Refuting the Commonplace that “Liturgy” Means “Work of the People”

In 2020, Angelico Press released a very interesting book entitled Christ the Liturgy by William Daniel. Serious students of liturgical theology should pick it up if they have not already done so. While I do not agree with all that the Anglican author presents, he offers unique perspectives I have not seen elsewhere and, in particular, makes a deft and profound use of both Church Fathers (Clement, Ignatius, Cyprian, Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus) and modern philosophers (Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Voegelin, Gadamer, Pickstock).

Chapter 1, worth the price of the book all by itself, delves into true and false, or perhaps we should say truer and falser, meanings of the term leitourgia, “a word,” writes Daniel,

that has been mistranslated, the first instance of which appears to have been at The Fourth General Council of the Alliance of The Reformed Churches holding The Presbyterian System (London, 1888), whereby liturgy is translated as “the work of the people.” To speak of “the work of the people” assumes a work, an offering, or the human capacity to give something to God that God doesn’t have. Translating leitourgia as “the work of the people,” a distinctly post-Enlightenment translation, inverts the human’s relation to the salvific offering of the Son to the Father. That is, this redefining of liturgy elicits a lack in God—the lack of God’s own worship. Additionally, liturgy as the “work of the people” separates the liturgical action from the creative agency of the Son and the human’s volitive participation in the re-creating of the world, infinitely actualized—recapitulated—in Christ. The Transcendent is hereby absolutely transcendent; there is no mingling of God and creation. What is important to note at the outset is that to translate or (re)define leitourgia as “the work of the people” detracts from the inherent, relational nature of liturgy as that which gathers the people of God into the eternal life of reciprocity that is Holy Trinity. (1–2)

This mistranslation is very prominent among supporters of the liturgical reform in the Catholic Church. For example, Kevin W. Irwin in his book Responses to 101 Questions on the Mass (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1999) speaks of “the Greek term leiturgia, meaning “work of the people” (p. 31).

The author then looks carefully at instances of classical and patristic texts that employ the term leitourgia to make his case. His goal is 

to lay the foundation for understanding liturgy as the manifestation of divinity in Christ, attested to by the early and medieval church, and as the anagogic relation of participation that is the essence of the church Catholic. Liturgy is hereby to be understood not as “the work of the people” but as “the work of the One for the sake of the many.” Christ himself is this “work,” this event, who is the Liturgy he enacts—both priest and victim, an offering to the Father for the life of the world. (2)

In ancient Greek authors, leitourgia first means “public work” or “public service” (laos ergon), which often took the form of a sacrificial gift or financial offering without expectation of repayment, solely for the common good, such as sponsoring a festival or holding (without pay) a public office. In Aristotle, leitourgia names the bearing of a communal burden for the benefit of the many. Not just the rich who fund banquets, choruses, and lyric contests, but also priests, doctors, the miliary, and innkeepers are all “liturgists” in this context. It is always a gift of one for the sake of the many.

St. Paul uses the term in continuity with Plato and Aristotle to refer to the one who gathers and offers funds for the sake of the building up of the Church, in analogy with the priests of the temple who gather the offerings to give glory to God. Paul describes himself as a libation poured out for the people. The one ministers to and for the many:

Paul is the liturgy he enacts—Christ. His liturgical role is to serve as Christ, to gather the offerings of the faithful into the offering Jesus is in himself. Only in this way do the liturgical actions—offerings—of a people become bound to the offering of Jesus to the Father—the one, holy acceptable offering. (8)

In the first epistle of Clement, leitourgia points to the hierarchical office that belongs to the various members of the body, all acting in and through Christ to participate in His high-priestly offering; but most especially the bishop, whose role is to gather up the many into the One (11). “Leitourgia is a sacrificial offering to God, which is consequently beneficial to others” (12). 

Office and action, as in the ancient world, are inseparable in Christ. The hierarchical administration of the liturgical economy is a division of labor, not a partitioning of classes. Just as the bishop makes the people available to God, likewise do the people make God available to the bishop. There is a logic of reciprocity embedded in the action. By necessity of her communion with God, the Christian must be in fellowship with Christ’s holy church, through its bishops. (19) 

We are led to see from the sources that in no sense is liturgy understood as the working of the people at some activity that is primarily theirs to claim or to conduct. On the contrary, they are the receivers of the largesse of the Father in Christ poured out by the Spirit through the Church’s rites enacted in obedience by those who are in the position of rulers and benefactors, who bear the communal burden, who “put on” liturgy (so to speak). In this vision there is no competition between parts of the body, but only gratitude for the complementary roles that allow worship to come alive. God gives the offering to the priest, and the priest returns it to God for the people: “the work of the One”—Christ, or His hierarchical representative—“for the sake of the many.”

The politicization of the liturgy, the jockeying for roles, the spreading out of activities, appears therefore to be a fundamental misreading of the economy of worship, in which “God is the sole giver of gifts; and it is only God who can receive God. Abraham’s giving and receiving are to be understood, therefore, as a participation in the giving and receiving of God from and to God” (24).

Daniel reaches his conclusion, invoking a major theme of the theologians associated with Radical Orthodoxy: 

The commonplace (mis)translation of leitourgia as “the work of the people” describes a chasm between what Christians do when they gather to worship and who the God they confess to worship is. The modern translation of this term dislocates the human from the action of Christ, thereby suspending the gift from the recipient—giver and receiver remain separate. In a falsely humanistic attempt to emphasize the work of humans in liturgy, “the work of the people” actually narrates a deistic understanding of the human as completely separate from God, or univocally maintains a sameness between God and humanity in “Being.” (34)

Almost as a corollary, Daniel points out how this univocity traps God in a human construct and evacuates our experiences of the possibility of redemption:

Paul’s sufferings (cf. 2 Cor 4:8–12; Col 1:24) are the sufferings of Christ, born in his body, for the sake of the church. It is the cross that is paradigmatic for participating in divine action—in the Liturgy-Christ. The cross is also that which makes all suffering intelligible and meaningful. The oft-repeated notion that Christ suffers when we suffer is yet another aggrandizing of the human in relation to her sufferings. We must not invert the relation between the suffering of Jesus and the sufferings of humanity. Again, while it may at first seem to elevate the suffering of humans to say that God suffers with us, it has the adverse effect of flattening human suffering as something that in no way transcends the present sensation of pain. What makes human suffering meaningful is that it participates in the bodily suffering of God on the cross. (35–36) 

At the end of the chapter, Daniel ties together his research into a thundering critique of the contemporary misappropriation of a noble ancient term:

