Recovery of the Sacrificial Dimension, The
When Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope on April 19, 2005, his views on the sacred liturgy were well-known. Indeed few popes have ascended to the Chair of St. Peter with so impressive a list of publications on the liturgy as Benedict XVI. His writings have been accessible not only to theologians and liturgists, but also to the general reading public. The media furthermore have summarized his views on the liturgy in countless reports and profiles throughout his tenure as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and particularly during the conclave which elected him Pope.
He has made no secret, for example, of the importance he places on the celebration of the Mass ad orientem, in the direction of the rising sun, which since the earliest days of the Church has served as a natural icon, as it were, of the risen Christ. He is on record as encouraging Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony during the Mass and other liturgical ceremonies. He has demonstrated a remarkable open-mindedness in respect of the Mass of the Roman rite as celebrated according to the Missale Romanum of 1962 and done much to promote the reconciliation of traditionalist Catholics with the Holy See. He has been identified with a growing movement called "the reform of the reform," which favors returning to the 1962 missal as a starting point for recuperating that legitimate and necessary "reform" of the Roman rite willed by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council.
Why, then, the delay in getting on with the program? The answer may lie not only with the personal style and approach of the Pope himself, but also with the current state of the Roman rite liturgy and the politics of worship that have dominated the past forty years. The liturgical movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries promoted "full, conscious, and active participation" in the liturgy. This ideal, embraced by the Fathers of Vatican II, has undergone various interpretations. A thorough, authoritative assessment of the council has yet to take place.
Shortly after the council and the revision of the Roman Missal in 1970, some prominent voices of the liturgical movement, like Oratorian scholar Louis Bouyer, lamented publicly that this was not the reform that they had been seeking. Others, like Marcel Lefebvre, rejected the new rite and used only the missal promulgated by Pope St. Pius V in 1570 and modified slightly over quite a few editions until the 1960s. Still others, judging that even more reforms were in order, demanded wider options and insisted that the liturgy be further adapted to meet the cultural needs and expectations of various ethnic and special-interest groups. And, finally, there were others who, despite official church policy, took the reform into their own hands and continue to introduce innovations wherever they are deemed desirable.
The introduction of vernacular translations of the liturgical texts led to further controversy, not only in Anglophone countries and regions. After decades of strife surrounding accuracy, dignity, "inclusivity," and rhetorical aesthetic, the issue of English in the liturgy is being addressed in an authoritative way only now. Expanded with new Eucharistic prayers and other euchological formulae in 1975, the Roman Missal is now in its third typical edition (2002). A new English translation is in preparation. This will mark one of the early achievements of the Ratzinger pontificate.
Despite his clear views and eloquent exposition of the key issues in the revision and celebration of the sacred liturgy, Pope Benedict must face the current state of affairs and exercise prudential judgments in favor of the common good. Hence it is profitless to speculate on particular changes and adjustments that he might introduce until he makes his mind on the subject known officially and exercises his ordinary magisterium as supreme pontiff.
In the meantime, it is useful to consider the broad picture and to focus on several chief concerns that he has identified over the past few decades rather than fix on rubrics or specific directives which may or may not be in the offing. These central issues must be taken into account before there can be any proposal for change, reform, or revision, whether initiated by the Pope himself or adopted on the local level. They include: the role of liturgy as a privileged form of prayer, the vertical dimension of sacred worship, the centrality of the paschal mystery to the life of the Church, and the Eucharist as a sacramental sacrifice and indeed the culmination of the sacramental system. In other words, what is needed today, first and foremost, is an authentic implementation of the Second Vatican Council. Since the liturgy, from a merely social perspective, is for Catholics, the most usual point of contact with the Church, it merits close attention. Since the liturgy entails the supreme act of the Church's worship of God, it affects all Catholics.
The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum concilium [SC], issued December 4, 1963, specifies that the liturgy is the summit and source of the Church's life and mission: "The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the fount from which all her power flows" [SC 10]. Here the council acknowledges the centrality of the liturgy for the Church's very life, identity, and mission. The Church is primarily a community of worship. Its raison d'etre, in simple terms, is to worship the triune God. Admitted to this worshiping community by the sacrament of baptism, confirmed as witnesses of Christ, and purified of sin by the sacrament of penance, the Christian faithful offer to God the Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ's Body and Blood. This pattern of Christian initiation is reflected in "the last rites" when a Christian who is ill, aged, or infirm receives forgiveness of sins in penance, is anointed with oil for strengthening and healing, then finally receives the Eucharistic Body and Blood of the Lord in Viaticum (or food for the journey). By Holy Orders the apostolic succession of priests (bishops and presbyters) guarantees that the Christian faithful have access, by means of the other sacraments, to the Eucharist. Matrimony provides married couples and families with the grace necessary for educating and forming the next generation of Christian worshipers.
