Monastery of the Holy Cross

Articles under Liturgy

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!

 

On the Nativity of Mary

The Church celebrates the birthdays of only three individuals, preferring, in most circumstances, to celebrate instead the entrance of the saints into everlasting life. The three exceptions appear in the monastery’s Deisis, the triptych of icons above the high altar. On either side of Christ Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, are the two esteemed forerunners of His gospel. On our right is John the Baptist, the greatest prophet and exemplar of the Old Testament or Torah. On the left, the Holy Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, whose birth was the dawn of salvation. Parallel to John the Baptist, she is frequently named as the greatest disciple of her Son and the exemplar of the new life of grace.

Today’s celebration marks nine months from the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. The Catholic Church has formulated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The large window in the south transept of our church shows Pope Pius IX declaring the dogma infallibly, surrounded by a variety of Church Doctors whose teachings had clarified Mary’s role in salvation history. The pope’s decision to define this dogma has occasioned some controversy and some tension—hopefully creative tension—with the churches of the East, where Our Lady’s sinlessness has been understood in differing ways.

This range of interpretations makes today’s feast all the more significant doctrinally and historically. The first celebrations of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary take place in the East, probably in Syria. This is a clear indication that the devotion of the faithful to the Mother of God included an awareness that her birth was extraordinary.

In fact, the roots of this awareness go back even further, to the remarkable second-century document known to us today as the Protoevangelium of James. Calling this book “apocryphal” is something of a slight, even if it was not ultimately accepted as Holy Scripture. In it, we find the story of Joachim and Anne, an annunciation of the birth of the Virgin (again, parallel to the annunciations by the Archangel Gabriel of the births of John the Baptist and Christ Himself), and the early consecration of the child Mary to service in the temple.

Recent scholarship has made this temple service more plausible. It seems that groups of virgins were designated to weave the curtain that separated the main body of the temple from the Holy of Holies, the same curtain that was torn at the death of Christ. In iconographic depictions of the Annunciation, the Blessed Virgin Mary is shown either reading Scripture, or, in the Eastern fashion, weaving. Whereas the curtain separated the sacred from the profane, Our Lady would, from that moment on, knit together the body of the Savior, Who weds heaven and earth, drawing all things to Himself in a supreme act of reconciliation.

As Solomon’s temple had been understood to be God’s residence on earth, the womb of the Blessed Virgin became the new tabernacle, the tent in which sojourned God the Son before the time of His birth. As the temple was to be kept pure, Mary’s body was understood to be free of the stain of Adam and Eve’s transgression. Quietly, in an obscure home in Nazareth, God prepared a dwelling for Himself and began, with the consent of the Virgin Mary, the restoration of the cosmos.

With this momentous event now widely known and celebrated, the Church hearkens back to an even quieter and more obscure commencement, the entry into the world of the one person chosen to be the Mother of God and the Mother of all the living. And here is the last distinguishing feature I would like to highlight. In ancient patriarchies, the birth of a son was widely anticipated and celebrated. Here is a new occurrence. We celebrate the birth of the great “daughter of Jerusalem,” and it is precisely Mary as woman that we honor. In the Blessed Mother of God we glimpse the full and unique dignity of women. Rightly let us sing together, “Today is the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary whose splendid life illuminates the whole Church!”

[Please come and pray Solemn Vespers with us tonight–Friday–at 7:00 p.m.]

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.

John the Baptist

The figure of John the Baptist loomed large in the imagination of the early Church. This is a challenge for most Christians today. Sure, no one born of woman was greater than John the Baptist, but wasn’t that under the old dispensation? Isn’t the least in the Kingdom of God greater even than John?

It is noteworthy that John maintains one of the two primary positions relative to Christ the Pantocrator in a traditional Deisis, the triptych of icons that you can see in our sanctuary. This places him, hierarchically, quite close to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven. What are we to make of this?

