning a new set of skills.

One of the ways in which Paul’s sight was restored allowed him to see that the death of Jesus saved not only the Chosen People from their sins. The death and resurrection is an offering for all peoples, even those far off. In baptism, our own eyes were opened to this reality, that we are members of a multitude that no one can number, made of every tribe, every single tribe and tongue. God’s grace—literally grace mean gift—is to anyone who would receive it. There are many, many dwelling places in the Father’s house. We have countless brothers and sisters, friends and comrades in heaven and still on earth.

Sometimes we struggle to accept this because accepting others and befriending persons with different customs, unfamiliar languages, and so on, poses a threat to our own ways of seeing the world, our own customs and liturgical language. In today’s world, a polemical multiculturalism tends to point fingers, separating us into categories of privileged and victim, and so it might helpful for me to state the same idea from the perspective, maybe the Greek perspective instead of the Hebrew perspective this time:

The communion of saints is waiting to accept you, your customs—purified of course—your language, all that is dear to you. The saints want to know you, want to welcome you.

You are a gift to the saints, and to God.

Candles in a Hungarian cemetary for All Saints Day: longing for eternal life

As Jesus says, as He prays to the Father at the end of the Last Supper, “Father, they are your gift to me.” You are that gift promised by the Father that Jesus has been longing to receive.

What strength there is in realizing this! How beautiful it is to feel this in our hearts, to celebrate this at our sacrifice today, to be called to the one altar of the Lord where are gathered mystically all the saints, our departed grandmothers and grandfathers, all those who are yet to be born whom God has chosen for us!

The Eucharist is a foretaste of the heavenly gift of eternal peace and joy—may our eyes be reopened to this reality today, and may our brothers and sisters who are still separated from our churches be consoled in the reality that their desire for heaven can be just as strong as they wait in longing to rejoin us at the Lord’s banquet.

The Ascension

Poetry tills and harvests in the fields of metaphor.

When Shakespeare’s Romeo muses, “Juliet is the sun,” he is not making a statement that is literally true. But it is true. How so? Oddly enough, answering this question involves us in more metaphorical speech.

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On the Mystical Antiphons

[The following is from the program notes for Solemn Vespers of Sunday, December 31.]

The coming of God in human flesh is the central event in human history. After the Word became flesh, all of creation appeared changed to those who encountered Jesus Christ risen and glorified. Christ’s sacred humanity became the key that reinterpreted all of the Scriptures and indeed unlocks the mystery of the human person and human destiny: to be divinized by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The Incarnation has had a way of scandalizing those who feel that it is beneath God’s majesty to inhabit the ordinariness and weakness of the human state. Early ‘gnostic’ movements in the Church’s history invented a variety of ways of protecting God from His own rashness, it would seem. In this milieu, the Church discovered that the virgin birth by Mary, the Mother of God was a central guarantee of the mystery of the Incarnation. Christ took flesh from the Blessed Virgin while retaining His divinity, as shown by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.

As the Church re-read the sacred Scriptures of Israel to understand more profoundly the mystery of Christ, she also began to discover a multitude of allusions to the mystery of His conception and to the sanctity of His Mother. The antiphons (the short texts at the beginning and end of each Psalm) of today’s solemnity assist us in reinterpreting the Psalms according to their Christology and excavating for us hidden meanings of the Old Testament. The mysterious fleece of Gideon (see Judges, chapter six) was covered with heavenly dew while all the ground around it remained dry and barren. This descent of the dew portended the Lord’s triumph in battle and salvation for Israel. The bramble bush that drew the attention of Moses burned with heavenly flame but was not consumed. And from it, he heard God’s Word, the Son, according to the Fathers of the Church. Mary received the fullness of deity in her womb without losing her virginity, nor being consumed by God’s powerful presence. And the Word that was her only Son was to lead all peoples, not through the Red Sea, but through death itself.  He did this by taking our sins upon Himself, becoming the Lamb of God, attested to by John the Baptist.

