Approaching the Threshold of Mystery: Liturgical Worlds an Theological Spaces 9783791771007, 3791771000

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THEOLOGIE DER LITURGIE Herausgegeben von Martin Stuflesser Band 10 Joris Geldhof, Daniel Minch, Trevor Maine (eds.) Approaching the Threshold of Mystery

Verlag Friedrich Pustet Regensburg

Joris Geldhof, Daniel Minch, Trevor Maine (eds.)

Approaching the Threshold of Mystery Liturgical Worlds and Theological Spaces

Verlag Friedrich Pustet Regensburg

All articles in this volume have undergone a rigorous peer review process based on an initial editor screening and blind refereeing by two anonymous referees.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. eISBN 978-3-7917-7100-7 (PDF) © 2015 by Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg Umschlag: Martin Veicht, Regensburg eBook-Produktion: Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg Diese Publikation ist auch als Printprodukt erhältlich: ISBN 978-3-7917-2741-7 Weitere Publikationen aus unserem Programm finden Sie unter www.verlag-pustet.de.

Contents

Joris Geldhof Foreword ..............................................................................................................................7 Trevor Maine and Daniel Minch Liturgy, Theology, and the Crisis of History Clearing Space for Liturgical Theology ...........................................................................9 1. Liturgical Spaces: On the Edge of the Sacred and the Secular Bert Daelemans, S.J. Fifty Shades of Grey? Contemporary Churches as Lived Liturgies that Mediate Mysteries ...................... 25 Philip J. Rossi, S.J. Liturgy as Sacramental Mystery Incarnating Grace in the Space of Wordly Vulnerability .......................................... 44 2. The Liturgical Mediation of the totus Christus Kevin G. Grove, C.S.C. The “Whole Christ” and the Mediation of Mystery within the Liturgy ................. 61 Walter Knowles “Becoming What You See” Augustin’s Mystagogia of Deification .......................................................................... 74 3. The Eucharistic Center of the Liturgical Field Samuel Goyvaerts „Das große Sakrament der Vereinigung“ Franz Anton Staudenmaier’s Eucharistic Theology .................................................. 89

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Daniel Minch Language, Structure, and Sacrament Reconsidering the Eucharistic Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx ........................ 98

4. Looking Beyond the West and the Roman Rite Unnatha Kavuvila Mediating the Mystery of Forgiveness and Reconciliation Subukkono, the Service of Peace in the Malankara Rite .......................................... 123 Elochukwu Uzukwu Recapturing the Mystery – Captured by the Mystery African Eucharistic Prayers in the Roman Rite ....................................................... 137 5. Liturgical Commotion in Eastern Europe Katerina Bauerova The Mystery of Divine-Human Cooperation in Freedom and Creativity An Example of Liturgical Life from the Russian Diaspora in France ................ 155 Jitka Jonová Attempts to Use the Vernacular Language in the Catholic Liturgy in the Czech Lands in the 1920s ................................................................................ 166 6. The Liturgy Enters Society Exploring its Social Relevance and Existential Value Thomas M. Kelly When Liturgy Empowers Rutilio Grande, S.J. and the Church of El Salvador ............................................... 185 Christopher McMahon Cruciform Salvation and Emergent Probability The Liturgical Significance of Lonergan’s Precept ................................................. 198

Personalia ................................................................................................................. 213

Foreword

The present volume is the offspring of a successful academic theological conference, which was organized in Leuven, Belgium, from 23–26 October 2013. It was the ninth in the series of Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology (LEST) and had set itself the goal of bringing together liturgy and systematic theology. The title of the conference was Mediating Mysteries, Understanding Liturgies. The idea behind it was that there is still a great amount of work to do at the intersection of liturgy and systematic theology.1 Many systematic theologians – dogmaticians as well as fundamental theologians – still tend to look down upon liturgy, as if it is merely the ritual and practical expression of the contents of belief, which they can study with more conceptual precision. Many liturgists, for their part, often fear or refrain from entering into the area of speculation and thinking, thereby leaving aside many interesting opportunities for theological reflection unexplored. This mentality, however, whereby liturgy and systematic theology are treated as separate disciplines is not advantageous for either partner. Liturgy is probably more than just a topic or a resource of references for theology; it can be considered as a kind of theologizing in its own right. Its performative disposition, ritual character, festive embedding, and celebratory dimensions are not stumbling blocks for theory, but rather motivations and inspirations for deeper soundings. This primary action-nature of liturgy requires of course more innovative methodologies than the ones that have prevailed the discipline of theology in bygone centuries. The articles gathered in this volume offer beautiful examples of doing liturgical theology in the early twenty-first century. A co-inherence of liturgy and systematic reflection is what binds all of them, even though they deal with many diverse issues. The present book is also part of a work-in-progress, which is currently being carried out by the Liturgical Institute in Leuven. The Liturgical Institute emerged out of a convergence of interests and forces in the late 1960s, when the renowned Benedictine abbey of Keizersberg and the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the Catholic University of Leuven decided to formally cooperate in the field of liturgical studies – which they had formerly undertaken only informally. In addition to many research initiatives, the Liturgical Institute has ever since edited the journal Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy, which was founded by Dom 1

Joris Geldhof (ed.), Mediating Mysteries, Understanding Liturgies: On Bridging the Gap Between Liturgy and Systematic Theology, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium (Leuven: Peeters, 2015).

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Lambert Beauduin in the early twentieth century. It was one of the major channels by which the famous monk and founder of the abbey of Chevetogne aimed at promoting the Liturgical Movement in Belgium and beyond. It was one of Dom Beauduin’s fellow monks and a good friend of his, Dom Maïeul Cappuyns, who wrote the first article about the intrinsic relation between liturgy and theology. It appeared in one of the first volumes of our beloved journal.2 The text itself has a classical structure and typically takes its point of departure from scholasticism, as was customary – and probably also necessary – at that time. Nevertheless, its prophetic value consists in the way in which it problematizes the lack of attention for the liturgy in dogmatic theology. Cappuyns demonstrates how dogmatic theologians – and even official doctrinal documents of the Church’s teaching authorities – systematically neglect the liturgy, even if it is obvious how overwhelming its importance and influence are for any doctrinal development. This book is yet another step in the attempts to think not only about liturgy, i.e. as a topic among others which one can isolate, circumscribe, study and defend opinions about, but also from liturgy. There is definitely something to say in favor of granting liturgy, sacraments and worship at large a much more prominent place in contemporary theological thought. The ‘location’ of liturgy deserves, and needs, to be revaluated and accordingly appreciated. The liturgy opens theological worlds, which have hitherto received insufficient attention, both content-wise and methodologically. The investigation of a sheer infinite amount of dimensions of mystery and their liturgical mediations continues to constitute a challenging theological program for the years to come. We may have only approached the threshold. Joris Geldhof Feast of Corpus Christi June 2015

2

Dom Maïeul J. Cappuyns, “Liturgie et théologie,” in Les Questions Liturgiques et paroissiales 9 (1934): 249–272.

Liturgy, Theology, and the Crisis of History Clearing Space for Liturgical Theology

Trevor Maine and Daniel Minch

Both in practice and as an object of study, the liturgy today is contested ground. Since the outset of the Liturgical Movement, but especially over the past 50 years, the themes of liturgy and liturgical reform have received increased attention within both Catholic and Protestant circles, especially regarding the complex and often nebulous relationships between liturgical forms, theology, and practicing Christian communities. There are today numerous approaches to liturgy, numerous views of its purpose and place within Christianity, how one should study it, what it is, and what its message. And though the vast majority of liturgical scholars would grant many of the oft-stated maxims regarding liturgy, that it is the life of the church in action, that it is the location in which “the work of our redemption is enacted,”1 that it is the “collective memory of the Church,”2 or Prosper of Aquitaine’s lex orandi, lex credendi [the rule of prayer dictates the rule of faith],3 there is disagreement as to what these messages mean for the church, for ecumenism, and for theology. These disputes have important implications beyond academic theo1 2

3

Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, Part III, Question 83, Art. 1, The Rite of This Sacrament, also cited in Sacrosanctum Concilium, 2. Wendelin Köster S.J., “Recovering Collective Memory in the Context of Postmodernism,” in Liturgy in a Postmodern World, ed. K. Pecklers S.J. (New York: Continuum 2003), 32. If the Church is a corporate body or personality, says Köster, then it also has a memory – “an instrument that is collecting all that is necessary to know about who she is” – and this faculty or memory is liturgy. Prosper’s original phrase, “ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi” [the order of supplication determines the rule of faith], appears in an exhortation of Christian liturgical practice as formative for doctrine, against Pelagianism. For further discussions of the historical meaning of this text and its interpretation, see among others, Paul De Clerk, “‘Lex orandi, lex credendi’: The original sense and historical avatars of an equivocal adage.” trans. Thomas M. Winger. Studia Liturgica 24 (1994): 178–200; Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life. A Systematic Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); and David W. Fagerberg, Theologia Prima: What is Liturgical Theology? (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2003). This definition of the phrase, however, has come under question, with some scholars believing it to be overly-broad and historically inaccurate. See here: Paul Bradshaw, “Difficulties in Doing Liturgical Theology,” Pacifica 11 (1998): 181–194.

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logical circles as well. The liturgy, after all, must always be enacted, experienced, and embodied by actual people and communities who come to liturgical space to worship – people who must navigate the traffic of Christian identity and redemption not only in their own lives but also between life and liturgy. These people and communities cannot be separated from their personal contexts, identities, or places in history – many of which may be experienced as ‘in tension’ with the words said or the beliefs professed in the liturgy.4 At issue is whether the liturgy is fundamentally a method (mystagogia), a location, or whether it is a message, and the answers to these questions will fundamentally affect how individuals, cultures, and communities relate to liturgy itself. This crisis of what the liturgy represents, how best to approach it, and how best to make sense of its history can be seen as parallel, perhaps even formative of, the crisis of history now felt in modernity. Though the effects of these tensions and conflicts can be acutely felt today, it cannot be said that these conflicts are particularly new or novel. Debating what liturgy and sacraments say, what sorts of theologies might lie behind their expression, and how best to interpret their meaning as passed down through history has been a primary task (or preoccupation) of Christian thought from the beginning. It is perhaps uncontroversial to state that there are and should be multiple ways to approach the liturgy as an object of study. That different researchers do and should seek to explore the theological riches of historical liturgical practice with different goals in mind, and to illuminate different aspects of its mysterious character, is both right and necessary. It is therefore important to realize straight away that a diversity of approaches and “perspectives as well as a certain fluidity with regard to its scope, goal, and research results are intrinsic to [liturgical theology as a] reflexive and outstandingly theological discipline.”5 In this volume, we seek to do justice to these diverse methods and goals as well as to the history of the liturgy and of Christians’ contextual, historical experience of it. One of the core insights of the Second Vatican Council was the degree to which the Council Fathers recognized the full impact of history and its role in the development of tradition. Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, was the first constitution to be promulgated and was the product of a long and difficult confrontation of the faithful with the problem of history and their efforts at retrieval and renewal of the public prayer of the church. Religion, 4

5

Because of the complex interplay between individual and corporate identities, between those identities, the beliefs of the church, and society more broadly, Teresa Berger suggests that liturgy is the most politicized ecclesial site of our times. Teresa Berger, “The Contemporary Church and the Real Presence of Women: Of Liturgy, Labor, and Gendered Lives,” Yale Institute of Sacred Music Colloquium: Music, Worship, Arts 1, no. 1 (2004): 95–103. Joris Geldhof, “Liturgical Theology,” in Religion: Oxford Research Encyclopedias. 12 Jun. 2015. http://religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore9780199340378-e–14.

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and especially the Christian religion, is always a historical phenomenon, inseparable from its context and narrative historicity without substantial alterations to the narrative itself. Christianity must maintain a special awareness of this historicity, no less in the liturgy, because it claims its foundation in a historical event: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth identified as the Christ and Son of God. The Incarnation is the symbol of God’s salvation in human form and the manifestation of that salvific power in history. The very power of God shines forth in the weakness of the human man Jesus, who was rejected by religious authorities and painfully executed by an occupying power. History is the site of God’s activity – even in events we see as terrible and meaningless, filled with human suffering. As Christians it is our duty to be conscious of our limitations and historicity in a very special way, but not merely as a sign of human impotence, but as the very condition of human action in the world and the conduit of God’s grace to and for others. We point this out because contemporary society is very much afflicted by historicity, precisely in its attempts to escape from it. Political narratives in Europe and the United States have relied recently on more and more skewed versions of the past, and nationalistic narratives rooted in an ultimately mythological history. This is especially true of many right-wing movements in European governments, with the sentiment being that increased toleration and diversity in society has diluted what used to be ‘pure’ national populations, values, and religious traditions. This trend is disturbing, especially when it is applied to religious narratives, as though the inclusion of a new minority community could, almost automatically, destabilize centuries of ‘stable’ tradition. When has tradition been purely stable? When has European, or American, or Canadian, or Indian identity been homogenous? As religious people we have a duty to unmask these false narratives of the past, and to recover elements of suffering in that past that will help us to deal with the suffering that is in our midst today.

Public Acts, Symbolic Resonance It is from these historical considerations and, indeed, difficulties that we now turn to the liturgy. The liturgy is not merely an interior exercise, and it is not something purely intellectual for scholars to write technical treatises over, although one may expect from scholars a great deal of technical expertise and sophistication. What we must recognize is the degree to which ‘history’ and ‘liturgy’ are intertwined, and how this very fact contributes to the essential nature of liturgy as a public act. The focus on history must not be forgotten, especially as we celebrate the fiftyyear jubilees of Vatican II and its documents, which did so much to establish the

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role of history in the Christian tradition. In service of that point, we cannot merely think that Vatican II and its documents emerged fully formed from the Council sessions. Each document has its own history. The Council itself, has its genesis partially in a public, symbolic (and beautifully subversive) act made by St. John XXIII. He made a brief pilgrimage by train to the Marian shrine in Loreto in 1962, shortly before the opening of the Council. This was the very rail line that had been built in the former Papal States under Pius IX, but which was never used by a sitting pope at the time of their completion in the nineteenth century.6 The unification of Italy in 1870, and the abolition of the Papal States made this ‘impossible,’ when Pius IX declared himself a ‘prisoner of the Vatican,’ and refused to acknowledge the authority of the state of Italy.7 This state continued formally until 1929, but the true end of papal ‘captivity,’ captivity to the past, should be seen as John XXIII’s journey north on the very railroad that his predecessor had built, now under state control. This was a clear sign of acknowledgement of the world outside the walls of the Vatican, “without any nostalgia for the Papal States, John XXIII proclaimed the Church’s new freedom from the burdens of the past.”8 It was a symbolic reorientation of the Bishop of Rome’s attention towards his flock. The church would come out to the people, and John was stating it publicly. This was a deeply liturgical action: active participation in the holy mystery of God’s mercy and forgiveness, and the public prayer of the church was present in his journey north. Much like his public removal of the word ‘perfidious’ from the Good Friday prayers for the Jewish people, prayer and action were united in a liturgical state of being. He acknowledged the painful realities of the past in a way that released the tension and demonstrated that neither he nor his church would remain captives of the past, but neither could it be forgotten entirely. The law that was performed and prayed was also the one which we believe in, and was formative of that belief: lex orandi, lex credendi. For the liturgy, the deeper renewal experienced in the twentieth century began earlier than the council, and its history is relevant for us. The Liturgical Movement, widely regarded as a twentieth-century phenomenon, began in the nineteenth century as a child of the Ultramontanist Benedictine monk, Prosper Guéranger (1805–1875).9 His model of the ideal community as a liturgical, wor6 7 8 9

Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology Through the Centuries (New York: Paulist Press, 2004), 271–273. John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2010), 61. Prusak, The Church Unfinished, 271. Aleuin Deutsch, O.S.B., “Preface to the First Edition,” in Liturgy the Life of the Church, Lambert Beaudiun O.S.B., trans. Virgil Michel, O.S.B., 2nd ed. (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 1929), iii.

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shiping Christian community was meant to bring the official liturgy of the church into direct, centralized focus.10 His efforts directed people away from other types of devotions and popular piety, replacing them with the ‘official’ alternatives, and introducing the medieval ideal of the scholar-monk. The monasteries founded on this ideal throughout Europe then turned their attentions, in large part, to study of the Patristic authors, leading to a renewed sense of ecclesiology: “how one understood liturgy was key to how one understood church, and vice versa.”11

Liturgy of the Church, Liturgy of the World This insight is at the heart of Dom Lambert Beauduin’s (1873–1960) lecture from 23 September 1909 given in Mechelen/Malines, Belgium, the text of which became the programmatic document for the Liturgical Movement.12 His booklet, Liturgy the Life of the Church (originally published in 1914 as, La Piété de l’Église, Principes et faits) absolutely has an ecclesiology at work within it, and it is a remarkably rich document, just as we should expect of the ‘grandfather’ of Sacrosanctum Concilium. As a monk of the Benedictine abbey of Keizersberg/Mont César in Leuven, there is a historical connection between this movement, and the university, KU Leuven, where the ninth edition of the Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology (LEST) conference was held on 23–26 October 2013. Prof. Joris Geldhof of the research unit of Pastoral and Empirical Theology convened the conference in conjunction with the research unit of Systematic Theology and the Study of Religions, with the intent of bridging the perceived gap between liturgical and systematic-fundamental theology. The scholars who attended LEST IX more than rose to this challenge, presenting papers from a variety of different sub-disciplines of what was once a unified sacra doctrina or sacra pagina. This volume represents the results of two years of editing and continued work after the conference to solidify the contributions that our participants have made to theology as a whole, and not merely to Catholic theology, liturgical studies, liturgical theology, or fundamental theology. What is called for more and more in our fragmented world, and our fragmented discipline, is a kind of synoptic theology, one that sees the disciplines as belonging together and as examining different aspects of the mystery of God revealed in history. The theologians of Leuven, past and present, have taken an active role in this historically embedded theology. 10 11 12

John O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II, 71–72. Ibid., 73. Republished in 2010 as, “La vraie prière de l'Église: Rapport présenté par le R.P. Dom Lambert Beaudoin (sic) o.s.b.,” Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy 91, no. 1–2 (2010): 37–41.

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The diversity of Leuven’s history and its theologians, monks and professors, pastors and lay men and women, all contribute to the task of the church in society. The key connection between ecclesiology and liturgy, which was explored at LEST IX, and which can be found in the pages of the present volume, opens the door even wider to increased speculation and meditation. Before our authors make their specific contributions, we would do well to explore the intrinsic connection, so well expressed in the ancient maxim, lex orandi, lex credendi, a bit further. Beauduin’s ecclesiology is certainly of the nineteenth century. We might associate the Liturgical Movement with a more ‘progressive’ tendency within Catholic theology in the twentieth century, but in a time before Vatican II, before Humani Generis, and above all, before the First World War, our contemporary expectations need to be corrected. There is, throughout Liturgy the Life of the Church, an ‘us’/ ‘them’ dichotomy that is clearly drawn, between the laity and the clergy. Beauduin clearly laments the state in which he finds the laity, even in the staunchly Catholic pre-war Belgium. The “people are cold in our churches,” they seem forced to attend, they are bored, and strongest of all, the assessment is that “they no longer pray.”13 The modern tendency of ‘individualism’ is clearly to blame for this problem, at least to a certain extent. We could easily see the ‘clergy-laity’ dualism as an example of an out of touch clergy, looking to blame the laity for the conditions created by society, or even by the hierarchy themselves. We could decontextualize this dichotomy, and say that all ‘dividing’ is illegitimate as an exercise of sovereign violence, but this would not be a fair treatment of the document whose goals are so noble. Beauduin’s trendsetting booklet is a document that, in fact, shows great care for ‘the people,’ it does not merely accuse them and belittle them. Far from it. It comes from a person who feels a sense of personal responsibility: Beauduin is a pastor, certainly of souls, but not just ‘souls’ as some abstract, intangible spiritual essence. He is a pastor of human beings, and he feels responsible for those he loves. What is his answer? How does he want the people to return to God and prayer? He makes it their task and he brings it to them. “It is they, especially, who by their zeal, their active participation in the singing, by the sacrifice of their individual preferences, must restore full vitality to the liturgical gatherings of the parish. The can well be called a spiritual work of mercy of the first order.”14 He stresses not the separation and privilege of the hierarchy, but the bond between both the clergy and the laity.15 Prayer and worship are sources of this unity, and so the liturgy is the core of a healthy ecclesiology. 13 14 15

Beauduin, Liturgy the Life of the Church, 25. Ibid., 25. Ibid., 32.

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There is something wonderfully organic to Beauduin’s theology. He conceives of the cycles of the liturgical year as being in tune with the natural world, and as a unifying factor for nature and supernature (a rare insight for the time). This ‘organic’ view has nothing of the neo-scholastic obsession with propositions and the increased sense of notional clarity that they can provide: the more doctrines, propositions, and statements of authority that we know, the more we really know about the Truth of God. Rather, for Beauduin, Every child of the Church is a saint in the making. Hence this piety is not reserved exclusively for an ascetical aristocracy, and is not placed beyond the reach of ordinary Christians. All without distinction, from the Pope to the smallest child learning the catechism, live the same liturgy in different degrees, participate in the same feasts, move in the same cycle.16

There is an organic growth, but not in a merely progressivistic way. It is a matter of practice, celebration, and prayer. It is, however, distinct from personal prayer in the sense that it is not merely interior. The liturgy provides an important foundation for personal prayer because of its hierarchical, public nature.17 In this way, the liturgy forms how people are who they are: “[it] not merely places us in the Church, but makes us to be of the Church.”18 Quoting Godfrey Kurth C.S.G., church historian, and professor in Liège and later in Rome, “one of the causes of religious ignorance, if not the greatest, is ignorance of the liturgy …”19 What is meant in this context, of course, is formal ignorance of the church’s liturgy. Following this line of argumentation, however, we can arrive at another type of religious ignorance, which is the further result of contemporary ignorance of the liturgy. The historical liturgy is embedded in the wider liturgical movement of creation. It is a symbol of God’s salvation in the world, but it does not exhaust that mystery, nor is it a self-standing entity with objective value. The history of the world is itself a liturgy, and the Christian should not attempt to merely “explain history in terms of liturgy, but liturgy in terms of history.”20 As Karl Rahner says, “[t]he world and its history are the terrible and sublime liturgy, breathing of death and sacrifice, which God celebrates and causes to be celebrated in and through human history in its freedom, this being something which he in turn sustains in grace.”21 The history of God’s salvific work appears fragmentarily in our remembered and recorded histories. It 16 17 18 19 20 21

Beaudoin, Liturgy the Life of the Church, 44. Ibid., 34–35. Ibid., 39. Ibid., 49. Michael Skelley, S.J., The Liturgy of the World: Karl Rahner’s Theology of Worship (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo, 1991), 86. Rahner, “Considerations on the Active Role of the Person in the Sacramental Event,” Theological Investigations, vol. 14 (New York: Seabury 1976), 169.

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penetrates and accents these histories, especially when we are particularly attuned to them through our Christian understanding of the world precisely as created. Looking back at that history offers an opportunity to rediscover the theological richesse of the liturgy and of its coming to be. God appears in our histories in our positive moments of triumph and healing, as well as in the negative and refractory experiences of suffering. We find God with us in the resistance that we throw up against injustice in history.22 This is not something that occurs automatically for humanity. There is no ‘general religiosity’ that will automatically lead us to the Christian God. Kurth’s observation about the ignorance of the liturgy is apt, especially if we point to the intrinsic and necessary connection between the lex orandi and the lex credendi. Learning to pray and to worship together in a way that is oriented towards God and embedded in the Christian tradition helps us to believe and it attunes us to God’s presence in the world as already there ahead of us, waiting for us and inviting us to partake more fully in creation. Christians experience God’s condemnation of human suffering within suffering itself because this is one of the core elements of our experience of reality: the faithfulness of God and God’s universal salvific will. The narrative ‘attunement’ to the work of God is one of effects of the visible liturgy. The church’s liturgy allows humanity to consciously, or rather, ‘unconsciously,’ partake in the liturgy of the world that is already there before we look for it. The whole tradition of mystical prayer and ascetic training also has this goal: “[t]o have one’s daily life become an act of worship is the greatest human achievement.”23 As the sacrament of the world, the church is responsible for propagating and continuing its own, historical liturgy. The church is responsible for being and becoming the visible body of Christ in the world, and it does this most concretely by acting out its own identity and bringing the people of God into union with Christ, in whom the church finds its head. At no point, however, can we confuse the historical liturgy with the liturgy of the world in an absolute manner. To raise it to the level of universal history would subvert the human-divine relationship, just as human beings have done with countless other narratives and customs throughout history. If the historical liturgy, or rather, historical liturgies – and in this volume we will see that there are and have been many – are “seen as the one and only liturgy,” then they lose their eschatological function as a real symbol of the primordial and transcendent liturgy of the world.24

22

23 24

Edward Schillebeeckx, “Correlation Between Human Question and Christian Answer,” The Understanding of Faith, Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx, vol. 5 (London et al.: Bloomsbury, 2014), 80–88 [91–101]. Skelley, The Liturgy of the World, 92. Ibid., 102–103.

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Liturgical and Systematic Perspectives: Our Common Task The sections of this volume follow on the idea of liturgical spaces, mental, physical, and historical, which make up our collective past and inform our understanding of tradition. These studies are not just historical, or ‘backward’ looking, however. These maintain the attempt begun at LEST IX to move the dialogue between systematic theology and liturgical theology forward such that the two disciplines can, in light of their common task, grow together and serve the cultivation of the church as the sacrament of Christ’s presence in the world. The salvific function of church makes this cooperation necessary, especially in the form that it has taken here. We will proceed in six sections, each dealing with a particular theological and liturgical ‘space’ that demands the attention of our scholarship. Our first section, Liturgical Spaces: On the Edge of the Sacred and Secular, begins with Bert Daelemans, S.J. (Universidad Pontificia Comillas) who opens the issue of ‘space’ very concretely in his article, “Fifty Shades of Grey? Contemporary Churches as Lived Liturgies that Mediate Mysteries.” Here, Daelemans addresses the massive problem of aesthetics in contemporary church structures, especially what he identifies as the ‘beigeification’ of liturgical spaces. He gives us a way of thinking of church buildings not merely as structures that we pray in, but as structures that are actively designed to pray with us, to help us to worship and pray in a deeper way. The theological and liturgical aspects of contemporary architecture should make us reflect on what it is to worship, and how it is that we worship in the world. Further, he utilizes the concept of heterotopia as a vehicle for an eschatological experience of God in the world. Philip Rossi S.J. (Marquette University) follows on this theme in a slightly different manner, through his discussion of secularization and the role of ‘vulnerability’ as an invitation to worship, even within what Charles Taylor has called the ‘immanent frame’. The text, “Liturgy as Sacramental Mystery: Incarnating Grace in the Space of Worldly Vulnerability,” demonstrates Rossi’s expertise with Taylor, but also his adept way of highlighting the deficit of understanding in Western cultures when it comes to the liturgy and its connection with our collective loss of a transcendent reference point. Rossi interweaves Taylor’s analysis with his own call for a stance of open vulnerability for the worshiping Christian subject as the entry-point for grace, and ultimately ‘transformative seeing,’ a new lens for viewing the (secular) world. From the discussions of modernity, grace, and actual liturgical space, we move to historical reflections on the work and influence of St. Augustine of Hippo in The Liturgical Mediation of the totus Christus. Specifically, this concept of the ‘whole Christ,’ the totus Christus, is considered in terms of liturgical mediation and deification. Kevin G. Grove, C.S.C. (Notre Dame), gives us in his article, “When Christ Speaks in Us: The “Whole Christ ” and the Mediation of Mystery within the Liturgy,” a well-rounded reception of the work of Paul Janowiak, S.J. on Augustine.

