GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO LITURGICAL AND SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY
COURSE OUTLINE
Name of the Institution: Tangaza College
Faculty: School of Theology
Department: Systematic Theology
Academic Year: 2011-2012
Semester: 1st Semester (August-December 2011)
Course Code number: LSC 101
Course title: General Introduction to Liturgical and Sacramental Theology
Credit hours: 3
Class Room: B4 & B13
Lecture Times: Tues 9.25am–10.15am, Wed 8.30am–9.20am, 9.25am–10.15am.
Pre-requisites: None
Name of Lecturer: Victor Dunne
Office: Main Office
Office Telephone: Main Office
E-mail: vdunnesps@gmail.com
Website: None
BlogSpot: http:\\liturgytangaza.blogspot.com
Pigeon hole number: 14
Availability for Consultation: Tues 8.00-10.45am, Wed 10.15-11.25am, Fri 10.15-11.25 in Office.
Course Description:
General Goals and Objectives:
This course LSC 101 aims to introduce first year students in a systematic and comprehensive way to the general study of liturgy and sacramentology. Special attention will be given to the history and background of liturgy and the sacraments and their development down through the centuries. The course will familiarise the students with some of the most significant concepts and notions in relation to liturgy and the sacraments and acquaint them with contemporary models of perceiving the ritual life of Christian worship.
Course Syllabus
Derivation of the term ‘liturgy’ – Usage in the ancient world, in the Old Testament world and in the New Testament world – The practice of liturgy in the Apostolic Church – Development of Liturgy from the early Church to modern times – pre-Vatican II developments – Liturgical Vision of Vatican II – Sacrosanctum Concilium – Various elements of Liturgy – Lex Orandi Lex Credendi – Encounter with God – Sign and Symbol – Rite: Purpose and Value – Mysterion – Sacramentum – The road towards sacramental definition - The Scholastic Model of Sacrament – Prophetic Symbol – Foundation of the Sacraments – Jesus: The Primordial Sacrament – Church: Sacrament of Salvation – The Participation of the Baptised Faithful – Grace: The Efficacy of the Sacraments – Reception, Faith and Invitation - The Challenges facing sacramental participation in our world today – Other Sacramental Models – Celebration.
Specific Goals:
1. To cover all the components of a basic undergraduate course of theology in the Catholic tradition.
2. To lead the students to the understanding of the liturgy as a sacramental experience of God's saving events accomplished in Christ and now effective in the Church.
3. To kindle in the student a fascination to probe deeply into this essential area of the Church’s life beyond the formal expectations of the course.
Specific learning Outcomes:
After completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. Articulate with confidence an understanding of the various concepts used in liturgical and sacramental theology.
2. To respect the tradition of the Church in her development of the liturgy and the sacraments.
3. To appreciate the centrality of liturgy and sacraments in the life of the Church.
4. To reflect critically on the challenges facing the Church in relation to her liturgy and sacraments.
Teaching Methods
Most class periods will be in a magisterial lecture format with suggested reading assignments. Questions will always be welcome and interaction is expected. PowerPoint presentations will be used and sometimes discussion in small groups and feedbacks to the whole class will take place.
Methods of Evaluation
There will be two CATs and one final written exam. The first CAT will involve writing a short paper on a specific topic and will be presented on or before Wednesday September 7th. The second CAT will be a written exam of forty five minute duration consisting of one comprehensive answer to be given from a choice of questions and will take place on Wednesday October 5th at 8.30 am. The final written exam will be of two hours duration.
Grading Criteria
Marking is out of 80, 30 of which will be available for the CAT and 50 for the Final Exam.
A: 80-70 (Summa Cum Laude) A+ (80-75) A (75) A- (74-70)
B: 60-69 (Magna Cum Laude) B+ (66-69) B (65) B- (60-64)
C: 50-59 (Cum laude) C+ (56-59) C (55) C- (50-54)
D: 40-49 (Probatus) D+ (46-49) D (45) D- (40-44)
E: 0-39 Non probatus
Required Essential Texts:
Sacrosanctum Concilium, Second Vatican Council.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1066-1209
The Christian Faith, Chapter 12.
Main Bibliography:
BOULAD, H., All is Grace - God and the Mystery of Time, London: SCM Press 1991.
CHAUVET, L-M., The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body, Collegeville: Liturgical Press 2001.
CHUPUNGCO, A., ed., Handbook for Liturgical studies. Vol. V: Liturgical Time and Space, Collegeville: Pueblo 2000
CRICHTON, J.D., The Church's Worship - Considerations on the Liturgical Constitution of the Second Vatican Council, New York: Sheed and Ward 1964.
CRICHTON, J.D., The Once and Future Liturgy, Dublin: Chapman 1977.
DEISS, L., Springtime of the Liturgy, Collegeville: Liturgical Press 1987.
MARTIMORT, A.G. ed, The Church at Prayer, Principle of the Liturgy - Vol. 1, London: Chapman, 1987.
MARTINEZ, G., Signs of Freedom. Theology of the Christian Sacraments, New York: Paulist Press 2003.
MARTOS, J., Doors to the Sacred, New York: Alba 2001.
NEUNER, J. – DUPUIS, J., ed., The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, New York: Alba 2001.
ETTORRI, J., Liturgy and Sacramental Theology, Nairobi: CUEA 2006.
FLANNERY, A., ed., Vatican II - The Constitution on the Liturgy, Dublin: Scepter Books 1966.
WORGUL, G., From Magic to Metaphor, New York: Paulist 1980.
ROSATO, P., Introduzione alla Teologia dei Sacramenti, Casale Monferrato: Piemme 1992.
LAWLER, M., Symbol and Sacrament, Mahwah: Paulist 1987,
LAVERY, H., Sacraments, London: DLT 1982.
BEGUERIE, P. – DUCHESNEAU, C., How to Understand the Sacraments, London: SCM 1991.
COOKE, B., Sacraments & Sacramentality, Mystic: 23rd Pubs 1999.
RATZINGER, J., The Spirit of the Liturgy, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2000.
SEARLE, M., Liturgy Made Simple, Collegeville: Liturgical Press1981
Assignments:
Each week the students will be informed of what exact reading assignments they are expected to cover. Every student will be expected to read Sacrosanctum Concilium of the Second Vatican Council.
Teaching Schedule for the Whole Semester
Week 1
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 16th Aug Evolution of the Term Liturgy Course Outline
Wed, 17th Aug Usage in the New Testament Catechism, 1066-1075
Wed, 17th Aug Practice in the Early Church Ettorri, Liturgy and Sacramental Theology, Ch 1
Week 2
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 23rd Aug Development in History Martos, Doors to the Sacred, Ch 2
Wed, 24th Aug Vatican II: Sacrosanctum Concilium
Wed, 24th Aug Lex Orandi Lex Credendi Ettorri, Chapter 2
Week 3
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 30th Aug Liturgy and Theology The Christian Faith, Chap 12
Wed, 31st Aug Significant Liturgical Elements Chupungco, Handbook for Liturgical Studies, Chapter 1
Wed, 31st Aug Encounter with God Catechism, 1076-1083
Week 4
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 6th Sept Sign Lavery, Sacraments, Chapter 2.
Wed, 7th Sept Symbol Bausch, Sacraments, Chapter 2
Wed, 7th Sept Aspects of Symbol Catechism, 1145-1162
Week 5
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 13th Sept Human Perspective of Ritual Worgul, From Magic to Metaphor, Ch 4
Wed, 14th Sept Ritual in Religion Worgul, From Magic to Metaphor, Ch 5
Wed, 14th Sept Ritual and Communal Formation Martos, Doors to the Sacred, Ch 1
Week 6
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 20th Sept Mystery Religions Ettorri, Chapter 3
Wed, 21st Sept Impact on Early Christianity Martos, Doors to the Sacred, Ch 2
Wed, 21st Sept Sacramentum The Christian Faith, Chapter 12
Week 7
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 27th Sept CAT Class Notes
Wed, 28th Sept Augustine and Thomas Aquinas Martos, Doors to the Sacred, Ch 3
Wed, 28th Sept From Florence to Trent Martos, Doors to the Sacred, Ch 4
Week 8
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 4th Oct Scholastic Model Lawler, Symbol & Sacrament, Ch 2
Wed, 5th Oct Ex opere operato Lawler, Symbol & Sacrament, Ch 2
Wed, 5th Oct Kerygma and Sacrament Worgul, From Magic to Metaphor, Ch 8
Week 9
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 18th Oct Prophetic Symbolic Activity Lawler, Symbol & Sacrament, Chap 1
Wed, 19th Oct Efficacy of Visible Word Beguerie & Duchesneau, How to Understand Sacraments, Conclusion
Wed, 19th Oct Christological Foundation Catechism, 1084-1090
Week 10
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading Assignment
Tues, 25th Oct Continuation and Anamnesis of Prophetic Acts of Jesus Cooke, Sacraments & Sacramentality, Chapter 5
Wed, 26th Oct Trinitarian Perspective Searle, Liturgy Made Simple, Chapter 1
Wed, 26th Oct Invocation and Epiclesis Catechism, 1091-1112
Week 11
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 1st Nov Ecclesial Dimension Noll, Sacraments, Chapter 3
Wed, 2nd Nov Res et Sacramentum Beguerie & Duchesneau, How to Understand the Sacraments, Chp 2
Wed, 2nd Nov Participation of Faithful Catechism, 1135-1144
Week 12
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 8th Nov Channels of Grace Worgul, From Magic to Metaphor, Ch 10
Wed, 9th Nov From quantity to quality Lawler, Symbol & Sacrament, Chapter 1
Wed, 9th Nov Reception of Sacraments Catechism, 1113-1134
Week 13
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 15th Nov Ex opere operantis Lawler, Symbol & Sacrament, Chapter 2
Wed, 16th Nov Invitation Cooke, Sacraments and Sacramentality, Chapter 21
Wed, 16th Nov Lex Agendi Gusmer, Wholesome Worship, Chapter 3
Week 14
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 22nd Nov Challenges in Post-Modernity Bausch, Sacraments, Chp 1
Wed, 23rd Nov Facing Culture Change Martos, Doors to the Sacred, Chapter 5
Wed, 23rd Nov More Sacramental Paradigms Worgul, From Magic to Metaphor, Ch 12
Week 15
Date Theme of Lecture Further Reading/Assignment
Tues, 29th Nov Celebration Paradigm Worgul, From Magic to Metaphor, Ch 12
Wed, 30th Nov Celebration and Integration Martos, Doors to the Sacred, Conclusion
Wed, 30th Nov Synthesis of Course Class Notes
Academic Policy Issues
Examination regulations will follow the School of Theology's updated Directory on Exams.
Continual lateness for lectures will not be tolerated
Apart from the first lecture in the morning, no student will be allowed into the class after ten minutes. All mobile phones should be turned off during lectures. No texting or SMSing is allowed No one should stand up and walk out of class except in cases of illness or emergency
Any student who misses more than four class contact hours in a two credit course will not be allowed to sit the final exam and will receive no credits.
A student should notify the lecturer of any absence and, if necessary, should provide a letter from the student or the student's superior explaining the reason for the absence.
Academic Integrity, Plagiarism and Penalties Policies
Plagiarism is stealing; it is the theft or expropriation of all or part of someone else's work without proper acknowledgement, presenting the material as it if were one's own.
Plagiarism normally occurs
• when a student lifts verbatim written material from books and articles (either from published material or from the Internet) without acknowledging their source or
• when passages from books and articles are re-written without any acknowledgement of the source or
• when a student submits work which is a re-written version of someone else's work. Plagiarism in assignments and examinations is a serious breach of ethics and will be punished.
Cheating is using false pretences, tricks, devices, artifices or deception to obtain credit on an examination or in a college course. If a faculty member determines that a student has committed academic dishonesty by plagiarism, cheating or in any other manner, the faculty has the academic right to 1) fail the student for the paper, assignment, project and/or exam, and/or 2) fail the student for the course and/or 3) bring the student up on disciplinary charges.
CHAPTER ONE LITURGY
EVOLUTION OF THE WORD "LITURGY"
Liturgy is from the Greek word leitourgia, a composite of laos (people) and ergein (work or service). It means rendering a service to the people, carried out freely by citizens. It also refers to the public office one undertakes and later the word acquired a broader meaning to include the work done by slaves and even the small acts of service one did for one's friends. As time passed, the term liturgy indicated the "service of worship rendered to God".
In Christian usage it was confined to the idea of service of God and finally, since worship was regarded as the supreme service to God, it was applied to the Eucharist. Liturgy has a communal rather than individual thrust and focus.
Old Testament
In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, leitourgia is the technical term for worship. In the Hebrew Scripture the two verbs sharet and 'abad are employed to indicate both service in the secular sense and in the religious-cultic meaning.
Sharet, meaning service, used in relation to servant has to do with the high rank that he/she enjoys and the special kind of relation with his/her master. This appears very clearly in Gen 39 in situation of Joseph. In religious language, sharet indicates the service rendered to the master and lord the God of Israel. It is the cultic service offered by those who have a special relationship with God. The members of the tribe of Levi discharge this service. They are privileged and receive honour and prestige. In a special way, sharet pertains to the priests who officiate such services in the Tent, and later in the Temple. It also includes the responsibility of representing the people in front of God. By means of this service the people of Israel had access to God. Moreover, the priest is a representative of God for the people.
The verb ’abad refers rather to the burdensome service of a slave and to labour. Normally the idea of labour and service refer to activities such as agriculture and handicrafts and they designate the "working class." In the religious meaning, ’abad expresses the idea of "rendering cult" and indicates the enactment of the actual celebration of rituals and an attitude of dependence on spiritual powers.
When the Septuagint translators refer the cult rendered to the Lord by the priests and levites in the temple they consistently used the Greek word leitourgeo and the noun leitourgia. The noun leitourgia has become a technical term for the priestly cult and translates the Hebrew 'abodah. When other kinds of service or relations within the religious and even cultic domain are translated other words are used.
These words express to the following idea: some persons have been chosen by the Lord and have been entrusted with "the work for the people of God.” To represent the content of those verbs they opted for the Greek pagan terms leitourgia and leitourgeo. Perhaps this had something to do with the classical meaning of the word which signifies an official function held by society's nobility for the good of the people. The high rate of occurrence of leitourgeo and leitourgia in the text of the O.T. (about 170 times) shows how strongly the translators wanted to link the cult of God to service of the levitical priests and the benefit of the people.
With just one exception (2 Sam 19.19), leitourgia is always employed for the service of the priests and levites in the sanctuary, especially for the ministry of the priests at the altar. The translators made also a "theological" choice: a social political "work for the people" came to indicate "the work for the people" accomplished by God for the salvation of his people.
New Testament
In the new era of worship the terms leitourgia-leitourgeo are found quite rarely. These terms appear only fifteen times in the New Testament.
a) Luke 1.23
‘When his time of service (leitourgias) was ended, he went to his home.’ This refers to the liturgy that Zachariah had officiated in the Temple of Jerusalem.
b) Acts 13.2
“While they were worshiping (leitourgou) the Lord” – this shows that Christian worship is centred on and oriented to the Risen Lord.
c) Romans 13.6
“This is also reason you must pay taxes, since all government officials are God's servants (leitourgoi theos eisin), busy with this very thing.”
