Book Recommendation - Peter Kreeft’s Reflections on the Scripture Readings at Mass, Year C

Food for the Soul - Reflections on the Mass Readings Cycle C by Peter Kreeft, published by Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

This is the first in order of publication (although it is Cycle C) of what will be a complete set of three commentaries by Peter Kreeft on the Scripture readings at Mass - one for each cycle, A, B, and C.

It covers all three readings for every Sunday and major Feast in the year, devoting serious thought to every reading, typically two or three pages for each commentary, and so 8-10 pages per Sunday, with personal insights as well as traditional interpretations of Scripture.

The texts bear the characteristic mark of Kreeft’s writing: precision of thought, and his Chestertonian brand of wit. There is an additional quality that comes through his writing, and although I don’t see this referred to commonly by reviewers of Kreeft’s books, I think this might be what draws so many people to his work so powerfully (and it’s not just Catholics; I know Protestants who enjoy his work as well). This is joy. I do not know Peter Kreeft personally, and I would be curious to know if this quality would be apparent if I met him, but I would say that what has always struck me about his writing at least is that it communicates, through his writing style as much as the content, that it is worth being a Christian because the Faith gives us the possibility of an authentically happy life. For all else that we can say about Christianity, this is the much-neglected truth that would draw all the lost sheep back into the fold if only we could communicate it to them. Kreeft is one that does communicate this.

I received my copy of this book in mid-December, and so, given my attraction to his joyful style, I decided to see how Kreeft dealt with the readings on Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday in Advent in which the emphasis is on rejoicing. (Gaudete, as many of you will know already, is Latin for “Rejoice”, and the first word in the Introit for the day.)

The Old Testament reading is Zephaniah, 3, 14-18, which begins,

Shout for joy O daughter of Zion! Sing joyfully O Israel! Be glad and exult in all your heart O daughter Jerusalem.

The prophet then lists seven promises. Kreeft describes each of these in turn and then concludes with the following:

The seventh promise is that “he will sing joyfully because of you.” We will be his song. Now, we will sing about him; then, he will sing about us. If we now glorify Him, he then will glorify us. The reason he has not shown us a picture of our new self, our heavenly self - the reason he has not told us what it looks like - is probably because if we saw it now, we would either not believe it - not believe that that beautiful creature is us - or else we would be strongly tempted to worship it.

Whatever it is that God has in store for us, it is always better, wiser, more loving, more joyful, more beautiful, and more worthy of song than we can imagine. The best description we have is this, we will be like Jesus.

And, as the writer on sacred art for this column, I would add, if you want to know what Jesus looks like, look at the traditional art of the Church!

Purchase the book here.

“What Were They Smoking?”: Liturgical Reform Edition

Earlier this week, Dr Peter Kwasniewski shared some examples of liturgical art from the 1970s, rightly saying that: 

You need to know what people were thinking when they destroyed the liturgy. We can make all the guesses we want, but if we don’t actually read the authors of the fifties, sixties, and seventies, we won’t be able to get into their mindset and see what makes them tick.

Of course, occasionally one comes across ideas from this period so cringe-worthy and horrifying that it becomes a genuine struggle to get into the mindset of the author. Earlier this month, on a research trip to the British Library in London, I happened to come across such an idea from the immediate post-Vatican II period. The following extract dealing with the Liturgy of the Word is one of the more extreme examples of what Dom Alcuin Reid has previously called the it-seemed-like-a-good-idea principle of liturgical reform (cf. “Sacrosanctum concilium and the Reform of the Ordo Missae”, Antiphon 10.3 [2006] 277-295, p. 291) – from which may the Lord preserve us!

It is worth noting that the book from which this extract comes contains the proceedings of the 1966 Conference on Practical Liturgy held at Spode House (Staffordshire, UK), at the time owned by the Dominicans. (The Order left Spode in 1988, and the house is now known as Hawkesyard Hall.) The conference included papers given by the influential British liturgist J.D. Crichton and the Protestant biblical scholar C.H. Dodd.

I will leave NLM readers to discuss the extract if they wish to, but I have emphasized in bold the parts I found most interesting – so, caveat lector!

Extract from Oliver Pratt, “The Word—Preparation and Response” in Paulinus Milner (ed.), The Ministry of the Word (London: Burns & Oates, 1967), pp. 98-122

[p. 117] The future

Now I want, finally, to let my imagination run ahead a few years and describe what I feel may be one possible form in which the Ministry of the Word will develop in the future. Mass has just begun in the church of an urban industrial parish on one of the first few Sundays after Pentecost.