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Specifically, the role of the totus Christus in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos, and its potential application for contemporary liturgical theology. Grove shows the centrality of the notion of ‘transfiguration,’ the transfiguration of Christ, the Body of Christ, and the believer for Augustine, and the possible retrieval of this concept for today. Walter Knowles follows with a different perspective on the totus Christus, in relation to Augustine’s mystagogical catechesis. His article, “‘Becoming What You See’: Augustine’s Mystagogia of Deification,” draws from a number of different catechetical texts to show the importance of deification for Augustine, especially in its personal and communal dimensions. Following the section on Augustine, two articles bring us into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by analyzing two important theologians’ approaches to the Eucharist: The Eucharistic Center of the Liturgical Field. Samuel Goyvaerts (KU Leuven) gives us a focused article, “‘Das große Sakrament der Vereinigung’: Franz Anton Staudenmaier’s Eucharistic Theology,” on an important figure from the Catholic Tübinger Schule. Goyvaert’s treatment of Staudenmaier provides a picture of a long-neglected part of Catholic theology from the nineteenth century. This reading is significant for refuting the idea that all Catholic theology was uniform, and strictly Thomistic prior to the twentieth century ressourcement of the Patristic authors. Goyvaerts places Staudenmaier at the beginning of the Liturgical Movement, by illustrating the interdependence of his Eucharistic theology and his understanding of the liturgical celebrations that are centered on the Incarnation. Staudenmaier draws connections between the feast of Corpus Christi, the celebration of the Incarnation at Christmas, and the process of deification that participation in the liturgy fosters. Daniel Minch (KU Leuven) continues the line of Eucharistic argumentation in, “Language, Structure, and Sacrament: Reconsidering the Eucharistic Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx.” He examines Schillebeeckx’s post-Conciliar assessment Eucharistic change, especially with regard to the hermeneutics used at Trent in navigating new and more contextually appropriate ways to explain the sacramental operation. Minch gives a critical evaluation of Schillebeeckx’s work on the sacraments, and shows how the method that Schillebeeckx utilized in assessing Trent guided his own reflections on how to deal with appropriating the results of Vatican II. The article serves as both a historical evaluation of Schillebeeckx’s work and a systematic appropriation of the theories developed by Schillebeeckx for contemporary use. The focus on the Western and especially European church shifts at this point in our volume, in the section Looking Beyond the West and the Roman Rite. We move to two very detailed studies of Catholic, non-Roman rites and prayers. This exploration of liturgical unity-in-diversity starts with Unnatha Kavuvila (KU Leuven), whose article, “Mediating the Mystery of Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Subukkono, the Service of Peace in the Malankara Rite,” gives us a view of a SyroMalankara penitential rite. The concept of Subukkono, or ‘release’ is a central part

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of the Syro-Malankara tradition, and Kavuvila provides a window into the theology of reconciliation that underpins the rite, as well as its actual form. Ultimately, this rite is about ‘building up’ the community of the faithful in a progressive way, where all are reconciled to Christ, as the Body of Christ. The excellent comparative work of Elochukwu Uzukwu (Duquesne University) in his “Recapturing the Mystery – Captured by the Mystery: African Eucharistic Prayers in the Roman Rite,” provides further insight into the ‘unity-in-diversity’ tenet of the church. He examines relative liturgical freedom experienced by African churches after Vatican II, and the prayers and rites that were produced in that period in relation to some of the ancient liturgical texts. This is followed by the structure and content of some contemporary African prayers, and the slow reversal of the ‘liturgical freedom’ in recent decades with directives from Rome and the Congregation for Divine Worship. The Eastern traditions are represented by two texts from Katerina Bauerova (Protestant Theological Faculty, Charles University, Prague) and Jitka Jonová (Sts. Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology, Palacký University) respectively. First, Bauerova’s “The Mystery of Divine-Human Cooperation in Freedom and Creativity: An Example of Liturgical Life from the Russian Diaspora in France,” give a historical account of the innovative approaches taken by Russian Orthodox religious leaders in France during the inter-war period. The interaction of Catholic and Orthodox monastic spiritualties is well documented by Bauerova, and she shows the dynamic initiatives that emerged from unexpected places – the confrontation with psychoanalysis, philosophy, and art – and from unexpected people outside of the normal monastic boundaries of Russia. The “restless pilgrims” of this era have left quite a legacy to both Western and Eastern traditions, which should be retrieved. Jonová is also concerned with innovation in liturgical matters, but the context is vastly different. Her piece, “Attempts to Use the Vernacular Language in the Catholic Liturgy in the Czech Lands in the 1920s,” brings us to the Czech lands in the 1920s, and the tension created by the independent Czechoslovak Church that was formed in 1920. The conflict continued between those who tried to introduce the vernacular into liturgical celebrations as a counterresponse to the Czechoslovak Church, and the officials of the Vatican who wished the liturgy to remain as it had been. Jonová brings this story out in vivid detail with regard to the efforts of the Czech bishops to strike a balance between the wishes of the reformers and the Vatican. In the final section of our volume, we travel to the Americas for two studies that are focused on the liberatative function of liturgy, but in different ways. Thomas M. Kelly (Creighton University) finds inspiration in the life and work of the Jesuit, Rutilio Grande. His article, “When Liturgy Empowers: Rutilio Grande, S.J. and the Church of El Salvador,” gives an overview of Grande’s attempts at community-building in El Salvador based on liturgical models of close-knit, local

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base communities. The liturgy itself became an instrument for transforming the entire lives of people in these communities, while Grande provided the impetus and opportunity and the people – guided by the Spirit and sanctioned by the episcopal authorities – did the rest. Christopher McMahon (Saint Vincent College) brings Bernard Lonergan in to round out the discussion in, “Cruciform Salvation and Emergent Probability: The Liturgical Significance of Lonergan’s Precept.” Lonergan’s focus on soteriology stemming from the “law of the cross,” grounds liturgical soteriology in historical and contextual conditions. The worship of the church in the liturgy, as a performance of Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ, itself a cruciform act, provides a space that orients believers towards an ‘outside’ – that is, towards the performance of liberative action in the world, in an eschatological manner. There is no absolute salvation available in history, but within the liturgy, we find a specific space where, “heaven erupts into the space and time of a fallen world, renewing human vision, and worshippers, through an active participation in the celebration.”

Conclusion Though not all of these articles deal directly with the crises of liturgy and of history which are so prevalent today, each treats the ways in which liturgy can be seen as formative of theology, whether through architecture, through language, through culture, or through enacted Christian life and ministry. Each wrestles with the tension between whether liturgy is primarily a depository of already-held faith contents or whether its ritual enactment represents, perforce, the lived embodiment of those contents. In so doing, each in its own way offers an answer to the question of whether the liturgy is primarily the expression of a theology or whether it might be the precondition for theology – to the relationship between the lex orandi and lex credendi. The liturgy is more than the sum total of historical liturgies and rubrics or of data concerning these liturgies; it is a dynamic and living tradition which can only be treated by doing justice to complex flow of God’s katabatic action in history and creation’s anabatic response to it. As noted liturgist Adolf Adam put it, the liturgy must both retain and reaffirm the crucial importance of active cooperation between God and God’s people – the notion that liturgy “is the joint action of Jesus Christ, the high priest, and his Church for the salvation of human beings and the glorification of the Father.”25 This fundamental dedication underscores the notion that liturgy is not simply an object of theological study but is also itself a theological grammar by which our inquiries into it are 25

Adolf Adam, The Foundations of the Liturgy (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1985), 5.

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formed (and reformed as they return to it). Beyond treating the liturgy as a source of theological reflection – or of data – this volume, like many other such liturgical theological endeavors, treats the practice of liturgy itself as theological. We hope that in doing so, these studies of liturgical theology, form, celebration, and setting lead the reader not only to further study and reflection but also back to the liturgy itself with a renewed and yet critical vision of what liturgy is, can be, and of what it asks of us.

1. Liturgical Spaces: On the Edge of the Sacred and the Secular

Fifty Shades of Grey? Contemporary Churches as Lived Liturgies that Mediate Mysteries

Bert Daelemans, S.J.

These things are not intended to serve liturgy but to be liturgy, even if in a modest way.1

1.

Introduction. The Accusation of Relativist Space

In recent years, some Roman Catholic architects and architectural historians have provided a harsh critique against the ‘beigification’ of contemporary church architecture as “theologically unsound” and thus “harmful to the Church.”2 According to them, architectural Modernism could only lead to “large, empty spaces, marked by very little symbolism, narrativity, art, statuary or painting.”3 Indeed, many contemporary buildings – think of Tadao Ando’s well-acclaimed Church on the Water (1988) and Church of the Light (1989), Kister, Scheithauer, and Gross’s St Maria Magdalena in Freiburg-Rieselfeld (2004), Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas’s San Paolo in Foligno (2009), Renzo Piano’s domestic chapel at the Poor Clare convent in Ronchamp (2011), and Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti’s St Paul-de-la-Plaine in Saint-Denis (2014) – are empty spaces of bare concrete, as if they were nothing more than mere ‘shades of grey.’

1

2

3

Rudolf Schwarz, The Church Incarnate: The Sacred Function of Christian Architecture, trans. Cynthia Harris (Chicago, IL: H. Regnery Co., 1958), 200. My gratitude is due to John Arblaster for proofreading this contribution. The term “beigification” is from Robert Barron, “Beyond Beige Churches: Modernity and Liturgical Architecture,” Antiphon 6, no. 3 (2001): 14–22, at 22; Moyra Doorly, No Place for God: The Denial of the Transcendent in Modern Church Architecture (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 118. Barron, Beyond Beige Churches, 14.

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If the problem were but stylistic, the only thing to be done should be “to render beautiful the bare concrete, the exposed steel beams, and the barren brickwork”4 in order to “look like a church” that is, to bring in “the conventional architectural markers of churchliness,” which are “a cross, tower, dome, conventional shapes, and proportions.”5 But the problem, according to these authors, is the underlying Modernist rationale: “The church architecture of the past forty years, precisely in the measure that it has been shaped by modern presuppositions, is incapable of bearing the weight of Christianity.”6 Grey dissolves both black and white, and thus serves as a good metaphor for what these authors abhor as “relativist space,” which is “homogenous, directionless, and value-free.” Because no place can have more meaning than another place, “sacred space, by definition, cannot exist.” In conclusion, “by adopting the Modernist style, the Church has incorporated Relativism into her very fabric.”7 In the wake of relativism emerge subjectivism, rationalism, dualism, and anti-traditionalism.8 Because relativist space is considered incapable of conveying any sense of transcendence, the Modernist style is dismissed as “ugly as sin.”9 As a result, these authors go back to Gothic architecture as the ‘right’ way to build and to think theologically.10 Although I do not follow these critics in their severe option of style, I entirely adopt their appeal for “church structures that not only house and gather the worshipping assembly, but that tell the Christian story boldly, unapologetically, and with panache.”11 My answer to the accusation of contemporary churches as mere ‘shades of grey’ is that the theological depth of architecture should not be reduced to matters of norms or style but brought to life by examining how worshipping communities use and appropriate their churches. I have used ‘fifty shades of grey’ in a literal and metaphorical sense. The question is: could we recover, in reference to the popular novel, the embodied sensuousness of these shades of grey? This can only be done, I believe, when we are attentive to our body, that is, to both our individual and communitarian body.12 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Doorly, The Denial of the Transcendent in Modern Church Architecture, 4. Denis R. McNamara, Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy (Chicago, Mundelein, IL: Hillenbrand, 2009), 27. Barron, Beyond Beige Churches, 14. Doorly, The Denial of the Transcendent in Modern Church Architecture, 4. Barron, Beyond Beige Churches, 14–18. Michael S. Rose, Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed Our Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces and How We Can Change Them Back Again (Omaha, NE: Sophia Institute Press, 2001). See McNamara, 3, 169. With Gothic architecture as paradigm, Michael S. Rose proposes three “natural laws of church architecture”: verticality, permanence, and iconography. Barron, Beyond Beige Churches, 22. I have done so more extensively in my Spiritus loci: A Theological Method for Contemporary Church Architecture (Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2015). In order to be theological, our analysis of church buildings should include the synaesthetic, kergymatic, and Eucharistic dimensions of mys-

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Contemporary churches become lived liturgies in communitarian worship. The mysteries they mediate can be experienced fully only in (repeated) celebrations.13 Therefore, in this article, I will explore two case studies of contemporary architecture, both parish churches, examining the different creative ways in which Eucharistic liturgies are celebrated by the Episcopalian community of St Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco (John Goldman, 1995) and the Roman Catholic community of St François de Molitor in Paris (Jean-Marie Duthilleul and Corinne Callies, 2005).14 I do so in order to lay bare some of the inherent theological potential of architecture, which only mediates mystery in its fullness when the architecture, as lex edificandi, ‘participates’ in the liturgy or lex orandi, which corresponds to theology or lex credendi. On the one hand, although the first case study can certainly not be dismissed as ‘shades of grey’ because it adopts a rather colorful, traditional, and eclectic style, I have chosen it precisely as Episcopalian eye-opener for Roman Catholics because it brings to light a perhaps surprising search for transcendence and contemporariness. On the other hand, the Parisian church is the typical Modernist building that would be discarded by the aforementioned critics as mere ‘shades of grey’ unable to convey transcendence. While both parish communities are certainly not typical of all current liturgical practices in the Episcopalian and the Roman Catholic Churches in the West,15 their buildings represent complementary prototypes of the contemporary search for transcendence in architecture. I have chosen them precisely for the exceptional character of their communitarian

13 14

15

tagogic space. The first dimension pays attention to the individual body, the last to communitarian appropriation. This is also the theological conviction at the basis of Richard Kieckhefer, Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). My gratitude goes to both parish communities and their respective worship leaders Paul Fromberg and Father Gabriel Delort Laval for having so generously allowed me to take photographs during their celebrations. The following analyses reflect numerous visits during the years 2011 and 2012. The following websites give a good idea of the liturgies lived in and the mysteries mediated by these churches: http://www.saintgregorys.org/ and http://saintfrancois-molitor.cef.fr/ In particular, the baptismal theology of St Gregory of Nyssa received a lot of critique, not in the least from an Episcopalian point of view. Their lex credendi is the hospitality of open communion to everyone, baptized or not. Effectively, as lex edificandi, the baptismal font is relegated to the outside, behind the centrality of the altar, which is the most prominent welcome for any visitor. In this article, I will not discuss this critique, and focus instead on what is valuable in the use of the space during ordinary Eucharistic liturgy. For an exposition of the baptismal theology at St Gregory of Nyssa, see Donald Schell, “The Font Outside Our Walls,” God’s Friends 12, no. 2 (August 2001): n.p. [http://www.allsaintscompany.org/resource/fontoutside-our-walls]; See also Louis Van Tongeren, “St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Francisco,” in Sacred Places in Modern Western Culture, eds. Paul Post, Arie L. Molendijk, and Justin Kroesen (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 151–157.

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appropriation. They can therefore serve as valuable paradigms for domus ecclesiae that are truly domus Dei in a contemporary way.

2.

Hermeneutic Framework. Spatial Configurations and Rhythmic Patterns

Both churches reveal their surprising capacity for conveying transcendence precisely in communitarian celebration. That is exactly the point of this article: we must look at the lived liturgy before dismissing a church too quickly as ‘relativist space’ – or ‘shades of grey,’ in literal and/or metaphorical sense. Therefore, two sets of hermeneutic tools will prove helpful in focusing attention on the community (and not moving away to sterile and esoteric explorations of so-called hidden meanings in architecture16): Rudolf Schwarz’s spatial configurations and Marcia McFee’s rhythmic patterns. In the discussion of my case studies, it will become clear why I have precisely chosen these as hermeneutic instruments. Few theories, in fact, point out the importance of communitarian movement in liturgical architecture. That is, in the limited scale of this study, the major point I would like to retrieve of their fruitful thought. Together, they serve well to counter the critique of relativist space, because they bring to light what cannot be discovered without bodily participating in the living liturgies: the meaningful mysteries that are mediated through the dynamic interaction between moving (individual and communitarian) body and building. Whereas the first is a German architect who elaborated his theory in the heydays of the Liturgical Movement but is now largely forgotten, the latter is a current Methodist worship consultant with a vivid interest in helping communities appropriate their liturgical spaces. In the 1930s, the Roman Catholic architect Rudolf Schwarz presented six ‘plans,’ not as mere blueprints for building churches, but as stills of a changing, dynamic ‘seventh plan.’17 More essential than the building is the spatial configuration of a worshipping community. Schwarz called his first ‘plan’ for church building a ring, because it is simply based on how a community gathers spontaneously in a ring around a central focus, be it an altar or a preacher. Schwarz warns that a literal and static interpretation of this plan could become “the most desolate of all forms,” a self-enclosed circle without any transcendence. Therefore, “the closed 16 17

That would be the point of kerygmatic space without attention to the synaesthetic and Eucharistic qualities of the space. See my discussion in Spiritus loci, esp. 203–249. See Schwarz, The Church Incarnate. The Sacred Function of Christian Architecture, (Charleston, SC: Nabu Press, 2011). For a more thorough discussion, see my Spiritus loci, 278–299.

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form lasts only as long as it remains open.”18 One way to open the ring is vertically, by introducing an axis mundi, an opening of light, as an architectural expression of the Ascension. The church becomes then what Schwarz called a chalice of light, which it receives from above.19 Another of Schwarz’s suggestions is to open the ring horizontally in what he called the open ring, by including a “sacred emptiness,” that is, an emptiness that is not bare and vacant but rich and inhabited by a transcendent presence.20 Schwarz’s fourth plan, the way, is, together with the ring, another fundamental configuration: all are oriented as one People of God on a journey, a pilgrimage towards one goal. Schwarz observed that “even if we are loath to admit it, this is one of the great fundamental forms of our being together. […] Those who are settled down in the closed forms will never understand this pilgrimage.”21 God is here the one who leads through the desert. Many ‘familiar’ churches reproduce such a way-form in a static way, and unfortunately oppose laity and clergy in harsh confrontation. Recently, Richard Kieckhefer has revalued this basilical type that he called “classic sacramental” by stressing its processional and kinetic value.22 Indeed, the way-form of our familiar churches divided into longitudinal nave oriented towards a sanctuary can only be rightly understood in a dynamic way. Again, Schwarz’s ‘plans’ should not be implemented literally, but somehow find their materialization during the flow of a liturgical year – because they permit the assembly to embody plural ways of relating to God, instead of imposing static, petrified uniformity. Schwarz’s fifth plan, the dark chalice, represents the end of the journey, where Christ welcomes His people home. This converging configuration is the embodied answer to the open ring, after having gone the way. Schwarz imagined a dark inward space of homecoming. Some of his churches reproduce literally this parabolic vision.23 Finally, the sixth plan is the dome of light, the joyous vision of the New Jerusalem, the wedding banquet of the Lamb as described in the book of Revelation, where the whole universe is cast in divine light.24 According to Schwarz, a practicing architect himself, this vision was impossible to build. Nevertheless, it formed part of his six basic ‘plans’ for church building because of the underlying theological vision, which is dynamic, as expressed in his seventh ‘plan,’ the Cathedral of all times: “Only the cathedral is true body. The plans were like limbs of the hidden body of history; they contained the whole by implication but they 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Schwarz, The Church Incarnate, 67. Ibid., 95–113. Ibid., 67–94. Ibid., 114–153. See Kieckhefer, Theology in Stone, 17–25. See Schwarz, The Church Incarnate, 154–179. The prototype of this parabolic plan is Schwarz’s Heilig Kreuz in Bottrop (1953–1957). Ibid., 180–188.

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themselves remained its phase.”25 This plan or ‘whole’ stands “above all plans”26 and brings them all to completion and recapitulating them over time. Schwarz’s vision was an “ever-changing space”27 that made “the building run parallel to the action.”28 Schwarz’s theory for church building is based on the organic concept of the human body. The building had to bring to light an “inner spatiality”29: “A higher life is at hand and it speaks from time to time in changing forms. But that which speaks is ever present.”30 Church buildings had to “come into being solely out of the act of worship itself […], welling forth from within.”31 Schwarz would reject the presumption that ‘shades of grey’ are incapable of conveying transcendence: even an empty vessel “would have a form and this form would have a meaning.”32 For Schwarz, architecture had to serve and even become liturgy: “Architecture lasts only in order to be let back into happening.”33 That is exactly why “each of the great basic forms could be represented through the articulation of the people.”34 Complementary to Schwarz’s spatial configurations, and from a completely different starting point, the American liturgical scholar Marcia McFee has distinguished between four basic energy patterns, based on the human body. She related them to distinctive liturgical rituals, going from invigorating liveliness (thrust), ordering energy (shape), playful, interactive participation (swing) to contemplative, sustained stillness (hang): We are formed through the rhythms and dynamics of our worship as people who come to their feet, who are ready for action, inspired for action (Thrust energy). We are formed as people who name and claim God’s reality, who embody the vision of the reign of God, who share with others the sure foundation that is God (Shape energy). We are formed as people who love deeply, relate personally and intimately, who feel the ebbs and flows of life and emotion and respond to a hurting world (Swing energy). And we are formed as those who can listen for the still small voice leading and guiding us, able simply to ‘be’ present,

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Schwarz, The Church Incarnate, 195. On the seventh plan, see 189–210. All the following quotations are taken from this section. Ibid., 195. Ibid., 198. Ibid., 197. Ibid., 197. Ibid., 195. Ibid., 198. Ibid., 199. Ibid., 203. Ibid., 208.

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steeped in awe-filled moments, guiding others to the presence of the ever-mysterious God (Hang energy).35

Both Schwarz’s six spatial configurations and McFee’s four rhythmic patterns will help focusing upon communitarian appropriation in the analysis of my two case studies. In order to counter the accusation of ‘shades of grey’ or ‘relativist space,’ I will proceed in two steps. First, I will show the fruitfulness of this simple hermeneutic framework for a perhaps obvious, but contemporary example of ‘shades of color,’ as an Episcopalian eye-opener for Roman Catholic critics, who would certainly dismiss this church as ‘relativist space’ for its apparent subjectivism and eclecticism. Second, once this approach proved useful, I will apply this framework to a typical Modernist ‘shades of grey’-church. In doing so, both case studies, however different in living liturgies and mediating mysteries, will bring to light a profound dimension of all of our buildings and celebrations: they must lay bare the eschatological truth of our liturgical gatherings. This is, at least, my growing conviction over the years. The French theologian and liturgical scholar Louis Bouyer has argued that liturgical architecture should orient towards the parousia, the victorious coming of the Lord.36 In order to explore the other metaphor of the title: liturgical architecture should shed (eschatological) light upon the shades of our time, or, in other words, the shades of liturgical architecture should orient towards eschatological Light. Let me explain this briefly, before proceeding to the case studies.

3.

Shades of Light. Eschatological Heterotopias

The theological depth that this exercise will reveal in the case of both churches will be, as we will see, eschatological. A brief word on this theological truth is at stake before starting the exercise. Eschatology, for Karl Rahner, is the “futurity of the present.”37 Eschatology does not relegate important issues to the future, but places us really in this present world by revealing its eternal depth. Because such futurity is not easily visible, imagination comes to our aid: “Christian hope is not

35

36 37

Marcia McFee, “Primal Patterns: Towards a Kinesthetic Hermeneutic,” Proceedings of the North American Academy of Liturgy: Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, January 2–5, 2009 (Notre Dame, IN: North American Academy of Liturgy, 2009), 136–157, at 153–154. Louis Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame press, 1967), 81. Karl Rahner, “The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 4, trans. K. Smith (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1974), 323–346, 334.

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imaginary, but it is irreducibly imaginative.”38 Therefore, the German Protestant scholars Andrea Bieler and Luise Schottroff suggested “eschatological imagination” as an embodied practice of hope in the midst of a broken reality, opening windows that “show potential for life flourishing” by ‘reversing’ and ‘thickening’ ordinary experience.39 The French phenomenologist Jean-Yves Lacoste evoked an “eschatological reduction”40 of the liturgy: in phenomenology, reduction is used in order for the phenomenon to appear more clearly. Hence, in liturgical enactment, the world is momentarily placed between brackets so that the eschatological Kingdom – or the eternal depth of our world – appears more clearly. Adopting the term heterotopia of the French philosopher Michel Foucault (who not precisely wrote on liturgy), I would call places in which the Kingdom becomes visible eschatological heterotopias that function as mirrors for our society: Utopias are sites with no real place. […] There are also […] real places […] which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.41

Like utopias, heterotopias create another world, another place we dream of. But contrary to utopias, heterotopias are real places embedded and embodied in this world. These real places give us already a sense of another place – call it Kingdom – but they are not yet this Kingdom. Hence, how can our churches be heterotopias for the eschatological imagination, that is, “effectively enacted utopias,” real places embedded and embodied in our world, that give us a glimpse and a sense of the Kingdom by appealing at our imagination? Let us turn to two contemporary examples for showing how this eschatological Kingdom can be brought to light in communitarian appropriation. Especially the last case will respond to the accusation that ‘shades of grey’ can only lead to ‘rela38 39 40

41

Richard Bauckman and Trevor Hart, Hope against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge: 1999), 153–162. Andrea Bieler and Luise Schottroff, The Eucharist: Bodies, Bread, and Resurrection (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 15–48. Jean-Yves Lacoste, Experience and the Absolute: Disputed Questions on the Humanity of Man, Perspectives in Continental Philosophy 40, trans. Mark Raftery-Skeban (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004). Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” trans. Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics 16 (1986): 22–27. Not only churches may function as eschatological heterotopias: there are so many places in

our world that give us a glimpse of the Kingdom, in prisons, in hospitals, in schools, in homes.

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tivist space.’ Examining what communities actually do with their spaces, how they use and appropriate them will reveal their hidden meaning: hence, these spaces are not ‘relativist’ but ‘meaningful’; ‘shades of grey’ should be, in any case, ‘shades of Light.’ This basically eschatological meaning is not encrusted statically in the bare concrete but comes to light only dynamically in communitarian appropriation. The aforementioned hermeneutic instruments of spatial configurations and rhythmic patterns are a help to bring this to light. That the ‘shades of grey’ of contemporary church architecture convey transcendent meaning and mystery can only be perceived when being attentive to the moving (individual and communitarian) body. In short, liturgical architecture is basically a question of embodied sensuousness. Let me first demonstrate this with a proudly contemporary example of shades of color, imagery, playfulness, mysteriousness, narrativity, art, and painting.

4.

Shades of Color: St Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Francisco (1995)

The exotic, fairytale shape of St Gregory of Nyssa creates a playful mysteriousness that is fitting for an eschatological heterotopia because it is so unfamiliar, and this precisely appeals to the imagination.42 Instead of the dull reproduction of familiar church schemes, unfamiliar styles and shapes release an eschatological imagination that is much more appropriate for our broken world today. Playful unfamiliarity might well be a condition for the contemporary character of a church, in order to be truly a heterotopia, a mirror for our world. The spatial configuration of St Gregory of Nyssa is built around a well-forged liturgical pattern attuned over the years to the needs of a specific and fairly eclectic Episcopalian community. The complementary spaces for Word and Eucharist go back to early models of Syrian churches.43 The Sunday liturgy begins in the octagonal rotunda around a simple wooden altar-table, on which stand earthen cups. People gather spontaneously around this altar-table in what Schwarz had called a ring-configuration. The familiar distinction between nave and sanctuary is abol42

43

For many people, it might be a space for an imagination let loose, drifting away from clear liturgical norms that keep things tight and clean and controllable. However, if one is willing to approach, to enter, and to appropriate the eclectic, exotic, seemingly esoteric language, one discovers an unexpected balance between clear limits and free space, between institution and charisma that other churches are only dreaming about! Donald Schell, “Rending the Temple Veil: Holy Space in Holy Community,” in Searching for Sacred Space: Essays on Architecture and Liturgical Design in the Episcopal Church, ed. John Runkle (New York: Church Publishing, 2002), 149–181.

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ished. This is not a holy place where one should shut up and remain unnoticed. The Eucharistic space, the sacred heart of this place, comes first of all to the fore in the disarming dimension of simple human encounter. It is truly a domus ecclesiae, a house where a community feels at home. There is a lot of space for gathering and moving around. When we enter this meeting place, newcomers are welcomed, people chat, and the choir rehearses in a contagiously confident way, without the need of instruments. Everyone wears a nametag, in order to foster encounter. Everyone is welcome in this family of sisters and brothers in Christ. Above our heads, eightyeight historical and legendary figures, as one unlikely family lead by Christ, lift their hands in a welcoming gesture. This colorful fresco expresses the maxim of the church father Gregory of Nyssa written in the lantern above our heads: “The one thing truly worthwhile is becoming God’s friend.” This friendship mysticism is the hermeneutic key to the whole liturgical event, in which table fellowship has a central place. Encounter is part of the worship in St Gregory of Nyssa. But this is only one dimension, which corresponds to what the Evangelical theologian Mark A. Torgerson rightly has called “an architecture of immanence.”44 Because of this colorful fresco and the meaningful maxim of Gregory of Nyssa, we can recognize Schwarz’s second configuration of the chalice of light: a ring that does not remain enclosed upon itself but opens vertically to another space, becoming eschatological heterotopia because it makes visible a Kingdom of God, a heavenly Church of dancing brothers and sisters, God’s friends in communion. Suddenly, the door of the vesting room opens. A small colorful procession comes out, the presider with an Ethiopian cross, the lay deacon with the Gospel book, moving hastily and cheerfully under colorful Ethiopian umbrellas among the quieted congregation. “Christ is Risen!” exclaims the presider, immediately responded by the assembly: “He is risen indeed!” From the beginning, it is the Lord who invites, as depicted in the fresco above our heads. What is most striking is the Paschal urgency of this entrance ritual, which could be understood as a thrust pattern in McFee’s categories. Because of its energetic intensity, thrust energy does not usually last long. McFee suggests that thrust energy goes with the image of “a transformational God – a God on the move.”45 Indeed, three elements make this entrance ritual at St Gregory of Nyssa so meaningful: first, the liturgical dimension or lex orandi. We are welcomed with a Paschal greeting. Our Christian faith starts with the Risen Christ, who calls us together, who is the transformational God on the move inviting us to move with Him. Although He is not visible among us, does our heart not burn from what has been 44 45

Mark A. Torgerson, An Architecture of Immanence: Architecture for Worship and Ministry Today (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007). McFee, “Primal Patterns”, 142.

