Let me suggest a parallel. One might declare that marriage ought to be contracted only between sufficiently mature individuals, with witnesses, before a bishop, priest or deacon, in a formal ceremony previously announced to the parish; one might homilize on the human qualities requisite in spouses, patience, good temper, open communication, mutual trust and fidelity, and so forth; one might denounce the evils of divorce and contraception which are corrupting personal lives and tearing apart whole nations. But underlying all these things is the prior and more fundamental question: What is marriage, what is marriage in the Church supposed to be and do? Only when one has addressed this directly, only when one has glimpsed the essence of the thing itself, can one really understand the legal rules, the homiletic exhortations, the moral failings. It is no different with the liturgy. One can issue an impassioned plea for the dignified celebration of the Eucharist, in full ceremonial splendor; one can earnestly remind today’s liturgists that the Christian people are supposed to be meditating on sacred things with the help of Gregorian chant rather than facile folksy tunes; one may express a preference for the traditional rite and urge bishops to honor the Church’s recognition of the desires of the faithful attached to it. But making sense out of all these things demands that we think carefully about the nature and purpose of the liturgy itself, its innermost being and activity. Only by dwelling on these fundamentals will it be possible to say: “This is what a good liturgy is supposed to look like and accomplish,” with confidence that one has understood the point of the Church’s teachings.

St. Thomas Aquinas often says that the good of a thing is reached when all that should be there is there, while evil happens when any element of the ensemble is taken away. Hence, what is truly good is one and simple, whereas evil comes in forms too numerous to count. Since evils are only known through the goods which they take away, however, it is proper to begin with a positive exposition of the liturgy, and afterwards to sketch out some of the partial or defective views which attack the good that liturgy is and is intended to accomplish. While much that we are going to say is relevant also to the celebration or recitation of the liturgy of the hours (the “divine office”), we will be speaking, as in previous articles, almost exclusively of the Mass, the supreme liturgical prayer to which all others forms are ordered.

The Liturgy of the Eternal High Priest
The sacred liturgy of the Catholic Church is the ultimate prayer of man to God. It is the way by which man gives due worship and honor—indeed, gives his very heart and soul, his life, his family, his works, all that is in him—to his Lord, fulfilling his fundamental obligation to the Creator and at the same time living out his own high destiny as a child of God. But as Pius XII teaches, it is not mere man who thus prays, for the liturgy is first and foremost the perfect prayer that Christ in His human nature raises to the holy and undivided Trinity. It is through Christ as Head of the Church that all who are baptized into His death and resurrection, and thus who have become members of His Mystical Body, are empowered to praise and glorify the Triune God. Without the perfect sacrifice of praise and worship given by Jesus in His sinless humanity, the prayers of sinners would not reach the throne of the infinitely holy God. The principal celebrant of every liturgy, the bearer of humanity’s gifts and cries to God, is Jesus Christ the Eternal High Priest. His Sacrifice on Calvary, renewed in every Holy Mass, is the one perfect and all-sufficient act of worship and praise, reconciling sinners to God and, in the communion of the Body and Blood, giving a pledge and foretaste of everlasting life.

In his magnificent encyclical Mediator Dei, Pius XII explains the connection between the mission of Jesus Christ and the nature and purpose of the liturgy. He begins by explaining what Jesus sought and ever seeks to accomplish, linking this to His foundation of the priesthood of the New Covenant and the work of praise and glorification offered by the Church in her liturgy of the Mass, the sacraments, and the divine office.

