The “Liturgical Little Way”: The Spiritual Value of Following Detailed Prescriptions

One of the great strengths of the traditional Latin liturgy is that it leaves nothing to the will or imagination of the priest (and the same may be said of every minister in the sanctuary). It choreographs his moves, dictates his words, shapes his mind and heart to itself, to make it clear that it is Christ who is acting in and through him. In the words of the Psalmist: “Know ye that the Lord he is God: he made us, and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture” (Psa 99:3). Sheep are to follow the lead of their shepherd. The clergy is not and will never be the first principle of the liturgy; as St. Thomas Aquinas says with sobering humility, the priest or other cleric is an “animate instrument” of the Eternal High Priest: “Holy orders does not constitute a principal agent, but a minister and a certain instrument of divine operation.”

Ministers are like rational hammers or chisels or saws, by which a greater artisan will accomplish His work of sanctification, while conferring on them the immense dignity of resting in His hand and partaking of His action. Here is how Monsignor Ronald Knox expresses it:

The philosopher Aristotle, in defining the position of a slave, uses the words, “A slave is a living tool.” And that is what a priest is, a living tool of Jesus Christ. He lends his hands to be Christ’s hands, his voice to be Christ’s voice, his thoughts to be Christ’s thoughts; there is, there should be, nothing of himself in it from first to last, except where the Church graciously permits him to dwell for a moment in silence on his own special intentions, for the good estate of the living and the dead. Those who are not of our religion are puzzled sometimes, or even scandalized, by witnessing the ceremonies of the Mass; it is all, they say, so mechanical. But you see, it ought to be mechanical. They are watching, not a man, but a living tool; it turns this way and that, bends, straightens itself, gesticulates, all in obedience to a preconceived order—Christ’s order, not ours. The Mass is best said—we Catholics know it—when it is said so that you do not notice how it is said; we do not expect eccentricities from a tool, the tool of Christ.

The clergy are privileged tools, to be sure, but they are still tools; and the liturgy remains the work of Christ, the High Craftsman, the carpenter of the ark of the covenant, the architect of the heavenly Jerusalem, the New Song and its cantor. In its external form, in text and music and ceremonial, the liturgy should luminously proclaim that it is the work of Christ and His Church, not the product of a charismatic individual or a grassroots community.

In an interview in February 2016, Bishop Athanasius Schneider was asked what lessons he has learned from celebrating the traditional form of the Mass. Here is the bishop’s revealing response:

The deepest lesson I have learned from celebrating the traditional form of the Mass is this: I am only a poor instrument of a supernatural and utmost sacred action, whose principal celebrant is Christ, the Eternal High Priest. I feel that during the celebration of the Mass I lose in some sense my individual freedom, for the words and the gestures are prescribed even in their smallest details, and I am not able to dispose of them. I feel most deeply in my heart that I am only a servant and a minister, who yet, with free will, with faith and love, fulfill not my will, but the will of Another.

How much does a priest stand to gain or lose by his cooperation or lack of cooperation with the “smallest details” of the liturgical rite bequeathed to him by tradition and ecclesiastical law?

Mother Mectilde (Catherine de Bar)

To find an answer, let us turn to a great writer of the golden age of French spirituality, Catherine de Bar (1614–1698), or, in religious life, Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament. In her correspondence with the Countess of Chateauvieux, Mother Mectilde writes:

The first thing I notice in you, my very dear daughter, is that you do not have enough esteem for small things. You do not consider them in the light of divine Providence; that is why you have little attention and respect for them and you lose therein a great deal of grace. … God sometimes asks only for a small act of fidelity in order to make us great saints. You should always be in a state of holy and loving attention towards God, in order to give yourself to Him in all ways . . .  If you could conceive the loss you cause when you act in a purely human way, you would be inconsolable. Is it not a great fault in a soul who is able to give glory to God and who nevertheless deprives Him of it in order to give precedence to his [own] reasoning that the small actions of life are only trifles and that they do not need to be governed. O my child, if you had truly understood how you are ransomed and how you belong to Jesus Christ, you would have much more solicitude about honoring Him. If one beat of your heart does not belong to you, then so much the more your smallest action, which is always more extended than one heart beat.

In these words we find a striking anticipation of the better-known “Little Way” of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Mother Mectilde sees clearly that small acts of fidelity are the proving ground of our desire to be great saints, and that we should try never to act in a purely human way, out of our own creaturely resources.

Applying Mother Mectilde’s doctrine to Msgr. Knox’s comparison and Bishop Schneider’s experience, we can arrive at a new insight into the enormous spiritual benefits of the traditional Roman liturgy for the ministers who submit to its thousand little demands, which are occasions for placing them in a state of holy and loving attention towards God. Not one word or motion is considered a trifle that does not need to be governed; all actions are ordered to honoring Him.