The Worldwide Decline in attendance at Mass and the other sacraments, most notably penance, drew the attention of John Paul II in Dies Domini and Ecclesia de Eucharistia. This is a painful reality that Benedict XVI must address. He has indicated that the Church may be in for some pruning before she experiences fully the second spring forecast by his immediate predecessor. To this end, evangelization and catechesis must present the centrality of liturgy for the life of the Church. Mystagogical or post-baptismal catechesis must explain clearly and unambiguously to new generations the constant teaching of the Church that the Eucharist differs from the other sacraments in that It alone is Jesus Christ, wholly present body, blood, soul, and divinity under the sacramental veils. The Eucharist represents sacramentally the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary.
Some people today perhaps find theistic worship an unusual experience because they do not understand the point of it. Before the question "What does it mean to worship God?" comes the even more fundamental questions "What is God?" and "Who is God?" The renowned American catechist Eugene Kevane explains in Jesus the Divine Teacher, a work published posthumously, that flawed catechetics, widespread throughout the Catholic educational establishment since the 1970s, have left countless Catholics without a clear notion of what or who God is.
This may surprise older generations of the faithful who, more thoroughly catechized, recall pithy definitions provided by such useful summaries of Catholic doctrine as The Baltimore Catechism or The Penny Catechism: "God is the Supreme Being who alone exists of Himself and who can do all things." St. Anselm described God as "That than which a greater cannot be thought to exist." Yet God is neither an impersonal concept, nor a distant force unconcerned about the people and events of this world. He has revealed Himself as a communion of love, three divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By explaining what and who God is, the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated and highly recommended by Benedict XVI, will play a crucial role in preparing the faithful of all ages for "full, conscious, and active participation in the sacred liturgy" urged by Vatican II.
An understanding of the mystery of the triune God, however limited by the deficiencies of the human intellect, constitutes the basis of all Christian prayer, both individual or private, and public or liturgical. As the Supreme Being who alone is perfect and infinite in all His perfections, God eternally generates an infinitely perfect image of Himself, which we call the Logos, the Word, or the Son. The Father perfectly loves His Self-Image (Logos) and this Love is so perfect that it too is a person: the Spirit of Love breathed forth from Father to Son and breathed back from Son to Father. This Trinity of Persons goes out in self-emptying love one to the other and their self-giving Love, the Holy Spirit, spills out into creation. God the Father calls creation into being by His Word and sends forth His Spirit to breathe life into it. Genesis records that at the dawn of creation God says, "Let there be light." The Father creates through His Word. The Spirit of God hovers over the face of the deep and brings forth life in the seas, in the sky, and upon the earth.
Created in friendship with God, man grasps at divinity and disobeys the loving God. Sin introduces the need for redemption. God prepares His people for redemption by imposing the moral law and by sending a series of prophets to make straight the way of the Lord. Christ inaugurates a new creation in grace. The Word takes flesh and dwells among us. After teaching the law of love and offering Himself in sacrifice to the Father on our behalf, He suffers death, is buried, rises on the third day, and ascends to take His rightful place with the Father. In fulfillment of the Son's promise, the Father sends the Holy Spirit upon the Church to breathe life into this new people and to send them to the ends of the earth to make known the salvation of the Lord.
These two paragraphs summarize the Christian message about God and why He deserves our adoration, praise, and thanksgiving. They likewise explain why we come before Him in contrition for our sins and offer prayers of supplication for our own needs and of intercession for others. Benedict XVI recognizes that Catholics raised in the narcissistic milieu of the 1970s and 80s need to be reminded that the Christian Church gathers to worship and celebrate God, not itself.
The Heart of Christian Worship is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross, made present sacramentally in the Eucharist. A mid-1980s survey carried out among Catholics in the United States revealed that only 33% of Catholics believed in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. This shocking statistic served as a wake-up call to many pastors and catechists. No wonder church attendance was on the wane. American author Flannery O'Connor, herself a devout Catholic, summed it up best when challenged by a Protestant on the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation: "Well if it isn't really the body of Christ, then to hell with it!" Increasingly empty pews suggest that many today, not believing in the Real Presence, have said the same thing.