This is a mystery worth spending time with, rather than a question that admits of one, simple answer. In this short post, I would point out the importance of John as the preeminent prophet, the crown of the great guild that included Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Indeed, it is John who goes before Jesus Christ in the very spirit of Elijah, the greatest of the Israelite prophets. John, then, is a crucial link to our Semitic cultural heritage. His testimony to Christ is the fulfillment of the longing of the preeminent representatives of the People of Israel, the longing to see God’s face. “Behold, the Lamb of God!” says John.

John, along with Our Lady, is the model disciple, the one who “must decrease” that Christ may become all in all. Saint Augustine playfully noted that John’s feast falls at the moment when the days start to become shorter, whereas Christmas, the entrance of the “light that enlightens everyone” into the world, corresponds to the lengthening daylight.

There is one other playful aspect of today’s feast, this one directed at anyone who has had to learn the “solfege” method of singing. The hymn for Vespers, Ut queant laxis (and not “Doe, a deer…” from the Sound of Music), is the source of the familiar syllables that name the notes of the musical scale. The first syllables of each line (in bold in the pages below) name the first six ascending notes of a major scale: Ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la. The seventh degree was formed by combining the first letters of Sancte Ioannes, the last line. Later, “ut” became the more common “do” and “si” morphed into “ti.” You will notice that each line of the hymn begins one step higher than the last. Musicologists suspect that the composer of this hymn was the great twelfth-century musical pedagogue (and Benedictine) Guido d’Arrezzo, who invented the solfege system.

Ut queant laxis
resonare fibris
mira gestorum
famuli tuorum,
solve polluti
labiis reatum,
Sancte Ioannes.

(Translation by J. M. Neale)

For thy spirit, holy John, to chasten Lips sin-polluted, fettered tongues to loosen;
So by thy children might thy deeds of wonder Meetly be chanted.

 

 

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.

 

The Annunciation

[adapted from the notes for Solemn Vespers, 3/24/17 at the Monastery]

The meeting of time and eternity, of the finite and the infinite, of the human and the divine.  Today’s solemnity is a perfect crystallization of the reconciliation willed by God and accomplished through Mary’s fiat (“Amen” in her native Aramaic), as well as of the destiny that the Holy Trinity has allotted humanity. As we say in tonight’s concluding prayer, “may [we] merit to become partakers even of His divine nature,” Who willed to unite Himself to our human nature.

annuniation iconThe Annunciation is one of the most popular scenes in Western art and Eastern iconography. The Virgin Mary holds in her hand a spindle and scarlet material used to make the veil of the Temple. This veil is what separates the divine from the human, but also, being a central item in the Temple represents the meeting of God and Israel. We should recall that Herod began rebuilding the Temple at about the time of the Virgin Mary’s birth (there are many references to its construction in the New Testament). She will give birth to the true and everlasting Temple, the Body of Christ.

There is good reason to suppose that the solemnity of the Annunciation predates the celebration of Christmas, a noteworthy reminder that Christians have traditionally held that life begins at conception and that childbirth is the public manifestation and arrival of a child already long-nurtured by his or her mother. Many liturgical scholars, perhaps the majority at this point, fix the date of the Annunciation by the traditional date of Good Friday, since Christ was believed to have become man and to have died on the same date. From today’s date was then calculated the date of Christmas, nine months from March 25.

Our Lady’s gracious “yes” to the divine invitation to participate in the salvation of the world is a model of faith for all believers. Every time we obediently say, “yes,” to life, to suffering, to the commandments, Christ’s life is strengthened in us, and His healing presence is manifested to the world. Through our perseverance, we will save our lives by bringing to birth the life of Christ conceived in us at our first “yes” at baptism.

In tonight’s Processional chant, another ancient teaching is celebrated, the naming of Mary as the destroyer of all heresies. The key to understanding right belief is the Incarnation itself (the Trinitarian doctrines distinctive of Christianity are consequences of reflection on the virgin birth by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit). One could rightly read the first seven Ecumenical Councils as continued explorations of the mystery revealed in the encounter of Our Lady with the Archangel Gabriel, and the resulting unity of God and man. If ever we are troubled by doubts about the doctrine of the Church, the Mother of God is always waiting to illuminate us. She is a sure protector in times of temptation. She who listened to the voice of Gabriel undid the sin of Eve who listened to the voice of the tempter. Thus is Our Lady a model of discretion.