The length and density of the traditional antiphons attached to today’s solemnity are unusual. Most antiphons quote or directly paraphrase Biblical texts. The theological content of these ‘mystical’ antiphons is surely related to Mary’s status as the ‘vanquisher of all heresies’, the guarantor, as explained above, of the orthodox interpretation of the Incarnation.

Even more unusual is Josquin’s decision to do a full setting of the antiphons of this one liturgical day. Aside from his numerous Mass settings, Josquin set almost no fully liturgical music (in contrast to the paraliturgical devotional works for which he is justly renowned). Musical settings of Mass Ordinaries (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, etc.) have the advantage of being usable on almost any day of the year, whereas the ‘proper’ antiphons for today’s solemnity can only be performed on this one day of the year—at least if one wishes to honor the traditional placement of liturgical texts.

In Josquin’s day, the Roman liturgy celebrated the Circumcision of Christ on January 1, but this was a relatively recent observance, especially at Rome. And even when the Circumcision was adopted in the universal Church, it retained the more ancient association with the motherhood of Mary. Surely part of Josquin’s decision to set these texts is motivated by his own well-attested Marian devotion and the growing popularity of such devotion (especially in the use of the rosary) in his day. Even so, it is striking that he chose to set the texts of this solemnity rather than other devotional poems, which were numerous in his day.

The richness of this evening’s liturgy admirably brings 2017  to a close and reminds us of the fecundity of the mystery of our Faith. May the New Year be blessed by the Lord, the Lord of history and King of the nations!

 

 

On Ezekiel’s Vision

[The following is from the program notes for Solemn Vespers of Saturday, November 18.]

A church building is an eschatological sign. Explaining this and this evening’s Magnificat antiphon from the prophet Ezekiel is the burden of the rest of these notes. First of all, what is eschatology?

The dictionary definition will say that eschatology is the study of the “last things,” from the Greek word eschaton, “the end.” This definition is not, however, theologically precise. The believing Christian does not merely study eschatology any more than the believing theologian studies God. We can, of course, and should, learn things about God. But our God is a living God Who “cares for us.” In a more ancient sense, theology is the simple act of knowing God more and more intimately, the ascent of the mind to greater union with the mysterious Trinity.

In a similar way, the Christian does not study eschatology as if it were something yet to come. The former things are passing away as I type, and the Kingdom of God is breaking in all around us, if we possess the eyes of faith to see it. We already dine at the heavenly banquet, the wedding feast of the Lamb, every time we approach the altar, whereupon the one and only sacrifice for sins was and is offered. This one sacrifice inaugurates the end times.

In fact, we entered into this new existence at our baptisms. It is for this reason that the baptismal font is traditionally at the entrance to the church, and why we re-activate this baptismal grace by signing ourselves when we come into church. We go out from the world to undergo a “translation” from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son [cf. Colossians 1: 13], who is the Light that enlightens everyone. Our entry toward the altar is a figure of our ascent, as the Body of Christ, to where the Head has gone before us, in His return to the Father.

This is why the church is an eschatological sign. The church building is meant to be more than a gathering space or even a worship space. In a recent lecture, master iconographer Vladislav Andrejev cautioned us against understanding icons as windows to some other place, openings by which we look through to something not yet entirely here. In fact, the icon is a kind of “surface” of the present spiritual realities.  It makes visible to our physical eyes what is truly present to the eyes of faith, so that the eyes of faith may become more and more accustomed to the otherwise blinding light of divine life.

I would like to suggest that the whole of the church building is just this kind of “surface.” Thus the twelve pillars of our church are not merely symbols of the Twelve Apostles, the foundation of the heavenly temple being built up from the bodies of believers. They are the Apostles, manifesting themselves as great supporting columns of the space in which these spiritual realities are appearing.

Sacred music is a similar phenomenon. It is not merely a diversion, a sign of the beauty of something that we hope to encounter one day. It is the song of the angels, made audible to our ears.