Joseph Ratzinger, raised in the ebulliently Catholic environment of Bavaria, grew in appreciation of his Catholic faith precisely through his participation in the liturgy: "The inexhaustible reality of the Catholic liturgy has accompanied me through all phases of life, and so I shall have to speak of it again and again." It was the liturgy that formed him as a Catholic and drew him into communion with the Holy Trinity and with the Church called into being by the Word and the Love of God. The whole theology of communion or koinonia, which epitomizes the fundamental insight of Vatican II, derives from an accurate understanding of the sacred liturgy as the summit and source of the Church's life and mission. This message Joseph Ratzinger has driven home consistently in his many writings and addresses on liturgy and on the Church. Given his unstinting dedication as priest, theologian, teacher, bishop, and prefect to the fostering of the Church's communion, it is fitting to recall that Benedict XVI was raised to the Chair of Peter in the Year of the Eucharist.
In treating the mystery of the Eucharist, Catholic teaching employs the language of sacrifice with full deliberation. The Catholic priest, ordained, like Christ the supreme high priest, according to the order, not of Aaron, but of Melchisedech, offers sacrifice on an altar. Acting in the person of Christ, the priest offers the sacrifice of Calvary in an unbloody manner, separating Christ's Body from his Blood by means of a dual consecration of bread and of wine. After the Eucharistic prayer and the Our Father, the priest fractures the Sacred Host and commingles it with the Precious Blood in the chalice, thereby ritualizing Christ's resurrection from the dead. At Holy Communion, the priest himself consumes the Body and Blood of the risen and living Lord and distributes the Eucharistic Lord to those duly prepared and disposed to receive Him. After the cleansing of the vessels, the priest covers the chalice with the veil as Christ was covered in glory at the right hand of the Father. In this way, the Church celebrates Christ's paschal mystery, the great "sacrifice of praise."
Remarkably little about the sacrificial dimension of the Eucharist emerged from the Synod on the Eucharist held in October 2005. I suspect that Benedict will address this lacuna in a post-synodal document and will underscore in classic terms the Eucharist as both a sacramental sacrifice and a sacrificial sacrament.
It is precisely this sacrificial dimension of the Christian liturgy which is overlooked today and which calls for greater attention. The Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I) refers to the Old Testament sacrifices of Abel, of Abraham, and of Melchisedech. Abel pleased God by offering Him the firstlings of his flocks, whereas his brother Cain, giving God the leftovers of his crops, received no such divine favor. Sacrifice, if it is authentic, demands a level of objective excellence. Vessels of precious metal, vestments of worthy material, and clean altar linens all bespeak the dignity of the Eucharistic sacrifice. Sacred architecture provides space fitting to the House of the Lord, the place where God visits man. The magnificently beautiful cathedrals of Europe, built with impressive effort and at great expense, reflect the sacrifice of Abel, not that of Cain. Romanesque architecture proclaims the majesty of God and the inexorable sovereignty of His law; Gothic architecture points us to heaven and draws us into the sublime mystery of the Holy Trinity; the Baroque sweeps heaven down to us and brings the King of heaven into our very midst. The twenty-first century has yet to find a language of sacred architecture that combines beauty, proportion, divine transcendence, and spiritual intimacy. Benedict is keenly aware of the effect of art and architecture, no less than that of music, on the individual soul and on the experience of worship in common. Rather than opulence or pomp, Vatican II promoted the ideal of "noble simplicity." This reflects Benedict's personal style.
When pastors, musicians, and the lay-folk in the pews lose sight of the sacrificial dimension of the sacred liturgy, then Christian worship degenerates into self-affirmation and tawdry entertainment, even if it styles itself "religious entertainment." The Eucharist is much more than an occasion for friends to come together and experience fellowship through word and song. This is the role of campfires and street parties.