1. Mediator between God and men and High Priest who has gone before us into heaven, Jesus the Son of God quite clearly had one aim in view when He undertook the mission of mercy which was to endow mankind with the rich blessings of supernatural grace. Sin had disturbed the right relationship between man and his Creator; the Son of God would restore it. The children of Adam were wretched heirs to the infection of original sin; He would bring them back to their heavenly Father, the primal source and final destiny of all things. For this reason He was not content, while He dwelt with us on earth, merely to give notice that redemption had begun, and to proclaim the long-awaited Kingdom of God, but gave Himself besides in prayer and sacrifice to the task of saving souls, even to the point of offering Himself, as He hung from the cross, a Victim unspotted unto God, to purify our conscience of dead works, to serve the living God. Thus happily were all men summoned back from the byways leading them down to ruin and disaster, to be set squarely once again upon the path that leads to God. Thanks to the shedding of the blood of the Immaculate Lamb, now each might set about the personal task of achieving his own sanctification, so rendering to God the glory due to Him.

2. But what is more, the divine Redeemer has so willed it that the priestly life begun with the supplication and sacrifice of His mortal body should continue without intermission down the ages in His Mystical Body which is the Church. That is why He established a visible priesthood to offer everywhere the clean oblation which would enable men from East to West, freed from the shackles of sin, to offer God that unconstrained and voluntary homage which their conscience dictates.

3. In obedience, therefore, to her Founder’s behest, the Church prolongs the priestly mission of Jesus Christ mainly by means of the sacred liturgy. She does this in the first place at the altar, where constantly the sacrifice of the cross is represented and, with a single difference in the manner of its offering, renewed. She does it next by means of the sacraments, those special channels through which men are made partakers in the supernatural life. She does it, finally, by offering to God, all Good and Great, the daily tribute of her prayer of praise. “What a spectacle for heaven and earth,” observes Our predecessor of happy memory, Pius XI, “is not the Church at prayer! For centuries without interruption, from midnight to midnight, the divine psalmody of the inspired canticles is repeated on earth; there is no hour of the day that is not hallowed by its special liturgy; there is no state of human life that has not its part in the thanksgiving, praise, supplication and reparation of this common prayer of the Mystical Body of Christ which is His Church!”

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17. No sooner, in fact, “is the Word made flesh” than he shows Himself to the world vested with a priestly office, making to the Eternal Father an act of submission which will continue uninterruptedly as long as He lives: “When He cometh into the world he saith: ‘behold I come to do Thy Will.’” This act He was to consummate admirably in the bloody Sacrifice of the Cross: “It is in this will we are sanctified by the oblation of the Body of Jesus Christ once.” He plans His active life among men with no other purpose in view. As a child He is presented to the Lord in the Temple. To the Temple He returns as a grown boy, and often afterwards to instruct the people and to pray. He fasts for forty days before beginning His public ministry. His counsel and example summon all to prayer, daily and at night as well. As Teacher of the truth He “enlighteneth every man” to the end that mortals may duly acknowledge the immortal God, “not withdrawing unto perdition, but faithful to the saving of the soul.” As Shepherd He watches over His flock, leads it to life-giving pasture, lays down a law that none shall wander from His side, off the straight path He has pointed out, and that all shall lead holy lives imbued with His spirit and moved by His active aid. At the Last Supper He celebrates a new Pasch with solemn rite and ceremonial, and provides for its continuance through the divine institution of the Eucharist. On the morrow, lifted up between heaven and earth, He offers the saving sacrifice of His life, and pours forth, as it were, from His pierced Heart the sacraments destined to impart the treasures of redemption to the souls of men. All this He does with but a single aim: the glory of His Father and man’s ever greater sanctification.

18. But it is His will, besides, that the worship He instituted and practiced during His life on earth shall continue ever afterwards without intermission. For he has not left mankind an orphan. He still offers us the support of His powerful, unfailing intercession, acting as our “advocate with the Father.” He aids us likewise through His Church, where He is present indefectibly as the ages run their course—through the Church which He constituted as “the pillar of truth” and dispenser of grace, and which by His sacrifice on the cross, He founded, consecrated and confirmed forever.

19. The Church has, therefore, in common with the Word Incarnate the aim, the obligation and the function of teaching all men the truth, of governing and directing them aright, of offering to God the pleasing and acceptable sacrifice; in this way the Church re-establishes between the Creator and His creatures that unity and harmony to which the Apostle of the Gentiles alludes in these words: “Now, therefore, you are no more strangers and foreigners; but you are fellow citizens with the saints and domestics of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together in a habitation of God in the Spirit.”