This can only happen if human creativity is bridled by genuine asceticism, the work of listening to what is already being sung in heaven by those who have received the gift of hearing from the Holy Spirit.  Cooperation requires a silence with regard to earthly sound, even secular music. This is perhaps why, in many churches today, music and art don’t strike the worshippers as “sacred.” It’s music and art that comes from us, not from the inbreaking spiritual world.

All of this said, we can now look at the antiphon for the Magnificat. “I saw a closed gate in the house of the Lord, and an angel said to me, ‘It shall remain closed; the Lord alone shall come and enter in and go out.’” This passage is taken from Ezekiel’s stunning vision of the reconstituted temple (which had been destroyed some years earlier by the Babylonians when they captured Jerusalem in 587 B.C.). Solomon built the first temple based on a pattern given by Moses. Moses saw this pattern in a vision of heaven. We would say today that this vision of Moses was a first glimpse and foreshadowing of what was to be the reality of the true Temple, the Body of the Lord, which was destroyed not by the Babylonians, but by the Romans, only to be raised up in three days as the sole and eternal Temple.

Only God could bring this about. Only God supplies the gifts of the artist, the composer, the singer. We receive this gift from God; we do not earn it or otherwise bring it about. God alone will rend the veil that separates this world from the new age, the spiritual kingdom that is breaking in as we sing together this evening. May our gathering and common liturgical prayer open the eyes and ears of our hearts, that we may receive Him Who is coming!

 

The Transfiguration

“He did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly afraid [Mark 9: 5].” With this little detail, Saint Mark reveals quite a bit about the character of Saint Peter and the human condition in general. Under normal circumstances, we are unprepared to behold the full glory of God, and when suddenly God’s grandeur “flame[s] out, like shining from shook foil,”  it can be a terrifying, disorienting experience.

We have many testimonies of this encounter. One early, telling encounter was that of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah was a priest and probably had entered God’s temple countless times to offer sacrifice. One day, he suddenly saw in reality what he had been celebrating in shadowy, symbolic ways. “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up….And I said, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips…for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts [Isaiah 6: 1, 5]!” Isaiah is rendered voluntarily speechless until his lips are cleansed by a coal from the altar.

Similarly, Saint Thomas Aquinas, toward the end of his earthly life, was celebrating the Eucharist as he had many times before. This time was different. Like Isaiah, he glimpsed something of the reality that he had celebrated in the half-veil of sacramental mystery. The author of the Summa Theologica, perhaps the greatest intellectual achievement of all time, wrote no more after this, leaving the Summa unfinished. “All that I have written seems as so much straw,” he confided to a friend.

Saint Peter suffers no such scruples. Beholding Christ transfigured, he was properly afraid. Not knowing what to say, however, he said whatever came to mind. In this, he seems to be of a kindred mindset to modern man. Is it not the case that our incessant talking, the swarming proliferation of words, is so much nervous chatter to cover over our anxiety and alienation? We hardly know what to say, yet we can’t stop talking. In our case, I suspect that silence doesn’t occur to us because our fear is not the result of an encounter with the living God, but with the dreadful possibility of His utter absence.

I began by saying that we are not normally prepared to meet God in the unmitigated power of His limitless Being. What the Transfiguration begins to teach us is that, under the dispensation of grace, in the afterglow of the Resurrection and Pentecost, we live under a “new normal.” We live in the in-between time, the time of the holy Liturgy, after the shadows of animal sacrifice but not yet at the full consummation of the world. The Kingdom of God is breaking into the world that itself is passing away. The baptized, as God’s adopted children, are being trained to “see [God] as He is [1 John 3: 2].” The training of our senses and their elevation to the spiritual realm takes place in the liturgy.

This past June, we were blessed to be able to unveil our two newest icons, the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, flanking the Mother of God and John the Baptist. Gradually, our sanctuary is being populated with the communion of the saints. Icons are not mere representations of model believers. The iconographer truly receives the image from the inbreaking realm of heaven. Iconography is, therefore, an ascetical craft, a discipline of visual listening and receptivity, a training of the interior vision to see beyond the sacramental into the reality of God’s holy court. At the same time, icons train the worshipper to attune his or her senses to this new reality. The icons are a central part of the liturgical act, and as conduits of grace, help to elevate the sense of sight to its proper spiritual register.

