Architectural Aids: Two Reviews

Sketch by Peter F. Anson

A review of Carl Van Treeck and Aloysius Croft, Symbols in the Church (Romanitas Press, 2021) and Peter F. Anson, Churches: Their Plan and Furnishing (Romanitas Press, 2021)

It is a fact without doubt that the Roman Missal represents in its entirety the loftiest and most important work in ecclesiastical literature, being that it shows forth with the greatest fidelity the life-history of the Church, that sacred poem in the making of which ha posto mano e cielo e terra [“Heaven and earth have set their hand,” Dante, Paradiso XXV,2].[1]

The temple of Solomon… was not alone the binding of the holy book; it was the holy book itself. On each one of its concentric walls, the priests could read the word translated and manifested to the eye, and thus they followed its transformations from sanctuary to sanctuary, until they seized it in its last tabernacle… Thus the word was enclosed in an edifice.[2]

Here is a riddle: What are the three most important books in Catholic life that are not books? The answer is: the Bible (which, despite its modern binding, is not a book but a library of works co-authored by the Holy Spirit ); the traditional Roman Missal (which, though also appearing in book form, is a set of instructions for a sacred action); and the church (a building that, like the Holy Temple, is meant to be read cover to cover).

But if it is true that the church, like all great architecture, is a book (Victor Hugo calls architecture the great book of humanity), then it takes training to read it. One must learn its alphabet and grammar, so to speak, in order to understand its sentences and paragraphs. And yet not many people today are artistically or architecturally literate. One of modern Catholicism’s deficiencies is the widespread inability of its faithful to decipher the symbols of their Faith.

It is for this reason that we can be grateful to Romanitas Press for republishing two volumes on the subject: Carl Van Treeck and Aloysius Croft’s 1936 Symbols in the Church and Peter F. Anson’s 1947 Churches: Their Plan and Furnishing.

Peter Anson (1889-1975) was a restless and talented soul. Born near the sea in Portsmouth, England and trained as an architect, he entered an Anglican Benedictine monastery in 1910. Three years later, he and his community submitted to the Holy See and became Catholic. Anson eventually became an Oblate and the monastery’s librarian; he also founded the Apostleship of the Sea for Catholic seafarers. After a breakdown in health, however, Anson decided to return to the world, and at the age of 35 he earned a living as an artist while seeing the world. He became a Franciscan Tertiary for a while in Italy but returned to his nomadic life before eventually settling down in a village of sailors and fisherman in Macduff, Scotland, where he could savor the life of the sea once more.

Anson wrote Church Plans as a practical guide for building and remodeling churches. The author wisely cautions against altering churches simply because they do not conform to contemporary sensibilities, and he frowns upon antiquarian and unimaginative resuscitations of earlier styles. His language of functionalism and his disdain for “fancy symbolism” are slightly troublesome, for they could be interpreted as an excuse to produce barren barns and call them churches. But Anson himself does not go in this direction: his meticulous illustrations and moderate counsel open the reader up to the riches of sacred architecture. Anson faithfully operates within the strictures of the 1917 Code of Canon Law and other Church legislation. His summary of these regulations is quite useful, although not all of it is still valid, such as the prohibition of electric lights for illuminating the altar (112).

As you may have guessed from his biography, Anson was an eccentric fellow, and Church Plans is an eccentric work. The author does not shy from offering his own advice in addition to official Church rules. Pulpits, he opines, should be elevated, made of wood (“it looks warmer and gives more color to a church”), and have a door (“many an eloquent preacher would feel far more at his ease if knew there was no danger of falling backwards”) and a solid front (“it is distracting to see the preacher’s cassock and feet”)(156). He also holds the odd view that if the weather were perfectly clement every day, we would not need churches at all but would celebrate Mass in an open field (3). He seems to forget that churches do not simply provide shelter from the rain but, among other things, help keep our minds from wandering.

The chief weakness of Church Plans is that it tries to square the circle between traditional architecture and modernist. Anson quotes passages that advocate placing the altar in the center of the church and advises a “happy mean” between the new view and the old (39). But how can you have a happy mean between an altar in the center of the church and an altar at the end: placing it three-quarters of the way in? Fortunately, Anson’s go-to authority on practical matters is St. Charles Borromeo, so he almost never ends up recommending something silly. And although he includes illustrations of modernist abominations (there is a bleak, free-standing altar for Mass facing the people from 1935 Germany), his own rich sketches betray the stark differences. After being enchanted by page after page of beautiful churches, seeing a design by Hans Herkommer or Eric Gill is like a punch in the gut.