State officials are "leitourgoi/priestly ministers of God". For Paul, there is no clear-cut distinction or opposition between sacred and secular. It was, therefore, possible for Christians to get involved in the political set-up, and indeed, as part of their Christian commitment.
d) Romans 15.16
“Because of the grace given me by God to be a minister (leitourgon) of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God.” Leitourgos does not necessarily imply specifically priestly duties (cf.13.6).
e) Romans 15.27
“For if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service (leitourgisai autois) to them in material things.” In addition to being leitourgia, the collection must also be seen as communion (koinonia).
f) 2 Corinthians 9.12
“You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering (leitourgias) of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God.”
The community places itself, at the service of the brothers in their needs and of God's glory. The collections are "liturgy” and the manner in which they are conducted is service-diakonia; it an initiative truly cultic, priestly; it is an oblation, a sacrifice.
g) Philippians 2.17
“But even if I am being poured out as a libation over the sacrifice and the offering (leitourgia) of your faith,” The leitourgia of the Philippians is both the one that Paul, the leitourgos by God's grace, was performing when he was proclaiming the Gospel to them and their obedience, which has made of them an offering accepted by God.
h) Philippians 2.25, 30
“I think it is necessary to send Epaphroditus back to us. He was sent as your representative to help (leitourgon) me… Welcome him then in the Lord with all joy, and honour such people, because he came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for those services (leitourgias) that you could not give me.
Paul refers to Epaphroditus as minister - leitourgos to his needs. By so doing, Paul acknowledges that service rendered to him on behalf of the Philippians is a religious cultic task, and that Epaphroditus has been carrying out a priestly action. Liturgy here is perceived as an act of service or ministry (2.30).
i) Hebrews 1.7, 14
“Of the angels he says, "He makes his angels winds, and his servants (leitourgous) flames of fire… Are not all angels spirits in the divine service (leitourgika), sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?”
So, the angels are helpers assigned by God to his chosen ones and ministers of God's grace. They are at God's service so that human beings may be saved.
j) Hebrews 8.2, 6
“We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister (leitourgos) in the sanctuary and the true tent that the Lord, and not any mortal, has set up… But Jesus has now obtained a more excellent ministry (leitourgias), and to that degree he is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted through better promises.”
Here, we come across the nouns leitourgos (v.2) and leitourgia (v.6), where they both apply to Christ. The word leitourgos emphasizes the dynamism of Christ's activity. In his capacity as High Priest Christ is a minister-leitourgos not of temple on earth but of the true Tent (cf. 9.24; 10.22), taken in the Johannine meaning: the authentic, genuine, perfect Tent, divine both in nature and origin (Jn 1.9; 6.32; 15.1; l Jn 2.8). The heavenly Sanctuary is therefore, the Temple. After the superiority of Christ's High Priesthood has been established, the author goes on (v. 6) to describe the leitourgia of the Leitourgos in the context of the covenant, the sanctuary, and the sacrifice.
k) Hebrews 9.21, 10.11
“He sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship (leitourgias)… And every priest stands day after day at his service (leitourgon), offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins.”
The incomparable value of the sacrifice of Christ is in contrast not just with the Kippur (10.lb; cf. Lev 16), but also with all the other sacrifices of the old law (10.lb; cf. Lev l-7). The High Priest and Leitourgos, provides a permanent leitourgia in favour of his people as he sits at God's right hand (cf. 7.25).
The Apostolic Church
The early Christians would first of all meet at the Temple together with fellow Jews. At the same time, the gatherings in the homes of Christians were becoming more frequent and popular.
Their meals together included both fraternal agape and Eucharistic meals. The praises of God and prayers of petition were also part of the service (Acts 2:14, 24, 42, 47, 4:24-31, 12:5b) and the participants were convinced of the presence of the Lord (Mt 18:20, 28:20) and the presence of the promised Spirit (Acts 13.1-3) at them. The memory of God's saving deeds was kept alive by the preaching of the Apostles and the other eye witnesses to the life of Christ. The Sunday assembly became particularly important as it the day of the resurrection.
Still there is little information available about the liturgy at the time of Jesus and of the apostles. We do not even know, exception made perhaps for the Eucharist, if Christ celebrated any sacrament at all. The NT is a "witness of faith". They have proved us why we are to believe in Jesus Christ and in the case of the liturgy, they have explained to us how those ritual celebrations continue the presence of the risen Lord, and for us his salvation today.
The apostles were concerned in explaining to the disciples that by obeying the command of the Lord "Do this in memory of me,” the same Power (Holy Spirit) that was at work with him is now present and active with us and produces the same effects. They saw the liturgy as remembering Jesus, an "anamnesis" of all Lord himself "did and taught" in order to bring about our salvation.
We realise that the N.T. is not a book of history, but rather the code where we find the "genetic structure" of the liturgy. The "genetic structure" is important since it is the standard by which the liturgy is to be criticised, evaluated and assessed. The liturgy must always remain faithful to its original nature and essence. Liturgy has suffered several deviations and setbacks. The Second Vatican Council meant to discard those "elements subject to change ... that have suffered from the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy" (SC 21).
Conclusion
The Catechism of the Catholic Church introduces the part on the liturgy as follows: The word "liturgy" originally meant a "public work" or a service of/on behalf of the people." In Christian tradition it means the participation of the People of God in the work of God (Cf. Jn 17:4). Through the liturgy Christ our redeemer and high priest, continues the work of our redemption in, with, and through his Church. In the New Testament the word "liturgy" refers not only to the celebration of divine worship but also to the proclamation of the Gospel and to active charity (Cf. Lk 1.23, Acts 13.2; Rom 15.16, 27; 2 Cor 9:12; Phil 2:14-17 25, 30). In all of these situations it is a question of the service of God and neighbour. In a liturgical celebration the Church is servant in the image of her Lord the one leitourgos (Cf., Heb 8:2, 6); she shares in Christ's priesthood (worship) which is both prophetic (proclamation) and kingly (service of charity) (CCC 1069-70).
Please note that the notes below are a compilation of excerpts and paraphrasings of excerpts from the above books and the works of other authors and their use is strictly confined as reading material for the students of Class 1 in Tangaza College in the first semester of the academic year of 2010/2011.
Chapter Two HISTORY
1. Early Church
We learn about liturgical activity in the early Church in the Didache, the Letters of St Clement, the Tradition of Hippolytus and the writings of St Justin. The first apology of Justin stipulates that the Eucharistic celebration started by a liturgy of the word. The readings are followed by a homily of the president and prayers of the faithful. Then we have the preparation of the gifts (Bread, Wine and water are brought up). The president speaks the "prayer of the thanksgiving" and the congregation signifies its agreement with an Amen. The gifts over which the thanksgiving has been spoken is distributed to all attending. Then the deacon brings a portion to the absent.
The early Christian writers retained the cultic meaning of liturgy. This seems to be the sense of Didache 15.1 which affirms that bishops and deacons also perform the leitourgia of prophets and teachers. The Apostolic Tradition claims that clerical ordination is true liturgiam. For the Churches in the East, which have consistently kept this usage, leitourgia means the sacred rites in general and the Eucharistic celebration in particular. The Latin Church, on the other hand, used terms like officia divina, opus divinum, and sacri or ecclesiae ritus.
2 Fourth to Eighth Century
In 380, Emperor Theodosius proclaimed Christianity to be the sole legitimate religion of the state, and so the Church became the privileged imperial Church. Liturgy now was celebrated in a very solemn way in magnificent basilicas. Bishops got treated with equal esteem to highest officials of the land. In 321, the Sunday holiday becomes compulsory.
In the fight against Arianism many forms of prayers were altered, i.e., "to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit” and "to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit." In addition, many prayers were addressed directly to Jesus Christ.
The formation of Liturgical Families in East and West: EAST: Antioch - the West Syrian liturgy; the Byzantine Liturgy; the Nestorian liturgy (Malabar Coast - Kerala); East Syrian, Chaldeans; Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, and Maronite rites. WEST: Gallic Liturgy (umbrella for these groups), Visigoth Liturgy, Mozarabic Liturgy, old Gallic Liturgy, Celtic Liturgy, Liturgy of Milan, (Ambrosian Liturgy).
3. Middle Ages
Bishops were concerned with the various transitions and differences. They felt that an amalgamation would strengthen their liturgies. So an exchange took place between the Gallic Frankish and Roman Liturgies, with the latter being accorded high esteem. Other developments.
• The Canon of the Mass developed and consecration prayers spoken in a very low voice, because the priest had entered into the holy of holies.
• The line of demarcation between the altar and congregation was emphasized.
• The faithful were instructed to see behind each detail a deeper meaning.
• A decline in the reception of Holy Communion.
• Alcuin and Amalarius.
• Books that gave directions for the rites were published – Ordines.
• Romano-Germanic Pontifical, 950 by the Benedictines of St Alban in Mainz.
• Devotio Moderna.
As the centuries passed the liturgy became more consolidated – all the Bishops were expected to follow the liturgical practice of Rome. To secure this the complete Missals were published, and the breviaries were also written. Moreover the liturgical year was developed with the inclusion of the feasts of the Lord, Mary and the saints. We have an increase in the veneration of the Saints, relics and pilgrimages. The Host and the chalice were now elevated after words of institution. Then the Solemnity of Corpus Christi with its procession was introduced. The adoration of the Blessed Sacrament developed in various forms. Unfortunately, liturgy aimed at ceremonial consistency and was perceived as a container of grace simply waiting to be administered and applied for the benefit of the living and the dead.
4. TRENT
The Council of Trent (1555 – 1565) deliberated on reform in the liturgy and instructed the Pope to compile a new catechism and revise the liturgical books. Roman Catechism appeared in 1566, the Roman Breviary in 1578, the Roman Missal in 1580 and the Roman Ritual in 1614. A uniform liturgy was prescribed for the entire Western Church. This liturgy was a hybrid Roman-Gallican-German Liturgy.
The Liturgy was reserved for the clergy and except in the sermon, little attention was paid to the people. People "attended Mass" and their participation was limited to "listening" and "watching". The Catholic hymnal published made a significant contribution to popular piety.
5. THE BAROQUE PERIOD
This was an age of rigid unified liturgy and of rubricism. Liturgy was celebrated with great display of splendour, including magnificent ornamental interiors in the Baroque churches, polyphonic singing and instrumental music. The celebration of the Mass was experienced as a feast for the eye and ear. Some questionable liturgical practices developed:
• Praying devotional prayers during Mass.
• Distributing Holy Communion after Mass
• Preaching the sermon before Mass.
• Devotions to Jesus and Mary given great priority.
Still, the development of a Liturgical Science took place.
The intellectual influence of the Enlightenment replaced the baroque attitude to life. The people now looked at the liturgy more in terms of its pastoral usefulness, and they emphasized its communal character and strove for a greater simplicity and reasonableness. But the risk that they ran was that of reducing worship to a tool of moral formation, an educational aid. The Catholic Restoration of the 19th Century aimed at rebuilding what the Enlightenment had supposedly destroyed. In the process it sought to align itself closely with Rome and the High Middle Ages. Prosper Guelanger (1805 – 1875), the Benedictine abbot of Solesmes, sought to bring out the dignity and beauty of the liturgy.
Leitourgia did not have a correspondent Latin word, but was replaced with other words like officium, ministerium, servitium, opus Dei, and other synonyms. Not until the 16th century did the term appear in books written about The Greek Liturgy and The Latin Liturgy. Within the official ecclesiastical language the Latin term Liturgia appeared in the first half of 19th Century with Pope Gregory XVI (1832) and Pius IX (1864). It was used regularly during the time of Pope Pius X. However, the meaning had to do with ceremonies and the rubrics controlling the proper carrying out of rites. It also acquired a strong juridical connotation designating liturgy as the grand total of the laws and norms by which the official Church regulated the celebration of worship.
Chapter Three The Second Vatican Council
Before the Council the Roman Catholic Mass was uniform and in Latin. After the Council Catholics heard the mass in their own language and celebrated it differently. Before the Council other sacramental rites were almost identical in every country and diocese. After the Council Catholics had much greater freedom in designing sacramental rituals to fit their own cultures. Before the Council scholasticism was the dominant theology of the Catholic Church. After the Council Catholics developed new ways of thinking and talking about their beliefs.
1. DEVELOPMENTS
Yet what happened at the Council and in the years later did not occur instantaneously. Starting at the end of the 19th century, a series of developments begin to lay the foundation for an entirely different approach to the Catholic sacraments.
a) Neo-Scholasticism
In the 19th century some Catholic scholars began a sustained attempt to revitalize scholasticism. This neoscholastic movement gained papal approval in 1879 when Leo XIII called for a restoration of Christian philosophy based on the ideas of Thomas Aquinas, and in 1914 Pius X ordered all Catholic seminaries to use the Summa Theologica as a major source book in theology. However, by the 1950s Catholic philosophers and theologians were incorporating insights from existentialism and phenomenology, as well as ideas from sociology, psychology, and other disciplines into their work. Then, when the Second Vatican Council chose to speak in pastoral rather than scholastic terms, many Catholic writers abandoned scholasticism entirely in favour of more contemporary ways of looking at the world. Now, it is fair to say that scholasticism is no longer the unifying force in Catholic theology as it was in the past.
Still, the presuppositions of scholastic theology remain influential in the Church. These presuppositions are based on classical culture, which sought after the absolute and the universal, and had a non-historical deductive approach to reality. Classical culture moved from the universal to the particular, from the general to the specific. The "essence" of a reality never changed. Stability and completion were signs of perfection. Contemporary culture is concerned with the particular rather than the universal. The process of knowledge in contemporary culture is inductive. One always begins with the facts and gradually constructs general principles which are continually evaluated in terms of the concrete realities under analysis. If a general hypothesis is attained, it is not perceived as absolute but tentative, since further investigation may require its revision or total abandonment. Contemporary culture envisions reality as dynamic and evolving. It stands ready to accept a newness, a freshness to existence. Change and growth are perceived as signs of perfection; completion is a sign of imperfection.
b) Biblical Renewal
Until the 20th century the Catholic Church interpreted the Bible, quite literally, and it used scriptural quotations to support its doctrines. The hierarchy considered itself responsible for guarding the faith and properly interpreting the scriptures. But Catholic theologians repeatedly requested that they be allowed to use the new methods in studying the Bible. Finally in 1943 Pope Pius XII with his encyclical "Divino Afflante Spiritu” recognized the importance of these methods for scriptural research and granted Catholic scholars permission to use them with prudence and discretion.