Similarly, sacred music is much more than pleasing ornamentation of holy words. As Kevin Allen and I have discussed at various time in our decade of collaboration, the composer of sacred music must, like the iconographer, exercise a discipline of spiritual listening. The aim is, through purification of hearing, to catch something of the overwhelming beauty of the perpetual song of heaven. At Solemn Vespers this coming Saturday evening (August 5, 5:15 p.m.), the First Vespers of the feast of the Transfiguration, Kevin and I humbly offer two new motets in this spirit. We pray that our double motet will be a similar conduit of grace, to prepare our hearts to hear God’s Word in its fullest transformative power.

The Mystery of the Ascension

Along with Epiphany, the Solemnity of the Ascension is one of the more overlooked celebrations of the Church year. Both, interestingly, have to do with the intelligibility of our Faith. When Christ ascends into heaven, He does not go to another “place,” since He ascends “to my Father and your Father,” and God the Father is omnipresent, not bound by location. As long as Christ remained in His physical body, He belonged in a sense to this material world. And one important property of this universe is that two objects can’t occupy the same location at the same time. But by “passing over” to this new, glorified, spiritual existence, Christ was enthroned as King of the cosmos, because now all things from quarks and photons to super-novae, are permeated by His glorified presence, with us always until the end of the world.

This now means that all created things take on new significance. All things (potentially) point to Him and find genuine meaning in the goal that is Christ’s Kingdom. We can learn to read the Book of Nature precisely because of Jesus’s Ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit, which include wisdom and understanding, give us the power to read and interpret nature, history, and ourselves. This might sound like magic, but it really is not. The Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery in its entirety reveal to us the sort of God Who is the creator of all things, and this revelation supplies the missing piece to the meaning of the cosmos.

I began by saying that the Ascension tends to be overlooked today. If this “missing” mystery in the Christian imagination is one that would otherwise give meaning to our lives, then it is not surprising that the absence of an understanding of the Ascension occurs in a time plagued by meaninglessness, cynicism, and doubt.

There is one last important aspect of the Ascension mystery to note. I suggested that the true meaning of things is found in Christ’s presence and with reference to His Kingdom, which is slowly becoming manifest. This might suggest that the playfulness associated with artistic creation, musical composition and the inspiration of song, dance, and poetry is ruled out. This is perhaps why it is again important to recall the close link between Ascension and Pentecost. The gift of the Holy Spirit is the true gift of in-spiration, and the Spirit, Who “blows where He wills,” becomes our spirit. The Spirit, Who brooded over the creation of the world, makes us truly sovereign co-creators of God’s plan, truly individual yet unified. Creativity is not at all absent when the Holy Spirit is present. Thus the culmination of the Ascension liturgy is Pentecost, which governs the rest of the Church year until the end of time.

 

Going to the Father 8: God’s Welcome

When I was appointed prior of our community in 2004, one of my tasks was to work out realistic plan to build a genuine monastery cloister. We have been living in a former parish rectory and convent for twenty-four years. Most of that time, the space has been quite adequate. But as we have increased in number to ten, the need for better living quarters has become much more apparent. That said, the plan needed to be conceived from a long-range vantage point. The cost of construction is not trifling, and we are still a young community. Renovation and construction are psychologically straining, and we need to prepare ourselves well for this kind of work.

The magnificent choir of Westminster Abbey. Nothing quite so impressive for us! But one sees the architectural significance of the choir in a monastic church.

The magnificent choir of Westminster Abbey. Nothing quite so impressive for us! But one sees the architectural significance of the choir in a monastic church.