So many of these images come together in the final antiphon, Ave Regina Caelorum, traditionally sung from the Feast of the Presentation (formerly of the Purification) until the Paschal Triduum. “Hail root of Jesse! Hail gate of heaven!” In the Annunciation is fulfilled so many prophecies of the Old Testament foreseeing the coming of the Messiah and the reopening of Paradise. As God entered the world through the gate of Mary’s womb, we enter the divine life through the womb of the font of baptism. And so each evening, as we prepare for the dark hours, filled with many temptations, we call on the assistance of the great Mother of God and recall our baptisms by the sprinkling of holy water.

May this wondrous celebration fortify us in our Lenten practices of self-denial, and may it remind us of the glory that God has promised to those faithful to the teachings and practices of Holy Mother Church, in whom is fulfilled what was begun in the life of our Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary.

 

Natural Symbols-Introduction

[P]eople at different historic periods are more or less sensitive to signs as such. Some people are deaf or blind to non-verbal signals.–Mary Douglas

I’m back after a long layoff owing to travels and recuperation after our major building project this summer. And I have been promising for some time to write some things about Mary Douglas. I’ve begun here with one of many important quotes from what I consider to be her most important book, Natural Symbols. This book is not as famous as her breakthrough (and perennial classic) Purity and Danger. If you are looking to read her work, I’d start either with Purity and Danger or with one of her excellent Biblical commentaries, probably Leviticus as Literature.

But let’s look at this quote. She is saying that human sensitivity to “signs” depends on one’s historical situation. This quotation appears early in Natural Symbols, a book she wrote in response to the widespread rejection of ritual and symbol in the late 1960’s. She was also writing as a concerned Catholic, for whom ritual was a a life-affirming part of her experience. Finally, she wrote as an anthropologist, who had the opportunity to witness the use of ritual in other cultures, and to reflect on the purpose and effect of ritual in building social ties and shared meaning. Natural Symbols is a book that attempts to demonstrate the connection between three levels of experience (listed here from most to least general and abstract): 1) our system of belief about the world, society, God, and evil; 2) the way in which belief is communicated by and shapes society and the control it exercises (or fails to exercise) over us; 3) our experience of being a body, and the ways in which we use our bodies to communicate our shared (or unique) beliefs about the world and our place in it.

Super-dense symbols at Latin high Mass. Note the strict bodily postures of the participants, their orientation, etc.

Super-dense symbols at Latin high Mass. Note the strict bodily postures of the participants, their orientation, etc.

Let me unpack that last sentence with a concrete example. This will help to explain why I consider the book so important for understanding the malaise afflicting religious life in particular, and the Church in general. In a Catholic monastery, we say that we believe in the Mystery of the Incarnation. This implies that Christ is incarnate in the men with whom we live, and therefore regulate the ways in which brothers relate to one another. As the Prior, I am understood to hold the place of Christ (properly speaking) in the community. This means that brothers don’t refer to me as “Pete,” or sit in my place at table, in choir, or in chapter. Brothers act out, in their own bodies, symbols of the Incarnation. Thus we all genuflect when we enter the church, recognizing Christ’s Real Presence in the tabernacle. We bow to one another to acknowledge Christ in each brother. We discipline our bodies in accord with the social demands that communicate a system of belief.

But what if we happen to enter the monastery as part of an unlucky group that is “less sensitive” or even “deaf or blind,” to symbolic expressions like places of honor, genuflections, pectoral crosses, bows….even habits, tonsures, icons, candles, holy water, etc? I could go on and on. The point is that monastic life as such is as life that is based upon a belief system that is strongly tied to an intricately detailed set of symbolic observances. What if we enter such a life lacking the faculty to see and interpret the symbols?

A less ritually rigorous approach to worship. Note the varying postures, vesture (wink), and lack of identifiable architectural context.