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told to us, have our eyes not been opened (Lk 24:32)? Is this central altar-table not a symbol of the Risen Christ present in our midst, such as it was for the disciples of Emmaus? It is so meaningful to start the Sunday liturgy in the exact same spatial configuration as we will bring it to an end. Second, the theological dimension or lex credendi: the encounter with the Risen Christ occurs on the basis of simple human encounter. Standing around this altar-table, we are the Body of Christ, locally visible here and now. Third, the architectural dimension or lex edificandi: above our heads are the ones who live in God’s friendship and invite us to be one Church on earth, one vision of the eschatological Kingdom, in which the one thing truly worthwhile is becoming God’s friend. Now the ring breaks open and becomes an open ring: we move, in a sort of ordered procession behind the presider and his deacon, to the second pole of the liturgical ellipse, the elongated seating area. This procession reproduces Schwarz’s fourth plan, the way, until it comes to an end, as Schwarz’s dark chalice, ready, prepared, shaped for the liturgy of the Word, in what McFee called a shape pattern of balance, symmetry, clarity, repetition, moderation, and clearly defined functional zones. Due to its invariant stability, the inherent dynamism of this pattern could easily be overlooked, especially its power to shape a congregation. The oblong, ordered space is replete with furniture, antiphonal seating alongside a bema with ambo and presider chair at both ends as three signifiers for proclaiming (ambo), preaching (presider chair), and praising (antiphonal seating) one Word. The hierarchical roles are clearly laid out in the space. Behind the presider is a colorful fresco depicting Saint Gregory of Nyssa preaching. Above him, the friendship mysticism is made clear in the wedding of the human soul with the heavenly Bridegroom, in front of a depiction of the San Francisco church. What is not clear from visiting this church outside of celebrations, but what can only be experienced during Sunday worship, is that this place is also used for what McFee called hang energy. After each of the two Biblical readings at the ambo, a well-chosen moment of silence is particularly dense, filled with the deep echoing sounds of Tibetan bells, which hold in suspense the divine Word that no one can fathom. Most of the people close their eyes in silent prayer or spiritual aftertaste. They become aware of each other again, tasting the divine echoes of the proclaimed Word, hanging together in contemplation, waiting, focusing on being present rather than on doing and what’s going on. Sitting is appropriate for hang energy. There is no direction to go, there is but a place to be. Speech is totally unnecessary in this pattern, which speaks for itself and even fosters a certain ability to go with the flow. People just are for a moment, together in attentive stillness and intense connection. Such moments of hang energy are particularly apt for what I call ‘body-building,’ that is, for building the Body of Christ that we are. God is here the surrounding and grounding mystery in which we find and define ourselves again as community.

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After the Liturgy of the Word, the congregation moves a few times in a gentle, swinging dance around the altar, again as a ring, but a moving ring, repeating the same steps as depicted in the mural above our heads, as such connecting this earthly local church with the heavenly Church in one and the same divine liturgy presided by the dancing Risen Christ, and thus also as chalice of light. This move could be called swing energy in McFee’s kinesthetic hermeneutic. It is a playful, interactive, rhythmic, and swaying movement. The primary focus in swing energy is on the community as one dancing Body of Christ lead by Christ. Because of the dance and the accompanying song, this processional move is totally different than the earlier one. It is more festive, and at St Gregory of Nyssa it is always a long expected highlight of the liturgy – defining the particular liturgy of this local Church. At this moment, the lex edificandi joins adequately the lex orandi, lex credendi. This dance bridges the Liturgy of the Word with the Liturgy of the Eucharist. It grows out of the Word we have proclaimed, preached, and praised. The Word has enriched us and invites us now into embodied celebration. Such dynamic configuration corresponds in my view to Schwarz’s sixth plan, which he called the dome of light. It is not easy to see how Schwarz’s ‘joyous vision’ of the wedding banquet of the Lamb in the new Jerusalem could otherwise find architectural expression. I suggest that the community of St Gregory of Nyssa has found in its dance an appropriate dynamic expression of Schwarz’s vision. The whole building becomes now an eschatological event, a true Temple of the Spirit. This dance shapes the community into a ring of circumstantes around the altartable for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, which unfolds according to a shape pattern. The sigma-(C-)shaped altar-table is reminiscent of the oldest Last Supper depictions, such as the sixth-century mosaic in Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna or the sixth-century Rossano Gospels (Codex Purpureus Rossanensis, fol. 3), following a Mediterranean custom of reclining at the curved side of a stibadium.46 At St Gregory of Nyssa, the presider serves adequately at the conventional place of the servants, in memory of Christ who is the diakonos in our midst (Lk 22:27).47 On Fridays, this same Eucharistic rotunda hosts the food pantry, which distributes food to less fortunate citizens in the neighborhood. They move around the altar in exactly the same direction as the Dancing Saints and the community during Sunday worship, as such acquiring a Eucharistic dimension. This rotunda is thus 46

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Sigma-altars were used from the fifth to the seventh centuries. See Otto Nußbaum, “Zum Problem der runden und sigmaförmigen Altarplatten,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 4 (1961): 29–37 and Georges Roux, “Tables chrétiennes en marbre découvertes à Salamine: Anthologie salaminienne,” in Salamine de Chypre (Paris: 1973), 133–196. Otto Nußbaum, Der Standort des Liturgen am christlichen Altar vor dem Jahre 1000: Eine archäologische und liturgiegeschichtliche Untersuchung, Theophaneia 18, 2 vols. (Bonn: Hanstein, 1965), I, 444; Steven J. Schloeder, Architecture in Communion: Implementing the Second Vatican Council through Liturgy and Architecture (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1998), 69–74.

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truly the sacred heart of this church, providing an eschatological vision of the Kingdom in its four dimensions of encounter, dance, Eucharist, and solidarity. Having examined the architecture of this particular church through the lens of the liturgy, with the help of four energy patterns (thrust, shape, hang, and swing) and six spatial configurations (ring, chalice of light, open ring, way, dark chalice, dome of light), let me now formulate some conclusions before moving on to my next case study. First of all, these hermeneutic keys should not be applied rigidly. They allow the discovery of different tones or colors in our liturgies. The more we can recognize these patterns in our liturgies, the richer they are. Schwarz himself did not conceive of his ‘plans’ as blueprints for church building, but recognized that a “single movement flows uninterruptedly through all the ‘plans’ and one of its phases is set down in each of them.”48 That is why his seventh plan, the “Cathedral of All Times,” recapitulates the six plans and brings them to completion. This plan, however, is impossible to build. Therefore, if one has to choose, the open ring was Schwarz’s preferred vision for the everyday Eucharistic celebration. The issue at hand is not to stick to one static configuration or energy pattern alone but to recognize (and implement) different spatial configurations in our liturgies, such as my analysis of St Gregory of Nyssa has shown. Whereas McFee’s patterns allow one to focus on the rhythm of our celebrations, Schwarz’s plans translate the different shapes of a community. Both emphasize liturgical dynamism and communitarian appropriation. With this colorful Episcopalian eye-opener in mind, let us now move to the ‘shades of grey’ of a recent Roman Catholic church building, and see if we can lay bare its embodied sensuousness that would make it truly attractive, festive, contemporary, and eschatological – as ‘shades of Light.’

5.

Shades of Grey. St François de Molitor, Paris (2005)

The Roman Catholic St François de Molitor (2005) in Paris presents a totally different situation, showing that liturgical dynamism is open to multiple expressions, really and fortunately depending on the local communities’ appropriation of their space. At first sight, this building gathers all the characteristics of ‘shades of grey’ and ‘relativist space’ so abhorred by the critics. If truth be told, ‘shades of grey’ would still only function metaphorically in this church. It would rather be dismissed as ‘shades of beige,’ but the point is clear. Its minimalist, empty, ‘beigified’ space is “marked by very little symbolism, narrativity, art, statuary or painting.”49 In fact, three polychrome statues stand in the corners and are not visible at first 48 49

Schwarz, The Church Incarnate, 191. Barron, Beyond Beige Churches, 14.

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sight. Prominent are the metallic crosses on the walls and the golden cross of glory in front of the glass wall, also without corpus. The global atmosphere could even be characterized as Protestant, when not attentive to communitarian appropriation. The exterior façade of this church does not display the same exotic exuberance as St Gregory of Nyssa, and is more indistinguishable in the busy street. Therefore, if there is an eschatological quality to be brought to light, we must find it inside.50 After a dark passageway, we enter a bright open space. This surprising experience, which might remain unperceived or unconscious for most visitors who are not attentive to the synaesthetic qualities of the space,51 is in my view definitely reminiscent of Schwarz’s dome of light, in which one is taken in, especially in contrast with the darkness and confinement of the entrance. So, the first spatial configuration is actually this vision that Schwarz thought was impossible to build. Let us hang in there for a while. Indeed, McFee would speak here of hang energy: “We are formed as those who can listen for the still small voice leading and guiding us, able simply to ‘be’ present, steeped in awe-filled moments, guiding others to the presence of the ever-mysterious God.”52 Similar to the beneficial hangmoments in St Gregory of Nyssa, this Parisian church is propitious for contemplative listening. The smooth, diffuse light falling in from the glass wall helps to create the right atmosphere for contemplation and stillness. The elliptic configuration of the pews around the central altar is a prominent expression of Schwarz’s ring, very similar to how the rotunda is used in St Gregory of Nyssa. Nave and sanctuary are not separated in a familiar basilical way, but the sanctuary is enclosed within the nave, it is the sacred heart that transfigures the assembly into the Body of Christ. One could even imagine that the main rhythmic pattern displayed in this building is shape energy: there is order, balance, symmetry, clarity, repetition, moderation, and clearly defined functional zones. The white, cubic Carrara-marble altar is so much moved to the center that people seem reduced to mere unmoving observers. At least, this is the extent of what we think we see when not looking at the architecture through the lens of living liturgy. But then we miss the mysteries it mediates! And we might dismiss it all together as mere shades of grey without embodied sensuousness, without imagination, such as the movie was dismissed in relation to the popular erotic novel. It is surprisingly wonderful to see how the static ring breaks open as a Schwarzian open ring at the penitential and doxological rites, appropriately during 50

51 52

This being said, the marble plates are lit at night and thus shed mysterious Light on the streets. But the eschatological dimension of this church is definitely not reduced to this playful feature. I discuss synaesthetic space as the primary dimension addressed to the individual body in Spiritus loci, 161–202. McFee, “Primal Patterns”, 154.

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Kyrie and Gloria. This is an extraordinary example of communitarian appropriation of the space. At this moment during the Eucharistic liturgy, all present – clergy and laity – turn their bodies towards the cross of glory and the luminous garden: the ring of people remains open, at the same time defining the open space as absolutely sacred. According to Schwarz, the open ring is a “bleeding form,” which “shows that wherever the earthly form breaks off prematurely, God begins.”53 The golden cross is in fact a cross of glory, because it does not carry the crucified, and thus becomes the eschatological sign of the victorious Christ who comes at the end of times. By orienting themselves bodily, by moving their bodies together, in a kind of very subtle swing energy in McFee’s suggestive terms, the gathering of individuals is silently, bodily, boldly, playfully, sensuously, and without a word formed, shaped, and incorporated into one Body, one worshipping community oriented towards the cross, recognizing their creaturely limitedness and giving glory to the saving Creator. They are, to take another of Schwarz’s plans, configured as one People of God on a way that ends in God. Together, they are in expectation oriented towards the cross, towards the light, and towards the garden: a perfect eschatological symbol for the new creation and a reminder of the garden of Eden. The luminous garden with the cross of glory is a spatial symbol of the liturgical (not the geographical) Oriens or East, the eschatological already but not yet. This heavenly garden of paradise is already visible through the glass, but not yet within our reach: it is not physically accessible. During this moment of the liturgy, the worshipping community allows emptiness to break their enclosed ring open. Schwarz warned that a ring would not lead eventually to an unhealthy opposition between laity and clergy (what often can be experienced in basilical churches). That is why his way-form situates the presider walking in front of the community, that is, oriented as well towards the liturgical East. In an open ring, presider and assembly are all together oriented toward the emptiness. Schwarz argued that “this invasion of emptiness is not meaningless annihilation: it is the beginning of growth into the light.”54 In St François de Molitor, this emptiness is made sacred through the implicit symbols of garden and light and the explicit symbol of the cross of glory, but most of all through the embodied appropriation of the community, in their orientation towards this sacred focus, every time again making this center sacred at the same time as being themselves formed into and defined as an expecting community. Let me now quickly review the other plans of Schwarz’s theory. In St François de Molitor, a timid axis mundi is suggested in the circular opening above the altar, but at no moment during the Eucharistic liturgy does Schwarz’s chalice of light 53 54

Schwarz, The Church Incarnate, 77. Ibid.

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come explicitly to the fore, probably due to the overpowering symbol of the luminous garden. Schwarz’s dark chalice, emphasizing God’s mysterious and threatening silence, may be evoked during evening celebrations, where the garden is clad in darkness, which is particularly apt for Good Friday and Easter Vigil celebrations. Another image for the dark chalice is the tabernacle, with its twelve Pentecostal flames, placed as the only light source in a dark chapel oriented towards the geographical East. In contrast to St Gregory of Nyssa, the main energy patterns that are present are shape and hang energy. But I have suggested swing energy in the bodily move of the community during the penitential rites. One could also find interactive swing energy in the communitarian singing: this is yet another fundamental feature that one only perceives through repeated, embodied participation. The spatial ringconfiguration (that at first sight only fosters shape energy) helps enormously for this swing energy to be felt, because this subtle form of energy can only be perceived by and in one community. Together with hang-energy it is essential for communitarian ‘body-building’. In St François de Molitor, the choir is situated in the ring, near the altar, and no clear distinctions separate the choir from the rest of the assembly. Playful, interactive swing energy would not be felt were only the choir singing and the assembly reduced to mere listening but not participating observers. Lastly, let me finish with a brief word on thrust energy. If McFee is right about the necessity of all four forms of energy for community-building, and I believe she is, where would we find thrust energy in our Western celebrations anyway? She defines it as invigorating power that shapes us into “people who come to their feet, who are ready for action, inspired for action.”55 Thrust energy seems totally absent (and perhaps unnecessary) in St François de Molitor, because there is no room for processional movements. However, I suggest that it might be felt during an energetic and moving homily, for instance, or in passionate proclamation. Our communities deserve this as well. Let us enrich our drowsy celebrations! In conclusion, what at first sight might appear a static and closed configuration of a shape-patterned ring, and thus emphasizing the “architecture of immanence” of a domus ecclesiae, reveals the inherent transcendent dimension of a domus Dei or open ring during the swing-patterned penitential rites. Again, the architecture has to be analyzed through the lens of the particular liturgy of a local Church. This enriches the theological lex credendi, in this case especially the eschatological imagination – or expectation, symbolized by the luminous garden and the cross of glory.

55

McFee, “Primal Patterns”, 153.

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Body-building or Communitarian Appropriation?

Architecture plays an essential role in liturgical praxis. Much depends on the ethos of the communities, and thus on the appropriation of architectural space, in order for it to mediate mystery and become truly living liturgy. Both case studies have demonstrated that the issue at hand is eschatological: how do our places of worship today mediate the mystery that our world is already saved but does not yet coincide with the Kingdom of God? How can both ‘shades of color’ and ‘shades of grey’ be fundamentally ‘shades of Light’? This question, I guess, corresponds with the fundamental critique of the aforementioned authors against ‘relativist space.’ Thus, both approaches converge in their question, although not in their conclusions. My method for answering this question was simple: examining how parish communities appropriate their spaces during ordinary Sunday worship reveals in the diverse rhythms of their spatial configurations an embodied eschatological vision of the Kingdom, be it a swinging dance or common orientation – both sensuously engaging the individual body in order to be configured as communitarian body. Both case studies do so in different ways: on the one hand, through colorful imagery, lavish decoration, and communitarian dance (‘shades of color’); on the other hand, through sacred emptiness, noble simplicity, and embodied prayer (‘shades of grey’). Both are contemporary examples of how a lex edificandi can correspond to and even foster the well-known lex orandi, lex credendi axiom. Both are contemporary examples of how the individual and communitarian body is engaged through the ‘trialogue’ between architecture, theology, and liturgy. It is only in the liturgy that church architecture is rightly understood as bearing theological meaning. For instance, the colorful fresco of the ‘communion of saints’ in St Gregory of Nyssa could be appealing or not (as part of the lex edificandi), but only receives its full theological meaning (lex credendi) when a worshipping community is effectively dancing around the altar-table (lex orandi), mimicking their heavenly dance, as such uniting Terrestrial and Celestial Church in one embodied vision of the eschatological Kingdom. In the same way, in St François de Molitor, the luminous garden with the cross of glory (as part of the lex edificandi) only receives its full theological meaning (lex credendi) when a worshipping community is effectively (bodily) oriented by this liturgical Oriens of the expected Savior (lex orandi). The same could be said about the stairway to heaven in Paul Böhm’s definitely ‘shades of grey’ St Theodor in Cologne-Vingst (2002) or the cross of glory and the tapestries of the ‘communion of saints’ in Rafael Moneo’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles (2002), because these images participate in the lex edificandi by their spatial orientation, mimicking the worshipping community.

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Even though sacred art appears to be in crisis today, some symbolic imagery comes theologically ‘alive’ in the liturgy – and, as lived liturgy, mediates mystery. These images define as much the liturgical space that they overflow the limits of their two-dimensionality in order to incorporate the liturgy by their tridimensional (or spatial) theology. In this article, I have only focused on particular images that receive a precise eschatological dimension in the liturgies celebrated. Sure, this is an imaginative way of understanding eschatology. Without a doubt, the eschatological imagination opened by these “effectively enacted utopias” lays bare the ‘futurity,’ or eternal depth, of the present – a hope our broken world longs for. With this modest contribution, I hope to have countered both the harsh critique and the common opinion that contemporary churches are mere “shades of grey” – uninspiring, empty containers or multipurpose areas that mediate no sense of mystery and induce no lived liturgy. There is no need to go back to the Gothic style in order to convey transcendence. As an exercise in practical theology, I have written for any users of churches (visitors and worshippers), merely pointing out the embodied theology of our celebrations, already present by being bodily and sensuously present, by moving, acting, and celebrating. Our liturgical places should be more than mere empty rooms for gathering, more than mere ‘shades of grey,’ more than multipurpose areas – even though some ad hoc places can occasionally be lived as extraordinary eschatological heterotopias or ‘shades of Light.’56 What have we gained with this short excursion in the living liturgies of contemporary church architecture? Both case studies, one European and Roman Catholic and the other American and Episcopalian, have proven very different, but also complementary eye-openers for parish communities today who wish to appropriate their buildings and discover their inherent potential. Both hermeneutic instruments, one from a European Roman Catholic architect and the other from an American Methodist liturgist, have proven very different as well, but also complementary tools for parish communities today. In short, this excursion has not led to a dismissal of the shades of grey of contemporary architecture as relativist space, but has reinstated the need for symbolic foci, such as the frescos and the wooden sigma-altar in St Gregory of Nyssa and the marble altar, cross of glory, 56

I remember a nurse recalling the impacting experience of a Christmas Eucharist celebrated in the most ordinary and grey hall of the hospital instead of the tiny chapel. For special occasions, it is good to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, precisely in order to light up the inherent Kingdom already embedded in our world. A Eucharistic celebration is capable of transforming any place into a Eucharistic space if people are willing to enter the mysteries celebrated and appropriate them by living the liturgy. At regular times, our ordinary liturgical rhythm needs such compelling, extraordinary celebrations in order to be in touch again – albeit temporarily – with the bare essence of the mysteries we hope to mediate and the liturgies we attempt to live. It is precisely an architect who emphasized that liturgy does not need architecture: “Die Liturgie braucht den Kirchenbau nicht.” Rudolf Schwarz, Kirchenbau: Welt vor der Schwelle (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1960), 43.

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and luminous garden in St François de Molitor. Furthermore, it has reinstated the need for kinetic and flexible dynamism, and the discovery of the multiple energy patterns and spatial configurations that a specific space can display, for enriching communitarian appropriation. Most of all, this excursion has led to one clear message to our parish communities: the more the ‘shades of grey’ of our churches are appropriated by the living liturgies of our individual and communitarian bodies, the richer the mysteries they mediate and the more they are true shades of eschatological Light.

Liturgy as Sacramental Mystery Incarnating Grace in the Space of Worldly Vulnerability

Philip J. Rossi, S.J.

1.

Vulnerability: Obstacle or Invitation?

In his magisterial work, A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has argued that belief in a transcendent, personal, and providential God, which had been the “default position” interwoven into the social imaginary1 – “the ways in which [people] imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others” – of the dominant Christian culture of the West for more than a millennium, has now become a “contested” option. Belief in the God of Jesus Christ is now just one of many points of reference on offer for the moral and spiritual orientation of human lives. Taylor further argues that this shift occurred during the course of modernity in consequence of complex historical processes that have brought about widespread cultural entrenchment of an altered social imaginary he terms “the immanent frame.” The immanent frame has been constituted by a constellation of interlocking cosmic, social and moral orders of self-sufficient explanation, justification, and practice. It circumscribes all value and meaning into naturalistic terms that are entirely “this-worldly.” It thus provides no space for meaning, value, or reference other than what emerges from the constructive activities of human intelligence working within the confines of what is empirically accessible and measurable.2 This natu1

2

He more fully defines a “social imaginary” as “the ways in which [people] imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations which are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations,” Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 171; see Chapter 4, “Modern Social Imaginaries,” 159–211 and Modern Social Imaginaries, Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2004, for detailed discussions of this concept. “Empirically accessible,” of course, admits of a range of construals, some of which allow “religious experience” to fall within the scope of accessibility. The construal I am offering here, particularly with respect to what I later term the most “stringent” form of the immanent frame, is one for which such claims fall outside what counts as empirically accessible. I have tried to indicate this restrictive construal by the additional qualifier “measurable.”

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ralistic circumscription relegates to the periphery of meaningful and credible discourse those ways of speaking that issue from religious modes of belief and practice, such as the monotheisms of the Abrahamic traditions, which affirm as divine an active, personal reality that transcends the constructive capacities of human intelligence upon empirical data; such a naturalistic perspective allows those modes of belief and practice a status that makes them, at best, historically contingent cultural practices properly confined to the sphere of what is “private” or, at worst, forms of illusion that have all too often been sources of destructive social conflict. Concomitant with this eclipse of the transcendent has been the valorization of instrumental reason as the primary mode for engaging the impingements that the workings of the world’s contingency make upon the vulnerabilities of our human condition and for shaping our human sociality in terms of voluntarily undertaken relations.3 A crucial element in the valorization of instrumental reason has been an ever-deepening reliance on its power to extend human control over the full range of forces that impinge, curtail, or frustrate the achievement of the objects of our human projects. This sphere of instrumental control thus encompasses efforts to lessen and even eliminate the human vulnerabilities that render us subject to the impingement of the forces of the world that run athwart our purposes. In consequence, vulnerability stands within the immanent frame as an embarrassing consequence of our finitude, one that appropriate applications of instrumental reason should eventually enable us to overcome. Over against the immanent frame’s perspective on vulnerability as an obstacle to be overcome, I will be proposing a counter-perspective upon vulnerability. From this counter-perspective, vulnerability is not an obstacle simply to be removed but provides instead a fundamental locus in which we are invited to enact a mutual welcoming central to our commitment to one another in human solidarity. My proposal will be articulated as an argument that this counterperspective on vulnerability is central to the enactment of Christian liturgy: Liturgical enactment and participation enables us to transform our seeing of our human vulnerability, as it is embedded in the interplay of contingency, from an obstacle to our purposes to an invitation to the most profound human solidarity. Liturgy empowers a transformative seeing of our vulnerabilities in a way that the naturalism of the immanent frame all too often blocks. As a consequence of this transformation, we no longer see them as obstacles to human purposes; they instead now stand before us as markers of a human solidarity, which have been enfolded within the heal-

3

An important marker of the latter is the significant role that contractual models of the human social order have played in the political theories that articulate the moral structure of modern democratic institutions.

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ing and elevating graciousness of what is enacted in and by the Word who became incarnate into human vulnerability. My argument for this will proceed by tracking the significance of our human vulnerabilities along two trajectories. Along one trajectory lies the important, but highly contested status that our human vulnerabilities and the contingencies that bear upon them have within the social imaginary of modernity. The immanent frame has brought the contingencies that bear upon our enfleshed human vulnerability into a focus as a fundamental condition of our humanity. Yet a disenchanted world leaves our vulnerabilities bereft of any protection from the impingements of contingency, save those we can devise on the basis of our instrumental reason. As a result, our enfleshed vulnerability is fiercely contested in multiple ways, particularly with respect to its bearing upon our self-understanding as human and upon the relationships we have to one another amid the world’s contingencies. Along the second trajectory I will be tracking an understanding of liturgy as the locus for God’s abundant empowering enactment of grace, in and upon our human vulnerabilities and the contingencies impinging upon them. This gracing sustains a community of abiding welcome that is constituted in the Spirit by the now-risen crucified Lord Jesus, who entered incarnate into human vulnerability. Accordingly, liturgy may be understood as a shared practice that affirms, celebrates, and expresses God’s initiative of “being with us” as fully incarnate in the contingencies of enfleshed human vulnerability and continuing to abide with us as empowering Spirit. These two trajectories will then converge at the end in terms of an account of the transformative seeing of our vulnerabilities that liturgy empowers as the space of mutual welcoming that is enacted in and through the vulnerability of the incarnate Jesus as the Pascal Mystery of divine love.

2.

Vulnerability as Obstacle: The Immanent Frame and the Eclipse of Grace

The trajectory that the immanent frame imparts to its construal of human vulnerability – i.e., as an obstacle to be eliminated – arises as part of the dynamics of its naturalist veto upon anything other than what we can account for in terms of inner worldly explication and validation. In the process of “disenchantment” characteristic of modernity, the language and forms of scientific conceptualization displaced modes of explanation appealing to forces working within the world

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from a sphere of reality different from the empirically accessible.4 This “naturalist veto” also involves the erosion and loss of any semantics of intrinsic meaning indexing the nature, operation, and place of things to inner finalities that give the world its order. The naturalism of the immanent frame thus stands far removed from the pre-modern naturalism of an Aristotelian world in which a “nature” may be correctly and aptly described in terms of the finalities, both internal and external, that express the principle giving order to its activity. For the immanent frame finality has become otiose as a language of explanation, save for some residual usefulness it may have as shorthand for ends and purposes that agents intentionally adopt. One major consequence of the naturalist veto that the immanent frame places upon our construal of inner worldly interaction (including the exercise of our own human agency) is that it provides a context for the intelligibility and plausibility of reductive accounts of the human and humanity’s relation to the cosmos. In such accounts, reference to the transcendent or to grace, or to an order in which spirit may be conceptualized as a constitutive element of the human, plays no part. The immanent frame – particularly at its most stringent – thereby provides little conceptual, grammatical, or imaginative space for articulating a discourse of the spiritual with respect to our own human identity; neither does it provide space for a graced ordering of the world that exceeds the “natural” and expresses the enacted worldly presence of God – let alone for a discourse of such grace instantiated as sacramentum, i.e., as “visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation.”5 George Steiner has cogently expressed the momentous importance that this change in the construal of the natural has had for the formative dynamics of modernity: “It is this break of the covenant between word and world which constitutes one of the very few genuine revolutions of spirit in Western history, and which defines modernity itself.”6 Steiner’s remark is also fraught with implications for construing the role and importance that liturgical and sacramental practice has with respect to the social imaginary of the immanent frame: Inasmuch as liturgy’s inner dynamic rests upon the very covenant of meaning between word and world that modernity has breached, it can play a key role in constituting possibilities for renewing this covenant in and for the immanent frame. This role, I will be arguing in the next section, is constituted by how and what liturgy enables us to see inscribed in the human vulnerability in which we stand with one another before the contingencies of the world. Liturgy provides us with a capacity for seeing our vulnerability in its 4

5 6

This often functions within what Taylor calls “subtraction stories” in which religion declines in direct relation to developments in scientific understanding; see A Secular Age, 25– 28, 31–41. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 774. George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 93. Emphasis original.