The Celebrant says: The Jews knew that they were God’s chosen people but in this passage we see that the prophets were concerned to make clear to them that Jahveh’s plan of salvation was intended ultimately for the whole of mankind.

A laywoman comes forward and reads the Lesson: [Isaiah 49:1-6] [...]

[p. 118] The Celebrant says: The first Christians were made up of Gentiles of many different races together with Jewish converts. This mixing together led to trouble and some groups tried to set themselves up as better than others. St Paul makes clear here that all have put on Christ by their baptism and therefore all are equal before God. There can be no second-class citizens in the Christian fellowship.

Then a Pakistani layman comes forward to read the epistle: [Galatians 3:23-29] [...]

[p. 119] All of this will have only taken a minute or so apart from the actual Scripture readings themselves. In case anyone is finding it difficult to place which Sunday it is, it should be explained that the calendar has already been revised and enriched. There is a regular reading from the Old Testament added, a much wider range of Scripture is covered over a longer cycle and the texts are often grouped together in such a way that they can be made more meaningful.

The Celebrant says: This passage explains the meaning of Christian fellowship in terms of how our actions will be judged by Christ at his second coming.

A deacon comes forward and reads the gospel: [Matthew 25:31-40] [...]

[p. 120] Now another layman comes forward and draws the attention of the congregation to a display of pictures and diagrams that have been put up on the wall of a side chapel. (It is an old-fashioned church built in the 1960’s.) He takes a couple of minutes to explain what is there, that is the findings of a study made by a small group of lay people of the conditions of Afro-Asians living in the locality. A panel of professional people was asked to look at the qualifications and training of a mixed sample of Afro-Asian and European workers and to place them blindly, i.e. without knowing their race, into the jobs that they ought to have. The speaker points out that over 80% of the Afro-Asians were found to have actual jobs that were well below their proper grade according to the assessment. He goes on to give a couple of examples of personal humiliation that the work has unearthed and concludes by asking us if through doing this we are not continuing to humiliate Christ himself?

The Celebrant says: Not only must we accept these people fully into our own fellowship as equals in Christ but we must each of us decide what the Gospel means in the witness of our own personal lives. It may be anything from welcoming the promotion of an Indian fellow worker to seeing the marriage of your daughter to an African as pioneering a new multiracial society. Above all we must come to know and love the strangers of another race as persons for, as Christ himself has told us in the Gospel, anything that we can do to lessen their sufferings lessens his own.

The Mass continues with the creed and special bidding prayers that have been composed for the occasion. After Mass the people crowd around the display at the side of the [p. 121] church and the people who did the study are answering questions about it. Soon people are dotted around the church in little groups asking one another what they can do to help the Afro-Asians. This is a little different from the acts of solemn silent private devotion to which we are accustomed today but it is difficult to think that God finds it the least bit out of place in his house.

There has hardly been a homily in the form that we would know it today at all. The time taken up by the liturgy of the word has been no longer than that needed for the actual readings from Scripture plus another five or ten minutes, the time usually given over to the homily today. Not only has the job that we usually expect the homily to do been done but because of all the preparatory work put in by some of the laity, it has actually been done in a really meaningful way and indeed in such a manner as to more or less guarantee some sort of constructive response. The priest is still the custodian of the word and responsible for its preaching but to be responsible for something does not always mean doing all the job oneself. [...]

[p. 122] There is almost unlimited scope for variations upon this sort of treatment of the liturgy of the word and it seems clear that it need not be restricted only to a very occasional special event. Of course, a start would have to be made by an occasional venture. A lot would depend upon developing a real sense of engagement in the work of the Church throughout a large proportion of the people. If so, this sort of treatment of the Ministry of the Word could take place fairly frequently even if not always in quite such a spectacular manner as that described above. It is to be hoped that the forthcoming revision of the Scripture readings will be done in such a way as to provide full scope for the development of more effective approaches to the Ministry of the Word along such lines as these. Also perhaps use will be made of visual aids, like projecting a single scriptural phrase onto a screen, a phrase pregnant with meaning that the preacher returns to again and again. Perhaps religious art and drama can be brought into play.