The Church’s Magisterium on the sacred liturgy has therefore three goals: to safeguard the faith in its integrity, to ensure that God is honored as He deserves to be, and to advance the salvation of mankind, both of those who are already joined to the Church on earth and of those who still wander in darkness outside of her. One can judge the extent to which this Magisterium has been rightly understood and obeyed by the extent to which all the features of public worship—architecture and furnishings, ceremonies and gestures, symbols and speech and song—give worthy expression to the mysteries of faith and create in the faithful the best possible dispositions to receiving them worthily.

A Community Gathering for Singing, Speaking, and Socializing?
Given what we have seen, it is clear that liturgy aims to honor and glorify God, and in so doing, to teach us the truths of salvation, sanctify our souls, and lead us to an ever deeper intimacy with Jesus Christ. In accomplishing these aims, the liturgy truly furthers the brotherhood of man, it enables fellowship to exist, for there is common brotherhood only in the common adoration of the Father of all. Nothing that has been said in any way contradicts a vital awareness of the communal aspect of liturgical worship. Indeed, it is good and altogether fitting for us to pray to God as a people and to be conscious of our neighbor as a fellow citizen of the house of God. The public character of the liturgy is not incidental but essential to it.

Yet, this being said, we must make sure that our grasp of the meaning of community is sufficiently in tune with the real nature of the Church. First and foremost, when we worship we are in the presence of God and of His angels and saints. Reverence, solemnity, and majesty belong to worship precisely because it is no mere human gathering, but a momentary penetration of the earthly world with the life and grace of the heavenly Jerusalem and all of its inhabitants. We are joined to all who have worshiped in the past, who worship in the present (whether beyond our realm or next to us in the pew), and, in a mysterious way, for all ages to come. It is necessary, therefore, to let the glorious reality of the communion of saints shape the way we worship publicly. The liturgy in itself is not, and will only be cheapened if it becomes, a gathering for waving to your neighbor, exchanging news, shaking hands, “dialoguing” with an improvisatory priest, or the like. This sort of thing may have its rightful place before and after Mass and outside of the place of worship, but it is certainly not of the essence of the thing, and more often than not is a serious impediment to participating in the mysteries of the liturgy and attaining those goals which the liturgy aims at. The experience of community proper to the liturgy is an experience of common adoration, all faces, all hearts turned towards the sanctuary, focused on the divine truths announced and the divine sacrifice renewed. It is usually when we most forget ourselves and our neighbors in our intense concentration on the Holy Sacrifice that the seeds of true charity towards neighbor and self are most deeply planted in our souls.

Similar observations can be made about the role of speech and song. Unquestionably our souls can be stirred up and our awareness of unity in the church strengthened when we make dignified responses with one voice (“Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ, King of Endless Glory”), or when we can join in singing songs of a good quality with reverent and doctrinally rich words, as are many hymns handed down to us by our forefathers. All of this can improve attentiveness and produce a deep and positive impression on the soul. For it must never be forgotten that the ideal of full, active, and intelligent participation of the laity in the liturgy has as its goal the forming of the soul, the shaping of the Christian character. This indicates, too, what speech and song should not be in the liturgy—an always-having-to-say-or-sing-something approach, which ends up being a kind of busy-work, distracting and counterspiritual, much like exercises in arithmetic given to an ornery pupil who cannot sit still. Let us recall some words of our Holy Father on the irreplaceable role of silence and quiet listening:

Active participation certainly means that, in gesture, word, song, and service, all the members of the community take part in an act of worship, which is anything but inert or passive. Yet active participation does not preclude the active passivity of silence, stillness, and listening: indeed, it demands it. Worshippers are not passive, for instance, when listening to the readings or the homily, or following the prayers of the celebrant and the chants and music of the liturgy. These are experiences of silence and stillness, but they are in their own way profoundly active. In a culture which neither favors nor fosters meditative quiet, the art of interior listening is learned only with difficulty. Here we see how the liturgy, though it must be properly inculturated, must also be counter-cultural.3