Sketch by P.F. Anson. Yes!

Sketch by P.F. Anson. No!

Although Church Plans is thin on symbolic explanations, it is nonetheless useful for gaining a better understanding of the meaning and parts of a church. Equipped with this understanding, readers can then continue their education in sacred architecture with the works of men like Duncan Stroik.

Carl Van Treeck and Aloysius Croft’s Symbols in the Church was also written as a practical guide for artists and “ecclesiastical craftsmen” rather than students of symbolism (vi). Annotations are scarce as well as scholarly explanations of styles, historical context, etc. Like Church Plans, the images are illustrated with black-and-white sketches rather than photographs. The disadvantage of this choice is that the image is more dependent on the viewpoint of the artist; the advantage, however, is a unity of presentation, a greater beauty, and, in this case, the superior viewpoint of the artist, Carl Van Treeck. The basic idea behind Symbols in the Church is to introduce artists to “the beautiful picture language” of the Mystical Body of Christ (vi) so that they can adapt these symbols to contemporary use. Happily, the authors did not follow their own rule strictly but included some early representations of Christ that are no longer recognizable as such, e.g., a griffin, a peacock, a phoenix, and a bird in a cage (representing gestation in His mother’s womb!). As a result, the reader catches something of the breadth and depth of Catholic symbolism, which has varied from century to century and place to place.

Symbols in the Church begins with an interesting chapter on symbols and symbolism in which the authors argue that all Christian art must necessarily be symbolic because Christian art portrays some element of the supernatural. (“Sheer naturalness” they state earlier, is “the death of all liturgical art” [vi]). The rest of the book is divided according to subject matter: the Holy Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the Gospels and Evangelists, the Apostles, the Church, the Sacraments, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Ecclesiastical Year, and the Four Last Things.

The entire book is a delight to peruse, but I was especially fascinated by the symbols of the Church, some of which surprised me (there are a lot more than just Noah’s Ark and Peter’s Barque). And I was struck by an image of the Last Judgment depicting scales, one of which is filled with the cross, the anchor, and the crown of thorns, the other of which is laden with jewels. The latter tilts upward: the virtues and sufferings of the faithful soul outweigh the riches and comforts of the world.

Plate XXXVIII of Symbols in the Church. Symbols of death (1 and 2), judgment (3 and 4), and damnation (5).

Church Plans and Symbols in the Church fit hand in glove: Anson more or less tells you how to build a church, and Van Treeck and Croft tell you how to decorate it. I recommend these books to anyone interested in Catholic art and architecture but especially as gifts to priests and planning committees in charge of building or remodeling churches. God willing, with aids like these, “writing” beautiful churches will once again become common.

Address by Dom Karl Wallner: “The Profanation of the Sacred and the Sacralisation of the Profane”

Extracts from a major (and fascinating) address given by Dom Karl Wallner, O. Cist., Rector of the Pontifical University of Heiligenkreuz and national director of Missio for Austria, have been translated and are posted at the new liturgical site Canticum Salomonis, the unveiling of which NLM announced to readers last week. A taste:

Along with desacralisation inside the Church there was another phenomenon, which I was able to experience personally in my encounters with the profane world of show business: a form of sacralisation of the profane, a ritualisation of the banal, the promotion of non-religious objects to the level of cult objects. From the backstage of the show to which I had been invited, I could observe how the show was designed down the last detail as a sort of dramaturgy, so that the viewer in front of the television participated in a kind of “Pontifical Mass of Entertainment.”
          Several years ago, after celebrating a vigil service with a youth group, I had an experience that struck me profoundly and became the key to understanding.
          For the past 20 years at Heiligenkreuz, we have organised prayer retreats for young people between the ages of 15 and 28. Since the majority of young people that age suffer a severe lack of enculturation in everything related to Catholicism, and must still learn how to pray and adore, these vigils represent a real challenge. That is why we could not even imagine celebrating a Mass with them: we must first render these young capable of receiving the Eucharistic mystery. First and foremost they need to have a personal relation to Jesus Christ. In that regard, the Catholic liturgy offers a range of possibilities, a whole sacred repertoire that is able to create an ambiance that permits the young people to open their hearts so that they may be touched by the presence of God.