This research gave impetus to the liturgical movement by suggesting better usage of scripture in worship, and it provided another alternative to scholasticism by suggesting biblical rather than philosophical categories for theology. Most Catholic theologians then recognized a distinction between biblical statements and doctrinal statements. They agreed that statements in the Bible had to be understood in the context in which they were written. It was a mistake to ascribe to biblical authors the views and doctrines that developed later in Christianity. Scripture scholars soon realised that the biblical foundation of the sacraments could not be fully supported and that modern sacramental practice could not be found in the New Testament. It meant that sacramental theologians could approach the scriptural data more openly in attempting to understand what the sacraments were all about.
c) The Human Sciences
The social sciences of psychology and sociology supported the developments in philosophy, liturgy, and scripture. After the Council, insights drawn from the human sciences increasingly influenced Catholic attempts to understand the sacraments and their role in Christian life. Catholic intellectuals are discovering that in our pluralistic world it is difficult to confine the meaning that a sacrament has for people to its deliberately intended significance. They are also learning that symbolic story and ritual are unavoidably polyvalent, that is, they inherently contain a rich variety of meanings and values, some of which are deliberately intended and some of which are unconsciously communicated. They present an encouraging opportunity to allow the sacraments to speak for themselves, as it were, permitting them to reveal the Christian mysteries in increasing richness and depth.
d) The Liturgical Movement
The liturgical movement began in the 19th century out of dissatisfaction with the way things were, it progressed through a period of research into historical origins, and it culminated in a shift away from Tridentine Catholicism. Initially the movement affected only the monks of Europe, but in the 1880s the desire for liturgical reform began to spread beyond the monasteries, and by the beginning of the 20th century, the contribution of outstanding scholars on the ancient liturgical sources led to a renewal in liturgy and it attained a theological, ecclesial and spiritual significance. Scholars and theologians started talking about "liturgical theology.” Scholars were slowly learning that many of the rubrics and rituals associated with the sacramental life and worship of the Church were not, as it had been assumed, a uniform and seamless whole. For example, the Tridentine Mass was actually a composite of prayers, readings, gestures and rubrics. Research into the other sacraments showed that they too did not always have the forms given them in modern times and that they had been understood differently in different periods of the church history.
Pope Pius X (1903–1914) gave impetus to the renewal by speaking of "active participation" or "participatio actuosa" in the liturgy (Tra le Sollecitudini, 1903). The Belgian Benedictine, Lambert Beauduin, picked up on the expression ‘active participation of the laity’ and spoke of the need of "democratizing the liturgy.” In summary he stressed the liturgy is the authentic prayer of the church, the bond of unity between priest and people, the centrality of preaching, the vernacular translations of the texts for Sunday Mass and vespers and the focusing of piety on the liturgy. Another Benedictine, Odo Casel, described the liturgy as the "ritual action of Christ's work of salvation,” that is to say, the divine work of redemption made effective by means of signs and symbols. Liturgy was no more "cult" by which human beings attempt an encounter with God; it was a salvific event by which God himself establishes communion with human beings.
Pope Pius XII in Mediator Dei defines the liturgy as "the public worship which our Redeemer as Head of the Church renders to the Father, as well as the worship which the community of the faithful renders to its Founder, and through Him to the heavenly Father. It is, in short, the worship rendered by the Mystical Body of Christ in the entirety of its Head and members" (n. 20). So from the beginning of the twentieth century onward was one of intense fermentation. The need for reform in liturgy, with its call for the use of vernacular language, for more participation by the lay person, for a better understanding of the history of liturgical practices in the Christian tradition was a catalyst for the revolutionary renewal of the Church's sacramental life.
2. Vatican II
A Introduction
The Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium was approved on 4th December 1963. The document states that the Church desires to undertake with care a general reform of the liturgy in order that Christian people may more surely derive an abundance of graces from the liturgy (SC 21). It promoted the following:
• respect for the liturgy (7).
• active participation by the faithful (15-19).
• liturgical science and liturgical formation (20 -40).
• respect for the biblical readings and an increase in their number in the liturgy.
• the communal nature of a liturgical celebration
• the simplification and clarification of the rites.
• adaptation to the traditions and cultures of people
• decentralization (37-40)
• the use of the vernacular(36).
B SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM
1 Trinity: "For in the liturgy God speaks to his people, and Christ is still proclaiming his gospel. And the people reply to God by song and prayer" (SC 33). The Spirit inspires the Church to express its life of faith in fixed forms that correspond to the very content of the life of faith: the self-communication of the Father, through Christ, and the Holy Spirit. All this happens through a symbolic action that makes present the event of salvation both to God and to the faithful. God remembers (makes anamnesis) his faithfulness and mercy so that in its turn the Church may commit itself with fidelity to his Covenant. Rather than an act of human beings towards God, the liturgy is the action of God for them, a gift that they are to accept through faith.
2 Action of Jesus: SC 7 speaks of the liturgy as "an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ." At Mass Christ himself "now offers through the hands of the priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross." The Constitution affirms that "when a person baptizes, it is really Christ himself who baptizes." He is present in the proclamation of the word and "when the Church prays and sings." Accordingly, the faithful are caused and made capable of interacting with the Lord, of addressing the Father through the one mediator between God and humankind (1 Tim 2.5).
3 Presence of Jesus: Sacrosanctum Concilium refers to the active presence of Christ" and his saving mysteries in the Church, "especially in her liturgical celebrations" (SC 7).
4. Anamnesis: Every liturgical celebration is an anamnesis of the salvation event, which culminated in the Death and Resurrection of the Lord.
5 Scripture: SC 24 states that “it is from the Scriptures that actions and signs derive their meaning." In consequence the celebration of the liturgy always includes the proclamation of God's word.
6 Ritual and Symbol: Signs or symbols give to the liturgy a sacramental dimension, that is, they contain and reveal the presence of Christ and of the mystery which the Church celebrates. The ritual action, based on the essential components of word and gesture, aims at making the Mystery become apparent and introducing the faithful into it.
7 Sacraments: The theological reflection before the Council understood sacraments according to the arrangement "sacraments in general" and "sacraments in particular," where the former identified what the seven sacraments held in common, and the latter then applied these common notes to each individual sacrament. The language was structural and quasi-scientific. The language now employed to explore what is common to the Church’s sacraments is liturgical rather than structural. Emphasis is on their relationship to the mystery of Christ and to the Church as a whole, both of which are expressed in each liturgical act.
8 Church: SC describes the Church as a sacramental reality (SC 26). Lumen Gentium develops more fully the concept of the sacramental nature of the Church (LG 1, 48). This constitution introduces the profound notion that the Church is not only made by the sacraments but also makes the sacraments (LG 26, 11). In fact, the Council proposes the liturgy as the life of the Church, the ritual act which eternally actualises the nature of the Church as the Body of Christ. Consequently, the Christian religion is not only a doctrine, it is a way of life, and the liturgy is a community action or deed, it is the "work for the people." The phrases "through the hands of the priests," "when a person baptizes," "when the holy Scriptures are read," and "when the Church prays and sings" indicate the Church's ministerial role in the liturgy. Christ associates this role with himself in a capacity of minister. SC 10 calls the liturgy culmen et fons: "the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the fount from which all the Church's power flows." Most importantly, the accomplishment of God's plan continues now in the Church.
9 Participation: Vatican II aimed: "to impart an ever increasing vigour to the Christian life of the faithful" (SC 1). SC 14 considers full, conscious, and active participation as the aim of the conciliar reform and promotion of the liturgy. Active participation is the right and duty of the faithful "by reason of their baptism." The implementation of this ideal can only be realized through personal communication among the participants. “It is also the duty of pastors to ensure that the faithful take part fully aware of what they are doing, actively engaged in the rite, and enriched by its effects" (SC 11). Note also SC 11, 19, 26, 55. The liturgy is an event to be attended, but one in which the people are ‘to part in.’
10 Unity and Inculturation: SC 38 speaks of the ‘substantial unity’ of the liturgy in opposition to ‘rigid uniformity.’ Moreover, the liturgy is celebrated in the concrete situation of the worshiping community and hence takes into consideration their culture and traditions. SC 63b states: "these rituals are to be adapted, even in regard to the language employed, to the needs of the different regions." The liturgy is to be revised in order "that sound tradition may be retained and yet the way remain open to legitimate progress."
11 Faith: The liturgical celebration is a response of faith of the community to the inner activity of the Word and the Spirit taking place in the sacraments. "The sacraments not only presuppose the faith, but through words and things also nourish it, strengthen it and express it" (SC 59). The sacraments are primarily a prayer. In this perspective, the essential sacramental gestures and formulas are not interpreted exclusively as signifying a movement from God to the subjects of the celebration. Rather, they point also to the movement of the liturgical assembly toward God.
12 Salvation: The Council restored the relationship and connection between the liturgy and the Mystery of Salvation, which ultimately is the "work" of God. "For it is in the liturgy through which, especially in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, the work of our redemption is accomplished" (SC 2).
13 Revision: In SC 50-58, the Council called for a revision of the liturgical rites. SC 21 states both texts and rites should be drawn up so that they express more clearly the holy things which they signify; the Christian people, so far as possible, should be enabled to understand them with ease and to take part in them fully, actively, and as befits a community. The revision of rites is concerned with insuring that the ritual form facilitates the effectiveness of the liturgy and assists the faithful in their encounter with God.
C. AFTER VATICAN II
During the period after Vatican II, all of the sacramental rituals in the Roman Catholic Church were substantially revised. Some of these revised rituals have proven quite successful, namely, the revised baptismal rituals. Some of the revised rituals are seen as not being very successful, namely, the revised ritual of reconciliation and the revised ritual of confirmation.
Further modification and adaptation are required, but two major issues tend to restrict any further revisions. First, given the enormous amount of energy and time the post-conciliar revisioning process demanded, there does not appear to be a strong desire to engage in a similar process. Second, discussions on liturgical practice have in many ways ceased to be focused on liturgical theology itself and have become focused on authority issues.
Chapter Four Lex Orandi Lex Credendi
The phrase legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi is generally ascribed to Prosper of Aquitaine. In its original setting the statement refers to the solemn intercessions of the Good Friday liturgy. The Indiculus, redacted by Prosper: “We consider also the sacraments… are celebrated… in order that the law of praying may establish the law of believing” (DS 246).
Augustine had already made ample use of doctrinal proof from the liturgy. Against Julian of Eclanum, who maintained that children are born without original sin, Augustine points to the pre-baptismal exorcism in order to demonstrate that infants are until then in the power of the devil. The Church’s ‘law of belief’ in the necessity of grace for salvation is evident in its ‘law of prayer.’ The liturgical praxis is the ground for the confutation of heresies.
Eastern Churches: "We are and we posses only what we celebrate".
Among the early Fathers of the Church, the liturgy was known as theologia prima and the field of dogmatic speculation as theologia secunda. The original meaning of "orthodoxy" was the "right praise" (ortho-doxa) celebrated in the liturgy. In a derived sense, it came to mean "right teaching". The liturgy is the first source and the norm from which the teaching of the Church is derived.
1 Theology
Liturgy is theology because the content of faith can be seen and perceived in it. In fact, any theological investigation that wants to be such and not simply a private study among scholars, must always, inevitably and necessary, set off from the Church's lex orandi. Liturgy's "specific and primary objective is an action which makes objectively present the whole of the salvific work of Christ". We "do theology" when we search for the knowledge of that same salvific work in the ritual symbol, which contains it and reveals it at the level of efficacious reality. The primary source for liturgical theology is what is actually experienced in liturgy.
Word and Dialogue: The content of the liturgy is always the Word of God and its form is word/address to God. It is also expressed through a symbolic language, typical in the acting and performing of a ritual. The theo-dialogic power guarantees the spiritual impact on the person because it discloses itself necessarily as a dialogue between God and human beings. So liturgy is "theology in symbolic-ritual language", but it may happen that the ritual component attains an absolute "operative" value. As a consequence the "symbolic" language loses its power and liturgy is no longer true because it is no longer a theological dialogue but just a human action.
The interrelation between word and ritual depends on a delicate balance. The efficacy of the liturgy is sustained by "word” and "sacrament". Overstressing the word by detaching it from its event, it becomes an atemporal ideology. On the other hand, if the ritual is given an absolute value and is separated from the word, it becomes formalism and ritualism. This happened in an exemplary way in Judaism. Because of its sacramental nature, Christian liturgy is fundamentally and by origin a "theology". Evagarius Ponticus, a monk of the 4th Century, put this well, when he said: "You truly pray when you are a "theologian", and you are a "theologian" only when you truly pray". When liturgy is no more theologia prima, then it is not even theology in any sense but just a barren ritual. In the same way theology is no more theologia secunda, when the profession of faith assumes the function of "first principles."
Salvation: The Word must, be communicated in order to become personal salvation for individuals: this is what occurs in the liturgical celebration. Salvation is actualised for the individual in a symbolic and "sacramental" way. Nevertheless it does not cease to be "theology.”
Aim of Theology: To attain more precise knowledge of the depth dimension of all forms of Christian communal worship, as well as the peculiar significance of the various forms in which the liturgy is celebrated. Systematic theology completes its task only when it demonstrates how the liturgy serves in its particular way as transparency for the mystery of salvation. All classical liturgies confess this Trinitarian grounding and goal of the economy of salvation. Theologians are challenged to show how theology of liturgy can be formulated as theology of the economic Trinity.
Liturgical Theology: The task of liturgical theology consists in giving a theological basis to the explanation of worship and the whole liturgical tradition of the Church. This means, first, to find and define the concepts and categories which are capable of expressing as fully as possible the essential nature of the liturgical experience of the Church; second, to connect these ideas with that system of concepts which theology uses to expound the faith and doctrine of the Church; and third to present the separate data of liturgical experience as a connected whole, as, in the last analysis. Christian liturgy is essentially and existentially theology because it is always Word of God, known in the reality of the symbolic rite. Liturgy is theology in action.
2 Faith
The way by which we celebrate and pray, establishes and determines the way by which we believe, and as a result, also the way we behave. In other words, the One, in whom we believe, is the One whom we historically encounter in the liturgical celebration, and it is only that One in whom we should believe, and to whom we have to bear witness. Paul Ricoeur's noted phrase, "the symbol gives rise to thought," is very much to the point. Faith gives rise to theology only after it finds its first articulation in the form of myth and symbol, i.e., the stuff of liturgical ritual.
3 Liturgical Theology
Liturgical theology bases its proper "discourse on God" according to liturgical categories. Some of these are:
a. Sacramentality of Revelation. The word of God (eternally in God) becomes sacrament, that is, a visible word (revelation) when it manifests itself in the symbol of an event (sacrament).
b. Economy of salvation. Liturgy is the continuation, in ritual-symbolic terms, of the divine economy.
c. In the Christ-Sacrament there is the totality of revelation.
d. The Church expresses and fulfils herself in the liturgy. Christian worship, by its nature, structure and content, is the revelation and realization by the Church of its own real nature (cf. SC 2). It is not the Church which exists for the "cult," but the cult for the Church, for its welfare, for its growth into the full measure of the "stature of Christ" (Eph 4.13).
e. The Presence of Christ's Mystery. The liturgy actualises the presence of the whole mystery of God, which is concentrated in Christ. To do theology in the light of liturgy means to have access to the totality of the mystery of Christ and to see it not in conceptual formulations, but in the concreteness of a present and operating event.
f. The Word of God in Enactment. Theology is always a "discourse about God" inspired by God and, at the same time, to be always a new confession of faith.
Conclusion
1. Liturgy demands a comprehension at a theological level because it is essentially a bearer of the whole content of faith communicated in revelation.
2. Liturgy as theologia prima does not only acknowledge, but above all, it postulates a theologia secunda.
3. Liturgy is a way of revelation, and theology is enlightened by its investigation on revelation.
4. We call "liturgical theology" the reflection which deduces the theological contents from the celebrative praxis of liturgy and illustrates them within the same praxis.
5. Talk about "reform", "renewal", “adaptation" and "inculturation" needs to connect with the lex orandi. One cannot imagine the results that a general revision of theology would bring about if the starting point should be the actual experience which the faithful have of Christ in the liturgical celebration.
6. In effect, the life of grace is accomplished in leitourgia, i.e., in the "work in favour of the people" which the Father carries out through the Son and fulfils in the Spirit. Everything must be experienced and lived so that "the law of praying (lex orandi) may establish the law of believing (lex credendi)".