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receptivity for the enactment of a graced Paschal transformation upon us. In that transformation our vulnerability is moved along a trajectory in which it now becomes a locus of welcome into communion with God and with one another. Liturgy reminds us how our vulnerabilities inherently point us to the human solidarity and interdependence that has been taken up and transformed salvifically in the incarnate enactment of God’s Word into the contingencies of the world. How liturgy does so by enacting these transformative possibilities as the space in which grace may be discerned in the immanent frame will be then be the focus of the fourth section.

3.

Vulnerability as Invitation: Liturgy and the Enactment of the Discourse of Grace

The larger account that Taylor provides of the emergence of the this-worldly social imaginary of the immanent frame seems to exclude any meaningful placement of transcendence, or of human relation to the transcendent, within a culture of secularity. It might thus appear that an effort to render intelligible to such a culture the language and the workings of grace as they function in the contexts of sacramental and liturgical activity should be secondary to the larger project of making credible an affirmation of divine transcendence and of spirit as a constitutive element of the human. Liturgical and sacramental practices are deeply interwoven into the fabric of Christian belief. As a result, it might appear that attentiveness to the ‘gracing’ they enact is a function of already standing with the ambit of the community’s prior encounter with God’s self-revelation, as both transcendent and immanent – a fundamental point that the immanent frame contests. Since liturgical and sacramental language and practice function in a frame of reference that already stands counter to the naturalistic closure of the immanent frame, it might seem an unlikely place from which to launch an effort to render a discourse of grace intelligible for the naturalistic social imaginary of the immanent frame. I am suggesting otherwise. We need not wait upon a more encompassing response to the challenge the immanent frame poses to affirming the transcendence of the self-revealing God confessed by Christian faith in order to render intelligible the grace that is enacted and encountered in sacramental and liturgical practice. I am proposing, instead, that liturgy, as the locus of the Church’s transformative enactment of the life-giving signification of grace, can itself play a key role in marking out spaces of meaning from which the discourse of grace and transcendence may effectively speak to the cultures of secularity. This is so be-

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cause liturgy transforms the meaning of the spaces of our human vulnerability within the same dynamics of contingency that, for the immanent frame, loom as an unavoidable and sometimes dreaded marker of the fragility of our human condition. In that transformation, what had been spaces of dread become, in view of liturgical and sacramental enactment, spaces of divine and human welcome and communion. Liturgy invites us to enact a transformative understanding of what it is to be human, one that enables us to see our vulnerabilities exhibiting a depth to our human mutuality that the immanent frame’s atomist and voluntarist account of human identity and relationality renders almost invisible. Liturgy allows us to see this depth insofar as it invites us to acknowledge our vulnerability as the locus of the Incarnate God’s Paschal enactment of what Taylor calls the “first mystery”: “God’s initiative […] to enter, in full vulnerability, the heart of the [human] resistance [to God], to be among humans, offering participation in the divine life.” 7 Liturgy is thus the locus for acknowledging that the “being with us” in which the Incarnate Word has taken on the full measure of human vulnerability even unto death now empowers us to stand with the Crucified and Risen One in communion and solidarity with one another. Locating liturgy with respect to its fundamental bearing upon our human vulnerability thus opens possibilities for a transformative engagement with the immanent frame inasmuch as that same vulnerability, as it is deeply inscribed in our human condition, has become, particularly in late modernity, an unavoidable yet destabilizing vector in determining the moral orientation of the immanent frame. At issue is the meaning and significance of the human in the face of the contingencies that manifest, often enough in devastating and deeply destructive ways, how fully we are immersed in vulnerability. The naturalism of the immanent frame, moreover, has raised the ante for what is at stake for us in our vulnerability. From its perspective there is (and was) no God to hold accountable either for our vulnerabilities or for the contingencies that impinge upon them. As Susan Neiman has noted, in an account of the disenchantment of the natural that resonates with Taylor’s, the human vulnerabilities that become manifest in a world in which the inner workings of nature are devoid of purpose and stand indifferent, at best, to human well being now mark a major point of moral fracture within and for the intellectual culture of modernity.8 Her trope for this fracture between the disenchanted natural world of all that is and our moral aspirations to make it into the world it ought to be is compelling: 7 8

Taylor, A Secular Age, 654. “If the events that determined the twentieth century left contemporary experience fractured, any conception of reason that can be salvaged must reflect fracture itself,” Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 327.

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“Homeless.” She remarks, “The gap between nature and freedom, is and ought, conditions all human existence […] Integrity requires affirming the dissonance and conflict at the heart of experience. It means recognizing that we are never, metaphysically, at home in the world.”9 This fracture is all the more challenging when it becomes apparent that we are all too often no better than nature in our indifference to these vulnerabilities and their consequences. Having first disenchanted the workings of the world of nature into indifference to human purposes, we have proved ourselves no better at providing for one another a small space of respite in which to attend to the wounds and the scars that ensue from the workings of contingency upon our vulnerabilities.10 In the context of the central role that instrumental reason has been accorded by the immanent frame for shaping our response to the contingencies of the world, exercising control over the world emerges as a core strategy for protecting our vulnerabilities against the ravages of things gone wrong in the spaces of worldly contingency. Yet, as both Taylor and Neiman point out, much of the testimony of the human history that has unfolded in the wake of increasing human instrumental capacity to direct and alter the working of the world to human purposes seems to belie the promise of overcoming the contingencies that heedlessly impinge upon our vulnerabilities. Our efforts to ward off such impingement all too often bring in their wake further impingements – and those latter may be of at least as much consequence as the ones we originally hoped to ward off.11 Articulating both an adequate moral understanding of and an appropriate response to these vulnerabilities within the disenchanted context of modernity thus marks out a crucial field of contention over the fundamental shape and significance of human experience and engagement with the world and its contingencies as it has emerged in modernity.12 On this field, it should thus not be surprising that one major line of combat has formed around the salient in which the dis9 10

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Ibid., 80. Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought, 236–237, aptly notes with respect to the consequences that follow for our self-understanding of our own humanity from a disenchantment that renders the world indifferent to human aspirations: “Science may have abolished the sense that the world is inhabited by forces with wills of their own, and in this way reduced the unheimlich. But the price is enormous, for all of nature stands condemned. Human beings themselves become walking indictments of creation.” Cf. Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought, 73–75. With respect to the workings of contingency, she poignantly observes on p. 74 that, “Small dreams are no surer to become true than great ones, and either can become nightmare in the blink of an eye.“ Taylor sees this as a “three, perhaps ultimately, four-cornered battle” within which there are a variety of ad hoc alliances that can form among the three major contenders for the legacy of modernity (or its remnants) that Taylor identifies: neo-Nietzscheans, acknowledgers of transcendence, and variously configured defenders of secular humanism. See Charles Taylor, “A Catholic Modernity?” in Dilemmas and Connections (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 180.

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course of ‘rights’ has been put in place as the primary bulwark of protection against threats to basic human vulnerabilities. Taylor considers the articulation of the discourse of rights to be one of the major moral achievements of modernity; yet he also argues that the secular discourse of rights, particularly when its protective function is framed through a procedural syntax that avoids substantive claims about what constitutes the human, has too often proved a clumsy instrument for protecting our most fundamental human vulnerabilities as they are affected both by the contingencies of the workings of nature and the vagaries of human intentionality and action.13 The contingencies of the world that most strikingly manifest our vulnerabilities – such as severe life-time physical disabilities or affective incapacities, in large and small dislocations of people in consequence of war, civil unrest, economic instability, or natural disaster – often do so in ways that stretch to and beyond the limits of the capacity of the chief moral sources that the immanent frame recognizes, justice and benevolence, to move us to respond in timely, appropriate, and effective ways to those affected by them.14 Taylor notes the ironic consequences that have followed in the wake of modernity’s construal of these moral sources as the “hypergoods”15 that trump all others in efforts to fend off the ravages of contingency. However noble the ideals these hypergoods have inspired, they have also had enormous power to distort, dominate and crush: “The Kharkov famine and the Killing Fields were perpetrated by atheists in an attempt to realize the most lofty ideals of human perfection.”16 Taylor’s account echoes Foucault’s insight into “the ways in which high ethical and spiritual ideas are often interwoven with exclusions and relations of domination.”17 In the absence of the recognition that we are linked in mutuality through our shared human condition of vulnerability, benevolence and compassion, as Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky both recognized, all too readily become masks for a contemptuous pity. 13

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“In public debates standards that are unprecedentedly stringent are put forward in respect of these norms and are not openly challenged. We are meant to be concerned for the life and well being of all humans on the face of the earth … we subscribe to universal declarations of rights … But it is a quite different thing to be moved by a strong sense that human beings are eminently worth helping or treating with justice, a sense of their dignity or value,” Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 515. “Is the naturalist affirmation [of benevolence] conditional on a vision of human nature in the fullness of its health and strength? Does it move us to extend our help to the irremediably broken, such as the mentally handicapped, those dying without dignity, fetuses with genetic defects?” Taylor, Sources of the Self, 517. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 63: “Hypergoods” are “goods that are not only incomparably more important than others but provide the standpoint from which these must be weighed, judged and decided about.” Ibid., 518–519. Ibid., 518.

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4.

Liturgy: Grace as Transformative Seeing

The criticism that Taylor offers of the crushing power of lofty ideals resonates with some of the bleaker postmodern accounts of our human moral circumstances. It stands here, however, as an important coordinate for this essay’s constructive proposal that liturgy can play a significant role in rendering the discourse of grace intelligible for a culture shaped by the immanent frame, particularly by helping to enlarge its capacity to engage our human vulnerability not simply as an obstacle to be overcome but rather as a fundamental marker of a mutuality that calls us to solidarity with one another. He suggests that what is needed to move beyond the dilemma that hypergoods pose to the naturalism of the immanent frame is not resignation to the conclusion “that the highest spiritual aspirations must lead to mutilation or destruction” (or, as he puts it more concretely, that we have to choose “between various kinds of spiritual lobotomy and self-inflicted wounds”).18 What is needed instead is a transformative seeing that alters how we see and value our human condition of vulnerability as it is embedded in the fractured interplay of contingency: “[A] transformation of our stance towards the world whereby our vision of it is changed.”19 On Taylor’s account there is a “double-sidedness” to such a transformative seeing: Both the one seeing and what is seen are mutually implicated in the transformation effected in the “seeing.” Acknowledgment of the possibility of such mutual transformation, he argues, is not peculiarly modern. This genealogical point is of particular significance for my argument in that the lineage of this modern dynamic of transformation can be traced back to earlier understandings of the working of grace: “In fact, the notion of a transformation of our stance towards the world whereby our vision of it is changed has traditionally been connected with the notion of grace.”20 In the case of our vulnerabilities, how does the transformative seeing that liturgy provides alter our understanding of our human condition of vulnerability? More specifically, how would the transformative seeing that discerns them as a primary locus of grace within the space of the contingencies of the world – which, I am proposing, is the transformative seeing that liturgy enables for us – thus bring about a self-transformation through which we could now respond to them in appropriate ways? My proposal here is that such a transformative seeing is one that empowers us to see our vulnerabilities in a way that the naturalism of the immanent frame all too often blocks: To see them as the good that they are in the sight of God’s graciousness. This is to see them as the locus of the enactment of a transformative good effected liturgically and sacramentally in them and through 18 19 20

Taylor, Sources of the Self, 520–521. Ibid., 449. Ibid.

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them by the Word who became incarnate into human vulnerability so that our human vulnerability becomes the very locus of the Paschal mystery that thoroughly redeems the entirety of creation. To the extent that liturgy provides a frame of reference for a transformed engagement with human vulnerability, it constitutes an open space from which to begin an effort to render a discourse of grace intelligible for a culture of secularity at a point fraught with particular significance for the immanent frame. Secular culture – or at least significant parts of it – has had to grapple with the reality and significance of our human vulnerability to the full array of the world’s contingencies, including those we bring upon ourselves – yet it finds no clear space for seeing it as good. This same vulnerability is a central feature of our human reality that the enactment of the liturgy and the workings of the sacramental order present to us as the space for the workings of God’s graciousness. In sacrament and liturgy we are empowered to see our vulnerabilities as good in that they become the locus of communion with God and with one another. These vulnerabilities are the locus of the Paschal mystery enacted in Jesus; they are nothing less than the locus in which we encounter God’s most profound gracing of ourselves and from which we are invited to enact this gracing for one another. Liturgy as the Church’s enactment of the mystery of God’s transcendent graciousness thus makes that transformative graciousness present by drawing us deeper into the human vulnerability that the now-risen Crucified One shares with all of us. In drawing our vulnerability into the life-giving Paschal enactment at the center of the liturgy, we encounter God’s graciousness as transformative of our capacities for a mutual entrusting of our vulnerabilities into one another’s hearts and hands. This scope of this transformation is such that Bruce Morrill can aptly remark that “The scandal of the cross has passed over into the scandal of the Church, that is, into the stupefying claim that in such ordinary, limited, and sinful people as ourselves God is revealing God’s unbounded love, mercy, and forgiveness for the world.” 21 Liturgy thus enacts a community transformed by God’s graciousness into a space of abiding welcome into which we may bring any and all of the vulnerabilities that have been inscribed into our lives. A key element in this construal of liturgy is that it takes the human vulnerability we share with one another and that the crucified and risen Jesus Christ has taken upon himself to be an appropriate lens through which we may discern the liturgical enactment of grace in its power to form and sustain a community of welcome. Through this lens we are empowered to see our human vulnerability as good. Through the enacted vulnerability of the incarnate Jesus as the Pascal Mystery of divine love our human vulnerability becomes the locus in which we en21

Bruce Morrill, “Hidden Presence: The Mystery of the Assembly as Body of Christ,” Liturgical Ministry 11 (2002): 33.

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counter God’s gracing, in and from which we are invited to grace one another. I have already indicated that, to the extent that the immanent frame seems unavoidably drawn to attend to the challenges that our vulnerability presents to our self-understanding and to the scope of our responsibility to one another, our vulnerability may provide an especially rich locus for articulating a discourse of grace in and for a culture of secularity. Liturgical practice that enables seeing and engaging our vulnerabilities as the locus in which the good and grace of salvation is encountered and in which we stand in welcome to one another may enable a secular culture to notice, perhaps to its surprise, that the graciousness of God’s transcendence has already entered and is at work even in the immanent frame.

5.

Coda: Vulnerability and a Renewed “Seeing” of Transcendence

Let me conclude this discussion by elaborating further on one dimension of human vulnerability that makes it an appropriate, but nonetheless challenging, locus for which liturgy, in enacting and sustaining a community of welcome in the midst of our vulnerabilities, may serve as a context from which to render the discourse of grace intelligible within the immanent frame. This dimension is coordinated to the self-involving transformative seeing noted earlier that provides the structure of what Taylor calls the “languages of personal resonance” and that he construes as an enactment of grace. This indicates that one significant way that liturgy can help to make grace intelligible in a secular age: It enables us to (re)-construe transcendence, as encountered as the mystery of God’s graciousness in the liturgical activity of the church, in the light of what Taylor describes as the distinctive tonality that the immanent frame of modernity gives to the grammar of “self transformation”22 as it is articulated in these languages of personal resonance.23 He 22

23

It is important in this context to understand two dimensions of “self-transformation.” In the first instance it is a transformation in which the self is an object of transformation: it is the self that is transformed, whatever the agency of that transformation may be. In the second instance, the self participates in its own transformation; it is this second instance that modernity has highlighted, but, as Taylor points out, this does not necessitate (as some influential modern accounts of the self would have it) that the self is the sole agent of its own transformation. Grace is an invitation to human cooperation. For a more extended discussion, see Philip J. Rossi, S.J., “Divine Transcendence and the ‘Languages of Personal Resonance’: The Work of Charles Taylor and a Resource for Spirituality in an Era of Post-Modernity,” in Theology and Conversation, eds. J. Haers – P. De Mey (Leuven: Peeters-Leuven University Press 2003), 783–794 and “Seeing Good in a World of Suffering: Incarnation as God’s Transforming Vision,” in Godhead Here in Hiding: Incarnation

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indexes these languages to their function in enabling a self-involving transformative seeing of good: They articulate “the search for moral sources outside the subject through languages that resonate within him or her, the grasping of an order which is inseparably indexed to a personal vision.”24 He sees such languages providing a specific marker of a new dimension of the human spirit emergent in modernity, viz., they effect an imaginative transformation of our own possibilities for “seeing good” in ourselves that then transforms all that we see as good. Taylor’s point here thus suggests how the transformative seeing of our vulnerability that liturgy enables – i.e., seeing it as a locus inviting us to a deeper engagement in human mutuality and solidarity – also enables us to “see” transcendence differently. Such a transformed “seeing” of transcendence opens a possibility for subverting and destabilizing the account of transcendence standardly proposed from within the immanent frame, in which transcendence stands in overwhelmingly threatening otherness to the fragility of our finite human condition. Liturgy, as has been noted above, enables us to see our vulnerability as the locus of the saving enactment of the Paschal mystery, rather than as the field on which we encounter the capricious randomness of the contingencies of an indifferent nature or the overbearing otherness of transcendence; it does so precisely in view of the community’s profession that the One who is transcendence became incarnate in human vulnerability and now enables us in the Spirit to welcome one another in all our particular vulnerabilities. Liturgy may thus be taken to enact a selfinvolving transformative seeing that effects a communal counterpart to what Taylor describes as the function of languages of personal resonance. On Taylor’s account the mode of the transformative activity of languages of personal resonance has its deepest roots in a dynamic of grace. Languages of personal resonance provide, moreover, a creative variation, set in a register that is at once imaginative and conceptual, of a central theme in the immanent frame’s construal of our self-identity: The responsibility we each have for the shape we give to our actions and the direction we give to our lives, of which one highly influential form was articulated in Kant’s concept of autonomy. Even as Taylor emphasizes the distinctively modern tonality of such “languages of personal resonance” as coming from within, he acknowledges that their power as transformative does not come simply from within oneself. The creative tonality of these languages has its origin in a transposition, historically set in motion by Herder, of the creative activity of God’s Word to the constructive activity of human words.25 Taylor thus considers it appropriate to articulate their transformative power in

24 25

and the History of Human Suffering, eds. Terrence Merrigan and Frederik Glorieux (Leuven: Peeters Press, 2012), 453–466. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 510 See Charles Taylor, “Language and Human Nature,” in Human Agency and Language, Philosophical Papers I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 22–230.

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terms of the Creation language of Genesis, in which God’s seeing and bringing forth of good is one and the same: “On a Christian view, sanctification involves our sharing to some degree God’s love (agape) for the world, and this transforms how we see things and what else we long for or think important.”26 He contends that that this transformative power is, in a fundamental way, a gift beyond ourselves: It is not a Pelegian moral boot-strapping that effects this new “seeing.” He elaborates how this insight from John’s gospel can be expressed in a modern tonality stemming from Dostoevesky, who, brings together here a central idea of the Christian tradition, especially evident in the Gospel of John, that people are transformed through being loved by God, a love that they mediate to one another, on the one hand, with the modern notion of a subject who can help to bring on transfiguration through the stance he takes to himself and the world, on the other.27

Understood within the context of transformative seeing, liturgy becomes the locus in which we are invited to participate in the transformation which Jesus manifests, as Incarnate Logos. The Word Incarnate manifests how the “seeing good” effected in Creation is completed in a “seeing good” that, entering fully into human brokenness in all its historical particularity and remaining abidingly mindful of that brokenness, becomes a pattern for our enacting transformative healing for one another as a community in the Spirit. Participating in this transformation, moreover, enables us to attend to divine transcendence not only as made manifest in the magnificence of liturgical enactment, but – perhaps of greater importance for engaging a culture of secularity – as manifest in the humility and graciousness of the simple invitation of “take and eat … take and drink” that gathers us around the Eucharistic table. In this regard, an observation from David Power is pertinent: To grasp the significance of the exchange in bread and wine, one may need to draw attention not simply to the plenty of a table but to what the bread and the wine offer by way of glimpsing human vulnerability and brokenness; for here precisely is where the Word and Spirit enter our lives, affecting in a particular way the vulnerability of human life today in the face of multiple global forces.28

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Taylor, Sources of the Self, 70. Ibid., 452. David N. Power, OMI, “Eucharistic Justice,” in Theological Studies 67 (2006): 864. He offers a more general articulation of the principle at work in Worship, Culture and Theology (Washington: The Pastoral Press, 1990), 249: “The sacramental meaning inherent in Christian liturgy is not something added on to the nature of human experience. It is drawn out of this; it gives an orientation to the sacramental potentiality which is one with corporeal nature and the human person’s presence in the world as an integral part of it.”

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This finally brings me to the further purpose this coda serves: To gesture in a direction that suggests that there is something amiss with the line of criticism that some have offered in regard to post-Vatican II liturgical renewal and reform, i.e., that it has resulted in a diminishment or even a loss of a “sense of transcendence” that makes us aware of the majesty and glory of God and of our creaturely dependence.29 I suggest, instead, that to the extent that that liturgical renewal and reform has helped to make us more attentive to the fully human mode of vulnerability in which the Word incarnate effected the salvation of the world, it has deepened and enriched our sense of transcendence. While it is surely the case that solemn liturgical celebrations with flawlessly performed music and executed with careful attention to all the ritual prescriptions can provide a tantalizing foretaste of what it is like to stand in awe in the heavenly court of the Lord of Hosts,30 the transcendence of God has been made present in our midst not just by mighty trumpet blasts, the shaking of the earth, or fire from heaven. There is also the divine transcendence that Elijah recognized in the gentle breeze, that is enacted in the cup of water given in the Lord’s name, and that is made present when as few as two our three gather around the Eucharistic table, or when the oil of anointing graces the hands and forehead of the infirm. This is the transcendence of divine compassion, divine transcendence made manifest in the breathtaking humility of the Word become incarnate into the full vulnerability of our human condition and made present to us in the humble ministry we offer to one another as the church.31 29

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An instance of such criticism may be found in an address by Auxiliary Bishop James Conley of Denver (April, 2011) who remarks: “And yet I think many of us would agree with [Evelyn] Waugh on this point: Something has been lost. Something of the beauty and grandeur of the liturgy. Something of the reverence, the mystery, the sense of the transcendent. This has been a persistent criticism since the Council – and not only from so-called traditionalists” (http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/bishop-conley-on-the-new-translation; accessed 22 January 2015). Sancrosanctum Concilium 8, “In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, a minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle …” Cf. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate 14: “‘Worship’ itself, Eucharistic communion, includes the reality both of being loved and of loving others in turn. A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented”; Catechism 1397: “The Eucharist commits us to the poor. To receive in truth the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us, we must recognize Christ in the poorest, his brethren: ‘You have tasted the Blood of the Lord, yet you do not recognize your brother … You dishonor this table when you do not judge worthy of sharing your food someone judged worthy to take part in this meal … God freed you from all your sins and invited you here, but you have not become more merciful’” (St. John Chrysostom, Hom. in 1 Cor. 27, 4: PG 61, 229–230).

2.

The Liturgical Mediation of the totus Christus

When Christ Speaks in Us The “Whole Christ” and the Mediation of Mystery within the Liturgy

Kevin G. Grove, C.S.C.

Liturgical speech acts have Christological consequences. This study attempts to reclaim and expand upon one mode of the mediation of Christ – the “whole Christ” or totus Christus – and how it reshapes speech acts and therein the mediation of mystery within the liturgy. The totus Christus is simultaneously liturgical and systematic in origin as it evolved within Augustine’s preaching on the Psalms. It remains one of his unique contributions to Latin theology. More than simply conveying content, the very act of speaking (as well as its apophatic correlative of silence) within the totus Christus is the means by which members are drawn along to eschatological completion by their head. They are transfigured into Christ. It is important to note at the outset two contemporary but independent moments of ressourcement, which have paved the way for this study: one in Augustinian scholarship and the other in liturgical theology. In the history of Augustinian scholarship, there is an inverse relation between the advent of historical-critical biblical scholarship in general and broad theological engagement with the allegorical and figurative exegesis of Augustine. His Enarrationes in Psalmos provide a case in point. They were well known – some claim his best-known work – and widely circulated during his life and through the Middle Ages.1 In the last century, these texts were less the study of exegetes and more the subject of the history of exegesis and patristics.2 This included concepts developed through Augustine’s exegesis like the totus Christus. As Tarcisius van Bavel famously claimed, the totus Christus

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Clemens Weidemann, “Augustine’s Works in Circulation,” in A Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 431–449. Brian Daley, “Is Patristic Exegesis Still Usable? Reflections on Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms,” Communio 29, no. 1 (2002): 185–216; and Michael Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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was largely forgotten in work even on Augustine’s Christology.3 In more recent times, however, Augustine’s exegesis, including his Enarrationes in Psalmos, has become a subject of renewed importance for theological and philosophical study.4 The Enarrationes in Psalmos have been either re-translated or re-printed in both English and French in the last fifteen years.5 A new wave of scholars and their students have taken up again the Christological content of Augustine’s sermons and are treating these texts not as secondary to but alongside the thinker’s doctrinal works. Scholars like Isabelle Bochet, Maria Boulding, Michael Cameron, Michael Fiedrowicz, Paul Kolbet, and David Meconi, among others, have contributcontributed to this recovery of looking at liturgical sermons as a mode of studying Christology within Augustinian scholarship.6 The second moment is within liturgical scholarship. Quite recently, the concept of a totus Christus has re-emerged – even if only briefly – in the liturgical theology of Paul Janowiak, S.J. The Jesuit scholar of liturgy and preaching works through modes of presence in order to claim that the faithful are “standing together” in God, a phrase that forms part of the title of his most recent monograph.7 Janowiak’s scholarship does not explicate the totus Christus as a construct but his reintroduction of it provides an opportunity for a constructive rapprochement between systematics and liturgical theology since the totus Christus can be seen to be of interest to both.

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Tarcisius van Bavel described the totus Christus as a “forgotten aspect” of Augustine’s spirituality. He cites how Augustine himself considered it one of three primary modes of relation to Christ (Sermo 341, n.31 below). Tarcisius van Bavel, “The ‘Christus Totus’ Idea: A Forgotten Aspect of Augustine’s Spirituality,” Studies in Patristic Christology, eds. Thomas Finan – Vincent Twomey (Dublin: Four Courts Press, Ltd., 1998), 84–94. I mention philosophy because Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos have also been increasingly used in French phenomenology after its theological turn. This can be noted in the works of Jean-Louis Chrétien and Jean-Luc Marion. Jean-Louis Chrétien, The Unforgettable and the Unhoped for, trans. Jeffrey Bloechl (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002); and Jean-Luc Marion, In the Self’s Place: The Approach of St. Augustine, trans. Jeffrey Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). In English, Maria Boulding, OSB, re-translated the Enarrationes in Psalmos for New City Press in six volumes (2000–2004). In French, Les Éditions du Cerf re-published an old translation with a new introduction by Jean-Louis Chrétien (2007–2008). This body of literature includes: Isabelle Bochet, Saint Augustin et le désir de Dieu (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1982); Maria Boulding, trans., Expositions of the Psalms (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000); Michael Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Michael Fiedrowicz, Psalmus Vox Totius Christi: Studien zu Augustins Enarrationes in Psalmos (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1997); Paul Kolbet, Augustine and the Cure of Souls: Revising a Classical Ideal (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010); David Meconi, The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2013). I describe the development of Janowiak’s work in note 8, below.

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In light of these two moments, I will proceed as follows. I look first to the liturgical theology of Janowiak to show the totus Christus being briefly employed in terms of mediation. While this is a fine use of the concept overall, it is historically unanchored. In order to show that Augustine’s reflections that begot the concept would strengthen its function for liturgical theology, I re-narrate the evolution of the totus Christus for Augustine in terms of his Enarrationes in Psalmos – the records of sermons comprising his longest work, both in length and the number of years that it took him to complete it. By fleshing out the way in which Augustine developed a transfigurative theology of Christ speaking in his members and his members speaking in Christ, I attempt to position the totus Christus to be maximally useful in consideration of the mediation of mystery. Bringing these two areas of scholarship together reveals how the conjunction of voices of the members of a praying congregation constitutes a performative speech act in Christ. In my provisional conclusion, I bring Janowiak back into dialogue with this thicker articulation of Augustine’s totus Christus. In the conclusion proper, I suggest the ways this presents opportunities to consider the mediation of mystery in liturgical theology of embodiment as well as liturgical formation.