A side-note: when Canticum Salomonis was launched last week and many visited it, the social media links and RSS feed had not yet been set up. They are now in place, so please do pay them a visit, and read Pater Wallner's remarkable talk.

The Logic of Incarnation and the Temptation of Disincarnation

Adriaen Ysenbrandt (active 1510-1551), The Mass of St. Gregory

I recently heard a public address in which the speaker urged his audience “not to get stuck on externals” or to think that “just because you have the externals right, you are being a good Christian.” Consistent with his starting point, the speaker continued: “It’s wrong to say that having preferences A, B, C is better than having preferences X, Y, Z. If Holy Mother Church permits them all, then we should be okay with them all, too.”

As readers may have already surmised, he was addressing Catholics of a conservative and traditional disposition, and upbraiding them for (I suppose) their excessive preoccuptation with good liturgy, and for their presumptuous opinion that it is better to have certain “externals” rather than others — for example, to have the Latin language, chant and polyphony, the ad orientem stance, all-male altar service, and kneeling for communion, rather than their all-too-common alternatives.

I have come to think of this attack on externals as a kind of archetypal error of our day and age. It is no mere difference of opinion; it goes to the very roots of our faith.

To begin with, when and where do we see human beings fixated on externals? Ancient Israel, like its neighboring nations, seems to have had an irresistible hankering for idols of wood, stone, or metal, and when European missionaries arrived in pagan regions, they found craven tribesmen who worshiped trees, animals, or totems. Superstition has often reared its ugly head in religious history. Undoubtedly there are individuals with a mental handicap by which they latch on to particular objects or actions and seem incapable of passing through the symbol to its meaning. More subtly, there may well be the occasional ritualist who is so intent on the finer points of rubricology that he misses the forest for the trees.

Yet these categories of people are not likely to have been what the speaker had in mind. His message ran more along the lines of classical Protestantism: externals in religion are, at best, useful things, and, at worst, dangerously misleading ones, but they are not essential on our path. The moment one says “you can get too caught up in the externals and forget that it’s all about your interior relationship with Jesus,” one is creating an artificial dichotomy, a fictitious opposition, an almost Manichaean division between the sensible and the spiritual that puts them in tension rather than seeing them as providentially interconnected.

This interconnection is, after all, the very logic of the Incarnation. Man could not reach God directly and internally, so God came to Him visibly, in and through the external world. In the fullness of time, God Himself became man, became body, matter, a sensible object to unite us with that which is beyond all sense, beyond all conception of the created mind. Thanks to this initiative of divine mercy, man, exercising his own senses and imagination, could draw near to God by surrounding himself with what was not God but had become the living signs of His presence and His work. I mean, of course, the Bible, the sacraments, the liturgy.[1] This theology is captured in the pithiest manner by the most sublime of all Prefaces, that of the Nativity: “Through the mystery of the Word-made-flesh, a new radiance of Thy glory hath shone on the eye of the soul, such that, as we recognize God made visible, we are drawn to love of things invisible.”[2]

Carried to its furthest conclusion, the view that externals don’t matter, or that they matter only in “moderation” and with a hearty dose of relativism about other possible configurations of externals, runs the risk of repudiating or marginalizing the Incarnation and the sacramental system by which it continually irrupts into our world. It will provoke over time a rejection of the “scandal of the particular” in favor of a bland ecumenism in which all paths to salvation and all expressions of faith are valid, as long as one is sincere in one’s devotional life. It will express itself in a disposition that is more welcoming to evangelical Protestants, who are outside of the unity of the visible Church of Christ, than to traditionally-minded Catholics, who, prioritizing a certain definite ritual worship as Catholics have done for at least 1,500 years, are definitely inside of it.