Mother Mectilde develops this point in another passage from the same correspondence:

The gospel tells us today in two words what Christian holiness consists in. It is a wonderful lesson, listen to this please. The law says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind.”  Ponder these things well and you will see how much you are required to give to God, even to the smallest of your actions. …
       You will find in an infinity of places in Holy Scriptures your incapacity to dispose of yourself, indeed even one of your thoughts, if you do not want to steal it from Jesus Christ. For by right you cannot. You have been bought: the one who buys the tree buys the fruit, thus you are not your own. Ponder this truth well, repeat often these words: I am not my own, I belong to Jesus Christ. He has ransomed me by love, I am thus necessarily the slave of His love. O worthy slavery! …
       You see, next, how much you are obliged to give yourself to Him. That is, to consent to all the rights, powers, and authority He has over you, and to remain in Him. That is, to never depart from His holy presence, and to do all things by His spirit. As much as is possible for you, to never have in your ideas any other object than Him. In short, that His pure glory cause you to act in everything, even to the least of your actions. Do not think that there is anything small in regard to God: all is great, all is holy, His love sanctifies everything.
       Be thus very exact in the smallest things. All is done for a great God. It is necessary that you do everything mindfully, that is to say, with attention to God, and with a simple desire to glorify and please Him in everything. … He wants you to have this fidelity [in the smallest things] and then He will raise you to even greater ones. The man who does not value the little things will soon fall into great disorders.

How compelling is Mother Mectilde’s doctrine of holy slavery to Christ, expressed in the constant giving over of every little thing, every small act, done for the great God, the Lord of heaven and earth!

We are looking here at a gloss on Our Lord’s own teaching: “He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is greater: and he that is unjust in that which is little, is unjust also in that which is greater” (Lk 16:10). Note the emphasis on justice: the one who is unfaithful to God in little matters will prove unjust to Him in greater ones, too — not unloving, but unjust. It is about justice, the “rights of God,” since, as we saw Mother Mectilde so vividly saying, we belong to Him as His property.

In speaking of fidelity and justice, Our Lord is making reference to the virtue of religion, that is, giving to God that which we owe Him, to the best of our abilities. If we do not give Him our controlled limbs, our bows, genuflections, kisses, averted eyes, and careful pronunciation of syllables, why would we deceive ourselves into thinking that we shall give him our mind and will, our love, our service to others?

The school par excellence of utmost fidelity in small things as well as great ones is the sacred liturgy, wherein we obey little rubrics as we handle the greatest thing, the very flesh and blood of God. Prompted by Mother Mectilde’s teaching, should we not say that a liturgy that offers the celebrant or the participant a greater number of opportunities to submit to the mind of another and serve His will, especially in the “smallest details,” is a liturgy that will produce more abundant fruits of holiness?

If I may coin a phrase, this is nothing other than the “liturgical Little Way” — the teaching of St. Thérèse applied to that area in which it had always been practiced without fanfare until recent decades, when the rubrics were severely curtailed, celebrant options were multiplied, a casual approach was adopted, and a millennium of Western piety was dismissed as obscurantism. With the abandonment of this Little Way came an ever-increasing flood of infidelity, impiety, and depravity. “The man who does not value the little things will soon fall into great disorders.”

Thanks be to God we are seeing a restoration of the little things, so that someday we may see once again great sanctity emerging from the liturgy.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s website for selected articles, sacred music, and books from Os Justi Press, his SoundCloud page for lectures and interviews, and YouTube for talks and sacred music.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux on the Sacristans of Her Convent

Many readers will be familiar with this wonderful photograph of St. Thérèse, shown posing in her work of filling the ciborium with hosts (among other typical functions of a sacristan) for the daily conventual Mass:

This, of course, is much in keeping with the usual customs of women’s monasteries, where the sisters perform many of the tasks that would otherwise be assigned to clerics, such as leading the entire Divine Office and chanting its readings and prayers; making the responses at low Mass from outside the sanctuary in situations where no servers are available; and, in some rare cases, chanting the epistle at Mass (see Shawn Tribe’s “Carthusian Nuns and the Use of the Maniple and Stole”).

A photo that is much less known, and which I myself saw only for the first time recently, shows Thérèse with, if I may so say, her liturgical assistants in November 1896. Three of them are her blood sisters Marie, Pauline, and Céline (Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart, Mother Agnes of Jesus, and St. Geneviève of the Holy Face) and one is her aunt Marie Guérin (Sr. Marie of the Eucharist). Sr. Marie of the Eucharist, Sr. Marie of the Angels (not in the photo), and St. Thérèse were the sacristans, while her three blood sisters were altar bread bakers[1]:

St. Thérèse was a gifted amateur poet and playwright who composed a surprising amount of literary work in her spare moments during her nine years as a Carmelite nun. Some of her work was intended for public occasions such as recreations, birthdays, and feastdays, while other pieces were more private, sent to one or a few of her religious sisters.

In the same month of November 1896, she wrote a poem called “The Sacristans of Carmel,” in rhyming octosyllabic verse, which I wish to share with readers in honor of the Little Flower’s feast (whether you are celebrating it today on the new calendar or two days from now on the old calendar).