Thus, it seemed to me from early on that the first priority was the renovation of the church building. Take care of God’s house and let him take care of our house! The church is a public space, the place where most people learn about who we are. Now the structure of our church was conceived for the needs of a medium-sized parish, rather than for a small monastery. While we have been able to use the building profitably, we have long been aware of the ways in which the church’s architecture nudges us away from our professed goal of being a cloistered, contemplative community.

Renovation began in earnest two years ago when we commissioned our iconostasis and began work on the altar. The most important step, however, was certainly going to be the construction of a real monastic choir. Monks can spend over three hours a day in choir, and having a choir that meets the demands of the full Benedictine office would not only be a plus for us, but would also help visitors grasp that this is not a parish anymore, that it fulfills a different ecclesial function.

So we began the discussion of building a new choir. What would be our requirements for this improvement?

We have a beautiful neo-gothic church. The new choir must be appropriate to the space, with a design that doesn’t conflict with the gothic motifs that we already have. We were fortunate to discover New Holland Church Furniture in Pennsylvania, who have designed an absolutely beautiful and noble, yet functional, choir. It fits perfectly in the transept.

Our old choir had nineteen stalls, enough for our daily liturgy, but not enough when we hosted meetings, or when we invited Schola Laudis to join us for Solemn Vespers. The new choir has thirty-two stalls, adequate for both of these recurring needs.

Rood screen in Southwold Church

Rood screen in Southwold Church

We needed some sense of separation from the rest of the nave, without giving the impression of being distant or unwelcoming. Some brothers were even interested in a grille or rood screen. Ultimately we decided that this was too much separation. We decided on a low wall for the choir, and two additional low walls separating the choir from the nave. These look like small portions of a communion rail, though they are really stylized versions of a rood screen.

I mentioned in the previous post that our work on the altar and iconostasis, as well as our custom of celebrating Mass ad orientem could cause a kind of theological imbalance, implying God’s distance and undermining a sense of His welcoming immanence. Our design of the choir needed to address this.

Traditionally, the choir is part of the sanctuary. This means that in some monastic churches, for example, most Trappist churches, the sanctuary can end up stretching out over nearly the entire church. We had not capitalized on the possibilities of using the full, extended sanctuary to “close the gap” between clergy and laity. Again, the old parish architecture tended to form our imaginations in such a way so that we thought of the old, narrower sanctuary (all the way to the eastern apse, on the other side of the choir) as the sanctuary proper and the choir as something else. And the choir tended to act as something of a barrier between the laity and the distant sanctuary.

The grille separating the nuns of Regina Laudis from the rest of the abbey church.

The grille separating the nuns of Regina Laudis from the rest of the abbey church.

Then one of the brothers got a splendid idea. To express it best, let me quote from the General Instruction of the Roman Missal.

The Chair for the Priest Celebrant and Other Seats

310. The chair of the priest celebrant must signify his office of presiding over the gathering and of directing the prayer. Thus the best place for the chair is in a position facing the people at the head of the sanctuary, unless the design of the building or other circumstances impede this: for example, if the great distance would interfere with communication between the priest and the gathered assembly, or if the tabernacle is in the center behind the altar…[emphasis added].

With our new, rather massive choir in the center of the church, putting the presider’s chair in the old sanctuary up near the altar would definitely interfere with communication between the priest and the assembly.  So we put the presider’s chair on the west side of the transept, between the choir and assembly, where the priest will sit during the Liturgy of the Word. For the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the priest will make the long walk through the choir, up the old sanctuary steps, up the new predella steps, to the new altar and icon.

The altar of St. Nicholas's Basilica in Bari, Italy. Note the three steps. This graded platform is known as the predella.

The altar of St. Nicholas’s Basilica in Bari, Italy. Note the three steps. This graded platform is known as the predella.

I describe this movement of the priest quite deliberately. Another strategy we have used for bridging the gap between the lay faithful and the monks is the copious use of processions. For example, when we process from the entrance of the church, through the nave, to the choir, part of what is expressed is our being called forth from the gathered assembly to our particular place in the church as monks. We go forth, as it were, to lead our lay brothers and sisters rather than slipping in from the sacristy and departing without having any ‘communication’ (and I intend this word in its full theological sense) with other members of the Body of Christ.