We are looking at nothing less than a temptation to reject the Catholic religion in favor of an American religiosity that looks more to “where the heart is” than to where the intellect is in its act of faith and what the definite object of that faith is. As St. Thomas teaches, we cannot have the charity of God if we do not believe in Him first. In this sense, love — understood not as an instinct or emanation of the soul, as the modernists do, but as an infused gift from above — depends radically on the integrity of our faith. If you damage that integrity (and there can be no doubt it has been grievously damaged throughout the Church on earth over the past fifty years), you will weaken and eventually undermine the charity that is Christ’s most precious gift and the Christian’s most valuable possession.

If there is no integral faith, there can be no charity. If there is no right worship, there will be no right ordering to God and neighbor. If there are no sacraments, there will not be the consistent and guaranteed divinization of man in the Word made flesh. If the sacraments are not conducted as befits their sublime nature, the faithful will drift away from integral faith and right worship pleasing to God. It is all interconnected, each piece crucial to the existence and functioning of the whole; nothing is optional, nothing a mere “add-on” or “super-sizing.”[3]

In short, there is no Christianity without the Incarnation and all that it makes possible and necessary. The very essence of Christianity is the embodiment of the divine, the materialization of the Word, the irruption of the eternal and the boundless into time and space, so that through these means we may rise up to immortality and the beatific vision, perfect communion with God and one another. There is no shortcut. All will be saved by flesh, by signs, by the blood-soaked Cross, by . . . externals.

Someone may object: “But Jesus Himself said that a time was coming when men would worship not on this mountain or that mountain, but in spirit and in truth. He’s basically saying that worship is about being spiritual and truthful, not about doing this or that, or any particular rite or offering.” If we say this, however, we make Our Lord flagrantly contradict Himself. For it was He who established the sacrifical banquet of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, saying “do this in memory of me,” and it was He who, lifted high upon the Cross, gave us the perfect reality of worship in spirit and in truth, in the sacrifice of His pierced flesh and streaming blood. The particular once-for-all oblation of His particular Body and Blood is our salvation — and this oblation is made present for us in the mystery of the Most Blessed Sacrament. In this sense, to be without the Holy Eucharist is to be without worship, without salvation, without spirit and truth. Re-read John 6.

Hence, the error about which we are speaking is not an incidental one. It is a temptation to disincarnation, to distancing ourselves from that which, for us, here and now, must be of primary and vital importance. We are called to embrace the one and only Word-made-flesh, not the Word in abstraction or in a private and therefore individualized world of devotion. We cannot bypass the ladder of Christ’s humanity and each rung thereupon: the sacraments and sacramentals, which are signs potent for salvation; the sacred liturgy, where heaven meets earth and immaterial realities are clothed in color, tone, fragrance, and taste; the Eucharistic sacrifice, “font and apex of our entire Christian life”[4]; the corporal works of mercy, through which Our Lord touches the needy through our own hands. And we must not deceive ourselves by thinking that these things have a full and proper existence apart from Catholic tradition, through which they came to us in the first place, and from which they have their permanent and self-abiding justification. When we innovate, when we experiment, when we pluralize and privatize the devotional life, we are sawing off the branch on which we are sitting.

As mentioned before, the speaker said we should never think that a certain set of preferences (“A, B, C”) is better than another set of preferences (“X, Y, Z”), if both are permitted. But what if it is possible for us to know that A, B, C really is better than X, Y, Z — significantly better? Better because more aligned with the expressions and needs of human nature as understood by psychology, sociology, and anthropology? Better because more in keeping with millennia of Catholic tradition? Better because closer to what Holy Mother Church actually recommends? If one is convinced, on solid grounds, that A, B, C is superior to X, Y, Z, and that the very health and fruitfulness of the Church depend on adhering to the former and phasing out the latter, it may even be a sin not to pray and work for the widespread acceptance of the one and the downfall of the other.

It is claimed that saying and acting on such convictions promotes “tribalism.” But the reality is far otherwise. The Protestants have split into a thousand sects because they abandoned the unity of signs — the signs of papacy, sacrament, liturgy, sacred art. This is what happens to Catholics today, inasmuch as they, too, abandon the Church’s tradition in favor of pluralism, optionitis, and false inculturation.[5] Unity of sign has given way to pluralism of style. The pluralist does not say: “the Church always acted thus,” but “it is up to you to find and choose the way that works best for you.”

