“New Things and Old…”

The start of a new calendar year seems a good time to meditate on a famous verse from the Gospel of Matthew: “Therefore every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like a man, the head of a house, who brings forth from his treasure things new and old” (Mt 13:52).

In his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, St. Thomas Aquinas unfolds the meaning of nova et vetera with the help of the Fathers:

Who brings forth from his treasure things new and old, the duties of the new law. For the New Law adds new senses over the Old, and Christ explains this ... he is like any other head of a household, who brings forth the divine knowledge given to him, new and old. Not so the Manichees, because they did not bring forth the old. ... According to Augustine, it is explained in this way. … [Y]ou should understand, so that you may know how to explain those things which are written in the Old Law through the New. Hence those things said in the Old are figures of the New Testament. … Or, according to Gregory, the old things refer to all those things which are attributed to sin, and the new to those things which are attributed to the grace of Christ. Hence the new things refer to the reward of eternal life, while the old things refer to the punishment of Hell. Therefore, that man brings forth things new and old who considers not only the reward, but also the punishment of hell.

St. Benedict alludes to Mt 13:52 in chapter 64 of his Rule, one of many chapters that address the abbot’s role in the community:

Let him know that his duty is rather to profit his brethren than to preside over them. He must therefore be learned in the divine law, that he may have a treasure of knowledge from which to bring forth new things and old.

Apropos this passage, Dom Paul Delatte in his great commentary on the Rule observes:

From a treasure already acquired and increased every day by study and prayer, the Abbot must draw, like a good householder, “new things and old” (Mt 13:52, Sg 7:13): doctrine which does not change and application which changes from day to day, the eternal rules and the counsels appropriate to each individual nature. (449)

These examples, to which more could easily be added, show that the typical patristic and scholastic reading of the passage “new things and old” is not as if it were a way of saying “novelties and traditions,” but rather, new and old insights into what God has already taught us, the calling to mind of what belongs to the old covenant and the new covenant, the oldness of sin and its punishment, the newness of grace and its reward. In short, nova et vetera sums up divine revelation. Those scribes are praised who can see anew into the truth Our Lord has taught us as well as bring forward that which has already been seen by others.

All this is background to a rather startling passage in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (2011 ed., n. 15):

In this manner the Church, while remaining faithful to her office as teacher of truth, safeguarding “things old,” that is, the deposit of tradition, fulfills at the same time the duty of examining and prudently adopting “things new” (cf. Mt 13:52).
          For part of the new Missal orders the prayers of the Church in a way more open to the needs of our times. Of this kind are above all the Ritual Masses and Masses for Various Needs, in which tradition and new elements are appropriately brought together. Thus, while a great number of expressions, drawn from the Church’s most ancient tradition and familiar through the many editions of the Roman Missal, have remained unchanged, numerous others have been accommodated to the needs and conditions proper to our own age, and still others, such as the prayers for the Church, for the laity, for the sanctification of human labor, for the community of all nations, and certain needs proper to our era, have been newly composed, drawing on the thoughts and often the very phrasing of the recent documents of the Council.
          On account, moreover, of the same attitude toward the new state of the world as it now is, it seemed to cause no harm at all to so revered a treasure if some phrases were changed so that the language would be in accord with that of modern theology and would truly reflect the current state of the Church’s discipline. Hence, several expressions regarding the evaluation and use of earthly goods have been changed, as have several which alluded to a certain form of outward penance which was proper to other periods of the Church’s past.

These young modern people don't seem to have any problem with Tradition...

“Some phrases were changed so that the language would be in accord with that of modern theology…” If you would like to have a clearer sense of just how “some phrases were changed,” check out Matthew Hazell’s “The Postcommunion Prayers of the Missale Romanum (1970/2002): Translations and Sources” or Lauren Pristas’s tour de force The Collects of the Roman Missals. One will see the plain evidence of a wholesale rethinking, reworking, and rewriting that leaves little of the Tradition untouched. Modernity is the controlling and defining spirit, Tradition the raw material subjected to its scientific scrutiny, superior judgment, and, finally, ruthless surgery.

There you have it in a nutshell—discontinuity and rupture, cloaked under the guise of modest and reasonable reform. This is not, I submit, the meaning of Matthew 13:52 as understood by any Church Father or Doctor, nor even a legitimate extension or accommodation of the text. It makes “old things” equivalent to “the traditional doctrine and practice handed down from our forefathers” and “new things” equivalent to “new stuff we experts make up in response to our understanding of modern man.” What would any orthodox Christian, Eastern or Western, think about the (novel) idea of mixing new and old, understood in this manner?