Most radically, this unusual placement of the presider’s chair helps to illustrate what I take to be the meaning of facing east. Now, when we turn to the East for the Kyrie and Gloria, as has been our custom, the monks will have their backs to the priest! We actually tried this out last Sunday, when the old choir stalls had already been removed and we were making do with wire chairs. The meaning was quite clear. We were all turning to face a common direction, and there was nothing particularly ‘clerical’ about the priest’s orientation, since he was very much in the middle of everything rather than far away.

The construction is finishing up today. We will have many photos available soon, and hopefully these will include photos of the actual liturgy in progress. We welcome any questions or comments!

 

Going to the Father 7: Icon and Altar as Ascension

The Ascension of Jesus Christ to the right hand of the Father is the founding moment of the liturgy. The Good Shepherd went off in search of His lost sheep–us–by laying aside His dignity and prerogatives as Son of God and becoming flesh for our sake. Becoming obedient to the Father even unto death, He won our salvation and returned to the Father as the pioneer of our salvation. In our baptisms, we are united with Christ, and in the liturgy, we participate, really experience our own ascensions to the Kingdom of Heaven, as daughters and sons of God in the Holy Spirit.

Christ's Ascension is the founding movement of every liturgical celebration. Now He intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father [Romans 8: 34].

Christ’s Ascension is the founding movement of every liturgical celebration. Now He intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father [Romans 8: 34].

What an astonishing claim! And yet, it is our faith, the faith we profess every time we enter a church, recall our baptisms by signing ourselves with holy water in the form of the cross, and enter into the everlasting dialog of love between Father and Son. Yet because it is such an astonishing claim, we need practice in order to continually realize the Truth into which we have been received. Our minds need constant renewal, lest we fall back by a preoccupation with the earthly appearance of things. As I mentioned in the previous post, this vigilance requires us to hold in tension God’s transcendence, the goal toward which we move in our ascension in Christ, with God’s immanence, His real presence to us in all things through the eyes of faith. Thus the things of the world are transformed by contemplation, a gaze informed by faith, and this informing faith is oriented toward the Father “who is above all and through and in all [Ephesians 4: 6].”

In Gothic church buildings, this symbolism of ascent is signified by the long “vertical” shape of the nave. One enters at the baptismal font, the gateway to life in Christ, and moves toward the altar through stages, not necessarily “closer to God,” Who is in any case not at all bound to the sanctuary, but through the purification of the soul, the understanding and the will, so as to be more and more conformed to God. Christ the Mediator is symbolized variously by the direction East (from whence He shall come at the parousia), the altar (incised with five crosses, the five wounds by which the risen Christ is recognized), the priest (whose initial movement to the altar is a representation of Christ’s Ascension), and finally by the Blessed Sacrament Itself.

Christ goes forth from the sanctuary at two crucial moments in the liturgy. The first is the gospel procession, where the Word becomes flesh, as it were, in the human voice of the priest of deacon who proclaims it. The gospel book is carried in procession  from the altar to the people. The second movement “outward” is the carrying of the Body and Blood of Christ from the altar (again!) to the people, who now receive Christ Incarnate in Holy Communion. In this latter case, there is a complementary movement of the faithful toward the altar, “caught up together with [those who have died in Christ]…to meet the Lord [1 Thessalonians 4: 17].”

Christ in glory represent the Lord both ascending and returning (see Acts 1: 11), note the two interlocking four-pointed stars and white rays, representing the divine energies radiating in and through the Son.

Christ in glory represents the Lord both ascending and returning (see Acts 1: 11). Note the two interlocking four-pointed stars and white rays, representing the divine energies radiating in and through the Son.