This is nothing other than a subtle form of the dictatorship of relativism, under which one is never permitted to say A, B, C is better than X, Y, Z, for fear of offending someone by insisting on forgotten truths. Reason’s natural and noble work of discernment and judgment is compromised by politeness masquerading as charity, fideism pretending to be obedience, and laxity dressed up as humility.

Lack of due emphasis on externals ends up vitiating the internal powers and resources as well; we lose our common frame of reference and, with it, the most fertile source of our interior growth. To be isolated in this way, to be lulled into thinking ourselves more or less independent of the past and its certainties, is precisely what foments factionalism, as each tribe defines its multifarious allegiances to past, present, and future differently from the way every other tribe would do it. This is the heavy price we pay for sweet autonomy from those dastardly externals.

In the traditional Roman Mass, the priest consecrates the wine with this formula: “Hic est enim Calix Sanguinis mei, novi et aeterni Testamenti: Mysterium fidei: qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum.” The liturgy is teaching us that the mystery of faith is not properly found in a catechism or voluminous papal documents, in acclamations of the people, or in any social work or political activism, however laudable. The mystery of our faith is found in the heart of the Mass; it is intimately and intrinsically bound up with this precious chalice and its infinitely precious contents. We are thus reminded, again and again, of where our own source and summit must always be, if we are to have the strength to do the Lord’s work.

NOTES

[1] St. Thomas Aquinas speaks particularly eloquently to these points. Here is how he argues in Summa contra gentiles, Bk. 3, ch. 119:

Since it is connatural to man to acquire knowledge through the senses, and since it is most difficult to arise above sensible things, divine providence has appointed sensible things as a reminder to man of things divine, so that thus man’s intention might the more readily be recalled to divine things, not excluding the man whose mind is not equal to the contemplation of divine things in themselves. For this reason sensible sacrifices were instituted; since man offers these to God, not because God needs them, but that man might be reminded that he must refer both himself and all that is his to God as his end, and as the Creator, Governor and Lord of all.
       Again, sensible things are employed for man’s sanctification, in the form of washings, anointings, food and drink, and the uttering of sensible words, as signifying to man that he receives intelligible gifts from an external source, and from God whose name is expressed by sensible words.
       Moreover, man performs certain sensible actions, not to arouse God, but to arouse himself to things divine: such as prostrations, genuflections, raising of the voice and singing. Such things are not done as though God needed them, for He knows all things, and His will is unchangeable, and He looks at the affection of the heart, and not the mere movement of the body: but we do them for our own sake, that by them our intention may be fixed on God, and our hearts inflamed. At the same time we thereby confess that God is the author of our soul and body, since we employ both soul and body in the worship we give Him. 

[2] “Quia per incarnati Verbi mysterium nova mentis nostrae oculis lux tuae claritatis infulsit: ut, dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisibilium amorem rapiamur.”

[3] Ironically, the liturgical reformers in the 1960s and 1970s knew very well that the whole thing was about externals. That is why they moved, as quickly as possible, to change as much as they could do. Change the sign and you change the message. Change the ritual and you change the religion. They knew that the externals were the first and last thing every Christian encounters, prior to learning how to think, prior to formal catechesis, prior to discrimination.

[4] Lumen Gentium 11; cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium 10.

[5] See my articles "Confusions about Inculturation" and "Is 'Contemporary' Church Music a Good Example of Inculturation?"

Beat Your Own Breast

Even if Advent is not a penitential season in quite the same way Lent is, nevertheless, a penitential note has always been struck in this time of preparation and expectancy, in the weeks that lead up to the great feast of Christmas. In keeping therefore with the hopeful asceticism of the season, and the many Scriptural readings that call us to vigilance, I would like to have a look at one of the “lost gestures” of the Roman Rite which, thanks be to God, is now making a comeback.

Why do we beat our breasts? Many years ago, Fr. Cassian Folsom, O.S.B., prior of the Monastery of Norcia, wrote a lovely article entitled “Sacred Signs and Active Participation at Mass: What Do These Actions Mean, and Why Are They So Important?” Apropos our topic, Fr. Cassian says:

This is a sign of repentance, of humility, like the parable of the Pharisee and publican in the Gospel: “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying: O God, be merciful to me a sinner!” (Lk 18:13). In the Missal of Pius V, the rubric for this gesture was very specific: “He strikes his breast three times, saying: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” The rubric in the Missal of Paul VI is less precise. It simply says: “Striking themselves on the breast they say mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” … The words express our repentance verbally. Striking the breast expresses our repentance physically, in body language.