We have seen how liturgy as “the people’s work” locates a person’s identity in her own hands—the human nature entirely separable from divinity—a liturgical nominalism, as it were. Naming, as it does, the service of worship of the church, liturgy has been mistaken to be humanistic in the worst sense of the term. It has been wrongly understood as an isolated act in time, either performed by a professional class of persons (clergy) for an audience (laity) or enacted collectively as a body of people (priesthood of all believers), which can only be assented to by faith, not participated in through the reason of the body.
          In each instance the understanding is the same: God has given salvation to those who follow Christ; Christians, therefore, perform liturgies to offer thanks and praise for the gift of salvation. The assumption here is that the baptized have a gift to offer unto Almighty God, i.e., their selves. To say that the human has something she can give—even herself—to God, is to suggest that a person possesses within her being the capacity to initiate contact with God, thereby inverting the Creator-created relation. It is at once a rejection of human contingency and a denial of God as his own absolute contingency. God becomes somehow dependent on creation.
          This “self-possession” is the ultimate affront by the created to her Creator; it is the sin of all sins—it is Adam and Eve. Leitourgia as illuminated throughout the writings of the early fathers refuses both the Gnostic rejection of matter and the humanist departure from metaphysics. The modern mistranslation is more than a matter of semantics; it is an ontological chasm. (38–39)

He returns to this point at the start of chapter 4, providing an especially helpful summary of his position, which certainly shares much in common with the traditionalist critique of the radical branch of the Liturgical Movement and its triumph in the post-Vatican II liturgical reform with its humanist, activist, utilitarian, consumerist, and reductionist assumptions and stylings:

What is often misunderstood about liturgical action, specifically as it regards Christian liturgy, is that it is neither performative nor initiative. That is, it is not a performance before God to somehow please God or curry favor, nor is the Christian to understand herself as one who initiates contact with God. As outlined in the first chapter, this is a gross misrepresentation of liturgy that stems from a mistranslation and misunderstanding of the word and meaning of leitourgia. Any claim that liturgy is instigated by, or an experience simply to be taken in or enjoyed by, humans reduces liturgical action to a temporary, flattened affair that has little or nothing to do with God, save the gross objectification of the same. Such a reduction bears an implicit, disenchanted anthropology, a conception of humanity that is biological at best and animalistic at worst.
          Liturgy, however, does not originate in human action, even though it implicates humanity in its activity and elicits human participation. Liturgy is the creative agency of God who in Christ has gathered human nature into divine reciprocity, a reciprocity that is without beginning or end. The human’s participation in this eternal action is medial by nature. That is, the human is caught up in the divine self-relation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Liturgy hereby names the self-relation of eternal reciprocity that God himself is. To worship, therefore—to participate in the liturgical action—is to be involved in an action that begins outside of human agency yet implicates the human in divine agency. (121–22)

Based on this conclusion, Daniel then goes on later in the book to emphasize that liturgy is “medial”—that is, neither pure activity on our part, nor pure passivity, but both and neither, like the “middle voice” of some ancient languages.

One way to say this, however awkward it might strike the modern English-speaker’s ear, would be to say, “I was gathered into the offering of the Son to the Father.” Shorthand would be modestly simpler: “I participated in the self-offering of God today.” (127) 

One can see the care with which he banishes the idea that the worshipers are the primary agents, which has been the bane of liturgical reform for the past hundred years, and has led to many absurdities: making everyone say all the responses and do all the actions together in lockstep; giving clerical tasks to laity; opening up space for creative and spontaneous expression and motion on the part of the clergy; the statement that “I like Fr. So-and-so’s Mass best”; mobilizing the chickabiddies to make felt banners for their first communions; erupting into applause for the efforts of musicians or other groups; and so forth. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that the entire framework of the Liturgical Movement was always tainted with a certain Pelagianism, with what Jordan Aumann called “the heresy of activism.” The middle voice was lost: the insertion into the action of God that begins before we even exist and is eternally simple, circular, fruitful, and silent. Daniel concludes:

Liturgy, hereby, is not a matter of self-expression. It is not to be governed by the whims of any one individual’s sensibilities. Rather, liturgy is the confluence of linguistic worlds which have passed through the torcular of Christ, who is the wine press of God…. It is in this sense that liturgical mediality can be understood as an active-passivity, perhaps our best way of pointing toward the middle voice. It is a giving of ourselves to an action happening to us, to an agency that is not our own. Hereby do we become leitourgia—the work of God. We become Christ in proportion to our participation in the work of the One, which is for the sake of the many. (157–58)

To sum up: leitourgia does not mean “the work of the people.” It means “the work of One on behalf of many.” This definition is properly theocentric and Christocentric; it justifies, even as it relativizes, the “sacerdotalism” (in Dix’s expression) of all traditional liturgical rites.

There is much else of value in this book, such as its treatment of church architecture in chapter 3 (about which I will write separately). I encourage you to check it out.

William Daniel. Christ the Liturgy. Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2020. 206 pp. Paper ISBN 978-1621385554, $17.95. Cloth ISBN 978-1621385561, $32.00.

Guest Article: Bishop Athanasius Schneider on the Significance of Minor Ministries in the Sacred Liturgy

NLM is grateful to His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider for offering us the first publication of his profound analysis of the ancient origins of the minor orders and their liturgical-theological rationale, together with a critique on that basis of the novel path taken in the post-conciliar period, from Ministeria Quaedam of 1972 to Spiritus Domini of 2021.

Ordination of lectors in the traditional Roman rite

The Significance of Minor Ministries in the Sacred Liturgy

1. The principle of Divine law in the liturgy

Regarding the nature of the sacred liturgy, that is, of Divine worship, God himself has spoken to us in His Holy Word, and the Church has explained it in her solemn Magisterium. The first basic aspect of the liturgy is this: God himself tells men how they must honor Him; in other words, it is God who gives concrete norms and laws for the development, even exterior, of the worship of His Divine Majesty.

In fact, man is wounded by original sin and for this reason he is profoundly characterized by pride and ignorance, and even more profoundly by the temptation and tendency to put himself in the place of God at the center of worship, that is, to practice self-worship in its various implicit and explicit forms. Liturgical law and norms are therefore necessary for authentic Divine worship. These laws and norms must be found in Divine Revelation, in the written word of God and in the word of God transmitted by tradition.

Divine Revelation transmits to us a rich and detailed liturgical legislation. An entire book of the Old Testament is dedicated to liturgical law, the Book of Leviticus; partially also the Book of Exodus. The individual liturgical norms of Divine worship of the Old Testament had only a transitory value, since their purpose was to be a figure, looking to the Divine worship that would reach its fullness in the New Testament. However, there are some elements of perennial validity: firstly, the very fact of the need for liturgical legislation; secondly, that there is a detailed and rich legislation of Divine worship; and finally, that Divine worship takes place according to a hierarchical order. This hierarchical order presents itself as concretely tripartite: high priest–priest–levite; in the New Testament, respectively: bishop–presbyter–deacon/minister.

Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to bring it to its fullness (cf. Mt 5:17). He said: “Until heaven and earth have passed away, not one iota or a sign of the law will pass, without all being completed” (Mt 5:18). This is particularly valid for Divine worship, since the adoration of God constitutes the first commandment of the Decalogue (cf. Ex 20, 3-5). The purpose of all creation is this: angels and men and even irrational creatures must praise and worship the Divine Majesty, as the revealed prayer of the Sanctus says: “The heavens and the earth are full of Thy glory” (cf. Is 6:3).

Old Covenant hierarchy

2. Jesus Christ, the supreme worshiper of the Father and the supreme liturgical minister

The first and most perfect worshiper of the Father is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. His work of salvation had as its main purpose to give honor and glory to the Father in place of sinful humanity, unable to give a worthy and acceptable worship to God. The re-establishment of true Divine worship and the atonement of Divine Majesty, outraged due to the innumerable forms of perversion of worship, constituted the primary purpose of the Incarnation and the work of Redemption.