As we begin the Year of Our Lord 2015, we might reflect once more on the nova et vetera that we are called upon to ponder, teach, and guard as proponents of the New Liturgical Movement. In the name of our blog, “new” does not mean novelty and innovation, but a renewed interior spirit of gratefully receiving and understanding the Catholic Tradition that enables us to participate fruitfully in the sacred mysteries of Our Lord.

Classics of the Liturgical Movement: Dom Paul Delatte, OSB

It seems that this series is, at least for now, very much an introduction to monastic authors. That is hardly surprising, given the centrality of the sacred liturgy in the life of a disciple of St. Benedict or any monk whose heritage is Benedictine. Today’s author, Dom Paul Delatte, O.S.B. (1848-1937; abbot of Solesmes 1890-1921), will surely be known to many readers because of his famous Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, which many consider the best line-by-line spiritual commentary on that monastic masterpiece. Its pages are rife with profound insights into the properly and inherently liturgical Christian life that is ours in virtue of our baptism into the priesthood of Jesus Christ and how we can realize this lofty calling. The book resonates with all the great principles for which Dom Guéranger fought and to which the original traditionally-oriented members of the Liturgical Movement gave their energies in the early twentieth century. These are the very same principles we embrace today and wish to implement to the fullest.

*          *          *

On the "liturgical character" of creation, how it reflects the Blessed Trinity, and why formal public worship is the most exalted glorification of God:

Creation as a whole possesses in a true and special way a liturgical character. It resembles the divine life itself: for the Holy Trinity is a temple wherein, by His eternal generation, the Word is the perfect praise of the Father, “the brightness of his glory and the figure of his substance”; where the communion of Father and Son is sealed in the kiss of peace and in the personal joy which is their common Spirit. Glory has been defined as clara notitia cum laude, clear knowledge conjoined with praise; by the twofold procession of which we have just spoken God finds in Himself His essential glory. It is enough for Him; and the glory which He must receive from His works is only necessary on the creature’s side; for God it remains accidental and exterior. Yet He may not renounce it: “I will not give my glory to another.” (131)
          Furthermore, we should notice that this accidental glory of God is only complete on condition that it is at once objective, formal, and expressed. Objective glory is the real manifestation of the perfections of God; all being, all life, all created beauty, whether natural or supernatural, is ontologically the praise of God. Formal glory is paid only by rational creatures, who alone are capable of appreciating objective glory and of tracing it to its source; and only in this act do we get religion and liturgy. Without saying anything in this place about the religion of the angels, we may at least remark the truly sacerdotal position of man in the midst of the lower creation. The Apostle says in his Epistle to the Hebrews: “Every high-priest taken from among men is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God, that he may offer up gifts and sacrifices” (5:1). Man himself is taken out of creation, raised above it, and made its priest, so that he may offer to God, in his own name and in the name of the whole world, an intelligent homage. By his very nature an abridgement of the universe—a “microcosm,” as the ancients put it—his function is to collect the manifold voices of creation, as if all found their echo in his heart, as if he were the world’s consciousness; and his mission is to give life to all with his thought and love, and to make offering of all, whether in his use of the world or in explicit praise. The religious system of the world is completed and made perfect only in him; he is the link between the world and God; and when this link is broken, then the whole creation is affected and falls: “cursed is the earth in thy work” (Gen 3:17). (131-32)

Dom Delatte's discussion of what religion essentially implies is reminiscent of both Aquinas and Newman, and brings into sharp relief the dual note of submission and determinateness that are foreign to much of the modern world's conception of Christian worship:

It [a religious act] always implies an intellectual appreciation of divine excellence, a humble self-abasement, the will to confess submission, and finally an actual recognition of the divine sovereignty, whether by way of an expressive act and confirmation of some sort, merely internal in character, or by an act which is at once internal and openly manifested. It is this last act which properly speaking makes the act of religion and worship, in which the glorification of God is consummated. However, a liturgy is something more than this; it is the sum of acts, words, chants, and ceremonies, by means of which we manifest our interior religion; it is a collective and social prayer, the forms of which have a character that is regular, definite, and determined. (132)

Most magnificently, Dom Delatte unfolds before us a mystical vision of the unity of liturgy, Church, and the Word Incarnate, reminiscent of the best of patristic thought:

[A]ll particular liturgies center round, are merged in, and draw their strength from, the collective liturgy of that great living organism the Church, which is the perfect man and the fulness of Christ. The whole life of the Church expresses and unfolds itself in its liturgy; all the relations of creatures with God here find their principle and their consummation; by the very acts that in the individual as in the whole mass realize union with God, the liturgy pays God “all honour and glory.” In it the Holy Spirit has achieved the concentration, eternalization, and diffusion throughout the whole Body of Christ of the unchangeable fulness of the act of redemption, all the spiritual riches of the Church in the past, in the present, and in eternity. And as the bloody sacrifice, and the entry of our High Priest into the sanctuary of heaven, mark the culmination of His work, so the liturgy has its center in the Mass, the “Eucharist.” The Divine Office and the Hours are but the splendid accompaniment, the preparation for or radiance from the Eucharist. It may be said that the two economies, the natural and the supernatural, meet in this synthetic act, this “Action” par excellence. So our Holy Father [St. Benedict] and other ancient writers are well inspired when they call the liturgy in its totality the Opus Dei (Work of God): the work which has God and God alone for its direct object, the work in which God is solely interested, of which He is the principal agent, but which He has willed should be accomplished by human hands and human lips. (133)

We also find valuable insights into the Benedictine monastic ideal and its permanent relevance in the life of the Church. There is a quiet and strong confidence in the way he characterizes the stable calling of the monk in the body of the faithful:

The proper and distinctive work of the Benedictine, his lot and his mission, is the liturgy. He makes his profession so as to be in the Church—which is an association for the praise of God—one who glorifies God according to forms instituted by her who knows how God should be honoured and possesses the words of eternal life. He is wholly a man of prayer, and the diverse forms of his activity take spontaneously a religious colour, a quality of adoration and praise. . . . The holy liturgy is for us, at one and the same time, a means of sanctification and an end. But it is especially an end. Our contemplation nourishes itself therein without cessation, and so to speak finds in the liturgy its adequate object and proper term. (134-35)
          [W]e believe in the apostolic and social value of our prayer, and we believe that by it we reach directly not only God and ourselves, but our neighbours also. Even without speaking of its secret influence on the providential course of events, is not the spectacle of the Office worthily celebrated a very effective sort of preaching? Since the days of the primitive Church (Acts 2:42-47) the Catholic liturgy has been a principle of unity for the people of God, and social charity has been created by it. (137)
          [W]e are content to be makers of nothing that is visible or tangible, and to have no other usefulness than that of adoring God. We are glad and content to attain by the Work of God nothing but the essential end of all things, the end of the whole rational creation, the very end of the Church. So to act is to take here and now the attitude of eternity, and to rehearse for heaven; for, according to St. John, the work of those who are admitted into the heavenly Jerusalm is contemplation and a royal service. (137)

In reading Delatte one is often taken aback by the sharp contrast between his mentality, refined, precise, and lofty, and the sloppy thinking that overtook the later liturgists. For example, the clear distinction he is able to draw between private and public, informal and formal, is glaringly absent from the minds of Catholics today:

Now, faith tells us that God is everywhere present and that His gaze, though He be not seen, illumines all human activity; it tell us too that in every place and at every moment we are able, and sweet duty binds us, to live before Him and do Him homage. This homage, however, is private, not official, and has its source in personal love; it is quite free in its expression, and though it ever remains profoundly respectful, yet is it without forms and ceremonial. But the sacred liturgy pays God an official worship; and if God is not more present at the Divine Office than at private prayer, we are nevertheless especially bound to awaken and exercise our faith when we take part in this official audience, wherein all details are foreseen and all gestures regulated by the etiquette of God. God’s audience-chamber is always open, but the Divine Office is a solemn levee. There God is enwrapped in more compelling majesty; we appear before Him in the name of the whole Church; we identify ourselves with the one, eternal High Priest, Our Lord Jesus Christ; we perform the work of works. (186)

It is fitting to conclude these excerpts with Dom Delatte's gentle mockery of the worship of novelty and the fad of progress:

Those who doubt and deny win immediate fame. And the deference refused to tradition, to antiquity, to authority, is given at once and wholly, with infinite thoughtlessness, to the notions of some writer or other, to one of those prophets of the hour who trumpet the vague phrases: progress, evolution, broad-mindedness, and dogmatic awakening. This is intellectual foolery. And it seems to me that good sense and dignity require from us not only an attitude of reserve, but above all a spirit of tranquil resistance and conservatism. Conservation is the very instinct of life, a disposition essential for existence. We shall be truly progressive if we hold fast to this spirit, for there is no progress for a living organism which does not preserve continuity with its past. (310)

Thanks be to God that in the Church today there are still many monks striving to live, as did Dom Paul Delatte, according to the spirit and letter of the wise Rule of St. Benedict, which gives absolute primacy to the worship of God, the greatest and best.