1.

A Fifth-Century Concept’s Reappearance in Contemporary Liturgical Theology

Although the larger aspect of this study is presenting the evolution of a patristic and systematic hermeneutic, it is helpful to begin from a moment of contact with contemporary liturgical thought. Liturgical theologian Paul Janowiak has begun using the term totus Christus, or ‘whole Christ,’ in order to speak about modes of presence.8 He identifies four such modes: the gathered assembly, the minister, the Word, and the Eucharistic species.9 He prefers to describe these as modes of a singular and indivisible presence, that of a totus Christus. This whole Christ reveals a way in which liturgical divisions might find healing in an image of a wholeness that is “relational, dialogical, and participative.”10 The whole Christ becomes the 8

9 10

Janowiak began this work in The Holy Preaching: The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000). There he analyzed the sacramental nature of both the “dynamic” text and the reading, or performance process, of the Liturgy of the Word. The generative space shared by Word, presider, and assembly prompted his considerations of Christ in the second text: Standing Together in the Community of God: Liturgical Spirituality and the Presence of Christ (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2011). Janowiak, Standing Together, x. Ibid., 204.

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primary starting point for the liturgy and has implications for everything from manner of presiding to the action of receiving the word proclaimed with sacramental immediacy. Yet, for all of the many strengths of Janowiak’s work, the ‘whole Christ’ concept remains historically unanchored while it is being used to hold together the presence of Christ at both ambo and altar, in both preacher and congregation. Augustine, while acknowledged in Janowiak’s presentation, is used only to support the members being drawn into the totus Christus by means of “the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup.”11 Perhaps surprisingly, Augustine himself came to formulate this Christological transfiguration not in Eucharistic terms, but in terms of speech acts. The totus Christus concept was a scriptural hermeneutic, not itself inherently Eucharistic in origin but emerging from praying psalms together.12 If present-day liturgical theology is to utilize fully such a concept as a description for mediated presence and mystery in our own time, it is profitable to reclaim the manner in which, for Augustine, praying the psalms together in Christ images the entire spiritual path of the Church. Thus, from this modern liturgical context, we take a turn to patristic Christology.

2.

Augmenting the Concept of Mediation by Retrieving an Augustinian Construct

The totus Christus is one of the many parts of Augustine of Hippo’s intellectual patrimony. Essentially, it emerged from a question: whose voice is speaking the text of a psalm? Augustine worked on this question for over thirty years. The sermons and notes that became his Enarrationes in Psalmos provide the liturgical location where he worked out this enquiry. The expositions provide scholars the data to chart the theological development of the totus Christus concept as it became a Christological answer to what was originally simply an exegetical question. First, it was common for patristic theologians to read the Psalms as a prophecy, in some manner, of Christ.13 Augustine is not unique in that regard. Because of 11 12

13

Janowiak, Standing Together, 201. The totus Christus antedates the fully developed corpus mysticum tradition. Though not dissimilar concepts, often scholars read the totus Christus in light of the corpus mysticum, when there are in fact real differences in the way these concepts came about and were described in sermons. Emile Mersch’s classical text on the history of the concept of the mystical body takes this approach to Augustine: The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in Scripture and Tradition (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011). Perhaps most importantly for Augustine, this was the practice of Ambrose. But Origen and others are known for reading the psalms in Christ. See A. G. Andreopoulos – A. Casiday –

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the first person voice of many of the Psalms, the texts are plastic enough in form alone to be spoken in the first person in different times and places in the liturgical prayer of both Jewish and Christian communities. These are texts which are easily and often removed from their historical Sitz im Leben because their form is so easily adaptable.14 Augustine was reading these psalms with North African communities and preaching on them, line by line, in various North African basilicas. Sometimes this happened in the context of a Eucharistic liturgy and other times not.15 For the purposes of this study, I will condense Augustine’s formation of the concept to two distinct insights. These serve to illustrate how Christ’s voice functioned in the psalms which Augustine and his congregants were praying. The first is how Augustine came to understand Christ as the speaker of the Psalms. The second treats speaking in Christ as an ongoing locus of mediation. A watershed sermon in Augustine’s own exegetical work came in his consideration of Christ, as the Word having assumed human flesh, who chooses to speak the words of Psalm 21(22): 2 from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”16 As Augustine understands, at no point was Christ forsaken by God. Thus, the cry of dereliction is a confusing choice of words. One option Augustine had would have been to separate the humanity and divinity of Christ, somehow suggesting that the humanity of Christ was crying out. The Christological consequences of this sort of thinking, however, presented far too much risk. Augustine’s earlier Manichaean days had made him particularly wary of any theological explanation that denied the created goodness of the material world, including the human body.17 His solution, then, is that when the Word took up human flesh that he also took up a human voice. He took up not only the particular flesh identifiable as the man Jesus Christ, but also the flesh of Adam, representing all of fallen flesh. He took up not only Jesus Christ’s particular human voice, but the

14

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Carol Harrison (eds.), Meditations of the heart: the Psalms in early Christian thought and practice: essays in honour of Andrew Louth (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011). Psalms have continued to be read in this way, with the first person voice opening interpretation to figuration in liturgical contexts. Concerning prayer and liturgy, see Laurence Kriegshauser, O.S.B., Praying the Psalms in Christ (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009). Concerning this way of reading the psalms from the perspective of biblical scholarship, see Gordon McConville, “Spiritual Formation in the Psalms,” in The Bible and Spirituality, eds. Andrew T. Lincoln, J. Gordon McConville, and Lloyd Pietersen (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2013), 56–74. For an introduction to the practices of and environments in which Augustine preached, see Hildegund Müller, “Preacher: Augustine and His Congregation,” A Companion to Augustine, ed. M. Vessey (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, Ltd., 2012), 297–309. Augustine’s numbering of the Psalms is given first; the Hebrew numbering is provided in parentheses. Augustine treats this matter when he describes Manichaean adherents in his Enarrationes. See, for instance, Enarrationes in Psalmos [hereafter En Ps] 140.10–12.

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voice of Adam, representing all fallen voices. And a marvelous exchange takes place: Christ speaks the cry of dereliction through human flesh to God. Christ speaks in himself, but also in Adam.18 Thus, he speaks salvation into all human flesh. This is a theological insight gained from the classical rhetorical tradition. Prosopopoeia – same root as prosopon – or face making, was a Greek term for an author’s impersonation of the voice of a character either well known or invented.19 Known as fictiones personarum in the Latin rhetorical traditions of Cicero and Quintilian, impersonation was considered a very powerful rhetorical tool. One sees through the eyes and speaks through the voice of another. Michael Cameron, a scholar of Augustine, explains that “by this device the self transcends itself to become the other, even if only briefly.”20 Augustine began to experiment with this tool in his early psalm expositions and it provided him a theological and hermeneutical structure for his later ones. The result of the practice of prosopopeia gave Augustine the mechanism by which Christ could speak in Adam’s voice and thereby reveal the redemption of the cross. Augustine explains this in his exposition of Psalm 30: “But in fact he who deigned to assume the form of a slave, and within that form to clothe us with himself, he who did not disdain to take us up into himself, did not disdain either to transfigure us into himself, and to speak in our words, so that we in our turn might speak in his.”21 That is the heart of the watershed; Christ spoke in our words in order that we might speak in his. This exchange of voices in Christ is based on incarnational Christology, but takes place in Christ’s own dying words on the cross. Passion and incarnation are brought together in the same speech act. But Augustine’s totus Christus is not fully formed until he can actually account for a plurality of praying voices. An insight from Saul’s conversion (Acts 9:4) gives him the interpretive tools.22 18

19 20 21

22

The topic of the “exchange” is well developed in Augustinian studies. See W.S. Babcock “The Christ of the Exchange: A Study in the Christology of Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos.” Yale University, 1971. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 179–80. Ibid., 181. En Ps 30.2.3. Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms in The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, trans. Maria Boulding, O.S.B., 6 vol. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), volume 1, page 322–3 [hereafter 1.322–3]. All English citations of the Expositions are taken from the Boulding translation. “Verumtamen quia dignatus est assumere formam servi, et in ea nos vestire se; qui non est dedignatus assumere nos in se, non est dedignatus transfigurare nos in se, et loqui verbis nostris, ut et nos loqueremur verbis ipsius.” Sancti Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos, eds. D. E. Dekkers, O.S.B – J. Fraipont in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 38–40 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956), vol. 38, page 192, lines 10– 13 [hereafter CCL 38.192.10–13]. See Benedict Guevin, “‘Saul, Saul, Why Are You Persecuting Me?’: Augustine’s Use of Acts 9:4 in His Enarrationes in Psalmos,” Downside Review 127, no. 449 (2009): 261–68.

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The central issue for Augustine’s understanding of Acts 9:4 (which he does also in the context of preaching Psalm 30(31)) hinges on the same word as Psalm 21: “me.” In Psalm 21, Christ speaks from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” The “me” of the cry of dereliction is Christ, Christ who is speaking in the voice of Adam. In Acts 9:4, Augustine is faced again with determining the referent of “me.” When Saul was rebuked by God, a voice from heaven asked him the question: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Augustine affirms that at this point Christ had clearly ascended into heaven. Saul’s actions could not have directly harmed the resurrected and ascended flesh of Christ. Saul had been “raging against” Christians on earth. Augustine asks why it might have been that Christ did not say why are you persecuting “my saints,” or “my servants,” but rather “why are you persecuting me?”23 Augustine’s conclusion is that when the voice of Christ spoke to Saul it had been saying the equivalent of “‘Why attack my limbs?’ The Head was crying out on behalf of the members, and the Head was transfiguring the members into himself.”24 The voice from heaven indicated that head and body were one. Further, Augustine explains that the relationship between head and body is continually established and renewed by means of the head. As a result, the head continues to transfigure the members into himself, even after ascending to heaven. This is Augustine’s mature configuration of the head and members imagery.25 In speaking through the members, the head transfigures – and Augustine prefers the word “transfigures” – the members into himself.26 Rhetorically, Augustine makes this very vivid. Paul’s conversion is like the tongue of a body speaking in the name of the foot. When one’s foot is trampled in a crowd, the tongue cries out “You are treading on me!” not “You are treading on my foot.“ The tongue was not crushed; the foot does not speak. Nonetheless, the unity of tongue and foot within the body allows the tongue to say “me” for

23 24 25

26

En Ps 30.2.3, Boulding 1.323; “Non ait: Quid sanctos meos, quid servos meos? sed, quid me persequeris?” CCL 38.192.30–31. Ibid., Boulding 1.323, “hoc est, quid membra mea? caput pro membris clamabat, et membra in se caput transfigurabat.” CCL 38.192.31–32. This evolves over time in the course of Augustine’s deepening relationship with the Scriptures in the 390s and 400s. His earliest psalm expositions, which are more like compilations of notes, mark this difference as he will identify a number of different voices in the course of one psalm. En Ps 30 cited here is one such example. En Ps 30.1 is an early exposition. En Ps 30.2–4 are Augustine’s later expositions of the same psalm. Though dating these texts precisely is impossible, the difference between the two demonstrates the evolution of Augustine’s thought. I follow Michael Cameron’s presentation of “transfiguration.” Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 290–291.

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both.27 Augustine thus does not need to say “Christ is speaking here in the prophet or psalmist” for he admits that he goes further and simply says, “Christ is speaking.”28 Christ speaks because on the cross Christ transfigured the body’s cry and made it his own.29 The ascension, however, extends that speaking relationship beyond Christ’s immediate presence on earth. Even from Augustine’s perspective looking back on the ascension as an event in history, he could claim transfiguration was still taking place. Head and members meant that once separate voices within a psalm – the prophet, the people redeemed, and the people in fear – could all be transfigured into one voice from the one body of Christ.30 The theological significance of Augustine’s use of Saul’s conversion cannot be understated for his understanding of Christ as mediator. The ascended Christ – though removed from the world in his flesh – is not removed from the members of his Pauline body. Instead, when Christ ascended into heaven, the head in one way – already and not yet – became the way and therein possibility for all the members to do the same. In a late sermon Augustine would present this as a unique mode – one of three – of knowing Christ in the scriptures. It is just as important as the Word equal to the Father and the Word as a mediator who took flesh and died upon the cross. This third way of studying Christ means considering Christ ascended and still aware of the plight of those on earth as head of the body.31 Mediation does not cease, but the locus of its effects is redefined. The grace of the head is mediated to the body. Head and body together form the whole Christ, the totus Christus. Concerning the mystery of this union of voices – a sacramentum of union, as intimate as bridegroom and bride (Eph 5:31–32) – Augustine spends years parsing the way in which these voices interact, particularly how it is that Christ speaks in his body and how members of the body learn to speak in Christ.32

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28 29 30 31 32

En. Ps. 30.2.3, Boulding 1.323; “Vocem namque pedis suscipit lingua. Quando forte in turba contritus pes dolet, clamat lingua: Calcas me; non enim ait: Calcas pedem meum, sed se dixit calcari, quam nemo tetigit: sed pes qui calcatus est, a lingua non separatus est.” CCL 38.192.32–36. En Ps 30.2.4, Boulding 1.324; “Loquitur hic ergo Christus in Propheta; audeo dicere, Christus loquitur.” CCL 38.193.1–2. Augustine frequently refers back to his exegesis of Psalm 21(22) in order to consider transfiguration and the conjunction of voices. This further marks the distinctions between Augustine’s earlier and later commentary on the same psalm text. Sermo 341.20. It must be pointed out that though the body of Christ is the focus of the Enarrationes in Psalmos, that Augustine is not excluding either the Holy Spirit or the Father. Christ is the focus here simply because he speaks in human flesh. In De Trinitate (15.34), Augustine expresses the mediation between the head and the body in terms of the Holy Spirit.

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At the center of Augustine’s mature understanding of the totus Christus is transfiguration. Christ did not speak the Psalms for his own good but for the benefit of all those who might pray them in him. Building on its own momentum, an exegetical mechanism that enabled the conjunction of voices also yielded the conjunction of experience. Those who prayed the Psalms within the totus Christus could not resist this transfiguration by assuming that a particular part of Christ’s speech did not apply to them. Augustine’s immediate explanation to those in his midst is that it is not the individual who needs to be ready to speak every line; rather, the “entire body of Christ finds itself in a position to say this.”33 The result is that the voice of the body, whether that is Christ speaking or the collective of the members, is the primary speaker. The individual member of the body might not be in a position to pray a psalm of lament, or enthronement, or any other word of Christ. But Augustine’s explanation of the totus Christus here establishes the formative priority of the totus Christus voice for the individual who is being transfigured into a body with other members. In short, an individual member’s transfiguration into Christ enables him or her to see matters not otherwise in their purview. Augustine, in the voice of the speaker of Psalm 118(119), says: “I could not have seen it myself if I had not seen it through the eyes of Christ, if indeed, I had not been in him; for these words are the words of Christ’s body, of which we are members.”34 The eyes of Christ are not to be taken and adapted at will by an individual who wishes to put them on as one might spectacles. Rather, by being a member of the body, one learns to speak, see, smell, taste, and understand in ways that are characteristic of that body. One might reasonably pose an objection to Augustine about mysteries that cannot be fully uttered in speech. He also, however, treats the opposite of speaking. This transfigurative conjunction of voices also includes a rather humble, apophatic silence. The voice of the totus Christus reaches the limit of human words. By praying the psalms, by Christ’s speaking in them, the members of the whole Christ, preacher and congregation, are moved beyond words to the praise of the heart. Augustine explains this in his exposition of Psalm 37(38): “for we remember that Sabbath, and about its memory so much has been said, and we must still say so many things, and never cease to speak of it, though with our heart, not our lips; because our lips fall silent only that we may cry the more from the heart.”35 The Sabbath, for Augustine, is a figure for the unattained rest of the restless heart 33 34 35

En Ps 118.30.1, Boulding 5.485; “quoniam re vera totum Christi corpus in hac humilitate positum dicit,” CCL 40.1767.2–3. En Ps 118.30.4, Boulding 5.486; “Neque enim ego id viderem, nisi in ipso viderem, nisi in ipso essem. Corporis enim Christi verba ista sunt, cuius membra sumus,” CCL 40.1768.1–3. En Ps 37.28, Boulding 2.167; “Illud enim sabbatum recordamur, in cuius recordatione tanta dicta sunt, et nos tanta dicere debemus, et dicentes nunquam tacere, non ore, sed corde: quia sic ore tacemus, ut corde clamare possimus,” CCL 38.401.22–25.

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that can only be found in God. Speaking of that rest is an exercise that orients the whole body toward it as an end unto which sweet scents are already soliciting them by the power of the Spirit.36

3.

Preliminary Conclusions: Augustine and Janowiak

We are now in a position to return to the usefulness of the totus Christus for current theological considerations for the mediation of mystery. Janowiak describes a “mysterious communal moment when the community itself and proclamation merge in a great gathering of grace.”37 Our exploration of voices speaking with Augustine shows that there is a part of our liturgy that performatively enacts the sort of moment Janowiak wants to describe. We together pray and sing the Psalms. The Word of God is not only proclaimed and heard, it is spoken. And, in the theological tradition of the totus Christus, that speaking is transfigurative. When the words of a psalm are spoken in Christ, we can believe that he is speaking in us. We are being drawn, gathered, and molded into a wholeness that cannot be effected on our own. In the Eucharist, the species are divided as one feeds many in order to gather them into a communion. In praying the psalms, many voices become the same first person ‘I’ or ‘we’. In this formulation of mediation, those speakers become Christ. There is something very earthy about Augustine’s construction of this mediation of mystery. As I mentioned at the outset, this antedates any developed notion of the corpus mysticum.38 The transfiguration of the whole Christ was as real – for Augustine – as the North African congregants for whom he was preaching. He addressed them as “you, body of Christ,” and was very willing to admit when the music was beautiful or they were hot or tired. Community dynamics meant real divisions and even the occasional lack of charity. Augustine would frequently enough use the totus Christus to critique the Donatists for making Christ provincial and North African rather than from the ends of the earth, as psalms indicated.39 Divisions, failures of human speech, and the reality of sin were givens in Augustine’s preaching. What becomes particularly interesting is how the continued act

36 37 38 39

En Ps 37.9. Janowiak, The Holy Preaching, 186. See n.12. The totus Christus provided a critique for Augustine of many groups who threatened the unity of the body of Christ. These included, Manichees, Pelagians, Donatists, Circumcellions, etc.

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of speaking – of praying together in Christ – draws along even those who do not feel like lamenting or exalting. There is a particularly famous line in Augustine’s De Trinitate in which he explains that through Christ we go to him, never departing from him.40 The challenging and exciting part about the liturgical recovery the concept of the totus Christus is that it provides a location for transfiguration that is both already and not yet. It roots it in the physical body of Christ. Thus, it roots it communally. But at an even more fundamental level – before we break up modes of presence and parts of prayers as Janowiak does – the totus Christus, as shown by its development out of the psalter in Augustinian theology, is centered around the act of speaking itself. Christ spoke in us his members. Our very uttering words – whether from the lips or the silent cry of the heart – is the performative action in which we together become the one who speaks in us.

Conclusion: Implications of the totus Christus for the Mediation of Mystery What we have done thus far is to mark out a systematic concept of mediation called the totus Christus. We did so first by noting that the fifth century construct of Augustine is currently being used in the liturgical theology of Paul Janowiak in order to articulate modes of presence that are relational, dialogical, and participative. While agreeing that the totus Christus provides such models, Janowiak’s liturgical theology does not take into account the Augustinian resources for precisely how such modes of presence are effected. I have argued that the very evolution of the totus Christus concept in Augustine’s theology helps to fill that gap. First, the totus Christus functioned for Augustine as a mode of reading the Old Testament on Christ’s lips; two covenants are mediated to one another. We traced this developing construct through Augustine sermons in order to articulate a mode of reciprocal performativity not merely within the liturgy but – as he argues – within all of the operations of the body of Christ – a concept as real and earthy as those standing near one another in the summer swelter of a north African basilica during an extended sermon from their bishop in Hippo. With these two pieces in place, we are now in position to explore two potential consequences of this systematic insight for further study of the mediation of mystery. The first concerns the liturgical theology of performance, especially as it relates to physical embodiment. Anthony Kelly calls this the “body language” of 40

De Trinitate, 13.6.24.

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“expanding incarnation.”41 Kelly explains that the incarnation is a singular event, but that it has invited a great host of other expressions: “the languages of metaphor, symbol, sacrament, devotion and spirituality, art and moral praxis.”42 The body of Christ is not that which flows from or is constituted by these various expressions, but is the “one point of convergence” of them all and therein the starting point and ever present dimension of “any ‘bodily‘ theology of the sacraments and the church.”43 What Kelly sets forth is a challenge for theology to understand the physical body of the worshipper as within and sustained by the body of Christ in more than a metaphorical sense. He calls for theology “to expand the sense of the materiality and embodiment implicit in incarnational faith.”44 Central to Kelly’s project, however, remains the issue of language. Speech is not secondary to incarnational embodiment, but the original location of it. Logos has been spoken from the beginning: it is Word which assumes human flesh (Jn 1:1–14). What the totus Christus thus might contribute to this discussion is how precisely the in-speaking of Word into human flesh occurred first in the person of Christ and then, post-ascension, in the members of his body. The “body language,” to use Kelly’s term, of the physical worshipper is one in which the Word is not merely an external utterance to be aurally received in the proclamation of Revelation, it is – at the most constitutive and fundamental level of performance – a Word which speaks the worshipper’s body into existence and sustains it in mutual exchange.45 Liturgical formation is the second potential partner for constructive dialogue between the systematic theology of the totus Christus and contemporary liturgical theology. Liturgical formation, which Ephrem Carr claims is the most overlooked aspect of the Second Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium, is mandated by that document for both the faithful and the clergy in order that they might participate “knowledgably, actively and with profit.”46 Scholars like Carr and David Fager41 42 43 44 45

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Anthony J. Kelly, “‘The Body of Christ. Amen!’: The Expanding Notion of Incarnation,” Theological Studies 71 (2010): 792–816. Kelly, “The Body of Christ,” 792. Ibid. Ibid., 797. Not all are in agreement with me here that speech and embodiment can be treated together. J.H. Cilliers, for instance separates speech (verbum) and embodiment (corporalitatem), arguing that the latter is a more holistic mode. What Ciliens does not counter, however, is the claim of the inseparable conjunction of word and embodiment (verbum) and (caro) in the incarnation itself (Jn 1:14). J.H. Cilliers, “‘Fides Quaerens Corporalitatem’: Perspectives on Liturgical Embodiment,” Verbum et Ecclesia 30, no. 1 (2000): 50–62. Ephrem Carr, “‘Sacrosanctum Concilium’ and its Consequences: The Reform of the Liturgy,” Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy 92 (2011): 193; Sacrosanctum Concilium: Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 4 December 1963. Accessed online: www.vatican.va. Paragraph 11.

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berg point out that liturgy is both “act“ and “work.”47 In this way, liturgical formation is not at all the passive reception of content but rather an ever-deepening act of ongoing participation in the very mystery of redemption. The totus Christus provides the potential to celebrate the speech act not as a vehicle or instrument of formation, but as a formative act in itself. Full, conscious, and active participation in terms of speaking includes not merely the ability to speak or the content of the words spoken, but an ever increasing consciousness of the in-speaking of Christ in one’s own words (and silence) and one’s own speech (and silence) in Christ’s as members of a body to a head. This fundamental issue lies at the heart of the Catholic Church’s self presentation of the mediation of mystery. The Church claims, after all, that it is the totus Christus who undertakes the action of liturgy.48 Augustine certainly does not have final word on the body of Christ. But he did leave the Latin theological tradition with an earthy, embodied, immanent mode of relation in and through Christ called the totus Christus. His account of mediation is so thick that the members are being drawn along by their head. They are becoming Christ. Such an exchange not only supports but magnifies thick definitions of liturgy. David Fagerberg cites Paul Holmer in writing: “Liturgy in its thin sense is an expression of how we see God; liturgy in its thick sense is an expression of how God sees us.”49 Augustine of Hippo challenges us to ask if we might say this even more strongly: In the thin sense of liturgy, we speak to God; God speaks to us. In the thick sense, we speak in God and God speaks in us. The latter formulation gestures toward the divinizing potential inherent in the mediation of mystery through Christ’s wholeness – as totus Christus.

47

48

49

See Ephrem Carr, “The Need for Liturgical Education and Formation Today,” Ecclesia Orans 24 (2007): 3–6; and David Fagerberg, Theologia Prima: What is Liturgical Theology (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2004). Catechism of the Catholic Church: Revised in Accordance with the Official Latin Text Promulgated by Pope John Paul II, (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 795, 1136. David Fagerberg, On Liturgical Asceticism (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 204.

“Becoming What You See” Augustine’s Mystagogia of Deification

Walter Knowles

Catechesis and mystagogia, the preparation of candidates for baptism and the interpretation of the baptismal and Eucharistic experience after the Great Vigil of Easter (and, of course, at other times such as Pentecost) was a significant part of the life of the early church. It is often explored through the written compilations of sermons by four bishops, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom of Antioch (and patriarch of Constantinople), Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Ambrose of Milan.1 We have outlines, fragments, and even a few complete sets of the pre-baptismal catechetical homilies from other bishops,2 but these seemingly minimal remains conceal one of the primary and most common ministries of fourth- and fifthcentury bishops. Augustine is no exception to the episcopal concern for the education of new Christians. Augustine, as a ‘small-town’ bishop, was the primary Christian educator for the Catholics of Hippo, and we find conversations with the catechumens and neophytes scattered throughout his preaching. William Harmless correlated a significant portion of Augustine’s teaching ministry with the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA),3 built primarily on the catechetical homilies of the Jerusalem tradition, but that was an attempt to fit Theseus onto Procrustes’ bed. In the second edition of Augustine and the Catechumenate, Harmless expanded and refined his work, placing Augustine at the center, rather than the RCIA.4 However, in doing so, he continued to limit his survey of Augustine’s mystagogical teaching to what was preached during the week after 1

2

3 4

Edward Yarnold, The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation: Baptismal Homilies of the Fourth Century, 2nd ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994), provides the classic introduction to these four sets of homilies. For example, those of Augustine’s confrère and protégé, Quodvultdeus, in Quodvultdeus of Carthage: The Creedal Homilies: Conversion in Fifth-Century North Africa, trans. Thomas M Finn (New York: Newman Press, 2004). See Russell J. DeSimone, “The Baptismal and Christological Catechesis of Quodvultdeus,” Augustinianum 25 (1985): 265–82. William Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995). William Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate, 2nd ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014).

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Easter. I have argued elsewhere that Augustine’s catechesis was not limited to lent, nor to the competentes who had announced their intention to be baptized at the upcoming Easter vigil, but rather that it was year-round, and was a continuing process, addressed to the whole people of God, modulated by major structures of the temporale and the sanctorale (both of which were fairly limited in their development at the end of the fourth century).5 This essay takes this “whole church” understanding of Augustine’s catechumenal instruction and applies it postbaptismal instruction. It is my contention that Augustine’s mystagogia is properly understood as his reflection on the baptismal experience, not just of the neophytes – and indeed, not primarily of the neophytes – but of the whole church. With this broadening from new Christians to the whole community, there is a concomitant expansion of the temporality of mystagogia from the time immediately after baptism to the rest of the church year.

1.

Augustine and Theosis

Augustine is often thought to possess a purely forensic soteriology and spirituality,6 but a careful reading of Augustine in the last few years has brought to light the breadth of his theology of union with God, which he shared with many other North African theologians. Noticing the centrality of christus totus in Augustine’s ecclesiology and soteriology, Victorino Capánaga reintroduced the theological world to Augustine’s unitive theology, and other Augustine scholars have continued the exploration of this issue in Augustine’s writings.7 Gerald Bonner furthered our understandings of the connections between Augustine’s spirituality and

5

6

7

Walter Knowles, “Incorporate into the Society of the Spirit: Baptismal Practice and Ecclesiology in Augustine’s North Africa,” in Drenched in Grace: Essays in Baptismal Ecclesiology Inspired by the Work and Ministry of Louis Weil, eds. Lizette Larson-Miller and Walter Knowles (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013), 14–31. Along with the simple linguistic bifurcation of Latin and Greek, historical theologians “know” that “the Augustininian vision of Christianity may be motivated by a promise of beatitude, but never by deification.” See Myrrha Lot-Borodine, La déification de l’homme, selon la doctrine des pères grecs (Paris: Cerf, 1970), 39, or, as a recent comprehensive history puts it, “The concept [of theosis] was likely to take the Christian believer in a very different direction from Augustine’s Western emphasis on the great gulf between God and humanity created by original sin.” See Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 433. Victorino Capánaga, “La deificacíon en la soteriologia agustiniana,” in Augustinus Magister, vol. 2 (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1954), 745–54, is probably the earliest study, which recognizes the importance of this strand in Augustine’s thought.