By constituting His apostles true priests of the New Covenant, Jesus left His priesthood to His Church and with it the public worship of the New Testament, which has for its ritual culmination the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice. He taught his apostles through the Holy Spirit that the worship of the New Covenant was to be the fulfillment of the worship of the Old Covenant. Thus the apostles transmitted their power and their liturgical service in three degrees, that is, in three hierarchical orders, in analogy with the three degrees of the ministers of the cult of the Old Covenant.

The supreme performer of the liturgy is Christ (in Greek: hó liturgós). He contains in himself and exercises all the Divine worship, even in the smallest functions. The following words of Christ can also be referred to this fact: “I am among you as one who serves” (Lk 22:27). Christ is the minister; he is also the “deacon” par excellence. So too is the bishop, as the supreme possessor of the liturgical service of Christ. The episcopate contains all the ministries and services of public worship: the ministry of the presbyterate, the ministry of the diaconate, the ministry of the minor orders, that is, also, the service of ministers (“altar boys”). In the pontifical Mass according to the most ancient form of the Roman rite, the bishop dresses in all the robes, even of the lower orders. In the absence of all the lower ministers, the bishop himself performs all the liturgical functions of the presbyter, of the deacon, and even of the minor orders, that is, of the altar servers. In the absence of the deacon, the presbyter himself performs all the liturgical functions of the deacon and of the minor orders, that is, of the altar servers. In the absence of the deacon, the sub-deacon, the holders of the minor orders, or the altar servers can perform some of the functions of the deacon.

The vesting of a pontiff

3. The tradition of the apostles

The apostolic tradition has seen in the triple hierarchical order of the Church the fulfillment of the typology of the triple hierarchical order of Divine worship in the Old Covenant. This is what Pope Saint Clement I, the disciple of the Apostles and third successor of the Apostle Peter, testifies to us.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Saint Clement presents the liturgical order divinely established in the Old Covenant as an exemplar for the right order of the hierarchy and worship of every Christian community. Speaking of Divine worship, he states:

We must do everything in order with regard to what the Lord has ordered to do according to the appointed times. He ordered the oblations and worship services to be performed not by chance or without order. By his sovereign decision, He Himself has determined where and by whom these services are to be performed, so that all things will be done in a holy manner according to His good pleasure and pleasing to His will. For the high priest has been assigned liturgical services (liturghíai) reserved for him, priests have been given their own proper place, on the levites devolve special ministrations (diakoníai), and the layman (ho laikòs ànthropos) is bound by the laws that pertain to laymen (laikóis prostágmasin). (1 Clem 40:1-3.5)

Pope Clement understands that the principles of this order divinely established in the Old Covenant must continue to operate in the life of the Church. The most evident reflection of this order should be found in the liturgical life, in the public worship of the Church. Thus the Holy Pontiff draws this conclusion, applied to the life and worship of Christians: “May each of you, brothers, in the position that is proper to him, be pleasing to God in good conscience and with reverence, without transgressing the established rule of liturgical services (kanón tes leiturghías)” (1 Clem 41:1).

Later (cf. 1 Clem 42:1ss.) Pope Clement describes the hierarchy of the New Covenant, contained in the Lord Jesus Christ himself and concretized in the mission of the apostles. This reality corresponds to the order (táxis) willed by God. Here Saint Clement uses the same terms with which he had previously described the liturgical and hierarchical order of the Old Covenant.

From the first centuries, the Church was aware that Divine worship had to take place according to an order established by God in keeping with the example of the Divine order established in the Ancient Covenant. Therefore, in order to carry out a task in public worship, it was necessary to belong to a hierarchical order. Consequently, Christian worship, that is, the Eucharistic liturgy, was carried out in a hierarchically ordered manner by persons officially appointed for this purpose. For this reason, these agents of worship constituted an order, a sacred order, divided into three degrees: episcopate, presbyterate and diaconate, paralleling the three degrees of ministers of Old Covenant worship: high priest, priests, and levites. Pope Saint Clement in the first century designated the service of the Old Testament levites with the word “diakonia” (1 Clem 40:5). We can therefore identify here the foundation of the ancient ecclesiastical tradition, since at least the fifth century, of designating the Christian deacon with the word “levite,” for example in the Constitutiones Apostolicae (2, 26:3) and in the writings of Pope Leo the Great (cf. Ep. 6:6; Ep. 14:4; Serm. 59:7; 85:2).
 

St. Peter ordains St. Stephen a deacon (Fra Angelico)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Clericalism, True and False

I do not deny that there are forms of clericalism that have plagued the Western Church in periods of its history, and I would not deny that traditionalists must be on their guard against the reemergence of such forms. Nevertheless, it has been my conviction for a long time that the worst manifestations of clericalism have, in fact, been those that followed the Second Vatican Council.

In my column today at LifeSiteNews, I attempted to describe six of the ways in which "clericalism" rears its ugly head in the postconciliar world. Some excerpts:

1. When a priest, contradicting nearly 2,000 years of unanimous tradition in the apostolic churches of the East and the West, faces the people at Mass (versus populum), he unavoidably imposes himself on them as the principal actor in the liturgy, standing “over against” the passive congregation. In this way the message is transmitted—whether the priest intends it or not—that he is the center of attention, the facilitator and even the validator of the assembled faithful. This is an efficacious sign of clericalism if ever there has been one. ...

2. When a priest says “call me Fr. Jimmy,” acts casually, tells lots of jokes and stories from the pulpit, and “doesn’t stand on ceremony,” he is in fact promoting a cult of the individual personality, the cult of Jimmy, rather than humbly accepting his God-given office or role in the Church as the impersonal minister of the Lord Jesus, one of a million that God will make use of in the span of history. ...

3. On the other hand, when clergy extend traditionally clerical ministries to lay people (e.g., extraordinary ministers of holy communion), they are perpetuating the false view that the only worthwhile, validating “work” for a Catholic is to be busy in the sanctuary. This is one of the worst manifestations of clericalism. The proper role of the laity is not to substitute as “straw ministers” but to sanctify the world outside of the church building...

4. When priests, bishops, and even the pope ignore or hold in contempt the legitimate aspirations and needs of the faithful or of their subordinate clergy; when only the pope, only his collaborators, only his allies, know what is best for everyone else, regardless of education, competency, or expertise — we are facing another notorious form of clericalism, which could be summed up as: “My way or the highway.” ...

5. When bishops or priests want to intrude their personal theological opinions into their preaching and writing, rather than following and handing down the common and traditional teaching of the Church, we are certainly dealing with a particularly acidic form of clericalism.

6. When the pope appoints ambitious men as bishops and curial officials instead of imitating great reforming popes who scoured observant monasteries and parishes for humble, holy, orthodox candidates, or when people entrusted with proposing episcopal candidates fail in their grave charge, they are flexing the muscles of a clericalism that becomes mightier the more successful the ambitious are. ...

Read the full article over at LifeSite. (See here for an archive of my blog posts there, a number of which concern liturgical matters.)