Our forefathers who worshiped in the traditional rite understood well the value of stillness: “Be still, and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth! The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge” (Ps. 46:10-11). The silences of the ancient liturgy give the soul room to appropriate the mysteries, to reflect on God’s speaking to us in His revealed Word and our Lord’s coming to us in the Eucharist; the soul is given a chance to become deeply aware of His mercy, His glory, His presence. “The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.” In the quiet of our heart, prepared for its Lord, He will find a place, He will make a place where He can rest and commune with us. Communication presupposes, fosters, and lives on, silence. Silence is the most essential food of the soul, without which it dries up into a succession of opinions, the nosy noise of newspapers. The Church in ancient and medieval times understood that we need both music and stillness, beautiful melodies as well as a beautiful absence of sound. This is something that we have to recover in the Modern Roman Rite if the Christian people are to attain greater spiritual maturity through their public worship.

A Gathering for Scripture Reading?
In some parishes, where the Liturgy of the Word (if one adds the sermon) covers a considerably longer span of time than the Liturgy of the Eucharist—a sad state of affairs made possible, in part, by the much too frequent use of the second Eucharistic Prayer—one might come away with the impression that Mass is primarily for the sake of hearing Scripture read and explained, and that Holy Communion comes afterwards as a kind of added attraction. This indicates nothing less than a total reversal of the proper order and proportion, and it would not be far from the truth to call it a Protestantizing of the Mass. In reality, the Word of God is first and foremost not a book, not even the Gospel, but Jesus Christ Himself: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:1,14). The Liturgy of the (written) Word is for the sake of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, in which the Incarnate Word, “for us men and for our salvation,” yields Himself to us, making us partakers of His divinity. The purpose of proclaiming Scripture at Mass is to prepare the worshipers for communion with the Word, the source of the written word, the one to whom the words of Scripture give witness. The liturgy, whether Mass or the canonical hours, is not a bible-study group, an opportunity for getting out the great old book and giving it some attention. The Scripture is proclaimed in order to preach “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). The goal of this preaching is the receiving of the Word—not the word written on paper, not even the interior word written on the heart, but the crucified and risen Lord who is “the power and the wisdom of God” (cf. 1 Cor. 1:24). If the scriptural part of the Mass does not seem to be in full continuity with the eucharistic part, if the readings and homily are not implicitly or explicitly ordered to the transcendent mystery of faith about to be renewed upon the altar and shared by the faithful in their mystical communion with the Lord, then one can be sure that, at some level, the nature of the liturgy and its parts has not been understood. In the true vision of things, the Liturgy of the Word—or as it was once called, the Liturgy of the Catechumens, of those who are to be instructed in the way of Christian life—is an antechamber, a promise, a preparation, a tilling of the ground, a clarion call to wake up and be attentive to the voice of Jesus Christ. “Behold the Lamb of God”: behold the one whom Scripture proclaims in the Prophets, the Psalms, the Epistles, the Gospels. That is why the second part of the liturgy was traditionally called “The Liturgy of the Faithful”: it celebrates the glory of the risen Son of God whom we confess in faith and helps us to live in holiness our baptismal calling as adopted children of the Father.