Here I am describing a dynamic liturgy, with a lot of movement. It is not what most Catholics think of when they think of liturgy, which unfortunately seems to bring to mind standing and sitting in one pew and watching while the priest does a bunch of things far away. What I have described is quite possible, even desirable in the present “ordinary” form of the Mass, and to a certain extent the reforms that followed Vatican II have made this latent dynamism more obvious (and this represents a restoration of certain elements of the Mass that had fallen away in the Tridentine period, which I personally consider to have been a bit ‘bureaucratized’, with a liturgy too much influenced by the Roman Curia and not enough by monks!). Orthodox liturgy tends to display this dynamism more openly, and often Orthodox liturgists will draw connections between the in-and-out motion of the priests and deacons with the mysterious energies of God, that go forth and return to Him [cf. Isaiah 55: 11]. And this connection in turn is sometimes reinforced with references to Eastern theologians like Gregory Palamas (1296-1359). But this dynamism is everywhere evident in Catholic sources, especially through the thirteenth century. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas is entirely patterned on what is called the “exitus-reditus” movement of God’s creative and restorative Word and Spirit, breathing outward into creation and gathering inward toward salvation and exaltation.

Our monastery church is a neo-gothic structure. The first altar that we had built for the church was slightly larger than four feet square and stood in the center of the sanctuary, at the eastern end of the building. Though it served us well, it was slightly small both for the space and for the number of concelebrants typical at our Eucharistic liturgy. After a benefactor came forward to commission the great iconostasis that you see on our home page (and above), we knew that it was time to commission as well a new altar. Present liturgical discipline favors a stone mensa or “table” on the altar. If we were to do have a stone altar constructed, we had two choices, necessitated by the weight of the potential structure. We could first of all restore it as a ‘high altar’ against the easternmost wall of the church. This would be easier and more cost effective, since there was already an iron and brick support in place there, and since we were already celebrating Mass ad orientem. The other option was keeping it in place and building a new support. This would have been quite costly. Moreover, the building itself calls for the altar to be at the very head of the structure, as the “Head” Who is Christ.

Our new iconostasis and altar, with four concelebrating priests. One gets a sense of the size of the church that we received from the Archdiocese and its orientation.

Our new iconostasis and altar, with four concelebrating priests. One gets a sense of the size of the church that we received from the Archdiocese and its orientation.

When the iconostasis and altar were installed last year (and I will have much more to write about the icons, so stay tuned!), the architecture of the church really came into strong focus. I can say with some assurance that all of the brothers have found this new arrangement to be a tremendous blessing and aid to prayer. The danger of such an arrangement is that the very strong vertical thrust might lead guests to feel faraway from the action and left out, as if God had retreated somewhere relatively inaccessible and only peeked out for communion. How could we help newcomers to feel more welcomed, to have a sense of God’s nearness without undoing the brilliance of the transcendent recaptured in our high altar and iconostasis? This was the challenge that we took up when we began to plan the last phase of our renovation of the church, the construction of the new choir.

Going to the Father 6: On Transcendence and Immanence

Before we tackle the installation of the new altar, the iconostasis and the choir, we will need to deal with two tensions within monastic life. The first is transcendence versus immanence, and the second, closely related, is between cloister and hospitality. Let’s begin with the latter.

A cloister garden with central fountain and four walkways representing the four rivers of Eden. Courtesy geograph.org.uk

A cloister garden with central fountain and four walkways representing the four rivers of Eden. Courtesy geograph.org.uk

The cloister is the area of the monastery reserved for monks or nuns. It is the concrete sign of withdrawal from the world for the sake of the Kingdom of God. In the stronger parts of our tradition, the cloister is even equated with heaven, or at the very least, with a restored Garden of Eden. Cloisters have traditionally been built with four corners with a fountain at the center, embodying Genesis 2: 10-14. To enter the cloister requires the death and resurrection of monastic vows, and this death has frequently been indicated by the use of a funeral pall to cover the monk while the litany of saints is sung at his profession. Entrance into the cloister involves the renunciation of worldly thoughts, preoccupations, and behaviors, and the embrace of a holy life, even an angelic life, keeping watch like the sleepless angels and joining their constant praise of God in song.