A less ritually rigorous approach to worship. Note the varying postures, vesture (wink), and lack of identifiable architectural context.

After many years in monastic life, I have some to the conviction that most young men and women entering religious life today do so without the ability to understand the meaning of the symbols of the traditional life. Furthermore, I think that it is quite possible to engage in these symbolic behaviors without ever really grasping what they mean.

What makes me think this? Before Vatican II, the Church in general was governed by massive amounts of rule-bound behaviors that were intended to communicate a certain theology. Strong social disciplines regulated what bishops, priests, religious, and laity could and could not do. When the reforms of the Council began to take hold, huge percentages of Western Catholics quickly gave up all kinds of symbolic behaviors and social disciplines without any apparent grief (for others, obviously, these changes were devastating; Mary Douglas is very sensitive to their suffering, and in some ways this book is an anthropologist’s effort to help redress the wrongs that were just unfolding in 1970 when Natural Symbols was published). This suggests that there were large portions of the Catholic Church for whom, in 1960, the symbols and disciplines already were more or less meaningless, that their importance had been forgotten, despite the fact that everyone continued to engage in them.

In my experience, young men entering a traditional monastic life such as our is reputed to be are looking for the structure that ritual and discipline provide. But I have also observed that for many of these same men, the real meaning of these rituals can be easily misunderstood. I will attempt to explain what I think is actually going on in a later post. Here, since I must wrap up, let me just point out that an effort to put her ideas into effect in our monastery has had surprising consequences (good ones, so far). And Professor Douglas’s concerns turn out to have a lot in common with the diagnoses of Alasdair MacIntyre, Rene Girard, Fr. Henri de Lubac, George Steiner, Pope Benedict XVI, and others writing from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Those who are interested in the so-called “Benedict Option” would do well to pay close attention to Mary Douglas, if they really wish to avoid becoming sectarian pariahs. More than that, Douglas helps to explain why MacIntyre and de Lubac seem to be often misunderstood even by their own strongest supporters. Changing my belief requires me to change my social experience and to change the way I use and experience my body. Without social structure and asceticism (the disciplining of the body), philosophical and theological ideas will, in our world, tend to float free and remain largely inconsequential beyond the tempest-in-teapot-blog-combox skirmishes. I hope to show why this is the case in the coming weeks.

Liturgical Preparation

Reader Dave sent the following quote from Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s book Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism.  I find it interesting that he made the connection between liturgical strangeness and preparation.  This is because, as anyone in formation in our monastery will tell you, I harp on the theme of preparation as integral to the spiritual and liturgical life. Schmemann:

We must realize first of all that preparation is a constant and essential aspect of the Church’s worship as a whole.  It is impossible to enter into the spirit of the liturgy, to understand its meaning and truly to participate in it without first understanding that it is built primarily on the double rhythm of preparation and fulfillment, and that this rhythm is essential to the Church’s liturgy because it reveals and indeed fulfills the double nature and function of the Church herself.

Fr. Schmemann

Fr. Schmemann


On the one hand the Church herself is preparation: she “prepares” us for life eternal.  Thus her function is to transform our whole life into preparation.  By her preaching, doctrine and prayer she constantly reveals to us that the ultimate “value” which gives meaning and direction to our lives is at the “end,” is “to come,” is to be hoped for, expected, anticipated.  And without this basic dimension of “preparation” there simply is no Christianity and no Church.  Thus the liturgy of the Church is always and primarily a preparation: it always points and tends beyond itself, beyond the present, and its function is to make us enter into that preparation and thus transform our life by referring it to its fulfillment in the Kingdom of God.

Yet, on the other hand, the Church is also and essentially fulfillment.  The events which gave her birth and which constitute the very source of her faith and life have taken place.  Christ has come.  In Him man was deified and has ascended to heaven.  The Holy Spirit has come and His coming has inaugurated the Kingdom of God.  Grace has been given and the Church truly is “heaven on earth,” for in her we have access to Christ’s table in His Kingdom.  We have received the Holy Spirit and can partake, here and now, of the new life and be in communion with God.