Liturgical theology studies liturgical texts as privileged expressions of the Church's faith. It examines the dynamics of ritual action which is the means which "the work of redemption is accomplished" (SC 2). Without liturgical theology our understanding of the Church's faith and doctrine is bound to be incomplete. What is needed is not so much the intellectual comprehension of liturgy as its comprehension through life and prayer.
Chapter Five INITIATIVE OF TRIPERSONAL GOD & RESPONSE OF CHURCH
This chapter focuses on providing us with an understanding of the description and essence of the liturgy.
1 Liturgy is the work for/in favour of the people. Christian liturgy is the free and gracious initiative of the tripersonal God for us.
2 Liturgy is an encounter with the Tripersonal God
The liturgy is personal encounter in the sense that human persons meet the three divine persons according to the particular role each of these plays in the history of salvation. The N.T. shows the Trinitarian foundation of liturgy as "work for the people": the Father sets it out through the cooperation of the Son who accomplishes it with the effective presence of the Spirit. Thus the definition of the liturgy as encounter with God involves the ad extra working of the Trinity in salvation history.
3. Liturgy is the work of the Father
The Father is always active working ‘for the people’. Paul claims that ‘God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you’ (Ph 2.13), and John states, ‘My Father is working still, and I am working’ (Jn 5.17). The liturgy, especially, is the place where the Father works for the people.
4. Liturgy is the Work of Christ
Among human beings Jesus is the Leitourgos, the celebrant of the liturgy, who performs the "many good works of the Father" (Jn 10.32, cf. 5.36, 8.41). Christ the Lord is the High Priest consecrated by the Holy Spirit (Heb 8.1-2). Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.” As Priest he "brings back and presents" all humankind to the Father for worship "in Spirit and Truth" (Jn 4.23-24). Christ is the Leitourgos par excellence. As God, Jesus completes our salvation through his death and resurrection and as man, as our representative, he presents the perfect offering of himself to the Father. The Cross is the climax of the Liturgy accomplished by the Father through the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Cross is infallibly effective because the Father accepted the offering of the Son on the Cross and raised him from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in doing so accomplished our salvation (Rom 1.3-2; Acts 2.32-33).
5. Liturgy and the Holy Spirit
The Trinitarian Liturgy belongs to the Father and the Son and is “in the Holy Spirit". In his humanity during his Baptism at the Jordan the Lord receives the Holy Spirit of the Father. Note Acts 10.38. On the cross, Jesus offered himself unblemished to God through the eternal Spirit and, as he was about to die, the Lord "handed over the Spirit" (Jn 19.30) to the Father (Heb 9.14). Therefore, the Father raised him from the dead by the power of the same "Spirit of holiness" (Rom 1.4).
6 The Liturgy is Anamnesis and Epiclesis
In the rites the Church recalls or makes an anamnesis of what the Father has completed through Christ in human salvation. The act of recalling, of calling to mind, of making present is basic to liturgy. The anamnesis of God's marvellous deeds by the liturgical assembly allow them to become present in their midst. Epiclesis completes the action of anamnesis. The two concepts are related to each other in much the same way as the paschal mystery and the mystery of Pentecost. Just as the bestowal of the Holy Spirit on the Church on the day of Pentecost culminates Christ's saving work in his death and resurrection, so does the prayer of epiclesis culminate the action of anamnesis. When the Church recalls God's marvellous deeds in Christ, it also prays for the bestowal of the Holy Spirit who will consecrate or make holy the people and the sacramental elements used in worship. In the liturgy we not only recall the paschal mystery of Christ and our salvation, the Holy Spirit empowers us to accept and live our salvation now.
7 Liturgy is Participating in the History of Salvation
The liturgy perpetuates God's actions and interventions in human history. The liturgy is the final moment in the history of salvation, in as much as it continues in our time what Christ in his time accomplished by his paschal mystery. The Church, in prolonging the work of Christ in her liturgy, participates in the history of the salvation of humanity.
8 The Church co-leitourgos of Christ
The Church becomes co-leitourgos and co-servant of Christ. As he was about to leave his disciples the Lord instructed them: "Do this in memory of me"! In this ultimate mandate, the Lord commanded the disciple "to do what he did", that is to say, the same Liturgy of the Father in the Holy Spirit, which must continue in the "time of the Church", from Pentecost to Parousia. In fact, having received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2.1-4), the Church of the apostles obeyed the mandate of the Lord in its threefold aspect: kerygma, diakonia and leitourgia. Consequently, the Church, the Bride, empowered by the Spirit, is the first concelebrant with her Lord and Spouse in the salvific work of the Father together with the Spirit.
9 The Liturgy makes the Church
The Second Vatican Council asserts that the liturgy is “the pre-eminent manifestation of the Church. This is realised in the full active participation of all God's holy people in liturgical celebrations, especially in the Eucharist, in a single prayer, at one altar, at which there presides the bishop surrounded by his college of priests and by his ministers" (SC 41).
10 Liturgy is the worship of the Church
In the liturgy the Church offers worship to the Father, through Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. The ancient doxological formula expresses this succinctly: Ad Patrem, per Filium, in Spiritu Sancto. For this reason in the liturgy the Church normally addresses the Father, through Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
11 Liturgy is not just a system of ceremonies or a code of rubrics
Liturgy is not just a system of prayers and ceremonies; it is not an event whose effectiveness depends solely on the lawful fidelity with which it is performed. Worship necessarily requires norms and regulations for organizing and harmonizing the liturgy, but this is only one aspect and definitely not the most important. In fact, the best "master of ceremonies" can be the worst liturgist. The dominance of rubrics can stifle authentic liturgy making it degenerate into a sterile choreography, and transforming the most vital realities of the history of our salvation into a "sacred drama".
12 Liturgy is not primarily the official public worship and the administration of sacraments of the Church.
Liturgy is not primarily the external part of the public worship of the Church and it is not solely the whole of the public prayers and practices of worship established by Christ and the Church. Liturgy is not primarily the same as cult where men and women take the initiative of presenting to God their adoration by means of rites and symbols. Instead, liturgy is the "work for the people” accomplished by God in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Moreover the liturgy is not just the place where the Church "administers" the sacraments as means of grace. It is not just the context for the Church to be a channel of grace for people so as to nourish and strengthen them in their living. The sacraments, especially, are "signs" that manifest the presence of salvation achieved by Christ for our sake once and for all.
13 Liturgy is not just the business of the clergy or the prerogative of the religious
The separation between faithful and clergy which occurred in the past has resulted in a mentality and attitude that have ascribed to the clerical and religious caste the initiative and prerogatives of worship. The Second Vatican Council has insistently maintained that each member of the faithful, as a result of his/her baptism, is qualified to participate actively in the liturgy. But still the faithful often just become an "object" of worship, which is celebrated for their "nourishment" and satisfaction of their "religious needs".
14 Liturgy is not a private affair
The liturgy belongs to the entire people of God, and for this reason "liturgical celebrations are not private functions, but are celebrations of the Church, which is the ‘sacrament of unity’” (SC 26).
15 The Liturgy is not a nebulous collective method of prayer.
Some wrongly consider the liturgy as a sort of collective and anonymous prayer, as distinct from pious exercises or devotions which are the expressions of “individual and personal prayer". Connected with this, is the conviction that liturgy is unable to satisfy the profound needs of the spiritual life. In the past some have claimed that Mass is not the time for prayer (Louis Bouyer, 1956). A good number of the devout faithful do not know that in their worship and in their prayer together for their needs they along with all the other faithful constitute the Church, and that they are called to express the Church and to be transformed into members of the Church (cf. SC 2).
16 Liturgy is not just a sacred action.
Some perceive liturgy as exclusively a holy sacred action. Consequently, having been turned into something "sacred in itself", worship has as it were "profaned" everything else in the Church: her government becomes juridical and administrative and her spiritual content is strictly separated from her material life.
17 Liturgical ceremonies are not magical rites.
There is an attitude which identifies Christian ritual as magical rites. Christian ritual does not cause things to happen for persons. While liturgy is an instrument of God’s grace, it does not force God to act in a certain way. Perceiving Christian ritual as magic indicates an attempt to escape from what is happening in the real world.
18 Liturgy is not essentially a duty to be fulfilled.
It is necessary to overcome certain ideas expressed in imperatives like: "you must attend Mass; ... you must go to confession; ... you must receive Holy Communion". If Christ is present in the liturgy, then the liturgy in its various celebrations becomes our food and nourishment, and usually nobody is forced to eat his daily bread by "you must", unless he/she is sick. The role of the pastor is to sensitise the members to their spiritual hungers and their need for grace to live their Christian values, instead of demanding their presence at the liturgy.
19 Liturgy is not religious entertainment
When we see liturgy as religious entertainment, when we aim solely at making the liturgy lively and spontaneous, sometimes we oversimplify the celebration and risk denying some truths of the faith. Changes, additions, and omissions in the liturgy may cause doctrinal errors in theology and may destroy the essence of liturgy which is itself a "profession of faith". Sometimes, not just the laws but even the very spirit of the liturgy is put aside when we give space to entertainment with the intent of making the celebration more "alive"! If pastors are constantly experimenting with the liturgy aiming at amazing dramatic effects to hold the attention of the participants, then they must be careful that they are celebrating authentic liturgy, which aims at transmitting a true experience of faith. Pastors need to be aware that in the liturgy the actual "Catholicity" of the Church appears, and so “no other person (apart from episcopal conferences), not even a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority" (SC 22, 3). The liturgy in the Christian sense is not concerned primarily with stirring up romantic feelings or making people feel good about themselves or provoking social and political actions. It is not meant mainly to make us feel happy or to give us an escape from daily issues. The liturgy comes out of faith in the living God and in His Son Jesus Christ, who gives us eternal life (cf. Jn 17.3).
Conclusion
Liturgy is, therefore, to be understood as the work for the people of the new covenant which the Father had in mind from all eternity and manifested to the People of Israel, and has accomplished in the fullness of time through the Son and the Holy Spirit. Following his death and resurrection, Christ, the only Leitourgos-High Priest, continues his eternal and universal liturgy, to which he invites the host of the Angels, the just ones of the O.T. and the members of the Church. On these grounds liturgy is understood as the work of God for his people. As such the liturgy stands for and is salvation, because salvation is the greatest work which God has done for us. So Vatican II declares: "For it is the liturgy through which, especially in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, the work of our Redemption is accomplished" (SC 2).
Furthermore, the liturgy, where salvation, the "work for the people," is accomplished by God in Christ with the Holy Spirit, becomes also "the work of the people", i.e., the Church's celebration of the mysteries of Christ and her worship of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.
Chapter Six Significant Liturgical Elements
1 Liturgy and Devotions
The Conciliar Constitution on the Liturgy makes it clear that liturgical actions are those which the Church recognizes as part of its public worship. The constitution reminds us that "the liturgy does not exhaust the entire activity of the Church" (SC 9) and that "the spiritual life is not limited to participation in the liturgy" (SC 12). For this reason the Church highly endorses the popular devotions of the Christian people.
The distinction between what is liturgical and what is non-liturgical depends on what the Church claims as its official form of worship. There is a distinction between the cult of the Church (liturgy) and the cult in the Church (private devotions) because the Church has approved certain devotions. Today we speak more broadly of popular religiosity which includes also such acts as pilgrimages, religious drama and dance, and processions. In places where popular religiosity is vibrantly practiced it is important to balance it with the liturgy. It is also useful to examine ways whereby they can mutually enrich each other.
2 MUSIC, ART, AND FURNISHINGS
Although the liturgy can, strictly speaking, be celebrated without music, it is in the interest of active participation and the solemn form of divine worship to sing parts of the liturgy. SC 112 requires that song be closely bound to the liturgical text and to the rite, in order to "add delight to prayer, foster oneness of spirit, or invest the rites with greater solemnity."
The arts, too, have an important function in divine worship. Although the liturgy can make use of any decent and suitable space, it is fitting to celebrate it in the ambience of beauty, nobility, and dignity.
From these conciliar statements it appears that music, art, and furnishings are more than cosmetic elements of the liturgy. Each has a ministerial role to play; each possesses a sacramental and symbolic character.
3 The Ordo
The Church has taken great care of the directives which the Lord entrusted to it: "do this in memory of me - teach and baptise"! In this initial and precious treasure the Church has found inspiration in setting up and organising its liturgy so as to better accomplish the mission of making present Christ, the Risen Lord with the Holy Spirit. In its fidelity to the Lord's command that the Church has come to realise and understand the lex orandi, and as a rule, the lex orandi belongs to and is governed by the Church, which has also charge over its practical arrangement.
The many specifications of the rule of prayer are what make up the so called "ordo”, that is to say, the practical organisation of liturgical rituals. It is a Latin verb, ordinare, whose fundamental meaning is "to order, set in order, arrange, adjust, dispose, regulate". Consequently, it also indicates the function of "ruling and governing", thus, "to appoint to an office." In ecclesiastical language it stands for "to ordain, to admit to a clerical office". By ordo and ordines (plural) are designated the Latin official books of the Church containing the rites of the sacraments and other liturgical celebrations. In English the word used for the same books is "rite", which also comes from Latin, ritus and points out "the form and manner of religious observance". Its fundamental meaning is, therefore, "a prescribed form or manner governing the words or actions for a ceremony, a ceremonial act or action". However, the same word "rite" indicates also the grouping of the various Christian Churches using a distinct liturgy, having a particular theological tradition, and holding a specific code of laws.
Taken in its basic and general sense, the word ordo, can be described as the shape or structure of the Church's liturgy. However, the ordo is not simply a collection of rules and prescriptions, otherwise, known as "rubrics". The ordo is the actual celebration of the Church, it is the lex orandi, as it is laid down in the Missal and in the various other rites. The main components of ordo are Scripture readings, prayers, rubrics, and most importantly, the so called Preanotanda and Institutio, i.e., the general introductions to the various rites. The written Ordo arose after worship, and arose not as the elucidation of its theory, but as the outline of a liturgical rite for given conditions, or even as an aid for deciding disputed questions of liturgical practice.
4 Rubrics
Rubrics come from the Latin ruber meaning red. The word refers to the ceremonial directions for conducting a service. They were labelled rubrics since they were inscribed in the liturgical books in red ink as opposed to the prayers which were primarily in black. The relationship of the written rubrics to worship itself is analogous to the relationship of the canons to the structure of the Church.
The meaning of the Church's liturgical life must be contained within the ordo, insofar as it defines the general structure or "rite" of its liturgy. Of course, torn away from this meaning, the ordo becomes a lifeless and meaningless "law'. And if it is torn away from liturgical practice, the latter is surrendered to the mercy of the customs, tastes and whims of this or that priest. The normative value of the Church's rites also indicates that one’s interpretation of them must realise they are bearers of a rich liturgical and theological tradition.
Liturgy must be appreciated, loved and cherished for it is the life of the Church. Therefore, to find the Ordo behind the "rubrics", regulations and rules, is to find the unchanging principle, the living norm, the very heart of the liturgy.