How Typical Lector Praxis Transmits a Pelagian and Protestant Message

When I attended Thomas Aquinas College in California from 1990 to 1994, one of the first things I noticed about their Novus Ordo liturgies — apart from the startling fact that the unchanging parts were always in Latin, a practice they have been following for almost 50 years now — is that the reading was always done by one of the altar servers, vested in cassock and surplice. This struck me immediately as far better than the “normal” approach I had seen everywhere else, where a layman or laywoman gets up from the congregation and goes up to the ambo. Why did it seem better?

First, the server was dressed for a liturgical function, so it made the reading seem more obviously a liturgical act, part of the act of worship in which were were involved. Second, he was already up there in the sanctuary, to which he had processed together with the priest, so he was on hand, ready to perform the function. It no longer looked random but orderly, the right person at the right time and place. Third, each day one of the servers knew ahead of time that he was going to be the reader, and over time the servers tended to become far better lectors than most of the enthusiastic volunteers or appointees who seldom had a clue what they were doing. Fourth, a man’s voice is better suited for such reading. In most cases, it sounds stronger, calmer, more resonant, more authoritative. If “the lector sounds the voice of God,” then one ought to hear God speaking to us in His lordly, fatherly voice. As Psalm 28 has it: “The voice of the Lord is in power … The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars … The voice of the Lord shaketh the desert.” As much as I admire the piety of ladies who eagerly serve as lectors, the timbral qualities one hears — from sweet and soft to schoolmarmish and scolding — are often simply not edifying. Besides, as a psychologist recently argued, it is more distracting to men when women are reading than it is to women when men are reading. There is no parity or equality of the sexes in this regard.

These were some of the reasons why I rather liked the TAC practice after experiencing it, and I can’t say it surprised me when I discovered that the young ladies liked the practice, too. They were traditional in their views of liturgy and the roles of the sexes, and they felt a sense of relief at not being pressed into the modern feminist program of breaking down the “barriers” to an all-male sanctuary. They were quite content to let the men step up to the plate, as men should do — and as they usually will not do whenever women, with their native generosity and piety, are allowed to take over. These are the things that most caught my attention as a college student.

Years later, I was involved in a Catholic community that had been following the TAC practice for a number of years but was forced to abandon it due to pressure from particular clergy who disagreed with it. Watching that sudden transition from vested servers in the sanctuary acting as lectors to plain-clothes laymen and laywomen rising from the pews to read a text and returning to their seats brought home to me how theologically problematic this contemporary praxis really is. In particular, it transmits both Pelagian and Protestant messages — a surprising combination, but nonetheless true.

The Pelagian message is this. The lector walks right up into the sanctuary, although not vested, and usually not having been a part of the liturgical procession. Since liturgy of its essence is symbolic, this symbolizes something (whether intended to or not). Given that the sanctuary of the church represents heaven, walking right up into it symbolizes that any man has immediate, free, and easy access to the Holy of Holies. Heaven is ours for the taking, if we just take to our feet and use our God-given natural talents. A layman sauntering up into the holy place to read is the obliteration of the entire lesson of the Old Covenant — namely, that owing to man’s creatureliness and sinfulness there must be separation between man and God, which is overcome only by Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and man. Christ does not abolish the distinction but takes it into His very Person, so that we have access to God through Him. Therefore the ministerial priesthood and all the lesser ministries that assist it must have this mediational characteristic in order to be true to themselves. The unvested lay lector seated in the nave who walks right up into the sanctuary is a walking, talking contradiction of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The Byzantine tradition, needless to say, underlines this point by forbidding a lay lector (if there be such out of necessity) to read except from the nave, and keeping the holy of holies off limits behind the iconostasis except to those clergy who are allowed to enter it. [Update: A reader has corrected me by pointing out that in the Byzantine liturgy the reading is always done from the nave, whether by a subdeacon or by a lector substituting for him. It remains true that laity never enter the sanctuary, which is the point I am interested in.] The West had the same understanding of sacred space even if, at a certain point, we lost our rood screens and other such dividers: while everyone was permitted to see the ritual actions taking place in the sanctuary, no one bodily entered into it except the sacred ministers. The abolition of this distinction, by way of lectors and extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, is a symbolic erasure of the distinction between the source of holiness in Christ (who is most properly and clearly represented by the sacred ministers in the mediatorial roles) and the reception of holiness in the people (which is symbolized by their architectural separation and the manner in which they traditionally approach the sacraments — for example, receiving the host on the tongue from the anointed hand of a priest, who blesses them). Such an erasure may justly be called Pelagian, and it will be difficult to uproot a pervasive Pelagian habit of thinking in the people if this is the kind of thing they see whenever they go to church.

Furthermore, there is an implicit Protestant message: anyone can read the word of God; no office is required. The Word of God is free and open to everyone; no one need be specially set apart to read its holy, awesome, fearful, comforting message. Its words are like all other words, for which only mere literacy, that is, a purely natural (not supernatural) qualification, is called for. Thus, these words are not treated as if they are divinely inspired tokens of the ineffable Presence of God, to be handled by men who are formally deputed for this sacred task. For Protestants and modern Catholics there is a democratic availability of the Word that bypasses or sidesteps the hierarchical structure of the Church rooted in the Apostolic Succession of the episcopacy and its assistant clergy.

Contrast this with the traditional practice: only a vested lector — which, in the traditional Roman Rite, will be the subdeacon — may read. And at Low or High Mass, the priest fittingly reads everything because he contains in himself all the lower powers. What the lower may do, the higher may do, but not vice versa.

Now, I do not deny for a moment that the vast majority of lay lectors have the best intentions in the world. They want to be involved; they want to be helpful; they are doing what they have been told is good. I myself was a lector for many years in high school because, well, it just seemed like a thing one does at Mass. So the problem is not one of bad will. The problem rather lies in the “law of unintended consequences.” Quite apart from our subjective good intentions, everything we do in liturgy signifies something. Liturgy is a realm in which nothing done is “merely” practical or useful. Even something as originally practical as the washing of the hands acquired a symbolic meaning of purity from sin that now dominates (most priests don’t have to wash dirt off their hands at the lavabo, but all of us have at least venial sins to wash away). So, too, walking into the sanctuary, mounting the ambo, and reading from the Word of God are not mere human actions; the liturgical context endows them with a meaning of their own. In short, they are signs. Other related signs include the clothing one is wearing (is one vested for a liturgical ministry or wearing plain clothes?), the type of language one is reading from the book (is the Word being delivered in a sacral and poetic register, or is it in an ear-numbing modern dialect like Nabbish?), the quality of the lectionary and evangelary as physical objects (are they beautiful books or are they hideous chunks of self-conscious modernity, with all the charm of rock samples from Mordor?), and so forth. All of these actions, objects, and appearances mean something.