One of the things we insist on when men enter our monastery is that they do lectio divina on the Propers of the Liturgy.  Why?  Because this becomes their personal (and our communal) preparation for the Divine Liturgy.  Without this kind of intensive, and quite frankly often mundane, preparation, many aspects of the liturgy will simply go over our heads. This is not because the liturgy is too difficult, intellectual, or aesthetically elitist. It is because the liturgy comes to us from the future, from the end of time, from heaven, and we begin this encounter as persons in time and in the world. The liturgy is our training to be in the world but not of it, in time but eschatological, citizens of heaven still on pilgrimage.We will better realize the fulfillment of time and the cosmos to the extent that we prepare for the work of the liturgy. All of us are invited to do this, at whatever level is appropriate to our place in the Church, and we all benefit each other to the degree that we become new persons, that we “partake, here and now, of the new life.”

The Rosary and the Liturgy

In 2001, the Congregation for Divine Worship put out an important document, the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy. Paragraph 5 of this important document is worth quoting at length:

The correct relationship between these two expressions of faith must be based on certain firm principles, the first of which recognises that the Liturgy is the centre of the Church’s life and cannot be substituted by, or placed on a par with, any other form of religious expression. Moreover, it is important to reaffirm that popular religiosity, even if not always evident, naturally culminates in the celebration of the Liturgy towards which it should ideally be oriented.

I have made brief mention, at a few points in my ongoing catechesis on the liturgy, of the connection of the rosary with the liturgy. In my previous post, I indicated that the rosary is not, strictly speaking, part of the liturgy. It is a popular devotion. In my estimation, it is the most important popular devotion in Catholicism at present and merits this place by its unique structure. This structure is deeply imbued with liturgical connections.

Let’s begin with the traditional form of fifteen mysteries, over each of which are recited ten Hail Mary‘s. This makes 150 Aves, if one prays the entire cycle of the rosary. This number 150 is also the number of Psalms, and the custom of praying the Hail Mary 150 times derives from the monastic liturgy. Saint Benedict urged his monks to pray all 150 Psalms in a week, noting that the Desert Fathers often strenuously recited all 150 each day. The monastic reformers of the Cistercian order put a greater emphasis on manual labor than had the increasingly wealthy Benedictines of the twelfth century. This had its curative effects, but it also made full attendance at the Divine Office almost impossible. In this circumstance arose the institution of lay brothers, as distinguished from the choir monks. Both groups were monks, but the choir monks were the only ones bound by the full recitation of the Office. The lay brothers did the greater part of the manual work, and in place of the duty of Psalmody, were often permitted to recite a Hail Mary in place of each Psalm (this they could do without recourse to the use of written Psalters; lay brothers did not usually receive the same education as choir monks, and so could be illiterate).

This custom eventually passed, by a mysterious route, further outside the monastery, among confraternities of popular prayer, such as arose in great numbers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Somewhere around the year 1500, the fifteen Mysteries were added to this basic structure (various precursors had been around since much earlier, but it was in the early sixteenth century that the Mysteries were stabilized). Note that the Mysteries are a mixture of events in the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary. In this, the pious ‘realism’ of the popular movements finds expression. There is a certain drift from the celebration of a more ‘mystical’ Christ, enthroned in heaven, present in the hearts of the faithful, to a more ‘historical’ reading of Christ’s life. We can see this when we compare the list of Mysteries to a list of of the old “Double First Class” Feast Days. I will list the feasts (that were current in the 1564 Roman calendar), along with select Double Second Class Feasts, and hope that you remember what the fifteen mysteries are…

Annunciation
Visitation
Nativity
Purification/Presentation

Epiphany (inc. Baptism of the Lord & Wedding at Cana)
Transfiguration

The liturgical celebration of Epiphany traditional refers not exclusively to the visit of the Magi, but also the Baptism and the Wedding at Cana.

The liturgical celebration of Epiphany traditional refers not exclusively to the visit of the Magi, but also the Baptism and the Wedding at Cana.