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his concept of the church,8 and Henry Chadwick9 and Matthew Drever have further expanded our understanding of its connections to Christology and theological anthropology.10 However, most prominent in the recovery of this golden thread running through Augustine’s thought has been David Meconi, S.J., who has championed this part of Augustine’s theology in his newly published revision of his dissertation, The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification,11 and I must thank him for access to the page proofs of his book, of which I made liberal use in preparation of this paper.

1.2

Deification: From Personal to Communal

Augustine began his understanding of deification as individualistic and, in this life, transitory. Only he and his mother Monica experience union in their vision as related in Confessions12: Ascending higher, within ourselves, to speech and questioning, and admiring such works, we encounter our own minds, and go beyond them to the outskirts of that region where “you give eternal pasture to Israel.” . . . Then we sighed our way back down from “the Spirit’s first harvest” into the sound of our own words.13

This is Augustine’s early individualistic spirituality, and it is evident, as well, in his letter to a rather narcissistic Nebridius who is asking a newly-ordained Augustine

8

9 10 11

12 13

Gerald Bonner, “Augustine’s Conception of Deification”, Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986): 369–86, and his encyclopedia articles, “Deificare,” Augustinus-Lexicon, ed. Cornelius Petrus Mayer (Basel, CH: Schwabe AG, 1996), 266–267; “Deification, Divinization,” Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan Fitzgerald, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 265– 266. Henry Chadwick, “Note sur la divinisation chez saint Augustin,” Revue des sciences religieuses 76, no. 2 (2002): 246–248. Matthew Drever, Image, Identity, and the Forming of the Augustinian Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). David Vincent Meconi, The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification, (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2013). I first encountered Meconi’s thought in his provocatively titled “Becoming Gods by Becoming God’s: Augustine’s Mystagogy of Identification, Augustinian Studies” 39 (2008): 61–74. I’ve made substantial use of Meconi’s close readings of Augustine, and even partially appropriated Meconi’s subtitle, Augustine’s Mystagogia of Identification, but I am using mystagogia in its more specifically liturgical meaning. Works of St. Augustine are cited using the English titles from Allan Fitzgerald, ed., Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), xxxv–xlii. Confessions 9.10.24, in Augustine, Confessions, trans. Garry Wills (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 200–201.

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to either leave Hippo or to travel frequently to Carthage so that they could pursue their exploration of spirituality together. Augustine responded to his friend: God, of course, granted to a certain few men whom he wanted to be rulers of churches that they not only look forward to that last journey courageously, but also eagerly desire it and undertake without any anguish the labors of making these other journeys. … For in leisure [they] would be permitted to become godlike.14

But Augustine didn’t have that leisure, and yet he still desired union with God. His Confessions, written two years after his elevation as bishop of Hippo, is one of the last places in which Augustine presents this individualistic view of deification, for soon after he assumed his role as bishop of Hippo, Augustine, the pastor, came to the realization that union with God, deification, theosis, is properly something which the church, as the Body and Bride of Christ, experiences, and is only derivatively posited of individual members. This understanding marks him as distinct from his eastern African colleagues and those in the Levant and Byzantium who continued to understand theosis as an achievement of spiritual athletes. It also fundamentally colors his anthropology, soteriology, and ecclesiology; if union with God is the birthright of everyone who passes through baptismal waters, then unity, and not exceptionalism, is the mark of the church kat’-holos. While we could explore this participation in God through more philosophical writings, following Georges Folliet,15 for example, or in Augustine’s theological writings, such as The Trinity or City of God, doing so would cause us to miss the vast majority of Augustine’s teaching on deification. Because deification is something God works in the church as a whole, it is Augustine’s sermons to the people of Hippo (and Carthage) that we will explore, for in these, Augustine makes his clearest – and most innovative – statements of humanity’s participation in God. Five years after Confessions, preaching in the restored basilica of Hippo on Psalm 44:8, Augustine said: We have already spoken about this anointed God, that is, about Christ. There was no clearer way in which Christ’s name could have been expressed, than by calling him “Anointed God.” As he is fair beyond all humankind, so too he is anointed with the oil of joy, more abundantly than all who share with him. Who share with him? The children of men, be-

14 15

Letter 10.1, in Augustine, Letters 1–99, Works of St. Augustine II:1, trans. Roland J. Teske (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press 2001), 33–34. Georges Folliet, “‘Deificari in otio’: Augustin, Epistula 10, 2,” Recherches Augustiniennes 2 (1962): 225–236, explores deification in Letter 10, On the Greatness of the Soul, The Soliloquies, and their parallels in philosophical discourse, particularly in the platonic tradition.

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cause he is the Son of Man, who became a sharer in their mortality in order to make them sharers in his immortality.16

Whether or not his hearers made the connection, this is, if not a paraphrase certainly a restatement of Athanasius’s “God became human so that we might become divine.”17

1.2

Augustine’s Mystagogical Preaching

Augustine’s catechetical program did not consist merely of a dozen or so lectures given in lent to baptismal candidates, but rather a proclamation of the Good News to anyone who would hear. Indeed, it is arguable that Augustine provides us with the clearest example of normative early fifth-century catechesis and mystagogia. Hippo Regius, unlike Jerusalem, Milan, or Antioch, was not a pilgrimage center. As a result, the baptismal process at Hippo was much more like Juliette Day’s identification of ‘evangelical baptism’ than of our images of what she calls ‘cathedral baptism.’18 What we have from Augustine is something we don’t have from any other bishop of his period: an instruction on the pedagogy and process of the catechumenate, On the Instruction of Beginners, and then sermons, along that arc, throughout the year.19 There does not seem to be a distinction in Augustine’s homiletic oeuvre between catechetical sermons and sermons simply ad populum, for Augustine is catechizing his whole congregation, week by week. There is a structure to his catechetical preaching: it was one of increasing focus as the year turned toward the baptismal season of Pascha. In On the Instruction of Beginners, Augustine progresses from the scriptural narrative, to intellectual acceptance, ethics, and finally to a commitment to life in Christ. Augustine followed the same pattern for his mystagogia, but (as we might expect) in retrograde; he moves from love of God, through acts of piety, and then finally to theology and the interpretation of scripture. The focus is greatest in Pascha, because of its proximity to the baptisms at the vigils of Easter and Pentecost, and, because of the incarnational emphasis inherent in a participatory spirituality, the lesser festival of Christmas. Just as we can date some of Augustine’s catechetical sermons to particular stages in the conversion process, we can do the same with some of the distinctly mystagogical sermons, such as those given to the newly baptized infantes 16 17 18 19

Explanation of Psalm 44.21, in Expositions of the Psalms, Works of St. Augustine III:16, trans. Maria Boulding (Hyde Park, N.Y: New City Press, 2004), 299. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54. Juliette Day, “Baptism in Early Byzantine Palestine, 325–451,” Joint Liturgical Studies 43 (1999): 28–37. See footnote five, above for my “Incorporate into the Society of the Spirit: Baptismal Practice and Ecclesiology in Augustine’s North Africa,” for the basis of this argument.

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on the mornings of Easter and Pentecost,20 and it is in these that the connection between the life of baptism and Eucharist and the deification of Christians may be clearest.

1.3

Union and Baptism

In Sermon 272, one of the two specifically given on Pentecost of 408, Augustine simultaneously lays out his mystagogical program and gives one of his most direct statements of union with God: Unity, truth, piety, love. One bread: what is this one bread? The one body which we, being many, are. Remember that bread is not made from one grain, but from many. When you were being exorcized, it’s as though you were being ground. When you were baptized it’s as though you were mixed in dough. When you received the fire of the Holy Spirit, it’s as though you were baked. Be what you can see, and receive what you are [Estote quod videtis, et accipite quod estis].21

This is the point from which Augustine draws out his mystagogia: the intersection of baptism, Eucharist, and the complete body of Christ. Unlike this sermon, most of Augustine’s sermons cannot be precisely dated, and indeed, cannot be fit, regardless of year, into the cycle of liturgical time.22 In this essay, I have limited myself to examining sermons, which can reasonably be correlated with times in the ecclesiastical year.23 For the purposes of this study, I pay relatively little attention to the year. Within those sermons which can be placed within the year (the paschal sermons or sermons on commemorations of martyrs, for example), we see a strong enough general shape, however, that one might consider that an expansion of Willis’ lectionary methodology through a 20 21 22

23

Specifically Sermons 227 and 272. However, almost all of the sermons during Paschaltide are appropriately considered mystagogical. Sermon 272, in Sermons (230–272B) on the Liturgical Seasons, Works of St. Augustine III:7, trans. Edmund Hill (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1992), 298. A rigorously defined study of Augustine’s mystagogy would require an equally rigorously defined dating of his sermons. Unfortunately, Augustine’s homiletic stenographers (or their copyists) failed to leave us dates and occasions for most sermons. I have used the dates reached by several scholars’ for the sermons in preparing this essay. Most important of these has been the work of Eric Rebillard, and his summaries in the article “Sermones,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 773–792, but Geoffrey Willis, St. Augustine’s Lectionary (London: SPCK, 1962), was most helpful, and the dating given by Edmund Hill in his translations have played their somewhat lesser part. Thus important works, such as City of God, which is, of course, not a sermon, or Sermon 17, which cannot be located in the church year, for the complete understanding of deification or his unitive ecclesiology are passed over in this essay.

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thematic approach might help us to a greater understanding of the structure of Augustine’s preaching in general.

2.

Love Toward God and Love Toward Humanity

Becoming what we see is to be held together in love toward God and toward humanity. Augustine uses a variety of words to describe what holds us together in love with God. Inhaerere, adhere (adhaesit), and importantly, agglutinare, all figure in his vocabulary.24 We are glued together in baptism with God, and we cleave to Christ through his own gift. A week after the neophytes’ baptism, Augustine preached at the Shrine of the Twenty Martyrs reminding the whole church of its baptism: God, you see, wants to make you a god; not by nature, of course, like the one whom he begot; but by his gift and by adoption. For just as he through being humbled came to share your mortality; so through lifting you up he brings you to share his immortality. . . . the whole man being deified and made divine may cleave forever [totus homo deificatus inhaereat perpetuae] to the everlasting and unchangeable truth.25

Throughout his preaching on deification, Augustine uses both singulars and plurals to refer to Christians, but the context is always communal. In this sermon, this ecclesial context is underlined by his use of totus homo deificatus. The “whole human being” here points to a corporate person, the totus christus, body and head.

2.1

Piety and Growth in Desire

Desire for God, and its expression, love of God, is a foundation for the process of deification. Augustine sets up the desire for union before baptism in his sermon on the Lord’s Prayer (Sermon 59) when the competentes are given the prayer prior to their baptism. He puns on inhaerere and hereditatem (instead of the more usual patrimonium) to encourage the competentes not to cleave to the world, but rather to God 24

25

See Joseph T. Lienhard, “The Glue Itself Is the Charity: Ps. 62:9 in Augustine’s Thought,” in Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, eds. Joseph T. Lienhard, Earl C. Muller, and Roland J. Teske (New York: Lang, 1993), 375–84. One of his most famous uses of adhesion is in Confessions: “Friendship cannot be true unless you glue it together among those who cleave to one another [eam tu agglutinas] by the charity poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us.”(Confessions 4.4.7, translated in Leinhard, 375). Sermon 166.4, in Sermons (148–183) on the New Testament, Works of St. Augustine III:5, trans. Edmund Hill (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1992), 209–210.

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(59.2), and after scrutinizing all the petitions, he closes with a reminder to learn that it is the Father to whom they pray who is their desire and the root of their desire (59.8). Then, after baptism, in the season of Pascha, he tells them: The days have come for us to sing “Alleluia!” Come, my brothers and sisters, to receive the things which the Lord suggests for our exhortation, to nourish our love, for it is good to cleave to God [inhaerere deo bonum est].26

“For it is good to cleave to God” rings throughout Augustine’s paschaltide preaching, and it is the purpose which drives On the Instruction of Beginners.27 However, as Joseph Leinhard points out, mere cleaving (which can be understood as our action of holding on to God) moves into God’s action in bonding us to Godself; inhaerere (with humans as subject) becomes adhaerere (with God as the subject), and adhaerere and adhaesit become agglutinare. Gluten is caritas: this becomes a fixed equation in Augustine’s mind, and Psalm 62:9 (or Augustine’s variant with glue: “my soul is glued to you, your right hand holds me”) is a frequent refrain. It is worth noting that while the agglutinare through which we cleave to Christ is often used to describe pasting together, Pliny uses it to describe the fusing by heat of broken glass, and it is frequently used in North-African Latin for alloying or soldering two metallic pieces.28 For Augustine, wheat paste is transmuted through baptism into indivisible union.

2.2

Union in Christ, Head and Body

At the core of Augustine’s theology of deification is his understanding of christus totus, the unity of Christ and the church as a whole. The importance of Augustine’s christological innovation, moving from the union of the Son with the Father, and then the Word of God with the humanity of Jesus, to the union of Christ with his church, was basically overlooked until Gérard Philips brought it to light in 1954.29 Over the last sixty years, there have been many explorations of the significance of this idea for christology and ecclesiology. Meconi explores its implications for spirituality, but while he recognizes that almost all of the references to christus totus occur in sermons ad populum, he overlooks the reality that the context actually defines a new spirituality, not of the individual but of the people of God as a whole. 26 27 28 29

Explanation of Psalm 110.1. Translation ours. See On the Instruction of Beginners 6.10. Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2003), 72–74. See Gérard Philips, “L’influence du Christ-Chef sur son corps mystique suivant saint Augustin,” in Augustinus Magister, vol. 2 (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1954), 805–15.

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Walter Knowles

However, Augustine used christus totus not primarily as a mystical expression of the church, but rather as a hermeneutical principle for his teaching of the Psalms. In his second sermon on Psalm 58, he said: But as we have often reminded you, dearest friends, Christ is both head and body, and we must not think ourselves alien to Christ, since we are his members. … Since, then, the whole Christ consists of head and body [totus christus caput et corpus est], we must understand that we too are included in David when in the psalm's title we hear of understanding for David himself. Christ's members must have this understanding, and Christ must understand in the persons of his members, and the members of Christ must understand in Christ, because head and members form one Christ.30

Even more directly, Augustine emphasizes the essential unity that being bonded together in Christ brings: Christ is speaking here in the prophet; no, I would dare to go further and say simply, Christ is speaking. … I want you to understand that Head and body together are called one Christ. … A body is one single unit, with many members, but all the members of the body, numerous as they are, constitute one body; and it is the same with Christ. Many members, one body: [one] Christ.31

How then does Augustine use this concept as he reflects on baptism and the process of initiation? One of Augustine’s earliest expressions of this idea came in late Paschaltide, or possibly just after Pentecost, likely in 397. He was reflecting on whether Christ’s words to us are true and reliable, specifically as the emotional highs of baptism and Pascha begin to wear off: Now, however, I wonder if we shouldn’t have a look at ourselves, if we shouldn't think about his body, because he is also us. After all, if we weren’t him, this wouldn't be true: When you did it for one of the least of mine, you did it for me. If we weren’t him, this wouldn't be true: Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? So we too are him, because we are his organs, because we are his body, because he is our head, because the whole Christ is both head and body.32

The theme returns, as summer rolls by, in a sermon on the Gospel of John (5:20– 23), given the day after St. Cyprian’s “birthday” (September 14, 420). Reflecting back on the process from being enrolled as a catechumen through baptism itself, and then looking through the lens of Cyprian’s martyrdom, he preached: Let us congratulate ourselves then and give thanks for having been made not only Christians but Christ. Do you understand, brothers and sisters, the grace of God upon us; 30 31 32

Explanation of Psalm 54.3, in Expositions of the Psalms, vol. 3: 54. Explanation of Psalm 30(2).1.4, in Expositions of the Psalms, vol. 1: 324. Sermon 133.8, in Sermons (184–229Z) on the Liturgical Seasons, Works of St. Augustine III:6, trans. Edmund Hill (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991), 338.

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do you grasp that? Be filled with wonder, rejoice and be glad; we have been made Christ. For, if he is the head, and we the members, then he and we are the whole man.33

3.

Totus Christus: More than Christology and More than Ecclesiology

Augustine’s catechetical preaching began to intensify around the turn of the year toward Paschaltide. As a result, we find a sort of culmination of the mystagogical process in a sermon he gave in December of 419: Our Lord Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters, as far as I have been able to tune my mind to the sacred writings, can be understood and named in three ways. … The first way is: as God and according to the divine nature which is coequal and coeternal with the Father before he assumed flesh. The next way is: when, after assuming flesh, he is now understood from our reading to be God who is at the same time man, and man who is at the same time God, according to that pre-eminence which is peculiar to him and in which he is not to be equated with other human beings, but is the mediator and the head of the Church. The third way is: in some manner or other as the whole Christ in the fullness of the Church, that is as head and body, according to the completeness of a certain perfect man, the man in whom we are each of us members.34

Augustine, in this sermon, which is ostensibly a theological argument against Arianism, builds to a conclusion that is both ethical and ecclesial. The church is both Christ and bride of Christ. We can live a life that is restored and whole because we are parts of the one Christ, the whole Christ. That one whole Christ is not just the church of Augustine’s day or our time, or even of the earthly world, for it is truly universal, kat’-holos beyond time and space, because its head is beyond time and space: Otherwise, how are we the members of Christ, with the apostle saying as clearly as can be, You are the body of Christ and its members? All of us together are the members of Christ and his body; not only those of us who are in this place, but throughout the whole world; and not only those of us who are alive at this time, but what shall I 33

34

Tractate on the Gospel of John, 21.8, in Homilies on the Gospel of John, 1–40, Works of St. Augustine I:12, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park NY: New City Press, 2009), 379. See also Tarcisius J. van Bavel, “The ‘Christus Totus’ Idea: A Forgotten Aspect of Augustine’s Spirituality,” in Studies in Patristic Christology, eds. Thomas Finan and Vincent Twomey, (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998), 86. Sermon 341.1.1, in Sermons (341–400) on Various Subjects, trans. Edmund Hill, Works of St. Augustine III:10 (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1992), 19.

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say? From Abel the just right up to the end of the world, as long as people beget and are begotten, any of the just who make the passage through this life, all that now – that is, not in this place but in this life – all that are going to born after us, all constitute the one body of Christ; while they are each individually members of Christ. So if all constitute the body and are each individually members, there is of course a head, of which this is the body. And he himself, it says, is the head of the body, the Church, the firstborn, himself holding the first place. And because it also says of him that he is always the head of every principality and power, this Church which is now on its pilgrimage is joined to that heavenly Church where we have the angels as fellow citizens, with whom we would be quite shameless in claiming equality after the resurrection of our bodies, unless Truth had promised us this, saying, They shall be equal to the angels of God; and there is achieved one Church, the city of the great king.35

4.

Conclusion

Soon after his baptism, on his way home to Africa, Augustine and his mother experienced their mystical ascent. The story of the ascent is the description of two most unlikely candidates: a status-seeking Berber mother from the backwoods of Roman Africa, and her neophyte son. The ascent at Ostia thus stands as a challenge to the perfectionism with which Augustine struggled throughout his life. It fulfills his Plotinian desire for philosophical ascent, while also being granted to an unprepared woman. The ascent inverted the demands of Manichaean (and monastic) asceticism, for enlightenment was given to a meat-eater who had only recently sworn off sex; it granted unity with God to someone who, it was regularly argued, was not yet fully orthodox in his theology and was not baptized by a bishop of pure lineage, offending the Donatists; and finally it is (at least on Augustine’s part), a completely unmerited donum, thus setting up his battles with Julian of Eclanum and the Pelagians. At the core of Augustine’s religious identity is the realization that the whole Christ is given, not to those who have earned transcendence, but to the whole church, from the neophytes to the ancient in faith. A golden thread in his teaching ministry is the hope that all will come to know themselves as “becoming gods by becoming God’s.” Some forty years after his ascent, in a sermon preached on Christmas day to the people of Hippo Regius, we continue to hear resonances of Alexandrian theologians, such as Clement of Alexandria (Protrepticus 1.9) and Athanasius (On the Incarnation 54.3): “So that [God] could make gods of those who

35

Sermon 341.11, in Sermons (341–400), 26.

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were only human, the one who is God made himself human. Without giving up who [God] was, [God] desired to become what Godself had made.”36 Thus, unlike most theologians before and after him, the most significant feature of Augustine’s teaching on deification is that it is part of his dogmatic and ecclesial theology, not his ascetic theology. Bonner wrote, “it describes the consequence of the saving work of Christ rather than a mystical state enjoyed by a contemplative.”37 Augustine proclaimed theosis in the quotidian teaching of the whole people of God, and not in his quiet counsels to his monks and nuns. Union with God is God’s gift to housewives and neophytes, not a laurel crown earned by ascetics. Bonner reminded us that, for Augustine, Deification is an ecclesial process, in that it takes place within the communion of the Church, to which the Christian is admitted by baptism. For this reason, it can be called a sacramental process, in that the Christian grows in grace by being nourished by the eucharist [sic], which he receives as part of the worship of the Church.38

Augustine’s preaching on deification is part of his instruction to the whole church on how it is to live, an instruction reflecting baptism and prefiguring the eschaton. It is mystagogia of the first order, and its goal is not just being a Christian, but being Christ.

36 37 38

Sermon 192.1. Translation ours. Bonner, “Augustine’s Conception of Deification,” 382. Bonner, “Augustine’s Conception of Deification,” 383.

3. The Eucharistic Center of the Liturgical Field

„Das große Sakrament der Vereinigung“ Franz Anton Staudenmaier’s Eucharistic Theology

Samuel Goyvaerts

Introduction1 Franz Anton Staudenmaier belongs to the second generation of the well-known Catholic Tübingen School. Born in 1800, Staudenmaier studied in Tübingen, and after working for a short period of time as tutor at the Tübingen theological faculty, he was appointed at Gießen, teaching introduction to theology, Theologische Encyklopädie, and dogmatics. When he was 37, he moved to the theological faculty in Freiburg, where his former teacher Johann Baptist Hirscher, also a renowned Tübingen scholar, joined him. Staudenmaier is mostly known for his highly speculative systematic theology and, in particular, his dealings with Hegel and German idealism.2 However, few people are aware of the fact that Staudenmaier was also the author of one of the most popular books on Catholic liturgy of his age. Only a few contemporary theologians are aware of Staudenmaier’s impact on the theology of sacraments and the study of the liturgy. One of these is Reiner Kaczynski who, in the Sacrosanctum Concilium volume of the famous Herder commentary on the documents of Vatican II, perceives the suppression of Staudenmaier’s thought on liturgy by the neoscholastic forces in the 19th century as one of the most painful events in recent theological history. According to Kaczynski the true liturgical movement (as opposed to the liturgical movement in the Aufklärung) already started with Staudenmaier and therefore should not have been postponed until the twentieth century. I strongly agree with Kaczynski that forgetting or neglecting Staudenmaier was indeed a sad development for contemporary theology. I will try to rectify this in part, by revealing some of his thoughts on the Eucharist, 1

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This paper represents a small part of the fruits of four years of research on the theology of the Eucharist and of the liturgy according to the Catholic Tübingen School and Döllinger. See Samuel Goyvaerts, “Vereniging en tegenwoordigheid, offer en gemeenschap. De theologie van de eucharistie en de liturgie van de katholieke Tübinger Schule en Döllinger,” PhD diss., Leuven, 2013. For a good introduction on the live and work of Staudenmaier see: P. Hünermann, Franz Anton Staudenmaier (Wegbereiter heutiger Theologie, 8), Graz, Styria, 1975.

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which he presents as the great sacrament of unification and which gives a good example of the liturgical and theological value of this thought. I leave it to the reader then, to confirm or deny Kaczynski’s claim concerning Staudenmaier’s theology.

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The Eucharist as the Great Sacrament of Unification

In line with his Tübingen colleagues, and mainly Johan Adam Möhler,3 the concept of unity and unification forms a crucial part of the theology of Anton Staudenmaier. Belonging to the romantic era, these theologians were strongly convinced about the organic character of all things. Everything for these authors was interconnected – the Pauline metaphor of the body and the limbs (Rom 12,3– 8), for example, was crucial for their understanding of theology and faith. Moreover, the concept of unification used by Staudenmaier founds itself in the Trinitarian unity. In one of his reflections on the Church Staudenmaier states: The Church is one, una as the Symbolum of Nicea states. The principles however, out of which this unity of the church flows forth are: the one God, the one Christ, the one Spirit and the one truth of the divine revelation: or the revelation of the Father, the Son and the Spirit in unity, in which the Church itself is united.4

The highest purpose of a human being and of Christianity is the participation in this Trinitarian unity between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. On numerous occasions, Staudenmaier states that this unity between God and human beings is not only celebrated but also worked or constituted in the Eucharist.5 Hence, the fact 3

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Johan Adam Möhler was a church historian and belonged to the second generation of Tübingen theologians. His works on ecclesiology and pneumatology inspired 20th century theologians like Yves Congar. For a good introduction on the life and works of Möhler see P.-W. Scheele, Johann Adam Möhler (Wegbereiter heutiger Theologie, 3), Graz, Styria, 1969. “Die Kirche ist Eine, una. Symb Nicaen. Jene Principien aber, aus welchen die Einheit der Kirche hervorgeht, sind: der Eine Gott, der Eine Christus, der Eine Geist, und die Eine Wahrheit der göttlichen Offenbarung: oder die Offenbarung des Vaters, des Sohnes und des Geistes in der Einheit, mit der sie selbst Eins sind.” F.A. Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie der theologischen Wissenschaften als System der gesammten Theologie, 18402, 756–757. All translations of German quotes are my own. See Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie der theologischen Wissenschaften als System der gesammten Theologie, 1834, 438. When Staudenmaier describes Sunday mass in his Geist des Christenthums he starts as follows: “Alles strömt zur Kirche, das Wort Gottes zu hören und im Hochamte den Versöhnungstod Jesu zu feiern, so wie die lebendige und innige Vereinigung mit ihm, dem Erlöser, dem Anfänger und Vollender unseres Glaubens.” Staudenmaier, Der Geist des Christenthums dargestellt in den heiligen Zeiten, in den heiligen Handlungen und in der heiligen Kunst,

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that I use the term ‘unification,’ to translate the German term ‘Vereinigung’ which can refer to both unity and unification, or put differently, to the bond itself as well as to the process or the active working of this bond. Although Staudenmaier, unlike Möhler for example, never refers to the term theosis, there are strong indications to believe that his thought explicitly points in this direction. This is rather remarkable when one knows that, since the Middle Ages, the idea of theosis has been absent in academic theology.6 In his immensely popular work on the liturgy, Der Geist des Christenthums dargestellt in den heiligen Zeiten, in den heiligen Handlungen und in der heiligen Kunst, Staudenmaier describes how – when celebrating the Eucharist – Christ enters into the inner life of the worshipper, who then receives and shares in the divinity of Christ („sein göttliches Wesen“).7 While making this argument he refers to the preface of Ascension day where we pray and ask: “that He [Christ our Lord] might make us sharers in his divinity.”8 This is a first example of the lex orandi lex credendi principle which one can trace in Staudenmaier’s thought: though he does not give this short phrase to illustrate his case, he does use the liturgy itself as a theological argument. In the Eucharist, we can experience the deepest and most intense unification with the divine life of Christ. This idea is inspired by and based on what we pray in the celebration of the Ascension. On this point, Staudenmaier even speaks in mystical terms, referring to St. John of the Cross and his poems on the well-spring of unity offered to us in the Eucharist.9 In his Encyklopädie der theologischen Wissenschaften als System der gesammten Theologie, which is a completely different genre in comparison to his work on the liturgy, Staudenmaier states:

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18382, Vol. 1, 100. Aslo see Staudenmaier, Das Wesen der katholischen Kirche. Mit Rücksicht auf ihre Gegner, Freiburg, Herder, 21845, 109–110; Staudenmaier, Der Geist des Christenthums2, Vol. 2, 552; 700–703; Staudenmaier, Die Zünfte am heil. Frohleichnamsfeste, in Süddeutsches katholisches Kirchenblatt 1 (1841) nr. 2, 61–68, see 61; Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie2, 789. Also compare Mystici Corporis Christi § 82. For example on Christmas and the incarnation he writes: “der Göttliche sei Mensch geworden, um die Menschen göttlich zu machen.” Staudenmaier, Geist des Christenthums2, Vol. 1, 187. Without referring to it, this idea seems to me a paraphrase on Athanasius’ Orationes contra Arianos I, § 39, compare Athanasius Alexandrinus, Select Works and Letters (A Select Library of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. 2nd series, 4), Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, repr.1991, 329. Staudenmaier, Geist des Christenthums2, Vol. 2, 702. […] auf daß das Wort sich erfülle, das uns aus der Präfation des Himmelfahrtstages so heilig anspricht: damit er uns seiner Göttlichkeit theilhaftig mache.” Staudenmaier, Geist des Christenthums2, Vol. 2, 702. Emphasis original. Untill this day, the second preface of Ascension says: “ut nos divinitátis suæ tribúeret esse partícipes.” In concerns the poem Anque es de noche, see Staudenmaier, Geist des Christenthums2, Vol. 2, 703–705.