Chapter Seven SYMBOL
1 Signs
Every sphere of human existence is permeated with signs. Signs tell us whether to add (+) or subtract (-). They direct us to stop (red light) or advance (green light). All signs share common features.
a. Simplification: Signs are for simplification; they make life easier. Signs tidy experience, give it shape, make it orderly and manageable.
b. Revelation: St. Augustine: A sign is a thing which leads to a knowledge of something other than itself. The essential function of a sign is a directional pointer which makes an unknown reality known.
c. Veiled: How is it that the unknown fire becomes present in your cognitive faculty through a knowledge of the smoke? It happens precisely because you have grasped the smoke as a signifier of fire. Suppose another individual had never seen or heard of the relationship of smoke and fire. For him/her, the smoke would not immediately point to fire. Indeed, the smoke would actually hinder a knowledge of the fire by turning attention exclusively to itself, the smoke. The instrumental sign is not perfectly transparent but offers a resistance, as it were, to the knowledge of the thing signified; one must pass through the sign to arrive at the signified. For the eyes that do not know how to penetrate the veil, the sign is a screen. Hence for one who does not grasp the value the sign acts as a screen; for one who does grasp it, on the other hand, the sign acts as a bridge and informant. Signs can both uncover and hide the reality they signify. Second, there are different classifications of signs, distinguished by the quality of their relation to the reality they signify.
d. Simple Signs: Many signs are simple; one to one. Red means danger. The sign announces or indicates or suggests its meaning. A simple sign relates to what it signifies on a one-to-one basis. Simple signs do not explore; do not probe, do not illuminate the deep and dark places of existence.
e. Conventional Signs: Conventional signs are the product of human reason and do not arise from nature. There is no necessary relation between the sign and the reality signified.
f. Real and Index Signs: A real or index sign indicates an absent reality to which it is naturally bound.
g. Images: The goal of an image is to reproduce as accurately as possible the reality it signifies.
h. Allegory: Allegorical signs are those signs that have no real relation, but only a conventional relation to the thing they are intended to express. Since the connection and relation are conventional and subjective the illustration is not directly and immediately comprehensible. Common mergers are the lily and chastity, the owl and wisdom, the balance and justice. We use blue for Our Lady.
2 Symbols
A simple sign "is a part of the physical world of being: a symbol is a part of the human world of meaning." A simple sign is related to the thing to which it refers in a fixed and unique way. A symbol is characterized by its versatility.
a. Derivation: Symbols are primarily agents of unity and convergence. Derived from the Greek words sum-ballo, sum-ballein, the verb literally means "thrown together" and suggests the idea of unity. The prefix sum suggests a bringing together. Sum-ballein, therefore, implies assembling or making one what was fractured or divided. A symbol is understood as an agent of unity which really makes present the reality it symbolizes.
Our sym-bol converges with the event of the Son of God appearing for the destruction of all dia-bolicalness (1 John 3:8): dia-bolic, "to disunite, cause evil between two parties. Dia means through or apart and has the connotations of division, separation, and rivalry.
b. Scripture: The Bible hardly knows the term "symbol" (Wis 2:9); nevertheless, it often uses the term "sign" (Hebrew ôt, Greek semeion) and its synonyms (80x in the O.T., and 70x in the N.T.). Still, symbolic language is profoundly connatural to Semitic mentality. Biblical revelation arises through the typical luminous language conveyed by "signs" and "symbols."
b. Represents: A symbol points to a reality different than itself and makes it present without being identical to it. Signs which are symbols are characterized by their power and depth to disclose a reality by actually making it present. Symbols could be labelled "supercharged" realities. Symbols make concretely present what they symbolize.
c. Perception: Alfred North Whitehead sees the origin of symbolism in perception. The sensation of one reality leads to the perception or taking account of other realities. Most of us have imbibed a threadbare reading of reality. The real has been equated with the thing. The real (we suppose) is the tangible, the machine, the gadget. Christ looks at the flower and its beauty speaks of the beneficence of the Father. Symbolic vision really demands new eyes, eyes that see through the surface to the symbol. We can see with the eyes or we can see through the eyes.
Hugh Lavery: The disease of this world is an eye-disease. The great question is, 'What is the Good?' And the answer given is that the good is the thing which can be used. The long Mercedes car declares not what I am, but how much money I have. Once men and women are assessed by what they have, then they too have become just objects. For so often, the more you have, the less you are.
d. Symbolic Reference: The functioning which allows the transition from the symbol to the meanings is known as symbolic reference. That reference is grounded in some community of natures between the symbol and its meaning, but the reference is provided by the human person. "The potter, and not the pot," Whitehead argues, "is responsible for the shape of the pot."
e. Human Person: Human symbolising activity makes possible symbolic transformation, that is, the transformation of sensible reality into a symbol embodying meaning. Subject, symbolic transformation, symbol, symbolic reference and meanings, are all elements in a social world.
f. Communication: Probably, the most common of all symbols is called language, language that is clothed with its enormous power to prescribe and control feeling and action and interaction. The power of language to function depends not simply on rational aspects of language, but ultimately on personal factors associated with the human subject.
What has been said of the power of language to communicate meaning and to provoke action and interaction can be extended generally to all symbols. Symbols communicate meaning and provoke action and interaction not just to the extent that they are rationally grasped and understood, but more importantly to the extent that a person is involved in them. Symbols must be lived into to be effective.
Symbols do lead to the conception of ideas but not to clear and distinct ideas. Rather they lead to confused ideas, which require further reflection for further clarification. Symbols communicate at the level of sense and image and feeling and intuition and conception elemental meanings which are grasped, not logically and scientifically, but socially and personally.
g. Access: The symbol gives access to the transcendent and the sacred. The symbol itself is intended as an objective concentration of experiences of the transcendent world.
h. Medium: Men and women do not know reality immediately, but only mediately through the prisms of various symbolic systems. The avenue to the infinite is through the finite. There is no other access. The Really Real is mediated to us through symbols. Christ says, 'No one can come to the Father except through me.'
i. A Way of Knowing: Symbol is a way of knowing. The meanings mediated in symbols are not objectively defined and detailed. Rather they are subjectively and confusedly grasped, so that the knowledge resulting from them seems vague and opaque. But it is vague and opaque not in the sense that its meaning is obscure or that it is empty of meaning, but rather in the sense that its depth of meaning is unfathomable. The meanings realized in symbols are not grasped in one single glance but only after an ongoing, lived response.
j. Illuminative: A symbol is not identical nor co-extensive with the object that it symbolises. It is erroneous to suppose that a symbol is intended to be a reproduction of the thing that is really intended. It does not reproduce it, but illuminates it.
k. Opaque & Insistent: Ricoeur: “The opacity constitutes the depth of the symbol, which, it will be said, is inexhaustible.” The meaning is vague but insistent. It is the insistence of symbolic knowledge, not its conceptual precision, which moves an individual to the action and reaction associated with the symbol. A symbol does not affect such clear and distinct ideas does not mean that it effects no ideas whatever. For it does. Examples, the Kenyan flag, ‘I love you.’ Symbol has both an esoteric and an exoteric function. The symbol is intended primarily for the circle of the initiated.
l. Evocative: A symbol is an object or pattern which, whatever the reason may be, operates upon persons, and causes effects on them, beyond mere recognition of what is literarily presented in the given form. The emotive, stirring to action power of symbols, is regarded as their essential characteristic. The most clear-cut result, therefore, of symbols is eminently pragmatic: the moving of individuals to action and reaction. It is this power that enables symbols "to organize the miscellaneous crowd into a smoothly running community.” Symbols do not merely inform; they transform. Symbols have vigour and voltage. We can say a sign is dead, but a symbol is alive.
m. Double Intentionality: The reality which constitutes the symbol intends two different meanings. The sensible reality directly intends a literal, natural meaning; on another level symbolic meanings are "donated" in and through the first, literal meaning. The givenness of the symbolic meanings in the literal constitutes one source of both the power and the mystery of symbols.
n. Polar Relationship: A symbol and its meanings are related polarly. That is, though they are theoretically distinguishable, they are so correlative that neither is definable except in relation to the other. The clearest and most readily available example of a symbol is the human body. Neither symbols nor meanings, nor bodies nor souls should be thought of as things. Karl Rahner: "Body and soul are two meta-physical principles of one single being, and not two beings, each of which could be met with experimentally." The relationships between body and soul, and between symbol and meanings, are not analogous to the relationships between things that stand side by side in the physical world or between events that follow one another sequentially in the historical world. A symbol and its meanings coexist for a human interpreter, or neither really exists at all. For all human purposes a symbol is the meanings and the realities which it symbolizes in representation.
o. Realisation of Reality: Making love, for example, is a symbol and not a simple sign, for it does not just proclaim the presence of love but also realizes and celebrates that love in representation. So present is the love in the ritual love-making that the ritual, indeed, is the love. And because it is the love, the ritual not only makes love present but also incites men and women to appropriate loving action and reaction. The common phrase which claims that the man and the woman "make love" in such normal gestures of love, that is, make it real as concrete, present and effective, would appear to be quite accurate. In the conventional and obligatory actions, the letter, the holding hands, the kissing, the spoken words, the man's love for the woman is not only indicated but also realized. The actions are not just signs of love. They are also causes of love insofar as they cause it to be present in a context of human action and interaction. They are, that is, rituals of love. The effect, love realized for both man and woman, is due wholly both to the originating love and to the ritual gestures in which it is representatively realized.
Only when the man and the woman live into the symbols do they discover what it means to say that these conventionalized gestures are making love; only then do they understand the symbol; only then do they grasp personally the love that is the symbol. For love is not objectively grasped in itself, but only subjectively as mediated in symbol.
p. Multivocal: A symbol "is characterized not by its uniformity but by its versatility. It is not rigid or inflexible but mobile." The single, fixed meaning of a simple sign is communicated clearly and distinctly and predominantly intellectually. The many, fluid meaning of a symbol are communicated confusedly, that is, fused together, not only intellectually but also affectively. A genuine human symbol permeates and grips and stirs the whole human person.
Whole persons, and not just their intellects, are involved in symbols. A symbol is charged with many meanings, and once it has caused an interpreter to take account of its many meanings, its work still continues. The human mind can never get to the bottom of a symbol and be done with it. The words "I love you" raise as many questions about meaning as they answer. A symbol, any symbol, is mysterious.
q. Community: Every person is born naked into the world but no person is born into a naked world. All of us are born into a world replete with symbols and meanings, a world in which ethical values and principles, religious doctrines, political ideals, family values and the rules of social organization are all mapped out for us. To become useful members of that world we must learn its symbols and its meanings, and we must maintain those symbols and those meanings to maintain the world.
Public symbols and meanings belong primarily to communities and only secondarily to individuals. The first interpreter of a public ritual and symbol is always a community of men and women. For it is always a community that creates and legitimates both symbolic transformation, that is, the transformation of a mere sensible reality into a much more than sensible symbol, and symbolic reference, that is, the connection between this sensible reality-symbol and these much more than sensible realities and meanings. Individuals interpret the symbols and understand their public meanings only to the extent that they stand within the community.
r. Individual. As individuals, who are socialized into symbol-mediated meanings, we still remain free. We can still understand in a situation; and we can understand that in this particular time we can choose to highlight a particular meaning out of the spectrum of meanings the symbol offers.
In short, the human individual is not a robot. Whatever may be the public meanings of a symbol, any individual may create private meanings for the same symbol. If such an individual can mobilize social forces from a position of leadership, either jurisdictional or charismatic, then he or she can make such private meanings stick (Lumen Gentium). Thus new meanings would emerge into the public domain, exemplifying and validating the anthropological dictum: people made it and people can remake it.
s. Natural Resemblance: There are two basic questions men and women can ask about reality. The first is an empirical question: What is that? The second is a human question: What is that for us? The first asks about "facts"; the second asks about meanings. In the scientific technical tradition since the Enlightenment, the factual question reigns as the so-called objective order, while the meaning question is derogated as the so-called subjective order. Such a hard and fast separation of objective and subjective does not seem to match the real situation.
The factual question is objective to the extent that it asks about - what is really out there. But it is also subjective to the extent that what is out there is attained only as the result of subjective perception controlled by subjective theory. Fact is a composite of objective datum and subjective perception. If there is a subjective element at the level of empirical question, there is undeniably a subjective element at the level of human questioning. But there is equally undeniably an objective element at this level too. If a Rolls Royce, for instance, means status, position and wealth in England, it does so not completely subjectively, but also because of certain empirical characteristics of a Rolls Royce, because of some community of nature between human wealth and status and what goes into the making of a Rolls Royce.
The two questions may be posed, for instance, of the seder meal, or Eucharist. The answer to the empirical question "What is that?" can only be: that is a meal of bread and wine. But at the meaning level, the answer to the human question "what is that for us?" is: for us that is the presence of God and the body of Christ. For the natural meanings associated with meals humans share together donate to the symbolic meal more the meanings of presence, love, friendship, oneness, being and counting for others than does a buried and reclaimed stone. Religious faith does not create, but proclaims, realizes and celebrates, the presence of God in the meanings of the shared meal. That faith is reinforced in its choice of this symbolic ritual by the good news that it was God himself for seder, and later Jesus himself for Eucharist, who identified the recalling of his presence in and through the ritual meal of bread and wine.
t. Fully Real: To say symbol is not to say not real, but rather fully real, that is, representatively and concretely and effectively and personally real. Prophetic symbols realize sacred reality precisely by symbolizing it. To say that seder is a symbol of the active presence of the God who saves, or that Eucharist is a symbol of the presence of Jesus for the community called Church, is to say that God and Jesus are proclaimed, realized and celebrated as present in these rituals, really, truly and substantially present, as the familiar theological phrase states it. All symbols make present what they symbolize. God and Jesus are reported to have identified their presence with this meal.
u. Presence: Symbols are not nouns, they are verbs; they are not names indicating distance but actions telling of presence. In the symbolic frame of reference the signifier is not there to point out the signified but rather to place us together with it: sym-ballo, "to make into one." The absent signified becomes for us vicariously present in the signifier. Sym-ballein truly "places together" signifier and signified and significance.
v. (Symbols of Faith: In systematic theology, for example, summaries of dogmatic statements of faith are called, in fact, symbols (e.g., the Apostles', Nicene, Athanasian Symbols or Creeds). This particular use of the term is specific and technical)
3 Cross
A cross on the cover of a book signifies a religious and Christian book. A cross on a map marks the location of a Church. Yet the cross is more. It is not an exclusively Christian sign. It is universal, what psychologists call 'archetypal'. Long before Calvary, Christ says, 'Take up your cross daily'. People understood him.
Many peoples employ the cross to signify the weight and worry of experience. For the Romans, the cross was a sign of degradation. The Jews themselves saw crucifixion as the great curse. The death of Christ was not only torment but degradation. The cross was the sign of his regard for the rejected. The first Christians were appalled when the cross became their badge of identity, for it argued a servile status and spoke of their subjection. The cross became acceptable only when the image of the risen Christ was impaled there. Here the cross, a sign of victimization, became a sign of victory. The unveiling of the cross on Good Friday was greeted with acclamation; victory evokes applause. The badge of death was made the symbol of glory.
Christians venerate a cross now become a crucifix. It is more than a sign now; it moves and it remembers. It defines a new attitude to reality. It is responsibility accepted; it is faith affirmed. It is not lifeless but active. It recalls an event. It revises the accepted meaning of death and hell and life as impasse. And it reveals that love is not sentiment but sacrifice; that love is not soft but strong. It is sacrifice which gives love its steel and its stamina.
4 Summary
We can say that men and women live not only in a physical world, but also, and more importantly, in a human world which is a world of meaning. Men and women have so enveloped themselves in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols and religious rituals, that they do not know any reality directly and immediately, but only indirectly through the mediation of one or more of these symbol systems.