Fr. Cassian continues, quoting one of my favorite books, Guardini’s Sacred Signs:

Guardini has something to say about this gesture too. He asks the question: “What is the significance of this striking the breast? All its meaning lies in its being rightly done. To brush one’s clothes with the tip of one’s fingers is not to strike the breast. We should beat upon our breasts with our closed fists. In the old picture of Saint Jerome in the desert he is kneeling on the ground and striking his breast with a stone. It is an honest blow, not an elegant gesture. To strike the breast is to beat against the gates of our inner world in order to shatter them. This is its significance.” … The gesture of striking the breast, made carefully and with full awareness, can communicate to ourselves and to others more than mere words can say, that we recognize our sinfulness and publicly declare our sorrow for our sins. … Try it yourself. The rib cage is like an echo chamber. If you strike your breast properly, you’ll hear the sound of it: like the sound of thunder.

This, then, is why we have this gesture and why it is important not to let it slip away into a manner of worship that is too verbal and not sufficiently physical and interior.

I don’t know if others have done the same, but ever since the new translation of the Roman Missal appeared, I’ve been wondering if the People of God in my neighborhood would start beating their breasts as they say: “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.” After all, this rhythmic repetition, evidently not a useless repetition but a highly necessary one, almost begs to be accompanied by some bodily action: “through my fault (thump), through my fault (thump), through my most grievous fault (thump).”

The results seem to be mixed so far. The younger people pick it up quickly: they are natural imitators, they delight in ritual observances, and as soon as they see a few adults who do it, they start to emulate. But those who have lived a very long time without the beating of the breast — which was, I’m afraid, lost during the confusion of “the changes” — for the most part do not seem to have resumed the custom, and, alas, I cannot remember a single homily in which the custom was mentioned, either to explain it, or to encourage it.

Still, there’s hope. The beating of the breast will come back, for three reasons: firstly, the increasing number of Catholics who attend the Extraordinary Form cannot avoid seeing it happening many times (and, perchance, reading it in their missals); secondly, members of the younger generation who are liturgically conscientious are taking it up again at both the Ordinary and Extraoridnary Forms; thirdly and most deeply, it is a profoundly human, natural, humble, and effective sign, of which we always stand in need. This gives it a kind of elemental claim on us that easily reasserts itself in spite of decades of abeyance. One sees the same thing with the reintroduction of kneeling for communion, the use of incense, the Benedictine altar arrangement, ad orientem, and lots of other examples. They may have been totally unfamiliar in a certain community, but when they reappear on the watch of a pastor more attuned to Catholic tradition, they make such intuitive sense in worship that the reaction of many is: “Ah, yes — that’s what we’ve been missing.”

* * *

There is also a practical issue that a reader once raised with me, in connection with the traditional Latin Mass. He wrote:

At the the Agnus Dei (Angelus Press Missal, pp. 906–7; Lasance, p. 788; Saint Andrew, p. 981), I have noticed that people in the pews strike their breast three times. They often do the same at the Communion of the Priest (Angelus Press Missal, pp. 910–11; Lasance, p. 790; Saint Andrew, p. 983). My understanding, perhaps mistaken, is that at these two points in the Mass, the priest is the only person who should be doing this, while the faithful in the pews are supposed to do it only at the Communion of the Faithful (Angelus Press, pp. 912–13; Lasance, p. 791; Saint Andrew, p. 984). There seems to be some confusion about this amongst those of us in the pews. I’d appreciate it if you could let me know what is correct.

It’s a good question, and similar to many other questions that people can and do raise about posture and customs at the TLM. In response, let me mention a few points:

1. As surprising as it may seem, what the laity are supposed to do in the old Mass is nowhere explicitly determined. There are no obligatory rubrics for the laity. There are customs and expectations, but no instructions. (In this regard it is different from the Novus Ordo, which specifies what the congregation is supposed to do at every stage of the liturgy. When Fr. Cassian said above that the old rubric is more precise than the new, he was of course referring to the old rubric for the priest and server; there was none for the laity in attendance. The new rubric is less precise about how many times to beat the breast, but it is more inclusive in that it prescribes the action for all present.) Accordingly, it cannot be “right” or “wrong” to beat one’s breast at any point during the traditional Mass. Granted, if someone were to beat his breast so often and so loudly that it became a distraction to his neighbors, that could well be a venial sin against charity. Otherwise, whether you sit, stand, kneel, pray the Rosary, read your missal, etc., is all up to you.