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It is important to note is that it is a joint action of both Christ and the community, a giving of both divine and human. In Staudenmaier’s theology, freedom, specifically human freedom, is very important and it is also a necessary condition for receiving grace. Salvation, according to Staudenmaier, is no mechanical event but is essentially a process, namely “a process of mediation, constituted by two factors: divine grace and human freedom.” When one studies Staudenmaier, and by extension the entire Tübingen School, this interplay between human and divine also points to another essential theological idea, namely the incarnation. The unity between God and the human being that is constituted in the Eucharist is modeled alongside or parallel to the unity in the mystery of Christ’s incarnation.11 We also noticed that in the context of the Eucharistic unification, Staudenmaier often uses the term ‘Godman’ (Gottmensch) to denote the figure of Christ, or at least refers to his Gottmenschlichkeit, where both are meant to show that the incarnational relation between God and humanity is constitutive for sacramental unification.12 This also becomes clear in Staudenmaier’s reflections on the feast and the liturgy of Corpus Christi, which is again an example of how the law of prayer and the law of faith are related to each other in Staudenmaier’s theology.

2.

The Feast of the Eucharist as the Fulfillment of the Feast of Corpus Christi

Staudenmaier understands the feast of the Eucharist, Corpus Christi, as the fulfillment of the feast of the incarnation, Christmas: “In celebrating Corpus Christi,

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“Christus gibt sich in ihr [the Eucharist] ewig hin für die Welt; eben so gibt sich aber auch die Gemeinde an ihn hin, und wird so durch die vereinte Thätigkeit, die göttliche und menschliche, in die Gemeinschaft mit Gott und Christo ewig hineingezogen, in welcher das Leben ein heiliges und wahrhaft unsterbliches ist.” Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie2, 791. “So ist im Abendmahle die Einheit des göttlichen und menschlichen Lebens festgehalten, und wird in ihm wirklich vollzogen, wie Christus selbst die lebendige Einheit der göttlichen und menschlichen Natur ist.” Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie2, 788. Cf. Staudenmaier, Abendmahl, 14; Staudenmaier, Geist des Christenthums2, Vol. 2, 769–770; Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie, 438–439.

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the higher goal of the incarnation (Menschwerdung Gottes) is realized.”13 Elsewhere he states that on the feast of Corpus Christi the feast of Christmas “comes to its realization in ourselves.”14 These statements are of course connected to the traditional idea of salvation. God has become human in Jesus Christ, celebrated at Christmas, to reunite humanity with Him, a unity that is effected in the Eucharist. Liturgically, as Staudenmaier points out, this is reflected in the preface of Christmas and Corpus Christi, which in his time was the same and which reads: “For in the mystery of the Word made flesh a new light of your glory has shone upon the eyes of our mind so that, as we recognize in him God made visible, we may be caught up through him in love of things invisible.” Today, this is just the first preface of Christmas, since after the Second Vatican Council, two prefaces for Corpus Christi were added, but before this change the Church prayed the preface of Christmas on Corpus Christi. This means that we have actually lost this very explicit liturgical connection between Christmas and Corpus Christi. Taking the liturgy as starting point for his theological reflection – lex orandi, lex credendi in practice – Staudenmaier further explores the (nowadays liturgically lost) connection between these two feasts. The mystery of Christ’s incarnation brings to us the “new light of divine clarity.” Since this new light has come to the world and permanently lives in this world, the earth rejoices. For this reason the heavenly choirs of Christmas in Luke 2 are cited by Staudenmaier. It is this heavenly joy that is continued while praying the preface of Christmas, also on Corpus Christi. Because of and just as in the Incarnation, heaven and earth are liturgically united in the joy of Christmas and in the permanent jubilation of Corpus Christi.15 Again, the reason for this jubilation, and now I come to the core of Staudenmaier’s argument, is this: On the day of Christmas, God unites himself with humanity, since He himself appears as a human amongst humans; likewise the human being unites itself with God through the Holy Supper on the feast of Corpus Christi.16

As already noted, the Incarnation (Christmas) and the Eucharist (Corpus Christi) are strongly connected in the liturgical theology that Staudenmaier develops here. By God’s grace and the salvific birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we the faithful are able to unite ourselves with God. Thus, heaven and earth rejoice, for 13

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“In seiner Feier [of Corpus Christi] verwirklicht sich der erhabene Zweck der Menschwerdung Gottes; das Weihnachtsfest kommt zu seiner Erfüllung im Feste des heil. Frohnleichnams” Staudenmaier, Die Zünfte, 62. “in uns selber zu seiner Verwirklichung komme” Staudenmaier, Die Zünfte, 62. See Staudenmaier, Die Zünfte, 62. “Denn vereinigte sich am Tage der heil. Weihnachten Gott mit der Menschheit, indem er selbst als Mensch unter Menschen erscheint; so vereinigt am Frohnleichnamsfeste der Mensch sich mit Gott durch das heil. Abendmahl.” Staudenmaier, Die Zünfte, 62.

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„Die Himmel hat sich auf die Erde herabgelassen; die Erde ist in den Himmel zurückgegangen.“17 Again, we can very easily read all of this from the perspective of theosis, although without Staudenmaier mentioning this explicitly.

3.

The Unification with God and with Each Other: the Eucharist and the Church

This unity between God and humanity is the first and main reason why Staudenmaier calls the Eucharist the great sacrament of unification. The second reason is the fact that this unity between God and humanity constituted in the Eucharist is through itself constitutive for the community, which is the Church. The Eucharist is not only the unification between God and humanity, but also the unification of human beings amongst each other. Staudenmaier says: However the love towards God and Christ, which here [in the Eucharist] is present and forever growing in ourselves, is also a love towards our brothers. This is why the Last Supper is the great sacrament of unification, and the Church as community in love is most intimately connected to it, because the Church itself, being the great and living unification of all with God and amongst each other, derives this from the Eucharist.18

Starting from this quote, a first observation is the crucial place of love. This is, of course, not at all surprising, since, as Staudenmaier elsewhere puts it, “love is unity.”19 The highest unity is the unity with God, and since this unity is constituted in the Eucharist, Staudenmaier is able to say that, “the mystery of the Supper is the mystery of love,”20 or that “in this Sacrament, the deepest essence of love is 17

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Staudenmaier, Die Zünfte, 62. I prefer the original German here, in translation this would mean something like: “Heaven has lowered itself to the earth, the earth has returend in heaven.” “Die Liebe aber, die hier [in the Eucharist] zu Gott und Christus in uns ist und immer lebendiger wird, ist auch eine Liebe zu den Brüdern. Deswegen ist das Abendmahl das große Sakrament der Vereinigung, und die Kirche als Gemeinschaft in der Liebe steht zu ihm in der allerengsten Verbindung, weil eben die Kirche selbst als die große lebendige Vereinigung Aller mit Gott und unter einander aus ihm nimmt.” Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie, 438 (italics are original). Also see Staudenmaier, Das Wesen2, 109–110; Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie2, 789. In this last work, Staudenmaier phrases it thus: “denn das Sacrament des Abendmahls […] ist das große Sacrament der Vereinigung selbst, und zwar des Menschen mit Gott durch Christus, und der Menschen untereinander” (italics are orginial). Staudenmaier, Geist des Christenthums2, Vol. 2, 702. “das Geheimniß des Abendmahls ist das Geheimniß der Liebe” Staudenmaier, Geist des Christenthums2, Vol. 2, 552.

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revealed.”21 As a consequence, Staudenmaier sometimes calls the Church the present Kingdom of love.22 A second observation is that the Church and the Eucharist are mutually constructive, as Staudenmaier also states elsewhere: “When the Church celebrates the Last Supper, she sees and edifies herself. In this moment she increasingly realizes herself in her temporal and eternal being.”23 In other words, the Eucharist builds up the Church. However, through his Eucharistic reflections and his ecclesiology the relation between the Eucharist and the Church clearly comes to the fore as one of reciprocity. In order to clarify this reciprocal relation between the Church and the Eucharist, it must be made clear how Staudenmaier perceives the real presence of Christ, in the Church as well as in the Eucharist. To Staudenmaier, the Eucharist is much more then anamnesis alone. Although he recognizes the commemorative character of the Eucharist, the Eucharist also contains something real.24 The Eucharist as a (spiritual) moment of remembrance, is connected with and constituted by the Eucharist as moment of reality, of real presence. Anamnesis is constitutive for the meaning of the Eucharist, but the real presence constitutes the living and sacramental value of this liturgical celebration. Both sustain each other.25 This real presence now, makes “our unification with Him a truly, essential and living one.”26 Staudenmaier stresses the fact that Christ’s presence is a living and active presence, which seeks to bring everything into unity, both in itself as well as in unity with God. For Staudenmaier the Eucharistic real presence can be seen as the ontological ground and essential condition for the unity with God through Christ. Of course, he also refers to the Eucharistic gifts. In view of his sacramental theology, in which the outward elements of liturgy and sacraments play an essential role, Staudenmaier believes that the consumption of the Eucharistic gifts is indispensible to reach true unity with God, which might also explain his strong devotion for Corpus Christi.27 21 22 23

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“In diesem Sakramente [the Eucharist] wird daher das tiefste Wesen der Liebe offenbar” Staudenmaier, Geist des Christenthums2, Vol. 2, 702. Staudenmaier, Das Wesen2, 114. In this writing, Staudenmaier connects this Kingdom of love immediately with the communio sanctorum. “Während daher die Kirche das Abendmahl spendet, schaut und erbaut sie sich selbst und verwirklichet sich in jedem Momente mehr in ihrem zeitlichen und ewigen Dasein.” Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie, 439. Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie, 439. “Das Moment der Geistigkeit wäre ohne das Moment der Realität eben so unlebendig, als das Moment der Realität ohne das Moment der Geistigkeit bedeutungslos wäre. Die Hauptsache ist der Geist; aber der wahre Geist ist der lebendige.” Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie, 439. “unsere Vereinigung mit ihm eine wahre, wesentliche und lebendige.” Staudenmaier, Geist des Christenthums2, Vol. 2, 703. Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie, 439.

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Similarly, Christ’s presence in the Church does not rest on mere commemoration but rests within the faith that Christ’s living presence in the Church is constituted in and through its liturgy and sacraments. Through these, Christ becomes real in the Church, his life is repeated in her, He appears in her according to his spiritual entirety, He is being presented in her, in order for her to become the substantial form, the proper manifestation, in one word, his body, σωμα.28.

As observed above, the metaphor of the Church as body of Christ is crucial for Staudenmaier’s theology. The chapter on the Church in his Encyklopädie, in which the reflections on the Eucharist are also present, is completely structured on the basis of Paul’s metaphor of the body and the members.29 Connecting ecclesiology and Eucharistic theology, Staudenmaier writes: Through this [Eucharistic] unity everyone becomes an agile and vivacious member, and thus one can understand how the Eucharist is that sacrament which has a truly particular and reciprocal relation to the Church, because in it she sees and establishes herself always anew and because [through it] she realizes the eternal idea underlying herself, and presents this in all objectivity – which is moreover the reason that this sacrament can only be truly known in the Church and that the doctrine of the Eucharist constitutes an essential part of the doctrine of the Church.30

Staudenmaier explicitly states that the relation between the Church and the Eucharist is a very particular and reciprocal one, as stated above. This quotation mainly illustrates how time and again Staudenmaier’s starting point is the Eucharistic unification. Through partaking in the Eucharistic meal and the unification between the faithful and Christ, all become members of his body.

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“wird Christus in der Kirche real, wiederholt sich in ihr sein Leben, kommt er in ihr nach seiner geistigen Totalität zur Erscheinung, wird er in ihr gestaltet, so daß sie die substantielle Form, die eigentliche Manifestation, mit einem Worte, sein Leib, σωμα wird” Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie2, 756. Cf. Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie, 425–448; Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie2, 752–849. Mainly the fourth chapter in the second edition of the Encyklopädie is entirely based on 1 Cor 12:4–28, see Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie2, 803–817. “Durch diese [eucharistische] Einheit wird Jeder am Leibe Christi ein regsames lebendiges Glied, und eben dadurch ist zu begreifen, wie das Abendmahl jenes Sakrament sei, das zur Kirche ein ganz besonderes rückwirkendes Verhältnis hat, weil sie in ihm sich selbst stets aufs neue schaut und erbaut, und die ihr zu Grund liegende ewige Idee verwirklichet und in der Objectivität darstellt, weßhalb dieses Sakrament auch nur in der Kirche wahrhaft erkannt werden kann, wie denn die Lehre vom Abendmahle ein wesentlicher Bestandtheil der Lehre von der Kirche ist” Staudenmaier, Encyklopädie, 440.

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Conclusion Unification with God through Christ is essential for the theological thinking of Franz Anton Staudenmaier, for whom the highest goal of the Church and the human being is this unity with God. This unity is strongly connected with the incarnation, which he also shows through a particular liturgical theological method. This also explains why the Eucharist has a unique position in his theology. The stress on unity moreover explains the reciprocal relation Staudenmaier describes between the Eucharist and the Church. The Eucharist can only take place in the life of the Church, understood as Christ’s present and living body, and at the same time, the Eucharist is the realization of this presence. This is a living and active presence, whose sole goal is to lead to unity, both amongst the faithful and as a profound unity with God. The act of communion, nurturing oneself on Christ’s body and blood, is essential for this unity – hence also Staudenmaier’s attention and love for the feast of Corpus Christi. Influenced and driven by the organic thinking of the Romantic era during his lifetime, Staudenmaier unites many different aspects of the Eucharist into one coherent system, as well as those aspects that are beyond the scope of this reflection such as sacrifice, salvation and others. Staudenmaier is certainly one of the most underestimated Catholic theologians of nineteenth century within the field of liturgy and sacraments and by extension ecclesiology and systematic theology as a whole, and whose work warrants a great deal of further study in our own contemporary era.

Language, Structure, and Sacrament Reconsidering the Eucharistic Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx

Daniel Minch

The Flemish-born Dominican theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx (1914–2009), wrote variously throughout his career on the character and role of the sacraments in Catholic thought. Most prominently, he published his dissertation as a book titled De sacramentele heilseconomie,1 or ‘The Sacramental Economy of Salvation’ in 1952, as the culmination of his theological studies in France under the tutelage Marie-Dominic Chenu and Yves Congar and his continuing work as a lecturer at the Dominican study house in Leuven, Belgium.2 Later, he released a smaller work, directed towards a wider audience that was both a summary of his dissertation and part of a planned sequel to his first work (in the form of a “preliminary study”) that laid out a sacramental integration of human culture with divine salvation.3 This appeared in English in 1963 as Christ the Sacrament of Encounter with God.4 He also wrote the entry on ‘sacrament’ (among many others) in the three-volume Theologisch woordenboek, a Dutch-language encyclopedia of Catholic theological knowledge published between 1952 and 1958.5 Schillebeeckx went on to publish a 1

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Henricus Edward Schillebeeckx, De sacramentele heilseconomie. Theologische bezinning op S. Thomas’ sacramentenleer in het licht van de traditie en van de hedendaagse sacramentsproblematiek (Antwerpen/Bilthoven: ‘t Groeit & H. Nelissen, 1952). Erik Borgman, Edward Schillebeeckx: A Theologian and His History, trans. John Bowden (London/New York: Continuum, 2003), 103–106, 117, 199–211. Ted Schoof, “E. Schillebeeckx: 25 Years in Nijmegen,” Theology Digest 37, no. 4 (1990): 230; Borgman, Edward Schillebeeckx, 215–216. Christus sacrament van de Godsontmoeting (Bilthoven: Nelissen, 1959); the first and second printings were under the title De Christusontmoeting als sacrament van de Godsontmoeting: Theologische begrijpelijkheid van he heilsfeit der sacramenten (Antwerpen/Bilthoven: ‘t Groeit & H. Nelissen, 1958). The later edition was expanded under the new title and translated into French, German (1960), Italian (1962), English (1963), Spanish (1965), Japanese, Polish (1966), and Portuguese (1967). This entry is found in Theologisch woordenboek, vol. 2, eds. H. Brink, A.H. Maltha, J.H. Walgrave (Roermond and Maaseik: Romen & zonen, 1958), s.v. ‘sacrament,’ cols. 4185–4231. Hereafter cited as Schillebeeckx, “Sacrament.”

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short book in 1967 on the Eucharist that reconsidered the meaning of ‘transubstantiation’ as a contemporary hermeneutical problem.6 Finally, towards the end of his life, it was announced that Schillebeeckx was preparing a major work on the sacraments that sadly never materialized before his death in 2009. One of his final scholarly contributions, “Towards a Rediscovery of the Christian Sacraments: Ritualizing Elements in Daily Life” (from 2000), seems to be a preview of what we might have expected from the book, where Schillebeeckx’s thinking has shifted far from his earlier treatments and is highly influenced by ritual studies.7 Here we will leave aside Schillebeeckx’s later thoughts on the sacraments and the liturgy, and focus instead on his treatment of the sacraments, and especially the Eucharist, in some of his earlier work.8 This will allow us to highlight the importance of a hermeneutical approach to history and theology. The turn that Schillebeeckx made to contemporary hermeneutics in the mid-1960s represents a major sea change in his thinking. I am convinced that this hermeneutical turn (and the later integration of critical theory into this synthesis) is less of a total ‘break’ from his so-called ‘metaphysical’ early work than a new direction for channeling his energy and a reorientation of his methodology from an essentially neo-Scholastic framework towards a more-or-less Gadamerian one, which allowed for, above all, greater creativity in dealing with theological problems. As a hermeneutical exercise, Schillebeeckx’s 1967 book on the Eucharist is a short but paradigmatic example. Scholars often regard his first two Jesus volumes as his most important works content-wise, and likewise consider the shorter Interim Report on the Books Jesus and Christ as the purest distillation of his methodology. The often-overlooked Eucharist book, however, shows more than just clear signs of where Schillebeeckx was heading with radical hermeneutics and even phenomenology in at an earlier period of development.9 We know that Schillebeeckx be6

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Christus’ tegenwoordigheid in de eucharistie (Antwerpen: Patmos, 1967); ET: The Eucharist, trans. N.D. Smith (London/New York: Burns & Oates, 2005). Based on “Christus’ tegenwoordigheid in de Eucharistie,” Tijdschrift voor theologie 5 (1965): 136–172, and “De eucharistische wijze van Christus’ werkelijke tegenwoordigheid,” Tijdschrift voor theologie 6 (1966): 359–394. “Naar een herontdekking van de christelijke sacramenten: Ritualisering van religieuze momenten in het alledaagse leven, Tijdschrift voor theologie 40 (2000): 164–187. English translation: “Towards a Rediscovery of the Christian Sacraments: Ritualizing Elements in Daily Life,” in Ordo: Bath, Word, Prayer, Table, ed. Dirk Lange, Dwight W. Vogel (Akron, OH: OSL Publications, 2005), 6–34. Schillebeeckx’s final article on sacraments deserves greater study in another format. At present there are two articles that assess and criticize Schillebeeckx’s later thought. See Lieven Boeve, “The Sacramental Interruption of the Rituals of Life,” The Heythrop Journal 44 (2003): 401–417; Joris Geldhof, “The Early and Late Schillebeeckx OP on Rituals, Liturgies, and Sacraments,” Usus Antiquior 1, no. 2 (July 2010): 132–150. Ultimately, phenomenology is not well developed in his later works, but there are stray allusions and references to the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenolo-

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gan teaching courses on hermeneutics in 1966, and we should infer that he had already been studying the problem during the Council period based on his teaching and the content of “Christus’ tegenwoordigheid in de Eucharistie” from 1965.10 The resulting book on Eucharist offers an applied methodological study of the Tridentine concept of Eucharistic change. Here Schillebeeckx is essentially asking, ‘What form of theological hermeneutics were the council fathers at Trent using to think of and express Eucharistic change?’ This analysis is driven by the all-important question of whether or not our understanding and expression of Eucharistic change, and by extension, Eucharistic presence, is bound to these same categories. If it is not, then Christians are free, and in fact compelled to reinterpret the dogmas of Trent concerning transubstantiation with a mind towards contemporary philosophical-critical consciousness in order for the dogma to retain the force of truth, since “our view of reality cannot possibly be separated completely from our conviction of faith … because the judgment of faith is by definition a judgment about reality.”11 This sacramental work is, however, more than just a clear methodological study. It is the practical outworking of a theoretical framework. Many contemporary readers of Schillebeeckx often ‘skip’ the dense exegetical portions of his longer Jesus books, while highlighting the importance of the shorter methodological sections. What this approach misses is the fact that Schillebeeckx’s historicalcritical exegesis is itself theology – a theological discourse from which much can be gained. The Jesus books, especially the first two, are not just a propaedeutic for theology in the sense that reading them prepares us to only afterwards follow the hermeneutical-critical method that is proposed. If this were the case, then the specifically methodological sections might be sufficient. As it is, however, the books do what they claim; practicing the method is practicing theology without merely reverting to a purely theoretical approach. There is an analogy to the sacrament of the Eucharist here in that Eucharist is both the cause of what is signi-

10 11

gy, I would hypothesize, represents the other ‘half’ of Schillebeeckx’s extant work, providing a foundation for his hermeneutics that is not made explicit in most of his writing. Cf. Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, trans. John Bowden, vol. 7 of The Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx (London et al.: Bloomsbury, 2014), 19–20 [34]; The Understanding of Faith: Interpretation and Criticism, trans. N.D. Smith, vol. 5 of The Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx (London et al.: Bloomsbury, 2014), 13–14 [15]. The writings of Merleau-Ponty were instrumental to Schillebeeckx’s analysis of philosophical atheism in the early 1960s, but in some places it receives more favorable treatment as a philosophical foundation for experience (of God). See especially God and Man, trans. Edward Fitzgerald, Peter Tomlinson (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969), 45, 61, 84, 129, 162. Pp. 162: “Through this transcendence man [sic] surpasses himself within the horizon of this world, and human freedom is (according to Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty) the native soil of the meaning of his world.” Schoof, “E. Schillebeeckx: 25 Years in Nijmegen,” 326–328. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 78.

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fied and signifies what it causes – we will see that Schillebeeckx’s understanding of reality as ‘sacramental’ is not accidental, but precisely ordered on his understanding of sacrament. Here, we will read The Eucharist as a performative theological hermeneutics. The best way to follow Schillebeeckx’s method is do it along with him, and this book provides, in my view, the clearest and most concise example. By following Schillebeeckx’s thought process, contemporary theology can find a more creative and contextually appropriate path towards understanding the sacraments, one that will be founded on this hermeneutical method of investigation. The Eucharist serves as a test case for rethinking the sacrament in contemporary philosophical categories, that is, in terms of experience and phenomenological analysis that presents the encounter with God in the sacraments as a fundamentally personal one. In order to do this we will also utilize ideas his 1958 article on the sacraments, and in doing so point to the on-going relevance of his pre-conciliar thought and its compatibility with (and necessity for) what is widely regarded as the more ‘important’ post-conciliar theology. We will also seek to expand upon the places where Schillebeeckx has paid inadequate attention to the embededness of the sacraments in their liturgical-communal context. Ultimately, we will outline a phenomenological-hermeneutical account of sacramentality that predates the important revival of Catholic sacramental thought of previous decades by authors such as Louis-Marie Chauvet, Enrico Mazza, Nathan Mitchell, and David Power.

1.

Analyzing the Hermeneutical Problem

The first problem examined by Schillebeeckx is a hermeneutical one. It is important to see the approach taken by Schillebeeckx, as well as the solutions that we will reach in this theological exercise, as being conditioned by the debate around ‘transubstantiation’ that took place in the mid-1960s. The neo-Scholastic framework of the pre-conciliar era primarily viewed the sacraments as “institutions that mediated grace,” or dispensaries for divine grace that occurred within a self-enclosed cultic world.12 Schillebeeckx interpreted ‘sacrament’ differently, drawing a distinction between the early Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on the Sententiae and the Aquinas of the Summa.13 The sacraments, following Dom Odo 12 13

Borgman, Edward Schillebeeckx, 209. Schillebeeckx, De sacramentele heilseconomie, 125–126. Borgman, Edward Schillebeeckx, 209. Schillebeeckx, De sacramentele heilseconomie, 128–130. By critiquing the early and mature Thomas, Schillebeeckx was advancing an implicit critique of neo-Scholastic Thomism. In the climate in which he published his dissertation, this discretion was very much necessary. His teacher, Chenu, was removed from Le Saulchoir in 1942,

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Casel,14 intrinsically point beyond themselves because the “sacrament is thus a sign of the historical Christ-mystery, but such that this mystery is currently acting on the soul of the subject for whom the sacrament is consummated.”15 This insight relates the sacraments to the world of human inter-subjectivity on an intrinsic, rather than an extrinsic, level. In the years following the publication of his dissertation, there was a new debate underway about the adequacy of scholastic terminology for Eucharistic change, particularly the word ‘transubstantiation’ in order to safeguard the experience and meaning of the dogma.16 Fundamental changes to the philosophical presuppositions of the day had begun a discussion over the suitability of the word ‘transubstantiation’ itself and its fittingness with regard to the sacramental mystery. An essential consideration of this debate was the nature of Eucharistic change itself. Those with a newer outlook on the subject posited an ontological change in the Eucharistic elements, while the more traditionally neo-Scholastic party continued to hold to a physical or molecular change in the bread and wine.17 The fundamental question of how Christ is present in the Eucharist is tied up immediately with the meaning of the sacrament. The need to explain anew the real presence as an aspect of Catholic sacramentality gave rise to new formulations and designations for the phenomenon that did not carry the baggage of neoScholastic natural philosophy. Most notable among the new terminology were ‘transignification,’ ‘transfinalization,’ and ‘transfiguration’. Paul VI’s encyclical Mysterium fidei from 1965 attempted to quell the debate and reaffirm the position of transubstantiation. Erik Borgman asserts that the encyclical had something of a chilling effect on sacramental theology, which did not recover until much later, and long after the completion of the conciliar liturgical reforms.18 What we will see here, however, is that Schillebeeckx already went very far in grounding ‘real presence’ in contemporary categories and in dialogue with the ‘new’ terminology, although in a way that was not necessarily opposed to Paul VI’s declaration. In order to approach the delicate nature of the Eucharistic dogma, Schillebeeckx begins with history and with essential questions about how we have interpreted that history. He asks if historians of Trent have not erroneously treated the

14 15 16 17

18

and he was again disciplined in 1954. Furthermore, the publication of Humani generis in 1950 had had a profound effect on Catholic theologians who employed ‘new’ historical-critical methodology. Borgman, Edward Schillebeeckx, 205. Schillebeeckx, De sacramentele heilseconomie, 130. (Translation ours.) Schillebeeckx, “Transubstantiation, Transfinalization, Transfiguration,” Worship 40, no. 6 (1966): 324–325. Schillebeeckx, “Transubstantiation, Transfinalization, Transfiguration,” 332–334. Schillebeeckx points out that this debate began in Italy, and not in Holland as some ‘conservative’ critics alleged. Borgman, Edward Schillebeeckx, 345.