The symbol covers the totality of those phenomena in which the sensuous is in any way filled with meaning, in which a sensuous content, while preserving the mode of its existence and facility, represents a particularization and embodiment, a manifestation and incarnation of meaning. Four elements essential to symbol may be isolated from this definition: (1) a. sensible thing or action, which on the physical level is merely a sensible reality, and on the human level is (2) a symbol endowed with meanings; (3) a relation between the sensible reality-symbol and this meaning, which is perceived by (4) a human subject who takes account of these meanings when faced with this symbol.
Symbols do not just "refer to", "indicate" or "represent", they "hold" and "carry" the absent reality, and therefore they establish a presence. Symbols are "relational events." They make present what is past and thus are not dissipated in pure actualism. Religious ritual is prescribed formal behaviour for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in mystical beings or powers. The smallest unit of such ritual is the symbol. Ritual, therefore, is complex symbolic action.
5 Definition
Symbolising is a human process in which meanings and realities, intellectual, notional and personal are proclaimed, realized and celebrated in presentation in a sensible reality within a specific perspective. The visible reality in which the meanings and realities are proclaimed is transformed into a symbol. In the religious activity called sacrament, the sensible reality which proclaims, realises in representation and celebrates is an action which is transformed into symbolic action. Such symbolic action is known technically as ritual. The term ritual can be used as though it were synonymous with the term symbol. The only distinction to be made between them is that ritual is specifically symbolic action.
CHAPTER EIGHT RITE
Gaudium et Spes 62: “In pastoral care, sufficient use should be made, not only of theological principles, but also of the findings of secular sciences, especially psychology and sociology: In this way, the faithful will be brought to a purer and more mature understanding of the faith”.
Ritual have often been wrongly conceived as rubrics. Ritual is a more potent and embracing term than liturgy. Ritual is the repetition of those symbols which evoke the feeling of that primordial event which initially called the community into being with such power that it effects our presence at that event. Ritual is fundamentally a bundle of symbols which prescribe formal behaviour for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in invisible beings or powers regarded as the first and final causes of all effects.
1. Significance
a. Formation
Ritual is basic to the formation of individual personality and social life. Erik Erikson is well known for his theory on the five stages of personality development and integration i.e., infancy, early childhood, play age, school age, and adolescence. He outlined the powerful and essential role ritual plays in each stage of development and its continuation in adult behaviour. Without participation in ritual or appropriation of the elements which it mediates, the human person faces psychological conflict, personality impairment, and estrangement from the inner self and outer society. Correspondingly, hollow or weak rituals will threaten the ability of the community to incorporate new members and maintain a stable existence in the flow of history.
b. Creative Integration
Ritual offers the human person the possibility of breaking through one's ideal self-image. Bernard Bro explains that the sacraments offer us a chance to cooperate completely in our own fulfilment, while demanding that we distinctively relativize our self-image. This negation of the ideal self occurs in the recognition of the other, the holy.
The second opposition which confronts the human person is his or her peers. The human person concurrently feels a need for a relationship with others and a fear of others. First, the individual human person can never adequately form or exhaust the image of the other. The other always remains free and elusive. The other always is a mystery and not a problem. Second, the other's existence comes first in the relationship. I count for nothing in their existence, it is independent from me.
Bro sees ritual as a way of overcoming this dual opposition and attaining communion with other persons without domination. Ritual allows one to respect the difference of the other and independence of the other, yet effects a positive relationship with the other. It is interesting that in the establishment of a relationship with another through ritual, a negation of the ideal self is realized since one ceases to be the sum total of the universe. One also moves beyond negation to participation in the richness of the other.
The third opposition confronting the human person is the world. The world is humankind’s home. Yet the world is an uncomfortable home. Ritual is a means for its participants to enter into this strange world without destruction. The world is a vibrant situation in which humankind makes meaning.
1 Self Centre of World Gifted & Fragile, Real Other
2 Others Need & Fear Mystery & Independent Respect
3 World Home & Strange Vibrant & Meaningful Integrates
Ritual allows integration into a higher framework, a perspective in which alienation can be transformed from a negation to a source of creativity. Ritual can lead from estrangement to communion. Through ritual, the human person can embrace a negativity and move beyond it to positive meaning.
2. Language
Language has the capacity of evoking a distinctively human element in existence i.e., meaning. Religious language has the additional power of disclosing an inexhaustible, indefinable, yet undeniably experience of meaning which transcends the ordinary. The interpretation of life and the relation to the transcendent that are the distinctive marks of ritual are grasped by images. The images of religious ritual are transmitted through language, gesture, and space.
Ritual language is metaphorical so that it discloses something about God and something about the participants. In almost all cases, the metaphor is tied to an event. The metaphors of religious ritual possess imperative as well as indicative force, not only informing but also enjoining and commanding.
B. R. Brinkman has proposed three primary and two secondary characteristics of religious ritual language. This discourse is primarily (1) descriptive, narrative, or mythical; (2) heuristic; and (3) prescriptive. Secondarily, the discourse is (4) promissory or fiduciary; and (5) performative. The term descriptive refers to the narrative or myth which accompanies ritual performance. Usually, the descriptive element or narrative operates as an explanation of exegesis of the ritual action. It sets the context for a correct interpretation of the performance.
The term heuristic refers to the power of language to arouse interest and evoke discovery of a reality which is not immediately observed in the ritual action. Through the heuristic power of religious language, the believer is led to consider a different symbol than the one first presented – the language evokes different meanings from the same symbol.
The term prescriptive connotes the cohesive power of ritual language for the life of the ritual community. The prescriptive character leads to the secondary characteristics of promissory and performative. Because the meaning expressed in ritual is the basis for the continued stable existence of the community, the ritual's participants are motivated to commit themselves to the values of the community and to live out these values in their concrete existence. Therefore, prescription implies promise and performance. The five characteristics of religious ritual language suggest a direct relationship between ritual and the life and structure of a community.
3. Patterns of Behaviour
Observation of various peoples has revealed a consistent, repetitive, or, what is called, patterned behaviour with cultural variations. The term behaviour simply refers to the observable response, activity, of an individual or group to the realities of life which impinge on them. A pattern is nothing other that repetitive human activities that reduce the raw and seemingly random stuff of experience to manageable proportions.
Patterns of behaviour control and nourish individual and communal response to reality in three ways. They foster effective group communication. They reduce intra-group conflict. Finally, they strengthen group bonding, coherence and solidarity. Patterns of behaviour exercise a significant and central role in all social communities. They appear in religious communities, especially in the form of ritual.
a. The Way of Intimacy
Reflection on the many drives of human existence notices a remarkable thrust for union or intimacy. Distance is the opposite experiential pole of intimacy. The "way of intimacy" could be restated as the "way of overcoming distance." The sacraments try to overcome distancing effects in two ways: first, through the use of the imagination; and second, through the repetitiveness of religious rituals.
In religious situations, two differences must be narrowed: the vertical and the horizontal. In sacramental behaviour, the human imagination projects a vertical dimension which identifies the sacred object (God) as being above i.e., in a position of power and transcendence. The imagination also projects a horizontal dimension or time line of past, present, and future, a looking backward and forward which creates a sense of continuity. In both cases, the projection of the imagination is purposeful. The upward looking seems to make the sacrament effective, the backward look provides a form of guarantee, and the forward look gives us hope to see that our insufficient performance here and now will by and by be made good.
The vertical and horizontal projections of the imagination are synthesized when the "sacraments" are envisioned as extensions of some type of "incarnation" which adds "proximity" as a dimension.
In institutionalized religion, the repetitive character of ritual formalizes the behaviour by offering contact with its original charter event and by allowing contact between the participants past experiences of the charter event's re-enactment and their present re-enactment. The ritual affirms the convivial existence of the group as transcending the individual, both in the present and in times past.
Ritual legislation and the repetition of ritual arises from the prescriptive character of the "sacramental" situation i.e., the need for the individual and the community to perpetuate their existence and by necessity the directives and laws which will attain this goal. Repetition, therefore, arises from the need to cope with "unfinished business." "Unfinished business refers to those elements or values which are yet to be attained or lived up to by the individual or the community in terms of their world view. Unfinished business accumulates in terms of both the "charter event" and the nexus of past and present re-enactments of the "charter event" since the human world view is articulated and expressed in and through these ritual activities.
The re-enactments do not transform "unfinished business" into "finished business." Rather, by intimacy or contact, there is a feeling of absorption in a transparent reality to which the 'unfinished business' itself calls us. The ritual person can come to terms with himself and his world. The stronger and more reassured he becomes, the more he can take up again the problems of his religious existence. Indeed he/she is offered the opportunity to do this every time he/she engages in ritual.
b. The Socially Operational Way
An essential dimension of ritual is its communal or social nature. "What does the admitted factor of sociality in sacramental life tell us about sacramentality itself? A social imprint appears throughout an investigation of religious ritual’s multiple dimensions. Its presence in sacramental rituals will disclose either intimacy communion, or an intensified relationship to the ritual community or the numinal or divine. This presence is indisputable. "What we want to know in the long run is whether ritual and sacramental symbols do perform in their religious and theological sense in virtue of their societal element." To answer this query, two steps are necessary. First, the societal influence on symbols must be established. Second, a demonstration of the social operation and its effect within concrete religious rituals must be shown.
Symbols are social because they are socially mediated to an individual and consequently operate through social life. The social operation of symbols is clearly seen in the way the chaos of life is moulded into a culture which orders and interprets the meaning of both the world and human activity through human symbolic activity. Social change is fundamentally symbolic change and symbolic change affects social change. The symbols of ritual men and women are social and the social character of ritual men and women is symbolic. The social operation of symbols can be detected in concrete religious rituals. For example, each of the Christian sacraments focuses on aspects of existence which imply social relationships of a definite and constitutive nature.
Sociality is effective on the individuals within the community through the power of the imagination. Imagination leads not only to a communion and consummation with the "divine," but also with the ritual community.
The unity of social operationalism extends in two directions. It produces an organization of experienced symbols and an organization of the individuals who comprise the ritual community. We organize the symbols with which we have to deal, and by the same token we organize ourselves. The more we accept the socializing offer of sacramental life, the more we socialize our individuality.
Sociality in religious ritual is an opportunity to see in human nature an openness to the divine. God, and any claim to his existence, will be discovered within the operations of human existence, or not at all. The intimacy attained in ritual through imagination is not a private affair, but is itself social.
c. The Way of Interiorization
Interiorization is a response to the attraction of a given event or situation. It may or may not be accompanied by conceptualization. Interiorization is a degreed reality. "The fuller, the more human, the interiorization, the more I will accept responsibility for the meaning, or the proffered commitment, indeed for the gift as I may think of it, which is now entrusted to me."
There are concrete roles which are expected to be interiorized by a form of commitment, such as the roles of priests, doctors, lawyers, social workers, etc. Interiorization requires that those who assume these roles transform them into personal biographies.
Interiorization seems to stress personal responsibility over community. This concept should be understood as a correlative rather than an opposition. The interiorization unfolds within the context of a community, a community which bears social symbols that require the response of interiorization. Interiorization itself will be measured by the responsibility of the individual in his or her social existence.
d. The Way of Sacramental Operationalism
Brinkman tries to avoid a "transcendental leap" and prefers to utilize the descriptive term presence as the ultimate goal of religious patterns of behaviour. He illustrates this by using the following example. A serving sailor may want to kiss the photo his girlfriend gave him. By the imagination, the sailor symbolically recreates the situation between himself and his girl. The total result has the logic of sacraments. It is prescriptive: his commitment and loyalty are involved. It is also heuristic (allowing or assisting to discover): does she still look like that? Does she still love him faithfully? All this is a sign of deep "directionality" of the photo as a symbolic reality. The total situation for the sailor is also purposive. By this kiss he is contributing to bringing about an enhanced state of affairs between himself and his girl. He contributes, for though she may never know about this particular kiss, she will finally, we hope, be the recipient of better sustained expressions of his deeper love. Again in the situation the sailor himself receives, for now he is accepting again within him this present symbolic reality as a personal gift and symbolic presence of his girl, and is more deeply moved to love her.
Through directionality, the sailor seeks after and discovers the achievement of a presence. Because the imagination is at work with symbolic realities, therefore it is the element of presence which comes to mind. For imagination is concerned with presence, above all it is a concern which is personal. Presence is not imaginary, but the product of the organised imagination in a full anthropological sense. Without the operation of the imagination with the force of directionality, the attainment of the feeling of presence would be impossible.
Religious ritual behaviour has a purpose, viz., presence. So, intimacy creates a feeling of closeness and reassurance which removes dangerous threats. Interiorization demands conformity to the embraced symbols. The two taken together constitute humankind's imaginative presence, a presence for me and for us.
d. Patterns of Behaviour and the Human Situation
Our previous definition of ritual enumerated three elements: patterns of behaviour, repetition, and purposiveness. The purpose of ritual is essentially to cope with human existence, an existence composed of rewarding and threatening experiences. The ability to cope is not exclusively individual, but essentially social. It will unfold within the human context or not at all.
The repetition in ritual reinforces the "belief system" or world view of a particular community within the individual. It achieves this by offering a contact with the original charter event of the community and its past re-enactments. Through the repetition of ritual, the unfinished business of the individual and the community can be taken up again with renewed enthusiasm and conviction. The patterns of behaviour present in ritual are the basic drives or roads which lead to the experience of communion or consummation. Ritual in this perspective is a continual invitation to become permeated with the presence of whatever is conceived as "ultimate reality" by the community.
e. Conclusion
Ritual is a "given" of human existence. It is an a priori necessity for the very existence and sustenance of a cultural group's or social unit's life. Without ritual, a community is doomed to perish. Ritual permeates the three dimensions of culture: language, patterns of behaviour, and social structures. Ritual language and gesture disclose meaning for the "odd" situations of life. Ritualized patterns of behaviour evoke intimacy, interiorization, sociality, and presence. Ritual is the building block for social structure.
Psychological research attests to the absolute necessity of ritual for personality development and mature integration. Sociology and anthropology issue an equal claim for ritual's indisputable role in cultural and social existence. Communal health and stability parallel individual development and wholeness. Social, anthropological and psychological studies call for a rejection of any interpretation of ritual as a secondary or insignificant feature within human existence. Without ritual, there would be no human society. With impoverished ritual, human community becomes weakened, fragile, and disarrayed.
The behavioural sciences depict ritual as the most natural, normal, and even necessary human activity. It is the key to personal growth, integration, and continued personality equilibrium. It fosters social communication and social relationships. Without ritual, individuals and whole cultures face the threat of dissolution. Men and women are ritual beings through and through.
Ritual is a medium or vehicle for communicating and sustaining a particular culture's root metaphor, which is the focal point and permeating undercurrent for its world view. Ritual fulfils this function by placing the ritual participants in contact with the original charter-event, its past re-enactments, and its present celebration. Having again seen and "tasted" the center and goal of their lives, the members of the ritual community can take up the "unfinished business" of aligning themselves and all reality to the central metaphor. A people's ritual is a code for understanding their interpretation of life.
Christian sacraments exhibit all the characteristics of ritual in general. They are normal and necessary for Christian culture. They are the medium or vehicle through which the Christian root metaphor of Christ's death-resurrection is expressed and mobilized to "positively" resolve the conflicts of life. Through sacramental rituals, Christians are bound to the Paschal Mystery and participate in its gift of divine life which is mediated through the gathered community as the presence of the risen Christ in the world. Christians perform the behaviour described as normal by the behavioural sciences in their sacraments, their rituals. Religious ritual behaviour is as normal for the Christian as ritual behaviour is for everyone.