2. That being said, certain customs are so widespread and longstanding, e.g., standing during the Gospel or kneeling during the Canon, that departing from them would be strange. To kneel during the Gospel or to stand during the Canon would be symbolically unfitting and certainly a huge distraction to others. Frankly, it’s very rare to find a community that is not united around such obvious symbols.

3. But then there is the realm of local customs that prevail in a given region or country, in a given parish or chapel, or in a given religious order that may be in charge of the liturgy you attend. There are bound to be some consistent customs, and, if you are new or visiting, it is wisest to follow St. Augustine’s advice in his famous Letter 54 to Januarius to fall in with local custom if there is nothing inherently evil in it. (One of his examples is which days to fast on: if in a place you are newly residing the choice of days is different from the choice you are accustomed to, you should not stubbornly maintain your past practice but adopt the one of your new locale.)

4. Now, I would have to do more research to find out about how widespread is the custom of beating the breast three times at the Agnus Dei. Still, the Agnus Dei is a part of the Mass Ordinary, which belongs (at High Mass) to the people to sing. Why should they not strike their breasts, too? Indeed, one might infer that this custom had been around before the Council because one almost always sees some people today at OF Masses striking their breast during the Agnus Dei — which is certainly not something mentioned in the new rubrics and could be a carry-over from the past. When, on the other hand, the priest strikes his breast at his “Domine, non sum dignus,” it would not make equal sense for the people to do so, because he is preparing for his own communion, and shortly afterwards, when he raises the host and says “Ecce Agnus Dei,” the people have their own opportunity to say “Domine, non sum dignus” three times and to strike their own breasts, as is right and fitting.

Thus, in my opinion, people shouldn’t do this at the priest’s communion, but they should do it at the Agnus Dei and for their own communion. But this is merely my opinion, since there are no official rubrics for the people’s postures and gestures. (And let's not forget all the other wonderful opportunities for striking one's breast that the traditional liturgy offers — active participation to the max!)

As we move towards the season of Christmas revelry, when people are apt to celebrate more and more, let’s not forget the Catholic B.Y.O.B.: Beat Your Own Breast.

Classics of the Liturgical Movement: Romano Guardini (2)

Two weeks ago we saw how masterfully Guardini spoke of the objectivity, preeminence, and emotional restraint of the sacred liturgy as the Church’s public prayer, and how tradition has bestowed on it a peculiarly balanced, well-rounded expression of the fullness of truth and integrity of doctrine, as well as how liturgy eagerly draws upon culture to enrich and elevate this expression.

This week, we take up at a gem of a work by the same author, Sacred Signs, first published in 1911. It would be difficult to exaggerate the beauty, power, and usefulness of this little book, which I have successfully used as a homeschooling assignment as well as a reading in college theology (it could serve many other purposes, too, such as a parish study circle). For many, this book has been a defining moment in coming to grasp the symbolic language of the liturgy, a language founded in a kind of heightened sensitivity to cosmology and psychology that moderns often lack. The table of contents reads like a grammar of ascent: “The Sign of the Cross, The Hands, Kneeling, Standing, Walking, Striking the Breast, Steps, Doors,  Candles, Holy Water, Fire, Ashes, Incense, Light and Heat, Bread and Wine, Linen, The Altar, The Chalice, The Paten, Blessing, Space Sanctified, Bells, Time Sanctified—Morning, Evening, Midday, The Name of God.”

In this book, Guardini helps us to see the Mass as the crown jewel of the liturgical “work” of Christ, who works through His Mystical Body to continue our divinization through sign, symbol, and sacrament. It is the Church's supreme and ancient love affair with Christ, where He has met to court her sweetly mid-way between heaven and earth, using the tools of every lover—song, word, gesture, symbol. In this splendorous spectacle of their love, we too are invited to join. We yearn to be an active partner in this drama of “fairest love.” To do that, we must make our own the Church's liturgical love-language, taught Her by Christ, so that with all the angels and Saints we can adore God with that “fairest love” we all desire. Through liturgy, Holy Church teaches us to love God as he deserves. Let us learn from Her!