Corpus Christi

[Holy Thursday]
[Good Friday]
[Holy Saturday]

Resurrection
Ascension
Pentecost
Assumption
Holy Trinity

Birth of John the Baptist
Ss. Peter and Paul
St. Michael the Archangel
All Saints

(Bold celebrations do not have a corresponding Mystery; I have grouped these according to the now-four groups of Mysteries, the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, and Glorious; the Sorrowful present certain interesting problems, which is why I did not put the Triduum in bold, nor did I leave this section blank.)

There is a lot to ponder here. A few notes to begin with, and then I will return over the coming week or so to some other observations.

Much as I love Saint Dominic, and much as I am fond of the Dominicans' love of the rosary, our great saint 'received' the rosary more in spirit than in historical reality.

Much as I love Saint Dominic, and much as I am fond of the Dominicans’ love of the rosary, our great saint ‘received’ the rosary more in spirit than in historical reality.

First of all, had St. Dominic in fact invented the rosary, according to the traditional legend, we might expect the Mysteries to match the liturgy even better than it does. That said, the correspondences are pretty good, especially after St. John Paul II’s addition of the Luminous Mysteries, four of which correspond to important liturgical celebrations, two of which (Epiphany and the Transfiguration) have gotten somewhat short shrift in the Western Church of the past millennium.

The focus on the life of Christ and an historicization of His life accounts for the Sorrowful Mysteries not quite corresponding to anything specific in the liturgy, aside from the correspondence of Good Friday and the Crucifixion. That said, it is worth noting–and this will be the subject of the future posts of some sort–that the longish meditation on Christ’s suffering really does have an important correlate in the liturgy of Triduum, especially the celebration of Tenebrae. 

Finally, for today, it is of interest that the life of Christ in the rosary does not branch out beyond Pentecost into the life of Christ in the Church. That the feast days of saints an angels find no analogy in the rosary might be considered a real deficiency in the connection of the rosary to the Eucharist. Whereas the meditation on the Mysteries of the rosary clearly functions to prepare us for a more full and active participation in the liturgy of the Church, it does not prepare us all that well for the celebration of saints’ feast days, days in which the we celebrate Christ’s ongoing presence in the healing and pedagogic examples of the saints. Nearly all of the omitted Double Second Class feasts are of saints, especially the Apostles (who are understood to be present in contemporary bishops).

The structure of the rosary is not a matter of infallible teaching, and St. John Paul has already given us a certain opening for rethinking the Mysteries. What would happen if we supplemented the present twenty Mysteries with other Mysteria, the sacred mysteries of the liturgy, that do not presently find expression in the rosary? I don’t really know, and I write that to be slightly provocative. I’d be quite interested in readers’ thoughts.

I will share with you some of my own practices regarding praying the rosary, and how I find it helpful to underline the connections with the liturgy. Much to write about here!

What is the Liturgy?

At one point in yesterday’s Oblate meeting, we discussed the difference between devotional pictures and icons. This discussion took place in a conference based on Pope Benedict XVI’s The Spirit of the Liturgy. And so it was noted that icons and devotional pictures might share themes, and composition. Pictures might even be of  icons. But icons are always liturgical. The way an icon is prepared, the fasting that an iconographer undergoes, the forty days that an icon traditional rests upon a consecrated altar, and the final blessing of the icon by an ordained priest using holy water marks this object as part of the liturgy. A reproduction of an icon, such as those that adorn our home page, are not liturgical objects in this sense, but are devotional. As such, they extend from the liturgy and should lead us back to the liturgy. Reverence for an icon is a liturgical act, pious thoughts and prayer before a devotional picture is not–though these are perfectly good, even necessary, activities when one is not able to attend the liturgy itself.

Corpus Christi Procession: the liturgy goes out into the world.

Corpus Christi Procession: the liturgy goes out into the world.