What seems to be most important is that these new experiments should be tried out in a number of parishes as soon as possible, for the results will have a bearing upon the function of liturgy as a whole. If such results can be obtained before the Commission working on the liturgy completes the major recasting of the eucharistic worship, they may be of considerable assistance to the Commission in its work.

The cover of a contemporaneous book (1967) by Oliver and Ianthe Pratt,
demonstrating their vision of liturgical “reform” for “modern man”.

(A quick word about the author of this extract: Dr Oliver Pratt was involved in the Newman Association in the UK (from 1963-65 he was its President), and at the time was Chairman of its Theological Studies Committee and Vice-Chairman of its Liturgy Committee. Shortly after the publication of this paper, he and his wife, Ianthe, would become prominent in the UK for their vocal dissent from Humanae Vitae. They were also heavily involved in the Catholic Renewal Movement (known as Catholics for a Changing Church since 1993 to avoid confusion with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal), and Ianthe Pratt would later be a founding member of the dissident group Catholic Women’s Ordination.)

The Silence of the Canon Speaks More Loudly Than Words

Dum medium silentium tenerent omnia, et nox in suo cursu medium iter haberet, omnipotens Sermo tuus, Domine, de caelis a regalibus sedibus venit. “While all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thine almighty Word, O Lord, leapt down from heaven from Thy royal throne.” (Introit, Sunday within the Octave of Christmas, MR 1962)

In last week’s article I spoke of why it makes more sense to follow the ancient custom of dividing the Mass into the “Mass of Catechumens” and the “Mass of the Faithful” instead of the modern nomenclature “Liturgy of the Word” and “Liturgy of the Eucharist.” This week I wish to reflect on the peculiar beauty of the very ancient custom of the silent canon[1] and how it confirms the intuition that the Word comes to us in the liturgy in a personal mode that transcends the notional presence of the Word obtained by reading individual words from a book. The Introit quoted above strikingly brings together both of these points: the coming of the Word Himself in the midst of total silence.

As I staunchly maintained in my lectio divina series last Lent,[2] the Lord unquestionably speaks to us in and through Sacred Scripture, and we must constantly go to this source to hear Him; but He comes to us more intimately still in Holy Communion. The traditional practice of the priest praying the Canon silently emphasizes that Christ does not come to us in words, but in the one unique Word which HE IS, and which—immanent, transcendent, and infinite as it is—no human tongue can ever express. Once we have absorbed this fact in our life of prayer, the words of Sacred Scripture can, paradoxically, penetrate our hearts more effectively and have a more-than-Protestant effect on our minds.

What I mean by a “Protestant effect” is the way that Protestants can listen to or look at Scripture again and again—e.g., John 6 or Matthew 16 or 1 Corinthians on the Eucharist—and yet their minds remain closed to its obvious Catholic significance. They are like the disciples on the way to Emmaus, who are thoroughly steeped in Scripture but have failed to grasp the central point, viz., the victory of the Messiah over sin and death. Jesus in person has to explain to them what they already “know” but have never internalized—and Jesus comes to us in person in the Real Presence and is internalized in the most radical way when we are permitted a share in His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

When the “Liturgy of the Word” is vouchsafed a distinct existence as one of the two parts of the Mass, and particularly when this distinctiveness is enhanced by a gargantuan lectionary with often lengthy readings frequently detached from the other prayers and antiphons of the Mass, there arises the impression of a text that is free-floating and self-justifying, the reading and preaching of which can become the pastorally central arena, throwing the sacramental essence of the Mass into shadow. How often have we experienced the Liturgy of the Word ballooning to an overwhelming size, losing all proportion with the pulsing heart of the liturgy, the offering of the sacrifice and the ensuing communion? In many Masses I’ve attended over the years, the time used by the opening greeting, the readings, and the homily was some 45 minutes, while somehow everything from the presentation of the gifts onwards was crammed into 15 minutes. In the rush to be done (now that the gregarious and intellectually engaging business of readings and preaching is over), either Eucharistic Prayer II or III is chosen—prayers that are utterly dwarfed by the preceding textual cornucopia, seeming like a pious afterthought. The anaphora and its still point, the consecration, shrink and lose their centrality.