Cult of the personality of the priest
In connection with the above points about the Liturgy of the Word, one might also mention a problem made possible most of all by the vernacularization and “creative options” allowed for in the Modern Roman Rite—namely, the often dangerous liberties taken by a priest who, as it were, “makes the liturgy his own.” We showed in the first article of the three-part series that, according to the express teaching of the Church, no priest has the right to deviate from any of the rubrics set down in the liturgical books, and that every priest is obliged by his sacred office to conform his conduct to the manifest principles and guidelines established by the Church for her public worship. Nevertheless, the fact remains that far too many liberties are taken with the Mass. This, in turn, produces a situation in which some people, whether self-consciously liberal or simply ill-catechized, attend a certain parish or liturgy because of what might be called a cult of the personality of the celebrant. They like how he “does” things, they like his storytelling, his flair, his spontaneity, or what have you. Of course, if the liturgy is supposed to be and do the things we have discussed, then the personality of a given priest, although it may have much to do with the quality of the sermon, should have nothing to do with the way the Mass as such is celebrated. If everyone in the Church were doing what the Church says ought to be done, then liturgies everywhere would be solemn, dignified, beautiful, and prayerful, and all the faithful would derive from the Mass the benefits it is intended to confer.

Given the understandable pain that many good Catholics feel about unwarranted liberties, improvisations, distractions, bad music, etc., it is important to see that the matter is quite different if one refuses to attend a liturgy where things are done unworthily, and seeks instead to find a true spiritual home. If you are constantly distracted from worship by antics in the sanctuary, hand-holding neighbors, flagrant violations of rubrics, heretical homilies, the army of “extraordinary” ministers clambering up to the altar at the Our Father, and other such things, then you not only may but must seek a different parish or liturgy, provided that you or others of similar concerns have tried, to the extent possible, to ameliorate the problems. This is not a cult of personality, but a search for the sacred and for the face of Christ. However much God is present in all places, including lions’ dens, we are not required to throw ourselves into them each and every Sunday.

The argument that “Christ is present in the Eucharist no matter how bad the liturgy may be” is absolutely true, but misses something very important: our Lord through His Church has given the liturgy to us for our benefit, for our instruction and growth in holiness, not for His, and He becomes present in our midst in order to accomplish these things in us. The external form of the liturgy in all its details must prepare the souls of the faithful for the working of the Holy Spirit and remain ever transparent to this work of salvation. If we cannot get past the opening bars of guitar music or the Hallmark greetings without a groan of weariness or a quick surge of anger, how well disposed can we possibly be to receive the Lord when He comes? It is a thoroughly false asceticism to pretend that one should buck up and suffer everything—including the distortion or demeaning of the Church’s Sacred Liturgy! The Church has the duty of leading souls to perfection, not of setting up obstacles to it; her ministers have many powers, but inflicting harm on their own flocks is not numbered among them. A parish does not serve a lofty penitential calling by punishing its members with a combination of bad taste and ignored rubrics. So, do not be impressed by the argument that “the Eucharist is, after all, the Eucharist.” There is a good reason why there has never been in the entire history of the Church a (legitimate) liturgy of five minutes’ duration comprising only the consecration and distribution of hosts. If we were disembodied intellects capable of fixing our attention immediately and immovably on just one thing, then nothing but the Real Presence would make any difference, and we could institute the aforesaid five-minute liturgy, or for that matter, the fifty-minute liturgy of polyester, pop tunes, and pop psychology, because it would make no difference anyway. But the Lord who instituted the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—the Lord who knows all that is in the heart of man, his spiritual needs and yearnings and limitations—wanted to provide nourishment for the whole man on every level of his being, the senses and the intellect, the mind and the heart. The liturgy is intended to nourish us in this holistic and comprehensive way, and to the extent that it impedes or undermines this purpose, it betrays itself and becomes a Judas to the Real Presence of Christ. Cardinal Ratzinger has spoken very much to the point on these matters:

. . .we ought to get back the dimension of the sacred in the liturgy. The liturgy is not a festivity; it is not a meeting for the purpose of having a good time. It is of no importance that the parish priest has cudgeled his brains to come up with suggestive ideas or imaginative novelties. The liturgy is what makes the Thrice-Holy God present amongst us; it is the burning bush; it is the Alliance of God with man in Jesus Christ, who has died and risen again. The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment, but in rendering tangible the Totally Other, whom we are not capable of summoning. He comes because He wills. In other words, the essential in the liturgy is the mystery, which is realized in the common ritual of the Church; all the rest diminishes it. Men experiment with it in lively fashion, and find themselves deceived, when the mystery is transformed into distraction, when the chief actor in the liturgy is not the Living God but the priest or the liturgical director.4