One common misunderstanding of the symbolic value of the cloister conflates withdrawal from the world with mere privacy. Monks have nothing of their own, not even their wills, and so to imagine that the cloister is the private area of the monks where they can ‘be themselves’ and not bothered by guests is missing the point. Monks only leave the cloister (in theory) reluctantly, and out of obedience directed toward the welfare of the church. Nuns who practice papal enclosure almost never leave at all, for any reason. It is not because they “keep to themselves” or are unconcerned with the world. Rather, the world needs reminding that its values are not lasting, and that the things of the world are of value only as the open onto the ultimate realities of God’s coming reign. So the separate, cloistered lives of contemplatives are meant to model for the church and the world the transcendent values of Christ’s kingdom, not a retiring life in this world.

If the cloistered life requires this separation from the world, how is it that “monasteries are never lacking for guests?” In fact, the tension between cloister and hospitality only apparent. We monks and nuns certainly want to welcome others to share in the joy of serving God in the liturgy and in a life that focuses on constant prayer and gratitude. And so monasteries normally have areas for guests to stay and eat, and places where they can meet with the monks, if that is desirable (plenty of our guests in Chicago are happy with silence!). Clear boundaries make hospitality possible, even easy, since mutual expectations can be clear and all involved can relax in the confidence that we are together doing God’s will. Sometimes communities today allow guests more free access to the cloister. I can’t say whether or not this is a good practice in every case. In our particular case, it has not worked in the past because our cloister is so small that any compromise of it tends to flatten the sense of transcendence to which I referred above. Guests who have not undergone monastic formation usually don’t know how to comport themselves within the cloister in such a way as to maintain the atmosphere of prayer and recollection that is the goal of the separation from external anxieties.

Joseph Fiennes as Luther. After his gig as Shakespeare, opposite Gwyneth Paltrow, his rebound tossed him into the slough of despond opposite _deus absconditus_. If you aren't into geeky theological jokes, just ignore me.

Joseph Fiennes as Luther. After his gig as Shakespeare, opposite Gwyneth Paltrow, his rebound tossed him into the slough of despond opposite _deus absconditus_. If you aren’t into geeky theological jokes, just ignore me.

And if we monks are not able to maintain this sense of recollection, of God’s immanent presence in all things, we will not be able to communicate to others. And so we see how it can be that the apparent tension between transcendence and immanence is also only apparent, once properly understood. We need ways to symbolize God’s transcendence for ourselves so that His immanence does not become something bland and taken for granted. And we need ways of symbolizing His immanence that avoid taming God or reducing His presence to something this-worldly. God’s presence everywhere should be a routine surprise, and this requires an alertness and special discipline. The cloister is set up in such a way as to make this discipline possible.

I have mentioned in a couple of earlier posts that our monastery church is robustly ‘vertical’, and an emphasis on the verticality of the architecture means an emphasis on God’s transcendence. When theologians argue about God’s transcendence, there is commonly today a certain fearfulness that this majestic God will retreat into a faraway place, leaving us all but orphaned, anxiously sending up prayers in the blind hope that they will somehow reach him in spite of our feebleness. There is reason to think that this kind of theology was present, even dominant, in the Western Church from the end of the Middle Ages until recently (this is a very complex question!), and certainly the distance between God and ourselves has been felt by figures like Martin Luther and Cornelius Jansen. The reforms of the liturgy that began in the nineteenth century and culminated after Vatican II, were meant, in part, to address this imbalance.

And so when we began celebrating Mass facing the East and began talking about restoring the high altar, a few of our knowledgeable friends expressed concern, and understandably so. The task facing us as monks was to find a way to communicate, in symbol, the reality that a robust sense of God’s transcendence can very much be at the service of a joyful, felt experience of God’s loving and merciful nearness. This complementarity needs to be kept in mind as I describe, in the next few posts, how we came to commission our beautiful iconostasis, restore the high altar, and help design a new choir, installation of which begins today!