The important question to ask is what these signs are transmitting to us, what belief or attitude is being inculcated by them. When a lay minister distributes Holy Communion, for example, that says something: contrary to the way Catholics behaved for centuries, it turns out we are not, after all, dealing with a divine and fearful mystery, to be handled only by men specially set apart by a holy anointing and clothed in sacerdotal garb; we are dealing with ordinary food and drink that anyone can handle, as at a picnic or snack bar. It is a practical repudiation of the dogma of the Church, although perhaps few (except El Grillo) would think of denying Trent outright, although it should be noted that many people seem only too willing, in verification of Ratzinger’s oft-repeated critique, to make Vatican II the “super-council” that trumps even earlier Councils that are manifestly of greater magisterial weight inasmuch as they defined de fide dogmas and anathematized the contrary errors, while Vatican II purposefully avoided definitions and anathemas.

In any case, what is crucial is not recovering the teaching of earlier Councils (although we shall have to get around to doing this eventually!), but recovering a fundamental sense of the sacredness of everything that pertains to the worship of Almighty God, both in the veneration of His inerrant and infallible divine Word and in the adoration of His all-holy Eucharistic Body — actions for the conducting of which the Church had never failed, and should never fail, to appoint hierarchical ministers.

The ordinary of a Byzantine subdeacon

Homogeneity vs. Hierarchy: On the Treatment of Verbal Moments

Chanting the Epistle

In discussions of problems with the Novus Ordo Missae, its advocates will frequently say that its opponents are always assuming the “worst practices,” that is, the panoply of liturgical abuses so prevalent that they almost constitute an unspoken set of rubrics as rigidly required as that of any Latin altar missal. This is a fair point. As Cardinal Sarah has tirelessly pointed out, the Novus Ordo allows for many of the elements that Catholics devoted to the Church’s Latin liturgical tradition value: first and foremost, the ad orientem stance, which is presupposed in the very rubrics of the Missal of Paul VI; the use of Latin, Gregorian chant, the Roman Canon, incense, and beautiful vestments and vessels; a prominent place for silence; only men in the sanctuary, and always liturgically vested. True as all of this may be — and we must protest, with Martin Mosebach, that it is a profound problem for such elements to be merely allowed and not required — we are nevertheless confronted in the Novus Ordo with elements of rupture that no “hermeneutic of continuity” can heal or overcome. This post will consider one of the most obvious of these, namely, how what I shall call “verbal moments” are treated in terms of their spatial and positional differentiation.

Think about a Sunday Mass in the Ordinary Form: the first reading, the psalm, the second reading, the Gospel, the homily, and the prayer of the faithful are usually all recited, all at the same place (the ambo), always versus populum in just the same way. The Eucharistic Prayer, high point of the liturgy, is also recited from the nearby altar, versus populum, in the same voice as the Gospel is read. A huge swath of the liturgy is being performed in exactly the same manner: read aloud, in the vernacular; read towards the people; read from more or less the same place; read in the same auditorium voice. It has the effect of evening everything to the same level. There is no ascent; there is only succession. It is reminiscent of Newton’s notion of time as equably flowing at the same pace. One moment of time is the same as any other. The liturgy becomes a homogenous block of undifferentiated verbiage. It is almost a demonstration of how much greater time can be than space — as in waiting in a doctor’s or a dentist’s office.

How different, I reflected, is the traditional Roman liturgy, in the way it has developed over the centuries![1] Acknowledging the ceremonial differences between Low Mass, High Mass, Solemn High Mass, and Pontifical Mass, there is a commonality of approach whereby one can see the “genetic derivation” of the later simpler forms from the earlier and more elaborate forms.[2]

Chanting the Gospel at a Missa cantata

Chanting the Gospel at a Missa solemnis

In the Low Mass as well as in the Missa Cantata, the priest begins at the foot of the altar, where he tarries to prepare himself for the arduous ascent. He works his way up to the altar to kiss it, and commences the Introit at the southern side. All throughout the liturgy he is weaving back and forth, like a figure-skater tracing out a pattern. He reads or chants the Epistle on the side that represents the faithful — the Mediterranean south, where the Faith was first planted. The Gradual and Alleluia are chanted by the Schola somewhere else in the church, usually in a choir loft or side chapel. After these interlectional chants, the priest crosses over to read or chant the Gospel towards the side that represents the unconverted pagan world — the cold and barbaric north, where many fought to plant the Faith. He leaves the altar for the ambo, where he will explicate the Word of God to the people. When he is finished, he returns to the altar, kisses it in reverence, asks the people to join him in prayer, and enters into the heart of the Mass with the Offertory. From this point onwards, apart from a momentary excursion to the south, he is firmly fixed at the middle of the altar for the oblation of the Victim, offered to the East, facing the same way the people are. All are caught up in the same orientation — to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The Solemn High Mass expresses all of this differentiation of “verbal moments” even more dramatically, when the subdeacon chants the Epistle, the deacon chants the Gospel, and the priest, after the homily, offers the Holy Sacrifice.

What we see here in the original Roman rite is the tracing out of a sacred geography, whereby the “verbal moments” in the Mass are hierarchically and symbolically ordered. The Epistle at the south, the Gospel towards the north, the homily towards the people, and the Canon towards the Lord demonstrate in a bodily way, with the vividness of the immediately sensible, the differentiation and articulation of liturgical acts. The multiple qualities of each “verbal moment,” whether proclaimed aloud or whispered sotto voce, gives to each its own profile, a dignity that corresponds to its function:

subdeacon	Epistle	“southerly”	epistle tone
schola	Gradual	elsewhere	melismatic tone
deacon	Gospel	northwards	Gospel tone	incense, candles
priest	homily	westwards	plain speech
priest	Canon	eastwards	silence	incense, candles, bells

The Epistle can be fully and simply the Epistle, and retains its dignity as the sacrament of the Word by not being announced to the people as if it were merely instructional. The homily, as instructional, is rightly directed to the people. Last and best of all, “in the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4), comes the Canon of the Mass, “the dispensation of the mystery which hath been hidden from eternity in God” (Eph 3:9), which is uttered in silence, as the Word was made flesh in silence (Dum medium silentium), with nothing of the priest’s individual face or voice edging into the perfect embodiment of the suffering and glorified Christ. There is an arc of spiritual progression from one moment of the liturgy to the next. We are caught up in pilgrimage. We sense ourselves to be nearing a destination, one stage of a journey after another, towards the Promised Land. Rather than one thing after another, as in a modern agenda, each step is qualitatively different — a fact impressed on us unmistakably by the use of space, posture, orientation, chant tone, and voice level.

Preaching the homily

In contrast, we see in the reformed rite an anti-hierarchical egalitarianism that levels, equalizes, homogenizes, verbalizes, and externalizes. With it comes the loss of any order of acts of intimacy — the varied series of communications from outward to inward, from echo to source, from shadow to light, from memory to reality, from word to flesh. The monotony of “out loud, versus populum” makes the entire experience uniform, contiguous, blurred, unimpressive, and unmemorable; it sends a message that all of this is book learning, directed to this congregation, in keeping with congregationalist theology. It is far different with the unreformed rite, in which hierarchy is the very soul of the liturgical event. Everything that is to be done must be done in its due (distinctive) place, making full use of compass points, background and foreground, levels of voice, contour of tones. It places heterogenous utterances at different levels, in complex relationships, driving always towards internalization of meaning, and this it does precisely through the senses, so that we see and hear and even smell the stages of the journey. The liturgy is in motion, driving towards a destination, and we are privileged to be carried along with it.