How different is the motion of the traditional liturgy! It is a gradual escalation leading logically, one could even say ecstatically, to the Offertory, the Preface, the Sanctus, the Canon, the prayers after the Canon, and the Communion. Everything prior to this—the prayers at the foot of the altar, the confession of sin, the “Aufer a nobis,” the collects, epistle and Gospel, the Credo—is, and is experienced as, preparatory to something far greater, driving forward with eager longing to reach the fulfillment, the realization, of the word of God in the one Word which is God. The Creed stands as a textual centerpoint, which indeed it ought to be, since it is a divinely-authorized summary of the whole of revelation.

Accordingly, it makes sense that everything up to and especially the Creed should be sung or spoken out loud, whereas once we reach the Offertory and the Canon, a decisive shift is made to silence, to the loving contemplation of the voiceless and eternal source of meaning behind the words of Scripture and the Creed. Yet with wonderful clarity, the Holy Spirit led the Church to introduce the elevation of the Host and Chalice, which wordlessly captures all that words could never say about the offering of Christ on the cross out of love for sinners. This host is elevated for us, for us men and for our salvation, for us to see and worship: “When the Son of man is lifted up, He will draw all things to Himself…” In the midst of the silence of the Canon, suddenly the bells are rung and the priest elevates the High Priest into the sight of all, the Eucharistic God-Man suspended between man and God, the victim whose death reconciles man and God (the significance of a crucifix over the center of the altar takes on its meaning here: the symbol of the death of Christ is “confronted” with its living Reality, the visible image is mystically confronted by its hidden Exemplar). This elevation speaks with a fullness that the silence of the Canon accentuates in the most dramatic manner possible.

This profound silence at the very center of the Mass is just one among a thousand reasons why Christians hungry for the meat and drink of God find the appetite of their souls at once satisfied and provoked by the traditional Latin Mass. It has a word to speak to each of us in its magnificently arranged antiphons, lessons, and prayers, redolent of the weight of ages but fresh in the vigor of their human realism and supernatural savor; more than that, it has the Word without a word to overcome us and comfort us. It touches and stirs obscure depths in us where the Gospel has yet to be preached, transforming us with a gentle and terrible earnestness. Thanks be to God that this silence is increasingly speaking to more and more souls—souls fed up with the stream of verbiage and noise so characteristic of modernity and, sadly, of many liturgies that echo it.


NOTES

[1] See my earlier article "The Silent Canon: Is Worship Supposed to be Aweful?" for a discussion of how far back this practice really goes—one more sign that the liturgical reformers of the 1960s were not really in the business of restoring ancient practice but more intent on introducing novelty.

[2] See my article "Lectio Divina: Liturgical Proclamation and Personal Reading" as well as the links to other parts of the series listed there.

Why “Mass of Catechumens” Makes Better Sense Than “Liturgy of the Word”

Master of Portillo, Mass of St Gregory

It is well known that the Novus Ordo Missae divides the Mass into four parts: the Introductory Rites; the Liturgy of the Word; the Liturgy of the Eucharist; and the Concluding Rite. It is perhaps less known among Catholics today that this is a modern schematic and that the much more ancient distinction—still found in the traditional Latin Mass—is between the Mass of the Catechumens and the Mass of the Faithful. As we bask in the effulgence of the Incarnate Word, it would be well to reflect on why this ancient way of speaking is superior to the modern way.

The central and definitive “word” is Jesus Christ, the Logos or Verbum of the Father, made flesh for us men and for our salvation. It follows that the liturgy of the Word par excellence is the Holy Eucharist itself. To go further, the liturgy of the Word, in the fullest sense, must be the Eucharistic sacrifice, because in this sacrifice the Word which is “spoken” by the Father is offered back to Him, thanks to His human nature, in a perfect self-offering—and this oblation of Christ on the cross is the sole reason we ourselves can receive, can be made “hearers of,” the word of God in nature and in divine revelation. If, instead, one appropriates “word” to the Bible, then this portion of public worship, in terms of the phenomenology of the Mass, risks becoming an equal to the Eucharist, if not its superior.

The verbum Domini or Word of the Lord is the Logos, Jesus Christ Himself. Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis. It also refers to the “word” (in the idiomatic sense of that which summarizes: “in a word…”) of consecration, which is the mystery of faith, mysterium fidei. Christ, above all, is this mysterium fidei; all other sacred mysteries are such because of their being rooted in Him or flowing from Him. The Church is a mysterium because she is united to Christ, the great mystery, magnum mysterium. Through the consecration, we are taken from the promise of revelation (the Mass of Catechumens) to the Real Presence (the Mass of the Faithful)—a transition from verbum (in the ordinary sense of something spoken) to res (in the sense of the thing signified by word).