I open with this reflection to draw attention to the breadth of what we mean by the liturgy. In the previous post, I noted that I needed to say something about what the liturgy is. I’ve spent a good amount of time explaining the liturgy’s interior, spiritual reality. From this vantage point, the liturgy is the work of Christ the high priest, bringing us to the Father in the Spirit, mediating for us and by means of us, His Body, for the salvation of the whole of the cosmos.

But how does this happen, and how do we know that it is happening? The liturgy also has an exterior, incarnated reality, in that it takes place by means of certain types of persons (the baptized generally, the ordained ministers in a more specific sense), at certain times, in certain places (mainly churches, but also anywhere that the faithful gather in Christ’s name), by means of certain texts and ritual actions, and with certain instruments (bread and wine, water, oil, stone, incense, vestments, icons, crosses, candlesticks, wax, etc.).

Catholics are apt to the of the Mass when someone says, “liturgy.” And this is a good impulse, though a truncated one. The liturgy’s center is indeed the Eucharist, but to reduce the liturgy to Mass is quite problematic. The liturgy includes all of the sacraments. It also includes the whole Divine Office. This is not an obligatory part of the liturgy for the laity. However, since it is the liturgy, the Divine Office possesses an efficacy for uniting us in spirit to God that non-liturgical prayer does not have (I plan to write about how to pray the rosary in a ‘liturgical’ manner, and why this is the deeper spirit of this beautiful–almost indispensable–devotional prayer).

But…I’m still not finished listing the events that make up the liturgy. Blessings pronounced by a priest are part of the liturgy, and blessed objects retain a connection to the liturgy. So what I said above about icons falls in here. So do meals (!). Exorcisms, processions, religious professions, oblations and promises are all part of the liturgy. The marriage act itself is liturgical, since it is intrinsic to the confection of the sacrament of matrimony (this is also why same-sex marriage, whatever merits there might be to bestowing recognition on a stable partnership of love, cannot be considered Christian marriage).

The anointing of the sick, another action of Christ the mediator.

The anointing of the sick, another action of Christ the mediator.

So the liturgy is actually quite extensive. In the West, we have had a tendency to shorten and narrow what we mean by the liturgy, as I mentioned above. This has some problematic effects. The good news, however, is that recovering the richness of the liturgy can be a life-altering project, a real point of foundational renewal for the Church, and the basis any genuine ecumenical effort. As I mentioned in the last post, the corporal works of mercy are not therefore dispensable. They will be efficacious, I would suggest, to the extent that those ministering in this way are clearly grounded in the liturgy. The acts of healing and love, the active life, will be seen to be the work of Christ Himself and not simply that of human do-gooders. In fact, we can throw ourselves into all kinds of activities, without fear of falling into Pelagianism, if our source of energy and strength is Christ Himself, uniting us to Him and to each other in the liturgy, He “Who has made the two one.”

From this standpoint again, we have a way of understanding the Church’s traditional teaching on the centrality of the consecrated life, especially the contemplative life. Contemplatives have the duty to live the liturgical life to the fullest, to invite others to the vision of the liturgy, and to give witness to Christ’s triumph and mission of reconciliation. “A monk is he who directs his gaze towards God alone, and who, being at peace with God, becomes a source of peace,” said St. Theodore the Studite. Christ made peace by the blood of His Cross [Colossians 1: 20], that is, by the unique sacrifice which is extended and re-presented at every liturgical event. And immersion in this reality changes us into eschatological persons. 

Mass is often seen merely as an obligation, and the notion that even the laity would benefit from regular attendance at yet more of the liturgy is, in my experience, often shrugged off as an inconvenience, taking them away from more pressing concerns. From the perspective that I am outlining here, I hope that it is clear that this dismissal is skewed somewhat. Yes, Mass is obligatory for a baptized Catholic, but if we knew the gift of God that is the liturgy, we would welcome opportunities to participate more frequently, as our state in life permits. We would also learn to connect all of our prayer to the liturgical celebrations, to the vocabulary, priorities, and sentiments of the “work of God.” Then all of our prayer would be transforming us into women and men of Christ, into saints. Thus it is that the liturgy is the foundation for one of the most crucial insights of Vatican II, the universal call to holiness.

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