As mentioned above, hierarchical differentiation, sacred geography, and progressive motion are carried to their fullest extent in the distinctive roles and places allotted to priest, deacon, and subdeacon in the Missa solemnis or Solemn High Mass. The subdeacon’s chanting of the Epistle; the deacon’s chanting of the Gospel, using a book held by the subdeacon, flanked by acolytes bearing torches and incense; the priest’s preaching aloud and then praying in silence at the Canon, not to mention the priest’s blessing of the deacon and the latter’s return to the priest after chanting the Gospel — all of these articulations of liturgical action show a profound awareness of the language of the body and the bodiliness of language, so that we never have the feeling of being trapped in tedious talk, but are borne from one station to the next, as if we were following the Lord through the desert to the Jordan, from the Jordan to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to the heavenly sanctuary. He moves in us and among us; His ministers move; we move with Him and with them.

As is so often the case, I feel inadequate to express what I have experienced, but I take consolation in knowing that those who assist at the traditional Mass will grasp that of which I speak — and in hoping that those who have not yet had the happiness of assisting at it may be moved to seek it out, so that they, too, may join the same pilgrimage. “And it came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Lk 9:51).

Silently offering the Divine Victim

NOTES

[1] I say “as it has developed,” because the locations from which certain parts of the liturgy are conducted have changed over the centuries, as the architectural layout of the church and especially its sanctuary and ambo underwent various modifications. Nevertheless, every age of the Church shows us a keen awareness of the spatiality of liturgical actions, and the fittingness of assigning different moments to different places in the building, different ministers, and distinctive stances and tones.

[2] I say this deliberately because, as in the history of human languages, so in the history of liturgy, the idea of evolution from simpler to more complex is only partially true. We can find many examples where ancient forms are more complex or elaborate than later forms. Just as classical Greek is more complex than classical Latin, Latin than Italian, and 19th-century Italian than 21st-century Italian, so too is the pontifical liturgy of the Middle Ages more complex than the Missa solemnis, the Missa cantata, and the Missa recitata.

True Poverty of Spirit in the Splendor of Worship: Why We Pay Deference to the Celebrant

The reactions to my article of two weeks ago (“A Defense of Liturgy as ‘Carolingian Court Ritual’”) displayed a wide range of opinions on the “baroque” or “rococo” aspects of the Tridentine Roman liturgy. Some even suggested that the difference between medieval rites and the Tridentine rite is that in the former, the focus remains on God throughout, with the ministers merely having various jobs to perform in carrying out the work, while in the latter, the focus shifts to everyone paying homage to the celebrant. I think this is a crucial issue that deserves further thought, as it exposes foundational questions about the iconicity or representationalism of the liturgy.

Last January, I published a defense of the cappa magna (“The Cappa Magna in the Light of Nature, Rationality, and Mystery”), in the course of which I claimed that this garment is “fully consistent with the logic of creation, the Incarnation, and the grammar of worship as the most special of all special occasions,” and that

As Catholics, we rejoice in the natural beauty of colors and forms; we rejoice in the rational capacity to highlight personal dignity, elevated office, and earnest ritual; we rejoice in the supernatural symbolism that draws our minds beyond this earthly realm to the heavenly kingdom and its majestic Sovereign. It is a perfect example of the harmony of nature and grace — the hidden depths of visible nature and the sensible signs of invisible grace.

What I argued about the cappa magna may be extended to all the aspects of the greatest of historic Latin liturgies after the Papal Mass, namely, the Pontifical Mass. This liturgy features elaborate pre- and post-ceremonies of divesting and vesting, in addition to special touches throughout the Mass bound up with the episcopal standing of the celebrant. How we should understand these things may be gathered from a luminous statement in the Holy Rule of St. Benedict: “Let the abbot, since he is believed to hold the place of Christ, be called Lord and Abbot, not for any pretensions of his own, but for the honour and love of Christ.”[1] As with the abbot, so with the sacerdos magnus: all attentions are being given to Christ, who is present in a special way in His ordained ministers. For our Lord could have said of His animate instruments just what He said of the poor, with no less truth: “Whatsoever you do to the least of my pontiffs, that you do unto Me.” And we know that “he who honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father, who hath sent him” (Jn 5:23).

With the widespread loss of faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, we lose our faith in His real presence in the priests; religious exercises come to be about us, about the community. Naturally, in this false perspective, it is absurd to wear beautiful vestments, much less a cappa magna — who are we to dress up like this? But it is not about us; it is all about Jesus, directed to His honor and reflective of His glory. How would we treat Our Lord if He were the one offering the High Mass? Yet He is the one offering it; the Eternal High Priest is present in and working through His earthly high priest, whom we confess to be alter Christus.

No one has been granted the privilege of seeing this truth more fully than St. Gertrude the Great, who beheld in many of her visions the Lord Jesus Himself celebrating the liturgy of the Mass and of the Divine Office, with hosts of angels as his acolytes.

As He [Christ] sat on His royal throne, St. Gertrude cast herself at His feet and embraced them. Then He chanted the Kyrie eleison, in a clear and loud voice …
       The Son of God then rose from His royal throne and turning towards God the Father, intoned the Gloria in excelsis in a clear and sonorous voice. At the word Gloria, He extolled the immense and incomprehensible omnipotence of God the Father. At the words in excelsis, He praised His profound wisdom. At Deo, He honored the inestimable and indescribable sweetness of the Holy Spirit. The whole celestial court then continued in a most harmonious voice, Et in terra pax bonae voluntatis. …
       At the conclusion of the Gloria in excelsis, the Lord Jesus, who is our true High Priest and Pontiff, turned to Gertrude, saying Dominus vobiscum, dilecta — “The Lord be with you, beloved,” and she replied Et spiritus meus tecum, praedilecte — “And may my spirit be with Thee, O most Beloved.” After this she inclined towards the Lord, to return Him thanks for His live in uniting her spirit to His Divinity, whose delights are with the children of men. The Lord then read the Collect …
       Gertrude saw our Lord rise from His royal throne and present His blessed Heart to His Father, elevating it with His own Hands and immolating it in an ineffable manner for the whole Church, At this moment the bell rang for the Elevation of the Host in the Church [where St. Gertrude was on earth], so that it appeared as if our Lord did in heaven what the priest did on earth. …
       And our Lord communicated Himself to her with a love and tenderness which no human tongue could describe, so that she received the perfect fruit of His most precious Body and Blood. After this He sang a canticle of love for her and declared to her that had this union of Himself with her been the sole fruit of His labors, sorrows, and Passion, He would have been fully satisfied.[2]

Admittedly, Gertrude was caught up in rapture and saw visions that are seldom granted to mortals. Nevertheless, a Pontifical Mass truly does convey something of the burning intensity, the royal majesty, the celestial beauty, the overwhelming holiness of the Mass of Our Lord that she beheld. If our Mass on earth does not hint at this, if it is not capable of being a springboard to mystical communion with the High Priest, if it is antithetical to the truth Gertrude saw momentarily unveiled, it is being false to its essence.