The problem, then, with the phrase “Liturgy of the Word” is that the Word, as such, is fully and really present only in the Liturgy of the Eucharist, when the Word Himself is personally present in His divinity and glorified humanity. The sign of the difference is that, while we offer incense to the Gospel in honor of Him whose Gospel it is, it would be sinful for someone to bow down and adore the lectionary, placing his faith and trust in it, and loving it above all things, whereas it is precisely this adoration or latreia that must be given to most holy Eucharist; indeed, as Saint Augustine says (and Benedict XVI often quotes him to this effect), we would be guilty of sinning were we not to adore It.

A Protestant confusion is thus introduced and subtly fostered. According to the Catholic faith, “God’s Word” is chiefly and primarily in the Holy Eucharist because it is Jesus Christ, and only secondarily in the Sacred Scriptures that contain His teaching and bear witness to Him. Like all mere signs, Scripture will pass away in heaven, as the Book of Revelation teaches: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Rev 21:22-23). Like all mere signs, it is only for the wayfarer. In Protestant churches, one often sees the Bible sitting up on the main altar, where the tabernacle ought to be, as though at the center of Christianity were a book, something written in lifeless letters on lifeless paper; such an architectural arrangement expresses the very essence of the Protestant heresy, where words replace the Word in His living and life-giving flesh and blood. The Novus Ordo structure follows, in a sense, this verbalistic architectural schema, which makes it more understandable that in Catholic churches all over the world the tabernacle was removed from the center and placed off to the side, usually not in a place of great honor.

No one could have appreciated more than the Jewish Christians of the early Church how vast and profound a change was inaugurated by Christ in the New Covenant. It might seem logical, then, that they should discard the old forms of worship (the old wineskins, as it were) in favor of new ones. But nothing of the sort happened; the Christian worship grew organically out of the pre-existent Jewish worship. When the Christians began to worship exclusively in their own communities, no longer visiting the synagogue for the service of readings, they nevertheless kept and fostered the Jewish traditions in their own Eucharistic worship. The very fact that the Christians saw in the Holy Eucharist the fulfillment of what the Jews read about in their Scriptures indicates that the liturgical connection was understood to be much deeper than merely two back-to-back segments of ritual, one pertaining to “books” and the other to “sacrament” or “mysteries.” From a Patristic perspective, the division of “Mass of the Catechumens” and “Mass of the Faithful” renders the relationship far more accurately: the catechumens are those who, whether Jew or Gentile, remain on the outside of the fold but are approaching entrance to it, whereas the faithful are those who have embraced Jesus Christ as their Lord in the mysteries of initiation and can now, entering into the Holy of Holies, reap the fruits foretold in the Scriptures that are read aloud to everyone (including the catechumens).

The Temple of Solomon

The tradition teaches us continuity, not rupture and discontinuity, even in the midst of the most radical religious shift the world has ever seen within one religious tradition: from the Mosaic law to the grace of Christ, from the Torah to the Cross, from the many sacrifices of the Old Covenant to the one all-holy and all-sufficient sacrifice of the New Covenant. It was a transition not from letter to spirit, but from a cosmic catechumenate to an eternal fidelity, from one Mass to another Mass—or rather, a seamless transition from the outer chamber of expectant preparation to the inner chamber of loving communion.

How strange it is that, in so many respects, the attitude and decisions of those who replaced the organically developed Roman liturgy with a committee-generated fabrication treated the preceding form of Catholic worship as more foreign than the early Christians had treated the worship of the Israelites! Perhaps it is no more strange than the general loss of a sense of obligation or bond to God’s revelation of Himself in the past. We would rather have our own creation from our own time period than something handed down to us by our ancestors. Needless to say, this mentality is profoundly unscriptural, untraditional, unecclesiastical. One may wonder if it is not ineluctably bound up with the Hegelian (or Teilhardian) model of inexorable historical progress through the constant overcoming of the given, as we all march towards Absolute Spirit. But this way madness lies.

The Incarnation is the pivotal point, not the present moment; and the Christ who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, who has been given to us in the apostolic rites of the Church, is the measure of our doctrine and practice—not our own sociological models or theoretical constructs.