Introspection and Private Prayers?
Around the time of the Second Vatican Council, a lot of fuss was made about “private devotions during Mass.” The old ladies praying rosaries in the pews or the gentlemen reading their sodality missals and litanies while the Mass went forward up at the altar came in for a good many hard words of fraternal correction, mostly in the name of a benevolent “recovery of the public and active character of worship.” Private prayer during Mass became a prime example of the individualistic and pietistic mindset that was said to have contaminated the genuine public character of Catholic liturgy. In retrospect, given what has actually happened in most parishes around the world, it is not so obvious that we wouldn’t be much better off with whole churches full of rosary-praying individuals and a whispering priest rather than the superficial maudlin ceremonies that today receive the noble name of “Mass.”

But there is evidently some sense in what the reformers said. The liturgy is—and in past ages often concretely was, and certainly was always intended to be—the prayer of the people, presupposing and at the same time fostering the full attention, knowledge, and interior participation of every adult assisting at Mass. One of the great triumphs of the liturgical movement in its humbler and healthier days (ca. 1920s to 1950s) was the widespread diffusion in nearly every modern language of bilingual hand missals containing the text of the Roman Missal. As the use of these hand missals became customary, there was less and less of a barrier to the full spiritual participation of the people, and as time went on, less and less of a barrier to their making responses with the servers and singing the Ordinary of the Mass. (My St. Andrew’s Daily Missals from 1945 and my Schotte German-English Missal from 1962 contain not only the proper prayers and readings, but also a Kyriale or collection of Gregorian chants for the Mass Ordinary; and each of these missals indicates which words of the Mass can be said by the people together with the servers and/or the priest.5) If these promising developments had been allowed to go forward at a slow and natural pace over the decades, it is more than likely that by now, some forty years later, the Church would have been experiencing a true “second Spring” in her public liturgical life, with the Latin language, Gregorian chant, and solemn ceremonial not only left intact but enhanced. As it was, however, serious errors of prudential judgment led to a sudden foreshortening of the natural process of reform, with the disastrous results that are evident to all.

It is true that the liturgy offers an excellent opportunity to pray for private intentions, for one’s friends and family, for the living and the dead. Such prayers are prominently included in all liturgical rites of East and West. Masses, too, have always been offered for very specific intentions, like the repose of a grandmother’s soul or good weather for the upcoming harvest. All the same, the Mass is not primarily a space for saying one’s prayers or practicing one’s devotions; not even the combined private prayers of a large body of the faithful suffice to make their activity the public and common prayer which is the Catholic liturgy. At Mass or in the divine office, the purpose is first and foremost the worship, praise, and glorification of God by the people of God. Our aspirations and petitions are those of the Church as a whole for all of her members on earth and for the suffering souls in purgatory. My communion with the Lord in the Holy Eucharist is not only the most wonderful blessing for me, it is at the same time, and more fundamentally, the cause and sign of the Church’s unity as the Mystical Body of Christ, the cause and sign of my fellowship with all of the faithful and with the glorious company of angels and saints. It would not be possible, nor would it be desirable, to “leave behind” the consciousness of one’s worries, family problems, personal struggles, and the like when attending Mass. But there is a right way to bring them to Mass and a wrong way. The crucial thing is to carry these burdens to the Lord and place them at the foot of His Cross, letting our personal penance and prayer be enfolded within the public worship of God, turning our hearts to communion with Him, and through Him, with the entire Church. For Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life for each and for all: the way the liturgy must follow, the truth it must proclaim, the life it must communicate. To honor this path, embrace this wisdom, and drink deeply from this living source is the duty imposed and the blessing lavished upon every Catholic.

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