I remember with great inner warmth how it felt to be at the Mass celebrated by His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke at Strahov Abbey on the Feast of St. Teresa of Jesus in October 2016. Between the sanctuary full of ministers going about their many and varied tasks of service and the choir loft whence flowed the milk of chant and the honey of polyphony, I was suspended in an enormous net of prayer, the Church in heaven and the Church on earth, into which I, though unworthy, was invited to participate, along with the hundreds of souls packed into the narrow wooden benches of the nave.[3] Prayer was not a mental construct but a pulsing, palpable thing going on above me, before me, and yet within me, something much greater and more real than myself in that it came from God and carried me to God, infusing a sense of wonder and humility. “Who am I, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” — this mother that the liturgy is for our spiritual life.

The two hours of the Pontifical Mass passed as quickly as if time had stepped aside in deference to its master, waiting to be summoned again when he should wish it. The liturgy ended with a monumental improvisation on the pipe organ, so that my last impressions were an anarchic blend of banners carried in procession, music seizing hold of all space, and the bustle of men, women, and children streaming forth to the courtyard. I had been present at the tearing of the veil in the temple, the veil of His flesh, and for a moment the heavens were opened. I had worshiped with the angels, knelt with sinners, felt the balm of beauty, tasted the sacrament of love. Never have I been more proud to be a Catholic — or more aware of my smallness and dependency, my unworthiness as a member of the Mystical Body.

From those heights, let us return once more to pontifical regalia and look at the question from the opposite angle. While it is sometimes possible that a saintly priest or bishop would choose to rid himself of anything valuable in order to give the money to the poor, in our own times it is much more common to encounter what might be called “ostentatious bad taste” or “hypocritical poverty,” when a priest or bishop who claims to be renouncing pomp and circumstance for the sake of the Gospel is really drawing attention to himself as a paragon of social justice, whose ugly garments or clumsy chalices in fact still cost a great deal of money — money that could have been spent on something truly beautiful, which spiritually enriches all who behold it, including the poor. We could put it this way: a priest or bishop who does not see himself as essentially a symbol of another and therefore as able to accept and promote liturgical beauty for the sake of that other will, perforce, see himself as —himself, in front of the people, on display. At this point, two roads are open to him: to be ostentatiously wealthy for the sake of worldly glory, or to be ostentatiously poor and virtuous. In either case, it’s all about him, and the result is thoroughly disedifying. In contrast, when a man of God really acts and speaks as a man of God, one who totally belongs to Christ the Eternal High Priest, it is extremely edifying to see him robed in splendor, uplifted in honor. When Our Lord said: “Whatsoever you do to the least, you do unto Me” (cf. Mt 25:40), He was certainly not excluding the truth that whatsoever you do to the greatest, you do to Him as well.

We can see in the simplicity of St. Benedict’s faith the reason why so many in the Church today object to “pomp and splendor” — namely, their lack of the same faith. “Let the abbot, since he is believed to hold the place of Christ, be called Lord and Abbot…” If one does not believe firmly and unshakably with one’s mind and heart that the ministerial priest is alter Christus, a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek; if one does not believe that the bishop is Christ as ruling, teaching, and sanctifying; if one does not believe that the hierarchs of the Church are the authoritative voice and healing hands of the Word made flesh, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who suffered and is now exalted gloriously in heaven above the cherubim and seraphim, then it is perfectly reasonable to be repelled by signs of pomp and splendor.

Charles Coulombe makes this insightful observation about the difference in “style” between Benedict XVI and Francis: 

The generation of westerners of which he [Francis] is a part was marked — in Church, State, and indeed, in every field — by what can only be called a sort of “personalization” of authority. That is to say, that the traditional division in perception between an office and the current holder of that office — which allowed people of wildly differing, sometimes even opposed, views to collaborate out of shared respect for the office under whose direction they functioned — has been blurred or even obliterated. Such folk, when in authority, tend to downgrade or do away with traditional symbols of their office while emphasizing their own personalities in pursuit of some nebulous “authenticity.” So it is that morning dress and uniforms disappear from presidential inaugurations and legislative openings, and royals love to appear in casual wear. The difficulty with such an approach is that it tends to weaken respect for the office in the eyes of its subjects, who in turn begin to believe that their loyalty to it is dependent purely on their personal feelings for the occupant of the moment. Seeing the problems this had created, Benedict XVI began to restore the symbolic side of the Papacy, for all that formalism and display ran extremely counter to his nature. But it is not an issue that one of Francis’s generation could be expected to understand — quite the contrary.[4]

Pope Benedict, says Coulombe, attempted to show the “hermeneutic of reform in continuity” by his very apparel; it was not a mental construct or an eccentric opinion, but a lived reality, displayed on the outside:

What is certain is that he did try to use the hermeneutic of reform himself. Despite the lack of tiara noted earlier, piece by piece he restored bits of the papal wardrobe that his immediate predecessors had discarded: the fur-lined mozzetta, the camauro, the fanon, and — most annoying to some — the traditional red shoes, symbolizing the fact that as Pope he walked in the footsteps of the martyrs.

This humble Bavarian who shied away from the limelight saw that paradoxically it was necessary to elevate and accentuate the sacramental iconicity of the pontiff in order to move beyond the cult of personality inadvertently started by John XXIII and vastly augmented in the charismatic athlete, actor, poet, and playwright John Paul II. With Pope Francis, we see a return both of the cult of personality and of the false conception of poverty, this time applied not only to liturgy but also to doctrine itself.[5]

When we look back over the criticisms made of episcopal vestments by certain fathers of the Second Vatican Council and by our minimalists of today, we must ask ourselves: Why would a bishop who protests about wearing gauntlets or buskins not likewise protest about the mitre and crook? Why is a bishop or a priest still wearing clerical attire of any sort? Did not the chasuble begin as a typical Roman garment, of which jeans and a T-shirt would be our equivalent? Why is a cleric still using prescribed rituals and ceremonies at all?

Joseph Ratzinger saw that the post-modern critique of structures and institutions extends to everything — there is no logical reason to stop at the cappa magna or the gold chalice or the medieval chant, as opposed to carrying the deconstruction of religion all the way to its entire visible material system of power.[6] For this reason, therefore, the post-modern critique has to be rejected at its root. In its place we must put the Pseudo-Dionysian principle of excess, even super-excess. While we may not prefer the results of the Baroque aesthetic to those of the Byzantine, the Romanesque, or the Gothic, we can recognize in it the Christ-loving, creation-loving exultation of the Catholic soul, which serves as an antidote to the poisonous reductionism of our time and an exemplar of the disciplined abandon to holy things, rejoicing in every pound of spikenard it can spill out to anoint the feet of the Lord.

NOTES

[1] Holy Rule, ch. 63 (McCann trans.). Perhaps the most astonishing example of Benedict's analogical thinking is found in ch. 7, under the fifth degree of humility. The chapter begins: "The fifth degree of humility is that he [the monk] humbly confess and conceal not from his abbot any evil thoughts that enter his heart, and any secret sins that he has committed." Straightforward. But then Benedict backs up this advice with three authorities: "To this does Scripture exhort us, saying: Make known thy way unto the Lord and hope in him. And again: Confess to the Lord, for he is good, and his mercy endureth for ever. And further: I have made known my sin to thee, and my faults I have not concealed. I said: I will be my own accuser and confess my faults to the Lord, and with that thou didst remit the guilt of my sin." The patriarch has virtually equated "confessing to the Lord" with "confessing to the abbot." This can make sense only because the abbot is a true and authoritative 'icon' of the Lord, an alter Christus, along the lines of Jesus' statement: "He who hears you, hears me."