4. Religious Rites
a. Types
There are three types of religious ritual and the four elements which are at work in them. Religious rituals fall into the categories of either magic, taboo, or relations. Magic rituals attempt to control the divine. Taboo rituals seek to isolate an individual or community from the "holy" or the "other" which is considered to be dangerous. Relation rituals endeavour to form a relational non-destructive bond between a community and the "divine." In each of these religious rituals, four elements are present: symbolism, consecration, repetition, and remembrance. Symbols from the natural order make the "divine" present in the ritual without being identical to the "divine." Consecration enables a natural situation to share in a power or principle which transcends the natural and is its basis. Repetition of the ritual links the participants to their past and allows them to return to the original religious event the ritual is celebrating. Remembrance bonds the community together by preserving the religious tradition expressed in and through the ritual.
b. Movement
Some anthropologists claim that the religious rite is always ambiguous because the divine cult can lead towards magic or towards prophecy and relationality. The magical cult is centred around the behaviour of the Wizard, which is perceived as anti-social. He meets his clients individually. Salvation is disconnected from daily living. In a prophetic cult, the behaviour of the Prophet is seen as socially up building. He seeks to unify others who participate actively in his mission of making divine revelation continue. The central remains free for the divine power. Still, anti-social religion tends towards social religion. Magic tends towards Prophecy.
The Sociologists of Religion affirm the universality, the functionality and the collectivity of the sacred acts in traditional cultures. The sacred act is an external and almost universal sign of the human desire for a meeting and a participation in God that gives peace to the heart and energy to the moral commitment of men and women. The sacred act is not the act of an individual but of a social group and not only expresses but constitutes its unity. The principal elements of sacred rites are: Symbolic Acts, Ritual Prayers, and Communal Consummation. The sacred ritual of a community is a religious act, a community act, an ethical act, a pedagogical act and an intercultural act.
In summary, the divine power that brings a person to a rite also leads him to involvement in the social situation. Yet, we have to distinguish between prophetic cult and magical rite. Magic gives strength against fear but is private and anti social. Prophetic religion is involved in building community and its rite gives strength for this struggle. Philip Rosato shows that there is an inherent movement from magic rituals to relation rituals and he sees the Holy Spirit as empowering this movement.
CHAPTER NINE MYSTERY
Christianity originated when the mystery religions reached their widespread of popularity. The simultaneity of their propagation and their striking similarities require that we consider their relationship. Greek literature through the term mysterion contributed to the technical meaning of the word sacrament.
The mystery religions were secret religious cults that emphasized salvation for individuals who decided to be initiated into the mysteries, and in this way to feel close to each other and to the divine. The "gods" controlled the destiny of man. In these religions the members could obtain the secret and gain salvation. The mysteries consisted of secret rites and symbols reserved for the initiated.
The gods honoured in the mysteries were considered to have visibly appeared on earth, undergone human sufferings, and rediscovered good fortune, salvation or eternal life. The actions and experiences of the gods were not buried in the past, but actually made present in the cultic actions of the Mystery religions. The presence of the gods was realized in sacred actions, words, and symbols.
1. Etymology
Mystery indicates something which is difficult to understand and in Christian doctrine it stands for a "truth of faith" which is known by revelation. In antiquity it meant a ritual actualization of a "primordial" event. The word "mystery" derives from ‘˚nry’, and is translated in Greek as myein, meaning "to close" referring to the closing of the lips or the eyes. Mysterion originally meant something secret, something hidden, a fact which is not revealed. The verb myeo also indicates various elements by which qualified members "initiate" somebody to what was previously "concealed".
The "closed" nature: 1. Pledges of silence were intended to ensure that the holy secret would not be disclosed to profane outsiders. 2. As people with closed eyes remain in darkness until they open their eyes to see the light, so the mystes whose eyes were opened moved from darkness to enlightenment, both literally and metaphorically.
2. Rites and ceremonies
There is scant data available - followers managed to keep the secrecy of the essentials of the rites. The ritual actions, which were very detailed and accurate, aimed at reproducing the fate of the gods by way of mimicry. A period of preparation - segregation from community - swearing an oath of secrecy - a confession of sins - the initiation ceremony would wash away all the candidate's sins. The initiation ceremonies usually mimed death and resurrection.
3. Mystery Religions and Christianity
The mystery religions and Christianity had many similar features e.g., a time of preparation before initiation and periods of fasting, baptism and banquets; vigils and early morning ceremonies; pilgrimages and new names for the initiates. The first Christian communities resembled the mystery communities in big cities and seaports by providing social security and a feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood. The variety of rites and creeds was almost as great as in the mystery communities. The date of Christmas was purposely fixed on December 25 to push into the background the great festival of the sun god, and Epiphany on January 6 to supplant an Egyptian festival.
Great differences - tribal origins and historical person – myth and historical events – great fluidity and stability of features in New Testament – undeveloped theology and strong theology, sexual rites and no cult of rulers.
4. Mystery in the Bible and in Christianity
1) Old Testament
In the LXX mysterion occurs only in later writings; the same is true of apokalypsis in its theological sense of revealing a mystery. The term mysterion always renders the Heb. sod, confidential speech, secret, except in Daniel, where it corresponds to the Aramaic raz. Daniel uses it to mean "eschatological secret", the vision of what God has decreed shall take place in the future (Dan 2.28), the plan of God for the end times. The O.T. is very slow to give up the idea that God's words and deeds are manifest in history, and God does not speak in secret (Is 45.19; 48.16). Amos 3.7 f. - "Surely the Lord God does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets".
Later in the LXX, it refers to heathen cults. But also the way to divine wisdom is described approvingly in terms of mysteries, yet the way of wisdom is also faithfully set forth. In writings other than Wisdom and Daniel, mysterion occurs with profane meanings such as the secret plans of a political leader (Tob 12, 7; Jdt. 2,2), military secrets (2 Mac 13.21), or secrets shared among friends (Sir 22,22; 27,16 f., 21).
2) New Testament
Occurs only 27x, most frequently (20x) in Paul, since it is here that the mystery cults are directly dealt with. Once in each synoptic Gospels and is found in Revelation (4x). John makes abundant use of "sign."
a) The Mystery of God's Kingdom
The Synoptic use (Mt 13.11; Mk 4.11; Lk 8.10) of mysterion is in the saying about the purpose of the parables. Jesus says: “The mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven are revealed to you.” The parables are ultimately a veiling of the mystery because they are so simple.
b) Paul - The Mystery of Christ
For Paul mystery is the secret of the Divine plan of salvation, the restoration of the unity of the human race (Eph 3.6). Paul puts forward the Cross of Christ, as revealing God's redemptive plan. The closing doxology of Romans (16.25-27) is a hymn to Jesus Christ, who is the revelation of the mystery keep secret for endless ages, but now so clear that it must be broadcast to pagans everywhere to bring them to the obedience of faith (v.26).
c. Kerygma
Paul connect the mystery with the kerygma, 1 Col 1.27; Eph 1.9-10. The mysterion is not itself revelation, but it is the object of revelation. It does not declare itself; God in his free grace discloses it to his elect.
d. Servant of the Mystery
Paul gained knowledge of the mystery and is now entrusted with explaining how it is to be dispensed, Eph 3.2-9.
e. Contrast and Consummation
This mysterion is before the world, yet hidden from the ages, hidden in God, but fulfilled in Christ. The manifestation of the mysterion is also perceived in the contrast between the "then" and the "now" (Rom 16.25), and the rulers of this world and believers (1 Cor 2.6ff). Though it is now revealed, the mysterion conceals the consummation (cf. Col l.24-25; Eph 3.13).
f. Charity
The prophet has the special gift to penetrate the mysteries of God, but without the gift of love, Paul would be nothing (1 Cor 13.2). The contents of speaking in tongues are also mysteries (1 Cor 14.2), but they need to be interpreted for the good of the community (14.13).
g. Israel
The destiny of Israel is a mystery (Rom 11.25). Paul unfolds the secret of the final acceptance of the chosen people.
h. Resurrection
In 1 Cor 15.51 Paul says the mystery is the gift of the Resurrection.
i. Marriage
Christian marriage is "this great mystery" (Eph 5.31-32), because it "refers to Christ and the Church."
j. Eschaton
2 Th 2.4-12 and Rev 17.5, 7 speak about the secret rebellion and destructive power of the harlot Babylon, but the hidden plan of God will be fulfilled and evil forces will be destroyed.
k. Faith and Religion
In 1 Tim 3.9, 16, the "mystery of the faith" and the "mystery of our religion" refer both to the confession of Christ and his redeeming work. Mysterion means here a formulated confession of faith.
Mysterion, for Paul, refers to the divine plan to save all people in Christ, a plan determined by God from the beginning and kept secret, but now revealed through the Spirit. The mysterion is made known to those of mature faith because only those who are spiritual accept the knowledge. Paul never uses mysterion to designate those rituals that are today called sacraments.
3. Fathers of the Church
The second century Apologists use it in multiple senses: to refer to the pagan mystery cults; to describe the birth, death and life of Jesus; to indicate the figures and types of Christ in the Old Testament. The first extensive use is found in the works of the third century Alexandrians. Clement of Alexandria implies a divine knowledge which is concealed under the external form in which the truth is presented, and is revealed only to a few. Origen understands a sign, an expression for mysterion, to be "when through what is seen something other is indicated." Clement and Origen opened the way for the application of mystery terminology to Christian rituals.
The Christian mystery suggests the unity of God's plan for salvation. In the very polarity of hidden-revealed, the notion of mysterion suggests aspects of that sacramentality which is a constant dimension of the divine saving action. God saves by word and action: by a symbolic perceptible action, and by the word of revelation which illumines the mysterious action and calls for a human response. Still all the manifestations of the divine saving actions remain mysteries.
CHAPTER NINE Sacramentum
1. Etymology
The word sacramentum refers back to the most ancient times of the Roman religion. The term was not an exclusive property of the Christian churches and was not invented by Christian theologians. Originally, the Latin word sacramentum referred to a deposit placed before a court when two parties entered into litigation. The loser forfeited his share of the deposit which was often then used for religious purposes, was regarded as consecrated to the gods and called a sacramentum, a sacred thing. Sacramentum also had the connotations of taking a pledge.
The verb sacrare has the fundamental meaning of "to consecrate, to dedicate, to set aside jealously, to make untouchable". The noun (but also adjective) sacer and sacrum indicate the reality which has been consecrated, i.e., the "holy" and "sacred" thing; what is sacer or sacrum is distinct and opposed to profane. Sacramentum was also the commitment of a person who swore by imploring the divine favour and aid. The word also is sometimes used as a general term for anything which represents a hidden reality both sacred and mysterious. Sacrament can be broadly defined as "a sign or symbol of something which is sacred and mysterious."
The word sacramentum is used as the translation of the Greek word mysterion. This Greek term generally referred to either some hidden decree of God to save the world or "liturgical rites" kept secret from the uninitiated through which the followers of a particular cult hoped to enter into unity with the deity. The early Christian translators chose it probably because they wished to highlight the Christian "mysteries" as pledges and to avoid words such as mysteria, sacra, arcana, initia, which were in use in the pagan mystery cults, and which might have confused the meaning for Christians. Sacramentum was specifically used by Christian authors to translate the New Testament term mysterion.
2 Tertullian
Following the understanding of mysterion in Ephesians and Colossians, Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine they called sacramentum the realization of the plan of salvation. Tertullian is the first to use the word sacramentum of both baptism and Eucharist. He speaks of sacramentum as analogous to the soldier’s oath. He looks on Eucharist as a sacrament in a slightly different way, as a perceptible sign of someone who sanctifies Christians. Tertullian states: "caro salutis cardo est', the flesh (human nature) is the hinge of salvation. Certain spiritualising movements have a strong negative attitude towards the sacraments. Sacraments reflect the positive relationship of faith with the physical world, which God created and "saw how good it was"! It is on this power that the liturgy relies. It makes human realities the "epiphany" of God's presence in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
3. Patristic Times
In this period, the primary sources for an understanding of the sacraments were Scripture and personal experience. The Fathers of the Church "took their time" in developing the sacraments into the full-blown celebrations of today. The meaning, the number, the rituals, and the practice of the sacraments had not yet been defined and sometimes varied widely.
Then, mysterion and sacramentum were taken as synonyms. The Fathers describing the sacraments used terms like: image, likeness, type, sign, symbol, mystery, sacrament. This terminology brings us into the field of symbolism whereby the visible sign represents something invisible or absent. The sacramental symbol came to seen as not only the concentration and illustration, but also the emanation of a hidden reality. St John shows how the Logos ‘took flesh… and how we saw his glory’ (1.14). So, as the Logos was present in his human nature, the Glory of the Risen Lord is present in the sacramental signs.
The presence is not in the sense of ideal representation and illustration, because this would empty the reality of its transcendence. Instead it is a matter of real presence, a different kind of presence but equally present in the image, likeness, symbol, etc. For this reason St. Leo the Great declared: "all that was visible of our Redeemer was changed into a sacramental presence,” and St. Ambrose: "I find you in your mysteries".
3. Augustine
Augustine placed the sacramentum in the category of signa, visible signs that represent an invisible reality. A sacramentum is a sacrum signum, that is, a sign designated by God to point to a divine reality and contains that reality in itself. Some things are not used to signify anything. A sign is a thing which, beside its appearance, causes something else to come to thought. That something else is the res, the thing learned through the sign.
Signs which pertain to divine realities are called sacraments. Sacramentum refers to the visible form of invisible grace. A sign of a sacred or divine thing has some likeness to the thing signified.
For Augustine, sacramentum is a visible sign of invisible and efficacious divine realities. The formal essence of the sacramentum is the word, which "interprets" and confers meaning and efficacy to material element. “The word is added to the element, and it becomes the sacrament, itself, too, is as it were a visible word. Therefore, in the ritual liturgical celebration the Word in the same way becomes "incarnate" to the extent that the sacrament itself becomes a "visible word"! The celebration of the sacrament itself (Liturgy of the Sacrament) can never be separated from the Liturgy of the Word.
St. Augustine often compares the sacraments of the two Testaments. The signs and sacraments of the Old Testament prophesied the Christ to come; ours announce him present. In comparison with the old, they are more powerful. The sacraments of the New Testament give salvation; those of the Old promised a Saviour.
In the works of Augustine, however, sacramentum is by no means a sharply defined term. Augustine does not clearly distinguish mysterion and sacramentum, and both have affinities with other words: sign, symbol, figure, allegory and the like. Whereas in the Greek patristic mysterion there is a play of hidden and manifest, but the emphasis is clearly on the hidden, in the Augustinian sacramentum, mysterium, figura, and related words, there is an obscure meaning, and the emphasis is not on the obscurity but on the meaning: sacraments are signs, causing something else to come to thought: therefore let us understand.
The designation sacramentum-mysterion is applied to three classes of reality. First, it is applied to rites of both Old and New Testaments. Second, it is applied to symbols or figures. Third, it is applied to the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
A sacrament is a sacred sign. The sign and what it signifies are related as what is seen and what is believed, as what is seen and what is understood, as what is seen and what is. What is signified is also effected, by Christ and the Spirit. It is the efficacy worked by Christ and Spirit that separates a sacramentum-mysterion from mere figures and simple signs. A sacrament is an efficacious sign.