The Pope has written much on liturgical music. He grew up in a musical family. His brother Georg served as the choir master of the Domspatzen or cathedral singers of Regensburg. He himself plays the piano in his moments of recreation. If Benedict pronounces on music, it will likely be in the direction of giving Scripture its rightful prominence in the chants of the Mass. The Book of Psalms is the Bible's own prayer book and the staple of the Church's official prayer expressed in divine worship. The psalms were on Christ's lips as He hung upon the Cross. They are on the lips of the Church as she worships God at the various hours appointed for recitation of the divine office, particularly the "hinges of the day," lauds and vespers. Scripture provides the vast majority of texts for the antiphons of entrance, offertory, and communion of the Mass. Hymns form a part of the liturgical repertory, not of the Mass, but of the Hours.
Vatican II gave "pride of place" to Gregorian chant and highly recommended sacred polyphony [SC 116]. Many Catholic congregations today rarely, if ever, worship in either genre. In view of the council's directive that "the treasury of sacred music is to be preserved and cultivated with great care" [SC 114], plainchant and polyphony might well be expected to receive particular encouragement in Benedict's pontificate. They will provide a transcendent alternative to the relentlessly casual and sentimentalist music churned out in new hymnals and often strummed or chorded by instrumentalists of limited ability. Again, the spirit of sacrifice so necessary to the liturgy demands a level of excellence befitting the object of worship, God Himself. If, as Sacrosanctum concilium maintains, "in the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy City of Jerusalem where we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, Minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle" [SC8], then an examination of conscience is in order regarding the music of worship. The third typical edition of the Missale Romanum has intercalated most of the chants of the Ordinary of the Mass into the rest of the liturgical text with the goal that Catholics of the Roma rite learn to sing the Mass rather than to sing during the Mass [General Instruction on the Roman Missal].
As I have remarked elsewhere (Antiphon 9.2 [2005]), the implementation of Benedict's liturgical vision is largely a matter of will. Giuseppe Sarto, the only Parish priest ever to be elected Pope, ascended to the Chair of Peter as Pius X on August 4, 1903. By the feast of St. Cecilia (November 22) of that very year, the Pope issued, "motu proprio" (on his own initiative) Tra le sollecitudini, thereby inaugurating a program of reform in sacred music that saw the curtailment of operatic Masses which drew their musical inspiration from secular sources, and the revival of Gregorian chant along with the promotion of other music, including sacred polyphony, that derived from this most Roman of musical sources. Granted, Pius X did not face in 1903 the kind of ecclesial turmoil that would ensue in the wake of Vatican II. Nevertheless, his reforms did face opposition from secularist quarters within the Church. In any event, the Pope himself implemented his reform in Rome and encouraged the establishment of institutes of sacred music abroad that would carry out the renewal of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony around the globe.
The promotion of good liturgy is something within the power of liturgists, pastors, theologians, musicians, and architects. Conferences and symposia, journals and books can support the vision of liturgy articulated in the documents of Vatican II and espoused and defended by Joseph Ratzinger. When Catholic laity are exposed to the transcendent beauty of the Roman rite as laid down in the approved liturgical books, and given a reasonable explanation of the principles underlying the complete language of liturgical worship and the profound meaning of rite, word, and gesture, they may feel more at home in a properly liturgical milieu.
The Venerable Servant of God John Henry Newman, one of the most illustrious converts to Catholicism in the nineteenth century, knew that the conversion of England would not take place en masse in one political move. Instead, he recognized that the process of conversion would have to take place as cor ad cor loquitur, as "heart speaks to heart." This phrase, taken from St. Francis de Sales, served as Newman's motto and appears both literally and figuratively in his coat of arms. His writings, particularly his letters, were an exercise in conversing heart to heart. This may be the most effective way of sharing the fruits of Ratzinger's scholarly treatment of the sacred liturgy until, as Pope Benedict XVI, he initiates any new directions in the Church's liturgical life. As one official within the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments recently quipped, "the plane is on the runway — we are ready for takeoff."
"The Liturgy, then, is rightly seen as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. It involves the presentation of man's sanctification under the guise of signs perceptible by the senses and its accomplishment in ways appropriate to each of these signs. In it full public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and His Members.From this it follows that every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the Priest and of His Body, which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others. No other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree." — Sacrosanctum Concilium 7 (Flannery Edition, revised 1992)
Fr Neil J. Roy, STL, PhD, a priest of the diocese of Peterborough, Canada, is co-founder and president of The Research Institute for Catholic Liturgy; he is the editor of Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal, and serves on the board of The Society for Catholic Liturgy. He is the chair of the Department of Theology of Ave Maria College in Ypslanti, Michigan.
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