[2] William J. Doheny, C.S.C., The Revelations of  Saint Gertrude, Part III, ch. LXI.

[3] It was thought that hardly anyone would come to this Mass. When it began, the church was so full that no seats were left and latercomers had to stand or sit wherever they could. It is doubtful that this abbey has seen so many worshipers for a very long time. It is almost always this way with Pontifical Masses: the People of God are famished and they come to the feast whenever and wherever it is set forth.

[4] Vicars of Christ: A History of the Popes (Arcadia: Tumblar House, 2014), 389–90.

[5] By “poverty of doctrine” I refer to the superficiality, messiness, ambiguities, contradictions, and unclarity of this pope’s teaching, in contrast to the rich truthfulness of those of his predecessors who took seriously the Lord’s command to “let what you say be simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’” (Mt 5:37); cf. 2 Cor 1:17–19, Jas 5:12.

[6] For more thoughts about the deconstruction of symbolism, see the superb recent article on Alfred Lorenzer's 1981 study The Council of the Bookkeepers.

Dionysius Alive and Well: On Hierarchical Incensation

At the Solemn Vespers held on the opening day of the Sacra Liturgia conference, June 1, 2015, I witnessed a memorable sign of the true nature of the Church and of the cosmos: the elaborate incensation during the Magnificat.

I have seen incense used at Vespers before, but never so elaborately, or, one might say, to such a Baroque extent (with “Baroque” as an altogether laudatory appellation). After all, incensing, like every sign used in worship, must be done properly, according to the order of persons involved — and we had in our midst a major prelate at the throne, His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke; several bishops and an abbot; ranks of clergy; platoons of religious, seminarians, and laity. It was a microcosm of the Church universal.

The incensations commenced during the Canticle of Our Lady, beginning with Our Lord at the high altar; then moving to Cardinal Burke at the throne; and then, cascading downwards, in their various echelons, the celebrant, clergy in choir, the other ministers, the religious, the laity. The censer must change hands at certain times so that ministers may both give and receive according to their specified place. It was slow, solemn, and beautiful — a real representation of ecclesiastical hierarchy and a perfect ceremonial reflection of cosmic hierarchy. As Dionysius the Areopagite teaches us: “God radiates upon inferior natures through superior natures: and to say all in one word, it is by the ministry of the highest powers that He comes forth from the depths of His adorable obscurity.”

As the days of the week went on, each liturgy of the conference featured the same lengthy, graceful, comprehensive incensation of every rank, every person, from the Head of the Mystical Body to its lowliest member. The fire burned in the thurible and the clouds of smoke rose up as a sensible sign of an ardent offering of wordless praise, of our desire to raise our prayers to God in humble homage, and of Christ’s perfect mediation on our behalf, since He offered Himself as a holocaust for our sins and a pleasing fragrance before the Most Blessed Trinity. As a contemporary commentator on Dionysius says:

Christ offers the very source and norm of ecstatic being within the order of hierarchy. Finite, hierarchical being now shows itself as a being through which we stand within ourselves as outside of ourselves—offered up, or given over, in sacrifice. . . . To die with Christ (and thus to be saved) is to become an offering through fire, a burnt sacrifice. The desire that burns within all hierarchical beings is the fire of holocaust, in which those beings are offered ecstatically to their source. Such an offering ignites the true movement of death, realized first in Christ and offered through Christ for imitation. Christ saves the finite being whose very identity consists in self-transcendence.[1]

Taking one’s time with an action like this gives it its full weight. There are no excuses or apologies for the lengthy ceremony. No one is in a rush; no one’s private agenda is permitted to dictate that we must get done as quickly as possible. If individuals need to come and go, they are free to do so; but the liturgy proceeds on its own time, in its own domain, with a blessed freedom and a sort of holy indifference to the world. Spurning the utilitarianism of our time, we should not want to “get things over with” as quickly as possible, so that we can get back to our oh-so-important secular lives; and the liturgies in New York City taught us that preeminently valuable lesson.

The world is tearing itself apart in a demonic frenzy of self-indulgence, envy, and violence, and we cannot stop it from lying and killing, for its father is the father of lies, and a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44). But we can do the one thing for which we were made: praise, adore, glorify, magnify the Lord, for His own name’s sake, and for our salvation. This is why our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world: to save sinners, of whom I am the first (1 Tim 1:15). This is why He ascended into heaven: that, in spite of the world, the flesh, and the devil, we who are His faithful disciples would follow Him heavenward in our thoughts, desires, actions — above all, in the theandric action of the liturgy, which joins man to God, earth to heaven, sinner to salvation.

I saw this throughout the conference liturgies: each was of a mighty stature that seemed to be a slice of the eternal motions of the heavens, or like a living thing breathing on the scale of the redwood forests or the ocean reefs. We were catching a glimpse of something far greater, far more ancient and at the same time well ahead of us and beyond us, into which we were permitted to enter for a time, as a gracious favor. The liturgy was what it had to be and we submitted our minds and hearts to its rhythms, its logic, its mysteries. God was present and we served Him. That is all — and that is enough to make everything else real and worthwhile.

Near the conclusion of an absolutely sublime Votive Mass in Honor of the Holy Angels (in the usus antiquior), I was struck by the paradox of the Postcommunion prayer: “We who are filled with the heavenly blessing humbly beseech Thee, O Lord, that the mysteries we celebrate with this poor worship [fragili officio] of ours may be profitable to us by the help of Thy holy angels and archangels.” This — all that we had just done, all the glorious music, the noble prayers handed down to us by countless saints, the very offering up of the Holy Sacrifice in a church filled with worshipers in rapt and adoring silence — was our poor worship? And yet, it was a poor service compared to the bright, sleepless, ecstatic worship of the angels in the heavenly Jerusalem, compared to the perfect intercession of the wounds of Jesus Christ in His divine humanity at the right hand of the Father. But it took the very splendor of this liturgy to throw into bold relief the distance between us and the ineffable vision of peace for which we long.

Shakespeare’s Duke Orsino famously says: “If music be the food of love, play on. / Give me excess of it” (Twelfth Night, I, 1.1-3). For Abbot John of Ford, “praise is the food of love,” and there can never be too much of it:

Without any doubt, praise awakens love and preserves it. Hence it is that the citizens of Jerusalem feed the flame of eternal love by eternal praises. They cease not to cry aloud so as to be steadfast in love. Their cry has no rest, because love knows no intermission. So praise is the food of love.  And you, too, if deep within you there is a little spark of sacred love, do all you can to apply to this spark the oil of your praise, so that your tiny fire may live and grow.[2]

NOTES

[1] Thomas A. Carlson, Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 173-74.

[2] Commentary on the Song of Songs, Sermo III, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Maediavalis, Vol. XVII, 48; courtesy of Sancrucensis.

Photos courtesy of Stuart and Jill Chessman/Sacra Liturgia.