Stiftskirche Schlägl

(Other installments in this ongoing series "Classics of the Liturgical Movement":
          Introduction;
          Canon Simon's Commentary on the Rule;
          Dom Chautard's Soul of the Apostolate)

In Honor of St. Benedict, St. Thomas, and Benedict XVI

A meditation in honor of Saint Benedict, born into eternal life on March 21, 543 (or 547).

For the traditional feastday of the Patriarch of Western Monasticism and the Patron of Europe, it seems appropriate to recall these beautiful words from the Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict written by a great disciple of his, the Right Rev. Dom Paul Delatte, O.S.B., Abbot of Solesmes from 1890-1921.

St. Benedict of Nursia was above all else a man of tradition. He was not the enthusiastic creator of an entirely new form of the religious life: neither nature nor grace disposed him to such a course. As may be seen from the last chapter of his Rule, he cared nothing for a reputation of originality, or for the glory of being a pioneer. He did not write till late, till he was on the threshold of eternity, after study and perhaps after experience of the principal monastic codes. Nearly every sentence reveals almost a fixed determination to base his ideas on those of the ancients, or at least to use their language and appropriate their terms. But even though the Rule were nothing but an intelligent compilation, even though it were merely put together with the study and spiritual insight of St. Benedict, with the spirit of orderliness, moderation, and lucidity of this Roman of old patrician stock, it would not for all that be a commonplace work: in actual fact, it stands as the complete and finished expression of the monastic ideal. Who can measure the extraordinary influence that these few pages have exercised, during fourteen centuries, over the general development of the Western world? Yet St. Benedict thought only of God and of souls desirous to go to God; in the tranquil simplicity of his faith he purposed only to establish a school of the Lord’s service: Dominici schola servitii. But, just because of this singleminded pursuit of the one thing necessary, God has blessed the Rule with singular fruitfulness, and St. Benedict has taken his place in the line of the great patriarchs.

Dom Delatte’s splendid characterization of the “unoriginal originality” of Benedict reminds me strongly of St. Thomas Aquinas, himself a Benedictine oblate as a child and, later, a Dominian friar of whom quite the same thing could be said: he was determined to collect and harmonize the teachings of the ancients and bring them to bear on every problem, so that his solutions often seem like the work of an elegant host who manages, at the table, to get all the guests talking to one another and to reach a consensus that keeps the best of each while gracefully ignoring the rest. Aquinas, in that sense, “was above all else a man of tradition … who thought only of God and of souls desirous to go to God.” To paraphrase Delatte, “Who can measure the extraordinary influence that the works of Thomas, particularly his Summa, have exercised, during seven and a half centuries, over the general development of the Western world?”

But I am also reminded here of our beloved Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who chose the name Benedict for so many of the reasons for which Dom Delatte praises the patriarch. How often did we thank the good Lord for sending us a pope who “was above all else a man of tradition”? How could we fail to see that he sought neither originality nor glory, but pursued a steady course of reviving the wisdom and language of the ancients, bring to his difficult task the “orderliness, moderation, and lucidity” of the best kind of German scholar? It is as if he had been handed the keys to a mansion in which many rooms were closed off and falling apart, one in which the domestic staff had turned suspicious and unaccommodating, and had taken it upon himself to begin the long process of repairing physical structures and healing spiritual breaches. God willing, it will someday be said of him: “Who can measure the extraordinary influence that the few pages of Summorum Pontificum have exercised over the reconstruction of the Church after the destruction wreaked by postconciliar storms?” Yet in all this, Pope Benedict “thought only of God and of souls desirous to go to God; in the tranquil simplicity of his faith he purposed only to restore to the faithful the first and greatest school of the Lord’s service, the sacred liturgy.”

May the teaching and legislation of Pope Benedict be blessed over the centuries with a fruitfulness comparable to that of the Rule of Saint Benedict and the Summa of Saint Thomas.