The poem was written for Sr. Marie Philomena, who had asked Thérèse for something she could sing while baking; but it was first read by her aunt. Later, all of the sacristans and altar bread bakers got to know the poem, and apparently sang it regularly in their work, to whatever familiar tune they chose that would match the meter. In this we see a splendid example of the genre of a “work song” that has nearly disappeared from the world of mass-marketed and passively consumed entertainment. One may hope such work songs still survive in the Carmels.

The religious and theological content of the song are quite worth of attention. Here is the ICS translation, slightly modified to make it more literal[2]:

1. Here below our sweet office
Is to prepare for the altar
The bread and wine of the Sacrifice
Which brings to earth—“Heaven”!

2. Heaven, O supreme mystery!,
Hides itself under humble bread,
For Heaven, it is Jesus Himself,
Coming to us each morning.

3. There are no queens on earth
Who are happier than we.
Our office is a prayer
Which unites us to our Spouse.

4. This greatest honors of this world
Cannot compare
To the peace, profound and heavenly,
Which Jesus lets us savor.

5. We bring a holy envy
For the work of our hands,
For the little white host
Which is to veil our divine Lamb.

6. But his love has chosen us.
He is our Spouse, our Friend.
We are also hosts
Which Jesus wants to change into Himself.

7. Sublime mission of the Priest,
You become our mission here below.
Transformed by the Divine Master,
It is He who guides our steps.

8. We must help the apostles
By our prayers, our love.
Their battlefields are ours.
For them we fight each day.

9. The hidden God of the tabernacle
Who also hides in our hearts,
O what a miracle! at our voice
Deigns to pardon sinners!

10. Our happiness and our glory
Is to work for Jesus.
His beautiful Heaven is the ciborium
We want to fill with souls!...

The original draft

I heartily agree with the Carmelite commentators who find this poem both charming and insightful:

The sacristans are the untiring agents of this mysterious exchange [between heaven and earth]. In this poem, they readily call to mind something like Jacob’s ladder. These stanzas are full of “gentleness.” There is the discreet gentleness of the “housewife,” if we dare call it that: of the spouse “happier than a queen” whose heart remains attentive to her Husband, while her hands are diligently working for Him. There is also the discreet gentleness of the Carmelite nun, who is associated with the apostle at the altar in the role that is hers, that of the hidden companion. In both cases, the assistant becomes like the one she assists. …
       Here she [Thérèse] sings of her concrete way of sharing immediately in the “sublime mission of the Priest.” “Transformed” into Jesus by the Eucharist, “changed” into Him, does she not then also become an “alter Christus”…? She cannot leave her cloister to “preach the Gospel,” but Jesus, the first Missionary, walks in her and through her. He “guides her steps,” as He does those of the apostles she prays for, loves, and struggles for.
       She cannot absolve from sins. But Jesus present in her through the Eucharist gives her a share in his ministry of reconciling sinners.
       She will never fill the ciborium with consecrated hosts. But she is spending her life “filling Heaven with souls”—living hosts in which Christ lives alone from then on. …
       So Thérèse has no inferiority complex toward “men” or priests. She has no presumption either. For her, it is Jesus who acts in collaboration with men—and women. Even in 1892, she wrote to Céline: “I find that our share is really beautiful; what have we to envy in priests?”[3]

In fact, if we may use the awkward expression “holy envy,” it will always be the case that each Christian vocation has reason to admire the goods of every other, since these goods are not, simply speaking, compatible with one another. The priest may well “envy” the female religious her total and silent dedication to prayer, which he will almost never attain in his active ministry; the married man or woman may “envy” the consecrated soul its undivided attentiveness or availability for the things of the Lord (cf. 1 Cor 7); the consecrated man or woman may “envy” the married their sacramental realization of the faithful, fruitful union of Christ and the Church, which brings new immortal souls into the world, to complete the number of the elect. In the Mother of God alone do we find united that which nature cannot unite, combining and exceeding all Christian states of life: she is the wife unwed, the child-bearing virgin, mother inviolate, mediatrix of all grace as the inseparable minister of the High Priest. In her all vocations are at one, like white light before it splinters into a spectrum of colors. For the rest of us, the individual colors are distinct, complementary, and beautiful, as they are intended to be, for our individual benefit and for the common good of the Church.

St. Thérèse’s poem serves as a profitable meditation on several intertwined mysteries: the unique, exalted, and irreplaceable nature of the ministerial priesthood; the lofty participation in Christ the High Priest enjoyed by all who are baptized into His sacerdotal and royal dignity; the special position of consecrated religious, who follow the priestly and sacrificial Lamb whithersoever He goeth; and the value in God’s sight of the quiet, humble work done by sacristans whenever they reverently prepare the materials and environs required for worthily offering the sacrifice of praise.

NOTES

[1] For this and other details, I am indebted to the excellent commentary in The Poetry of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, trans. Donald Kinney, OCD (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996), 169–70.

[2] The translation is found in Kinney, Poetry, 170–71, as well as at this website. The French is contained in Kinney, pp. 301–302.

[3] Kinney, Poetry, 169–70.

The fair copy