Sacred Signs has been out of print for a very long time, and used copies are scarce. Since the text itself is in the public domain, I decided to produce a new edition of it, available here for $7.00. I'm pleased with the way it turned out.

Now for some tastes, to show why this has been a favorite book of so many readers over the past century!

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Kneeling

          When a man feels proud of himself, he stands erect, draws himself to his full height, throws back his head and shoulders and says with every part of his body, I am bigger and more important than you. But when he is humble he feels his littleness, and lowers his head and shrinks into himself. He abases himself. And the greater the presence in which he stands the more deeply he abases himself; the smaller he becomes in his own eyes.
          But when does our littleness so come home to us as when we stand in God’s presence? He is the great God, who is today and yesterday, whose years are hundreds and thousands, who fills the place where we are, the city, the wide world, the measureless space of the starry sky, in whose eyes the universe is less than a particle of dust, all-holy, all-pure, all-righteous, infinitely high. He is so great, I so small, so small that beside him I seem hardly to exist, so wanting am I in worth and substance. One has no need to be told that God’s presence is not the place in which to stand on one’s dignity. To appear less presumptuous, to be as little and low as we feel, we sink to our knees and thus sacrifice half our height; and to satisfy our hearts still further we bow down our heads, and our diminished stature speaks to God and says, Thou art the great God; I am nothing.
          Therefore let not the bending of our knees be a hurried gesture, an empty form. Put meaning into it. To kneel, in the soul’s intention, is to bow down before God in deepest reverence.
          On entering a church, or in passing before the altar, kneel down all the way without haste or hurry, putting your heart into what you do, and let your whole attitude say, Thou art the great God. It is an act of humility, an act of truth, and every time you kneel it will do your soul good.

Incense

          “And I saw an angel come and stand before the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given to him much incense, and the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the saints ascended up before God from the hand of the angel.” So writes Saint John in the mysterious book of the Apocalypse.
          The offering of an incense is a generous and beautiful rite. The bright grains of incense are laid upon the red-hot charcoal, the censer is swung, and the fragrant smoke rises in clouds. In the rhythm and the sweetness there is a musical quality; and like music also is the entire lack of practical utility: it is a prodigal waste of precious material. It is a pouring out of unwithholding love.
          “When the Lord was at supper Mary brought the spikenard of great price and poured it over his feet and wiped them with her hair, and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.” Narrower spirits objected. “Whereto this waste?” But the Son of God has spoken, “Let her alone. She hath done it against my burial.” Mary’s anointing was a mystery of death and love and the sweet savor of sacrifice.
          The offering of incense is like Mary’s anointing at Bethany. It is as free and objectless as beauty. It burns and is consumed like love that lasts through death. And the arid soul still takes his stand and asks the same question: What is the good of it?
          It is the offering of a sweet savor which Scripture itself tells us is the prayers of the Saints. Incense is the symbol of prayer. Like pure prayer it has in view no object of its own; it asks nothing for itself. It rises like the Gloria Patri at the end of a psalm in adoration and thanksgiving to God for his great glory.
          It is true that symbolism of this sort may lead to mere aestheticism. There are imaginations in which the fragrant clouds of incense induce a spurious religiosity; and, in such instances, when it does so, the Christian conscience does right to protest that prayer should be made in spirit and in truth. But though prayer is a plain, straight-forward business, it is not the so-much-for-so-muchness which the niggardly imagination and fleshless heart of the religious Philistine would make of it. The same spirit persists that produced the objection of Judas of Kerioth. Prayer is not to be measured by its bargaining power; it is not a matter of bourgeois common sense.
          Minds of this order know nothing of that magnanimous prayer that seeks only to give. Prayer is a profound act of worship, that asks neither why nor wherefore. It rises like beauty, like sweetness, like love. The more there is in it of love, the more of sacrifice. And when the fire has wholly consumed the sacrifice, a sweet savor ascends.

SOURCE

Sacred Signs. First published 1911. Trans. Grace Branham (St. Louis: Pio Decimo Press, 1956). Now available again in print, here.