4. St Isidore of Seville
The thinking of Isidore of Seville of the seventh century about sacraments was destined to have a theological influence for four centuries. Isidore retained elements both of the Greek patristic mysterion and the Augustinian sacramentum. For him, sacraments are so called because ‘under the cover of bodily things divine power more secretly produces their salvation.’ The definition does not mention sign. The whole emphasis is on secret power, which has links with the Greek mysterion.
So, Isidore defined a sacrament, not in the category of sign, but in the category of secret power concealed under visible actions. From this definition evolved the notion of sacrament as a vessel of grace.
5. Berengar of Tours
A sacrament is a sacred sign. But a sign is not the thing signified; the sacrament is not the reality. The Eucharist, the sacrament of the body of Christ, is not the real body of Christ.
6. Hugh of St Victor
"While a sign can signify a thing but not confer it, a sacrament not only signifies but also efficaciously confers. A sacrament simultaneously signifies by institution, represents by similitude, and confers by sanctification.” The notion of efficacy as being of the essence of the sacramental sign became normative.
7. Peter Lombard
Only those signs which confer or cause grace are properly called sacraments. Peter Lombard explained sacramentum in terms of the seven rituals of the Church called the sacraments of the new law. In time, the understanding emerged that these seven sacraments were necessary for salvation. The reason the number seven was chosen could be because seven was seen as a mystical number, which has a meaning beyond itself. We see this reflected in the seven works of mercy, the seven petitions in the Lord's prayer, and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Seven carries with it the notion of fullness, perfection, completeness. The number of sacraments became settled at seven at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274.
CHAPTER ELEVEN THE SCHOLASTIC MODEL
FROM BERENGAR TO TRENT
1. Res et Sacramentum
The birth of scholastic theology can be traced back to the 11th century controversy over the relationship of the Eucharistic bread and wine with the risen body of Christ. Augustine states: "A good person receives the sacrament and reality of the sacrament, but a bad person receives only the sacrament and not the reality.” Berengar of Tours (d. 1088) accepted the reality of the sacrament, i.e., the grace of union with Christ, but he denied that Christ's true body was present in the Eucharist. For him there were only two elements in the sacrament: the external sign, or symbol, and the ultimate effect, the grace.
Sacramentum tantum is the external sign consisting of matter and form. Res sacramenti or res tantum is the content of the sacrament, that is, the grace of God. The res tantum refers to the final effect or the reality which becomes present in and through the sacramental celebration.
The controversy was a catalyst to gather together principles that could be applied to all sacraments and the evolution of the term res et sacramentum. This is the internal sacrament, brought into the visible realm by the external sign and causing grace. Res et sacramentum goes beyond the immediate grace effected by a sacrament, and refers to the enduring realities of each sacrament.
The bread and wine (sacramentum tantum) signify the body and blood of Christ (res et sacramentum); the body and blood of Christ, in turn, are the basis for union with Christ (res tantum) insofar as the body and blood are received worthily. So the real presence of Christ in the eucharist is the res et sacramentum. For baptism, confirmation and holy orders, the res et sacramentum is called the indelible character imprinted on the recipient. It was the rite of sealing by which a person became a Christian for life. In the medieval period, character becomes identified with res et sacramentum and is used to describe the permanent effect of these three sacraments.
In the nineteenth century the res et sacramentum was understood in a ecclesiological sense by Matthias Scheeben. The res et sacramentum of the Eucharist is not just the risen body of the Lord, but the whole Christ, the Church, and involves incorporation. The res et sacramentum of Baptism and Confirmation is membership in the Church and responsibility for its mission. For Holy Order it is the abiding responsibility for pastoral service to the Church. For Matrimony (the bond of Union between man and woman, symbolizing the union of Christ and the Church), Penance (reconciliation with the Church), and Anointing of the Sick (a healing of the separation between the individual and the Church). The res et sacramentum is signified by the rite itself (sacramentum tantum) and disposes the recipients for the grace that is appropriate to the special relationship with the Church.
2. Objective Realities
Scholastic theology asked questions about sacraments as were fitting to scientific objects: who made it? where did it come from? what constitutes it to be what it is?
3. Institution
The word "institution" acquired a strong juridical import. Thomas Aquinas: "It is said that one institutes something, when power and vigour is given to that thing, as it is evident in the case of the institution of laws.” This view assumes that the purpose of the sacrament is not so much the communication of grace, but rather the fact that the power of producing an effect was given to a physical element.
4. Grace
This school theology perceives a sacrament as a sign instituted by Christ to confer the grace which it signifies. Some had the conviction that grace was contained in the sacrament like medicine in a bottle.
5. Ex Opere Operato
The concept ‘ex opere operato’ means that the objective efficacy and fruitfulness of the sacraments does not primarily depend on the opus operantis, that is, on the merits or attitudes of those receiving or administering the sacraments. However, it promoted the belief that all that was necessary for the sacraments to "cause the grace" to be transmitted was that they be performed correctly. If the sacraments automatically accomplished the grace that was desired, then there could be other automatic causes of the grace of God in the lives of individuals.
6. Matter and Form
The Church Fathers considered ecclesial rituals as consisting of matter and spirit. In the Middle Ages, materia replaced elementum and forma sacramenti or forma verborum replaced verbum. The hylomorphic (matter – form) doctrine states that everything physical and perceptible by the senses is a union of the changeable (matter) and the principle (form) that gave structure and definition. This was applied to the sacraments. In all of them, there must be some kind of matter, i.e., a visible, changeable, and determinable element, and form, the interpretive and determinative words of the "minister".
7. Physical Quantity
The materia and forma of the sacraments cause res and this res was grace. Sacraments were seen as something which causes grace, which is itself something. Scholastic theories tended to view the sacraments mechanistically i.e., the sacraments produce grace as a machine produces goods, or magically. The Protestant tradition warned of a manipulative tendency operative. Man's ritual performance could so easily be envisioned as shackling the divine.
8. Inadequacies
First, grace and the sacraments are not things. Second, the late Scholastic model fails to deal adequately with the relationship between sacraments and Christ. Third, even less attention is paid to the role of the Holy Spirit. The sanctifying work of the Spirit is interpreted to mean that the Spirit is sanctifier only by way of "appropriation," that is to say, because the work of sanctification accords with the name "spirit."
Fourth, the connection between Church and sacraments is also very weak. The sacraments are identified as acts of the minister of Christ. Since the minister represents Christ, the head of the Church, he can also be said to represent the Church. Sacraments appear to be means of grace, located within the sphere of the Church.
Fifth, this theology treats the sacraments almost exclusively under the aspect of the divine movement toward believers. Sixth, the mechanical-physical model ascribed a passive attitude to the recipients of sacraments. Seventh, the sign/symbol character of sacraments was forced to lie dormant in forgotten theological traditions. The questions of "validity of performance" and "accumulation of graces" became the exclusive thrust of sacramental investigations and writings.
Eighth, interest in the liturgical context declined. Concentration on the "essentials" of a sacrament led inevitably to a search for the minimum conditions under which it could come about.
Ninth, sacramental grace is conceived as including sanctifying grace. This latter grace is described as a divinely bestowed disposition that qualifies the recipient for union with uncreated grace. Catholic theology developed the distinction between created grace and uncreated grace. The simultaneous presence of both graces in the soul of the just person was considered to be a fact. However, the presence of the dispositive grace did not imply the presence of the uncreated grace. Rather, the uncreated grace was perceived as more or less as the complement of the created grace.
9. Thomas Aquinas
Sacraments effect what they signify, cause by signifying, are efficacious signs of grace. While popular preaching and piety used such aphorisms to relate the sanctifying of man and woman to the external rite, the theological tradition employed them to indicate that the sanctification of man and woman is achieved principally by the sacred reality signified by the sacrament, namely, God in Christ. The sign does, indeed, sanctify, but only as God's instrument.
Aquinas claims it is legitimate to say that the sacred reality which is signified by the sacraments and which causes grace is threefold: God, Christ and Church. He distinguished himself by emphasising the "instrumental" character of sacraments, in the sense that they relate to Christ like the hand to the body. He understood sacraments as the "prolongation of Christ's hand", which brought salvation to all that it touched.
Why is grace mediated to men and women in signs, and why must it be so mediated? Three reasons: Men and women are led through bodily and sensible reality to non-sensible, intelligible, spiritual reality; By sinning men and women subjugated themselves to bodily realities, and so it is apt that the remedies of sin be applied to them through those same bodily realities; and human activity revolves so much around bodily things that it is difficult for men and women to abstract themselves from bodily reality, and so it is again apt that spiritual realities be proposed to them mediated in the bodily. It is not God who needs sacraments, and therefore his activity is never to be thought of as being restricted to such sensible actions. It is men and women who need sacraments, in virtue of their being human, being sinners, and being much more at ease with sensible and bodily activity than with intelligible and spiritual.
Aquinas identifies a threefold dimension of the sacrament making it a "memorial sign," an "indicative sign" and a "prognostic sign." A "sacrament is a sign that is both commemorative of the past, namely, the passion of Christ, indicative of that which is effected in us by Christ’s passion, namely, grace; and prognostic, that is, announcing future glory” (S. Th III, q.60, a.3). In his view, sacraments are causes of grace instrumentally. Sacraments doubly contain grace, as both signifying and causing grace, as both signs and causes of grace.
10. The Council of Florence
There was great discussion on how the worthiness of those officiating affected the efficacy of the sacraments. The first official Church positions defend the teaching that the validity and effectiveness of a sacrament are not dependent on the worthiness of the minister (Innocent III, 1208; Council of Constance, 1415). To guarantee the effectiveness of the sacraments in addition to the teaching of ex opera operato, further minimal conditions were discussed: the minister's possession of power, and the existence of an intention to do what, in this particular sacrament, the Church does. The Council of Florence, 1439, asserted that: Our sacraments both contain grace and confer it on those who receive it worthily. All these sacraments are constituted by three elements: by things as the matter, by words as the form, and by the person of the minister conferring the sacrament with the intention of doing what the Church does.
11. The Council of Trent
This Council established uniform liturgical ritual and practice for each of the sacraments. Sacramentaries were also promulgated by this Council. The effect of these decisions was to and establish a Catholic sacramental practice with a uniformity that was to take root so deeply that the uniformity itself became a source of pride and distinction for Catholics all over the world.
The Council accepted that it was sufficient precondition for the reception of grace that on the part of the recipient there should be no obstacle (infant baptism). The liturgical context of the sacraments was, from then on, left totally out of consideration. After the Council, sacramental theology fell under the sway of canon law, and gradually ceased to be theology at all.
With Scholasticism, the sacraments become transformed from symbolic liturgical actions and life-events to extremely brief, punctual gestures. It was no longer possible to accommodate any expressions of self-obligation to service and witnessing in the world. The Bishops at Trent (1545-1547) clarified and defined the core of our sacramental theology and with the Scholastics have left a decisive mark on our sacramental theology to this day.
Chapter 12 Kerygma
Kerygma is a Greek word meaning the act of proclaiming or the message proclaimed. The Christian sees kerygma as the core message which announces God's decisive act and offer of salvation in the death and resurrection of Jesus. The sacraments are essentially kerygmatic because they not only proclaim God’s act and offer of salvation but also they make it present for us here and now.
1. Synkatabasis
John Chrysostom describes "condescension" as God showing himself in a way by which the one who is contemplating him is capable to see him. God balances his manifestation according to the weakness of the visual capacity of his contemplator. God speaks in this way to descend to the way of reasoning of corporeal people. God was not interested in speaking according to his own dignity, but rather for the benefit of the listeners.
The Second Vatican Council illustrates this quality, stating: “The marvellous "condescension" of eternal wisdom is clearly shown, and how far He has gone in adapting His language with thoughtful concern for our weak human nature. For the words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men” (DV 13).
Synkatabasis then is the divine quality that expresses God’s adapting his communication so that we can understand it; it is God speaking to us in our words. The Word becoming flesh is this "divine coming-down to humans". The Word of God condescends now to be expressed in Christian liturgical rituals. The divine word is revealed to us in the sacraments.
2. Dabar
In the Old Testament, dabar concurrently means word and event. The unity to these two elements reaches its climax in the divine dabar, the divine proclamation and deed. When God speaks his word, what is spoken transpires. In a real sense the divine dabar is a creative reality (Is 55.10-11).
The New Testament claims the existence of a unique expression of the word of God in the person of Jesus. Jesus is the expression of the word of God as the enfleshment, the Incarnation of the Word. Jesus not only speaks and lives the word, he is the word in the totality of his person. Now the life and ministry of Jesus is prolonged in the sacraments which not only proclaim the kerygma but they make it a reality for the participants. So, the sacraments are word-events; the word that they proclaim becomes actualised in the ritual event.
3. Primacy of Kerygma
The proclamation of the Word is the activity of the Church that includes everything else. The use of signs is part of the Church's task of preaching the word, not vice versa." The Word constitutes the sacramental sign and the significance of the sign itself is in proclamation.
A Constituting Sign
The material element of the sacraments e.g., bread, water, etc., cannot be decisive in sacraments, because of the impossibility and inability of finite limited objects to realize supernatural realities. Whenever a reality of the world is to be a sign, indication and historical presence of a strictly supernatural reality, it can only be so when the spiritual, transcendental (subjective) openness, orientation of man, pointing beyond the finite to God himself, becomes an intrinsically constitutive element of this sign. The supernatural reality can display itself only through the medium of the human word.
So, only the formal element is decisive in constituting a sign; only the spoken human word, as an expression of human transcendence, allows the possibility of God's self-communication within sacramental celebrations. The material element of the sacraments can only be properly understood in terms of the formal element and the sacraments can only be understood in terms of the Church's responsibility for proclaiming the word of God in the words of men and women.
B Sign Proclaiming
Catholics tended to emphasize the external sacraments as grace-giving while the Protestants tended to rely heavily on the read or preached scriptural word. But in reality, there should not be any conflict. The bible is a part of that mysterious presence by which God is revealed in Jesus in a believing community. The sacraments can be correctly perceived as scriptural words in drama. Scripture and liturgical ceremony form one conjoined reality of the Church giving expression to its own sacramental function of making Christ redemptively present to men and women throughout history. The ritual actions that have come to be named 'sacraments' are ‘word of God’ in the fullest sense.
Word and ritual still remain as two sides of the same sacramental coin. The Church has gone out of its way in all of the sacramental revisions to fill the pages with many scriptural readings and with many other scriptural options. There is no sacramental occasion when scripture is absent. The Church wants us to understand completely that scripture and sacramental ritual are one piece and that Jesus, in his living community, is once more speaking and acting prophetically in this word-act we call sacrament. Therefore the sacraments are primarily instruments through which Jesus communicates himself to us. Through the divine quality of synkatabasis, Jesus is talking to us in the sacraments.
4. Liturgy Representing Word
In sacraments, the ecclesial words fulfil the essence of the Church. In sacraments, the word of the Church is the proclamation of the word of God which signifies and effects salvation. Sacraments are expressions of the Church fulfilling her role as proclaimer of the word. Christ is God's human language in addressing human beings. The entire liturgy of the Church is an immense mysterious "sign" that not only re-presents to us the divine Word, but also offers it to us so that we may listen to it, so that in our turn might "do” it as well (Lk 8.21).
Monday, August 15, 2011
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