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basic hermeneutics of the council, which enshrined ‘transubstantiation’ in Catholic dogma. By analyzing the Acta of the council, Schillebeeckx traces the formation of canons 1 and 2 on the Eucharist to see the thinking patterns that the bishops used in formulating the idea of Eucharistic change and real presence.19 Thomas Aquinas famously described these problems in terms of Aristotelian natural philosophy and the doctrine of substance and accidents.20 Despite the robust debate over this subject by Thomas, Bonaventure (and their respective successors), and others such as John Wycliffe who held to a more purely Aristotelian view, the term ‘substance’ had currency within theology by the time of Trent.21 Canon 2 from Trent affirms a “wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance” of the bread and wine while the species of each remains.22 Schillebeeckx claims that in general “most modern historians of the Council of Trent maintain that this Council completely dissociated itself from the Aristotelian philosophy of nature.”23 The logic appears to be that because the council fathers did not use ‘accident,’ and instead chose ‘species’ for the Tridentine schemas then the fathers were explicitly choosing to dissociate themselves from Aristotle.24 A careful analysis of the Acta of the council, however, reveals that in 1547 a proposal was made to change ‘species’ to ‘accidents,’ but the vote produced a tie, which 19 20 21

22

23

24

Ibid., 29–53. ST, III, q. 75–77. Question 75–76 deals with Eucharistic presence, and q. 77 deals with the “change of substance.” Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 13–15, 49–51, 72–76; Raymond Moloney, The Eucharist (Eugene, OR: Continuum/Wipf & Stock, 1995), 142: “This term [substance] had a long history in the exposition of the faith. Originally it was associated with the problems of Christology, but ever since the fifth century it had been used of the Eucharist. In this context it even had a biblical ring to it because of Jerome’s phrase ‘supersubstantial bread [panis supersubstantialis]’ in his translation of Matthew’s version of the Our Father.” Cf. ibid., 163. For the whole text see Heinrich Denzinger, The Sources of Christian Dogma, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, based on the 13th ed. of Enchiridion Symbolorum (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2002), 884: “Can. 2. If anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist there retains the substance of bread and wine together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the entire substance of the wine into the blood, the species of the bread and wine only remaining, a change which the Catholic Church most fittingly calls transubstantiation: let him be anathema.” Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 54. Schillebeeckx goes to lengths to show the importance of Aristotle for the council fathers. This by itself is enough of an assertion, but in his book he intends it as a counter assertion against certain historians, including Moloney who says that the philosophical use of substance “entered the theology of the Eucharist only in the high Middle Ages” (although the high Middle Ages were long over with by the time of Trent, so this assertion is somewhat puzzling). See Moloney, The Eucharist, 163. The Council did not purport to settle differences between different schools of scholasticism, but was focused on creating a formal response to Protestantism. See Schillebeeckx, “Sacrament,” col. 4192; Moloney, The Eucharist, 159.

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meant that the formulation stood as it was.25 Further, the word ‘species,’ or ‘form’ had already been used by earlier councils and theologians.26 Schillebeeckx claims that historians have interpreted the council’s explicit intention not to canonize one scholastic school over another to mean that they were not using scholastic thinking altogether in their formulations at the council.27 More recent historical studies of Trent plainly acknowledge the indebtedness of the council fathers and especially their theologians to the work of the Scholastic schools, “because the medieval Scholastics were the ones who had fully elaborated the theology of the sacraments, and their successors were the theologians of the council.”28 This is the deeper, and ultimately more important hermeneutical claim, since it shows the way in which we as contemporary people can impose our own categories on the past – Scholasticism for us is a historical entity, something that can be studied and from which we have considerable historical distance. There are few contemporary people who would continue to hold to Aristotelian natural philosophy or physics. Our conceptions of the universe, of cosmology, of science, and subsequently of a word like ‘substance’ are so radically different from that of the council fathers who were educated in and through a thoroughly scholastic framework that we must remember that there is no ‘separation’ in their minds between physical reality and the doctrine of substance and accidents. This is true for them, just as we cannot begin to interpret the world without at least a background awareness of the atomic and molecular structure of matter. The natural philosophy of the time period cannot, therefore, be strained out of the council fathers’ views, for indeed what would be left for them to build a view of nature? The 25 26

27 28

Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 34–35, 54–55. Denzinger, The Sources of Christian Dogma, 414, 424. Cf. Moloney, The Eucharist, 164: “It is true that the term transubstantiation comes from philosophical theology. It is also probably true that the majority at Trent would have invoked Aristotle in their personal speculations on the matter, even though many of these had more a nominalist idea of substance than a strictly Aristotelian one.” Here Moloney performs exactly the hermeneutical blunder warned against by Schillebeeckx. He wants to attribute a ‘common’ meaning of substance to the term as ‘underlying reality,’ over-against any notion of Aristotelian philosophy. It is not wrong to acknowledge different levels of understanding the term ‘substance’ but it seems disingenuous to imply that theologians trained in the scholastic universities would explicitly use a term to include one aspect of it, the ‘pre-philosophical’ one wherein to “express this belief we do not need Aristotle,” while at the same time excluding a philosophical mode of thinking that they were overtly familiar with and actively debated. This is especially suspicious, since the explanation is couched in terms of politics and the in-fighting between different scholastic schools, but the matter pertains to the fathers’ very understanding of physics, cosmology, and natural philosophy. These are presuppositions that are unlikely to be ‘bracketed out’ in favor of a merely ‘common’ definition of a technical term. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 56. John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA/London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 119, 255.

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word ‘species’ is being used here to effectively mean the same thing as ‘accident’ “in their thinking about faith and within the framework of faith.”29 A fundamental doctrine of the faith was, therefore, expressed in the contemporary thinking patterns of the day and according to the prevalent interpretive frameworks. The concept of ‘real presence’ in the Eucharist, as something that was present in the Christian tradition in different formulations long before Trent is not contingent on the theory of substance and accidents, but its expression in this manner was necessary at that time in order to be understood.30 This observation has two effects: first it acknowledges the contingency of historicallyconditioned language. So, ‘transubstantiation’ was formulated as it was, but it could potentially have been otherwise, and it had already been formulated similarly in Greek as μεταστοιχείοσις.31 Meanwhile, the notion of explicit change in the Eucharistic elements can already be found explicitly in Justin Martyr. Second, however, each era formulated the solution to the problem differently, but each linguistic formulation was also in some way essential at the time. This makes the expression of dogma not simply a matter of ‘wording,’ as though any wording is completely arbitrary – ‘contingent’ and ‘arbitrary’ are in no wise coterminous here. The wording of a dogma in its own context is essential to its being understood by its contemporary audience, but that does not mean that these formulations were inevitable historical developments. Transubstantiation ‘worked’ because it could be understood within an Aristotelian frame of reference, and it could even be disagreed with within that same linguistic horizon. John Wycliffe famously came to the conclusion, on purely Aristotelian grounds, that the substance of bread or wine could not be disconnected from its accidents as Thomas claimed, and therefore a ‘transubstantiation’ of bread and wine was impossible.32 Language is therefore [1] historically conditioned and contingent, expressing one possibility among 29

30 31

32

Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 55–56. ‘Species’ had juridical pride of place according to the voting, where an equal number of votes were placed for both words. That ‘accident’ was used in other preparatory documents, and the fact that it was not brought to a vote later gives some evidence for the interchangeability of the terms. There is no conscious disassociation from ‘accident’ in favor of ‘species,’ but rather a sense that both were equally good. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 60–62; cf. Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 66. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 65; “Transubstantiation, Transfinalization, Transfiguration,” 331–332. Here στοιχῖον, or element (i.e. the bread and wine) is changed. John Meyendorff attests to this usage in the Greek fathers, but insists that the stress is on the change (μεταβολὴ) of the elements, or alternatively ‘re-ordination’ (μεταρύθμισις) of the elements. Here, there is no ‘essence’ (substantia) that is “distinct from humanity, but Jesus Himself, the risen Lord.” Thus μεταστοιχείοσις cannot be seen as a perfect translation for transubstantiation (which would be μεταουσίωσις), but as a similar attempt at conceptualizing Eucharistic change. See Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 2nd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979), 201–206. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 58–59.

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many, while [2] also essential in its own historicity as what is able to convey meaning within a particular socio-cultural expectation horizon. This exercise in historical-critical hermeneutics is aimed at showing that canon 1 affirms the reality of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist, contrasted with a presence that is merely “sign or figure, or force.”33 Canon 2 affirms that Eucharistic presence includes Eucharistic change; change that is “most fittingly” called transubstantiation.34 The two canons can be read as [1] the reality and meaning of the sacrament and [2] what we call the sacramental operation (wherein the operation, or change, is paramount). Substance is an Aristotelian concept in natural philosophy, but by being contrasted with mere sign or figure we are also opposing reality with an appearance in the way that substantia was linked in translation (cf. Heb. 11:1) to the Greek οὐσία, indicating the “firmness of reality” as opposed to mere appearances or an abstract concept.35 The double meaning of substantia in its philosophical (Aristotelian) usage and its more common usage (‘reality’) became confused and comingled, but now that Aristotelian natural philosophy and physics no longer constitute the ruling paradigm, it seems only right that we separate them once more.36 By showing that the council fathers of Trent both thought and reasoned in terms of Aristotle, Schillebeeckx has in some sense freed us from relying solely on Aristotle for interpreting the dogmas that they produced. The dogma was, “thought out in Aristotelian categories, but the strictly Aristotelian content of these categories was not included in what the dogma intended to say.”37 As we have said above, canon 1 states that Christ is present in the Eucharistic species 33

34

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36 37

Denzinger, The Sources of Christian Dogma, 883. Piet Schoonenberg appropriately qualifies the term ‘sign,’ however saying: “Whenever people say that Christ’s body and blood are present here in a sign, but as such in a real sign, wherein the substance of the sign-object is altered in its meaning, then is this not at all in conflict with Trent.” (Translation ours.) Schoonenberg, “Eucharistische tegenwoordigheid,” Verbum 26, no. 5 (1959): 199. Denzinger, The Sources of Christian Dogma, 884. Here I side with Moloney against Schillebeeckx, where he claims that content-wise, canon 2 does not add anything new to the insight of canon 1. The idea of change is important as a separate point for the council fathers to make. See Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 46; Moloney, The Eucharist, 173, n. 40. See also O’Malley, Trent, 147. Cf. Heb. 11:1– Greek: “αὐτοι ἀπολοῦνται, σὺ δὲ διαμένεις: καὶ πάντες ὡς ἱμάτιον παλαιωθήσονται,”; Vulgate: “est autem fides sperandorum substantia rerum argumentum non parentum.” Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 72–73. See note 26, above. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 102. Schillebeeckx distinguishes between the levels of faith, ontology, and natural philosophy utilized by Thomas and which can be seen in other thinkers of the period. The first two are historically attested in the longer tradition of the church such that Christ’s presence and the change of the elements are clearly seen in various modes of expression beginning with the New Testament. The third element, however depends on a view of cosmology and the natural world.

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(forms), while canon 2 states something about how Christ is present, i.e. by means of a change in the gifts and in a way that is not merely an appearance or shallow sign. If the council fathers in fact used a view of physics and cosmology that is no longer possible for us today, then it seems to follow that we should not be beholden to it in terms of explaining Eucharistic change or Eucharistic presence. This explanation does change something of “what the dogma intended to say,” however, in that what is expressed is always wrapped up in its mode of expression. The use of substance/accidents eventually gave rise to a very mechanistic view of grace and God’s work in the Eucharist, requiring a miracle to replace one substance with another while the accidents remain, and further intervention on God’s part to sustain this miraculous presence.38 The effect of the wording of the dogma is something that will certainly change, should we be able to reinterpret it with a different cosmology in mind (as we should never assume that a meaningful reinterpretation is always possible a priori). Schillebeeckx asserts that we as Christians, “no longer say, ‘Christ is there,’ without asking for whom he is present.”39 In other words, Christ’s presence is somehow personal for us as believers, but also in his own being present, since Christ is not an impersonal deity, but a personal and historical-eschatological God.40 The Eucharist is an element of human life that establishes a relationship between humans and God. Fundamentally, we have to ask, ‘what is a sacrament?’ What is it that establishes this inter-personal relationship? In going back to Schillebeeckx’s 1958 article from Theologisch woordenboek, we find that one of the primary meanings of sacramentum, “was in profane Latin: a religious commitment,” and “the idea of a public religious oath.”41 In this sense, it indicated a bond, a commitment of one party to another in terms of a military, juridical, or religious sense while also keeping in mind that any military oath was simultaneously a religious one for Rome.42 This archaic and philological use of sacramentum could be hermeneutically retrieved today when we speak of sacrament, and especially when applied to the Eucharist.43 38 39 40 41 42

43

Cf. Bruce T. Morrill, Encountering Christ in the Eucharist: The Paschal Mystery in People, Word, and Sacrament (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2012), 70–71, 100–101. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 104. Schillebeeckx, “Transubstantiation, Transfinalization, Transfiguration,” 335. Schillebeeckx, “Sacrament,” col. 4185. (Translation ours.) Ibid., cols. 4185–4187. Roman soldiers enacted a sacramentum in sacrificing each morning to their standards, creating a bond with the Roman gods that, in their eyes, sustained and preserved them. Religion was all-important for Rome, since it was quite literally a matter of national security that the pax deorum be kept in place, especially within the army. Here we are consciously leaving aside the ‘mystery’ etymology and definition for sacramentum derived from the Greek μυστήριον. Schillebeeckx initially follows Casel closely on this issue. See Borgman, Edward Schillebeeckx, 204; Schillebeeckx, De sacramentele heilseconomie, 665. However, by the time of his “Sacrament” article, he has come to see sacramentum as contain-

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What is required for an interpersonal bond is, first, two parties. In the sacraments, we must also look for a medium beyond the material that is present in our liturgies, since there are different types of mediation. On the symbolic level, the level at which one thing makes another present in its reality, we require both a physical thing or act as well as reflective, (inter-)subjective interpretation. In thinking of an agreement between two people, there is an offer, an acceptance, and in this case let us say a handshake that cements a deal.44 The physical embodiment of that agreement is truly made present by the handshake, but it is also the handshake that makes it an official agreement. If either party would refuse, then the deal is placed in jeopardy or even nullified. Accepting an offer is a fundamentally interpretive act where signs must be reflected upon and made sense of. There is an element of dialogue in forming such a bond.45 This points at the linguistic character of the sign, especially within a view of reality that espouses the linguisticality of being itself.46 “The essence of language,” says Schillebeeckx, “is that it lets beings appear in being.”47 Understanding is the essence of being, since we are constantly in the process of becoming by means of comprehension of the world, of objects, and of ourselves (revealing something of a doubled-self). Each offer, object, and apperception requires reflection and interpretation, which are fundamentally linguistic processes. This linguisticality is itself a product of humanity’s historicity and the unrepeatability of experience.48 Understanding cannot, therefore, be “a mere act of repeating the same thing. Rather, understanding is

44

45

46 47 48

ing a juridical meaning and significance that is absent from the Greek counterpart. See “Sacrament,” col. 4186. Schillebeeckx himself cites a particular handshake analogy in his “Sacrament” article. In his example, the handshake is a sign of friendship, an “abstract and logical connection/relation [verband] that lies between this exterior deed and spiritual reality, which is called friendship.” See “Sacrament,” col. 4194. Translation ours. This example comes from L. Monden, “Symbooloorzakelijkheid als eigen causaliteit van het sacrament,” Bijdragen uitgegeven door de philosophische en theologische faculteiten der Noord- en Zuid-Nederlandse Jezuieten 13 (1952): 277–285. This journal was the forerunner of the journal Bijdragen tijdschrift voor philosophie en theologie (currently the International Journal of Philosophy and Theology). The bond between God and humanity is, following the Hebrew tradition, a covenantal relationship wherein symbols are “situated in their ritual action, and the ritual, in turn, [is] situated in its purpose of sustaining and repeatedly renewing the mutual, covenantal presence of God with the people.” See Morrill, Encountering Christ, 24–26. Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith, 33–36 [37–39]. Ibid., 38. See Hans Georg Gadamer, “On the Scope and Function of Hermeneutical Reflection,” in Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. David E. Linge (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 2008), 24–25.

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aware of the fact that it is indeed an act of repeating.”49 Thus even repetitive actions take on new meaning in the subjective act of understanding them.

2.

The Sacramental Bond

How can the linguistic structure of interpretation be applied to the Eucharist and the sacraments? First, we must retain our idea of a sacramentum as a bond between two parties, which for our purposes we will deem the objective and subjective perspectives.50 From the subjective perspective, from the side of the experiencing human subject, we enter into the words and deeds that constitute the liturgy and approach the sacrament of the Eucharist with a horizon of expectation. That horizon is socially and historically conditioned as a framework from which we look to interpret the future. Our expectations for the future, based on past experiences and reflections on our own history, also exert a force on how we will experience the present.51 Participating in the liturgy will be affected by how we understand that liturgy, by what we believe – this in turn affects our actions, or how we actually participate in the liturgy. This understanding is cobbled together from the linguistic elements that we use to make sense of the world, and being placed in the context of Roman Catholic worship will ‘automatically,’ for Catholics, evoke specific frames of reference and for interpretation. What are we interpreting when we approach the Eucharist as a sacrament, however? In approaching it ‘as sacrament’ we assume a belief in the sacramental character of the Eucharist itself, or a personal faith-act informed by a wider tradition that gives us the interpretive ‘tools’ to see what it is that we see on the altar and in the ciborum. There is a physical reality there to be experienced – bread and wine, both of which can be seen, felt, and tasted as physical elements. What is there as a sign and symbol is the body and blood of Christ, but not as a ‘hidden’ form, or a physical change, and not in terms of a super-physical ‘substance’ behind tactile appearances.52 In fact, what we are doing is making the ‘bread and wine’ into a sign, but one that is quite different from ‘ordinary food and drink.’53 Schillebeeckx asserts that “[w]e know reality only in signs,” which are essentially 49

50 51 52 53

Gadamer, “On the Problem of Self-Understanding,” in Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. David E. Linge (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2008), 45. Emphasis original. It is precisely the former, objective perspective that Schillebeeckx will lose some sight of in his later work. Cf. Geldhof, “The Early and Late Schillebeeckx,” 139, 143–144. Cf. Gadamer, “On the Scope and Function of Hermeneutical Reflection,” 37. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 108–110. Cf. Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 66.

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linguistic.54 Understanding is a process of arrangement, coordination, and creation of signs that mediate an event in order to reach an understanding that is itself also linguistic. Understanding is both a process and a product. Therefore, “what we experience as bread and wine is also always a sign of the reality which escapes us, even outside the context of the Eucharist.”55 ‘Ordinary food and drink’ means something to us as well, and this meaning is also one that is interpreted. The physical signs are interpreted by a subject in a liturgical-cultic environment, and this changes their significance – literally what they signify is altered. This is the meaning of the word ‘transignification,’ which is a term that Schillebeeckx defended as a (partially) valid way of thinking about the Eucharist, although not a complete picture of what is involved in a sacrament.56 Even while remaining “essentially what it is, bread can be included in a sphere of meaning that is quite different from the purely biological,” as when bread is simply food.57 Human beings as experiencing subjects in fact live in a world that is constantly being transsignified, where subjects produce meanings within individual interpretive frameworks and can even transfer these meanings within a communal framework through dialogue and tradition. Two people can share bread within a similar linguistic-interpretive framework where they understand it as more than simply nourishment, or even through the sharing of bread come to form such an interpretive framework via their intentional activity in the world.58 An object as a sign can become phenomenologically different without altering its molecular structure, because if it is trans-signified it actually is a different reality.59 We do not need something new to occur ‘behind’ bread and wine; the change is with the objects themselves by means of their function as (fundamentally linguistic!) signs. Further, the question of when Eucharistic change occurs must also have its answer in the liturgy in which it is based. The liturgical-cultic act of consecration, within the wider context of the mass is the proper site of Eucharistic celebration. Schillebeeckx explicitly leaves aside what he calls “the whole context of the liturgical sacramental event,” taking up only the problem of transubstantiation for the 54 55 56 57 58

59

Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 129. Ibid., 129. Ibid., 132–133. Ibid., 133. We might call this bread the realization of our love, companionship, or mutual loyalty. The word ‘companion’ has its roots in the Roman ideal of ‘breaking bread together’. The importance of sharing a meal, of breaking bread, was enormous in the ancient world, since bread and other foodstuffs had a different significance. It is difficult for many of us in the West to conceive of the importance of food, since we are surrounded by it in so many different forms and take its availability for granted. Contrary to the position of F. Selvaggi, “Il concetto di sostanza nel dogma eucharistico in relazione alla fisica moderna,” Gregorianum 30 (1949): 7–45. Cited by Schillebeeckx in “Transubstantiation, Transfinalization, Transfiguration,” 333–334.

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sake of the length of the work which he wishes to limit to one topic and one short monograph.60 He acknowledges that any criticism of the scope of his treatment is legitimate, so we must here seek to expand the implications of his hermeneuticalphenomenological view of the Eucharist. It is the communal aspect of the Eucharist that is of paramount importance to the transignification of the bread and wine, since without other people, the cultic ceremony cannot be identified with the Eucharist.61 Here, the context provides other secondary signifiers that assist in the interpretation of a central sign. Interpretation is often seen as a negative process of discerning what an object is not in order to understand what it is, as in classical structuralism. The presence of other contextual signs are also important, however, because they can act as positive significations that lead to the identification of the original sign. These specific additive, or secondary signifiers are essential to the primary sign, which is dependent on them for its own existence. We know, therefore, that we are celebrating the Eucharist with our neighbors because the Eucharistic signs are present in a liturgical environment. Those who participate are identified as fellow-Christians by their apparent faith in a commonly held symbol. The Eucharist can be seen in this manner a sign of the unity of the church community: all who are present take this sign precisely as a unique and determining factor in the faith of the community. It is also a cause of that unity, where by virtue of participation in the Eucharistic liturgy all the faithful are included in an interpreted whole.62 The change of bread and wine, ordinary food and drink, into something that has extreme importance for the community is, at one level, a change in its significance for that community, and this changes the nature of the reality of that community (as a people gathered to do ‘x,’ for a specific purpose). Schillebeeckx has not adequately considered the role of the community for the possibility of Eucharistic change and for the process of transignification itself.63 The community gathers to celebrate the Eucharist, but when the elements are transformed and received, the nature of the community is also altered and transignified. The sacrament asserts its force on us at the inter-personal level, where “the being itself of things changes when the relationship is altered.”64 Without an object having some meaning within an interpersonal relationship, signifying some60 61 62 63

64

See Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 19, 43. Recall that even ‘private masses’ are to be celebrated, in their ordinary form, with both a priest and an altar server, so not completely alone as we often envision. ‘Salvation’ is something that has individual importance, but is also to be understood as a corporate reality. Cf. Augustine, Serm. 17.2: “Sed nolo salvus esse sine vobis!” His focus is very much on the experience and framework for interpretation of the experiencing subject. This subjective process (and product!) is, however, helped along and even partially dependent on other subjects acting together, interpreting together, and believing together. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 113. Emphasis original.

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thing and being interpreted as something, then that object cannot truly be what it is. Even if it retains the same name, the way we understand that name will change. This is why it is fundamentally unhelpful for us to claim the priority of a linguistic formulation to a truth claim, without testing its ability to be understood within a contemporary context.65 The liturgical and communal setting, as well as the importance of secondary signifiers are largely missing from Schillebeeckx’s analysis, but they serve to enrich his own phenomenological theology of Eucharist.

3.

The Ob-jective Offer in the Sacrament

A sign, Schillebeeckx says, “always refers to something else which is absent.”66 It is precisely this ‘absent’ part that has thus far been missing from our analysis, from the objective perspective. Essentially, Eucharistic change occurs from both sides – the subjective side in which something is transsignified as well as the objective side.67 Recalling Trent, there are two essential aspects to the Eucharist: real presence and Eucharistic change. Unfortunately, the two aspects cannot be easily separated since the anticipation of Eucharistic change by the gathered worshiping community is part of what converts one sign into another (from the subjective point of view). From the objective side, the thing presented and the thing that is present occur together, and it is with this in mind that we must resume the discussion. Creating an agreement, or a bond requires an offer, not only one who accepts or makes an oath. In sacramental-linguistic mediation, which occurs in interpreting the Eucharistic symbols, there is an offer that is also being interpreted. The interpersonal relationship between God and humanity is the primary relationship of mediation in the sacraments. Schillebeeckx was correct early on in his career in asserting that “[a]s the mystical form of appearance of the salvific power of the Christ-event in cultic-symbolic activity, the sacraments are also, in a mystical way, this salvific power itself (sacramentum-causa salutis): sources of salvation.”68 The sacraments are, therefore, on the one hand ‘theurgical’ events where the salvific work of God concerns human beings, while at the same time liturgical human 65

66 67 68

Cf. Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith, 77 [88]: “For a very long time, catholic theologians looked for a purely metaphysically oriented ‘natural theology,’ which tried to attribute meaning to God before he [sic] began to speak … It is, after all, meaningless to let the question of the truth of religious statements precede the question of their meaning.” Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 100; cf. p.94. At this point, we must recognize that the subjective side involves multiple interpreting subjects who are all working with a similar interpretive framework or tradition. Schillebeeckx, “Sacrament,” col. 4189. (Translation ours.)

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deeds that concern God: “cult and sanctification in and through Christ.”69 The objective offer of grace is of a different ontological density in the Eucharist, however, because of the manner in which it is given.70 The Eucharist is not the giving of oneself in a gift, but the gift and giver are coterminous. Christ does not give a gift that creates a relationship between two people, in the normal manner of a sign, but instead is himself present as that gift. The bond is established between Christ and the church in the Eucharist; the relationship is still a mediation and a point at which the saving activity of Christ must be received, interpreted, and accepted for there to be a relationship at all. The sacraments are indicative of a reciprocal relationship between God and humanity, where God offers and humans receive, but because reception occurs in interpretation, the process is a hermeneutical one.71 Human beings are constantly being strained through interpretation, as our categories are never quite adequate for our world, and it is in running up against these limits that we are constantly transcending them.72 What we experience as ‘new’ is something that does not quite accord with our previous experiences and the resulting interpretive frameworks. As limited, temporal beings, reality occurs to us as a gift and as a revelation of what Schillebeeckx much later identifies as what “we ourselves had never thought of and never produced.”73 The fact that there is something offered to us in reality that subjective experience then interprets shows something of the givenness of being. We are not the masters of reality, so our transsignification of the world can only be partial, since there is a force that reality exerts on our signs wherein they have a pre-given direction for interpretation.74 The objective offer, that which runs out to meet us (and in this sense ob-jects itself on our horizon of perception), and the subjective interpretation – the active reception – cannot be separated from one another. Instead they form one complex whole such that “knowledge of reality is therefore a complex unity, in which an active openness to what communicates itself as reality is accompanied by a giving of meaning.”75 What shows itself in the Eucharist must be given meaning by human beings, but because Christ’s gift of himself is part-and-parcel of an interpersonal communicative event, Christ also defines what the Eucharist can be.

69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Ibid., col. 4189. (Translation ours.) Schoonenberg, “De tegenwoordingheid van Christus,” Verbum 26, no. 4 (1959): 155–156. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 139. Michael Skelley, S.J., The Liturgy of the World: Karl Rahner’s Theology of Worship (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo, 1991), 81. Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden vol. 10 of The Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx (London et al: Bloomsbury, 2014), 21–22 [22]. Schillebeeckx, Church, 21–22 [22–23], 35–39 [36–39]; The Eucharist, 145–148. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 148. Emphasis original.

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The reality that is present as an offer of salvation impacts the way in which it can be interpreted, and to step outside of this framework and receive the Eucharist differently (as bread and wine for nourishment or pleasure) steps outside of the framework of the particular relationship with Christ that is present. Signs involve translation and negotiation, so a different understanding of the Eucharistic elements can be reached by human beings, but never a sacramental one because the reality that Christ offers is not experienced.76 In the Eucharistic relationship, “the bread itself, is thus radically changed – it is no longer oriented towards man [sic] as bread” and what is brought into being is a new ob-ject, with a different orientation of direction of interpretation.77 This is the distinction between human signification and divine signification in this communicative process. What humans communicate can be understood by others, as well as misunderstood, but there are common signs that we use to similar effect. These ‘fit’ within our interpretive frameworks and help them evolve. In God’s speech to humanity, what is given is the ineffable God made manifest in history. It is the selfcommunication of Godself that must be received, reflected upon, and somehow (partially) expressed, despite the fundamental inexpressibility of the divine. The relationship that is effected through this act of self-communication is not merely in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but it is especially the fulfilled purpose of this presence: “the presence of Christ in us,” and the building up of the mystical body of Christ.78 The limit is on the human side, so it is God who approaches us in places where we are able to comprehend and to reach out productively towards the offer of salvation that is made to us.79 The offer is, in some sense “secondary in relation to the complete, reciprocal presence to which it is directed as to its end and perfection,” in the living community.80 In the Eucharist, we return to the question of reality. There is an offer of reality being made in the symbols of bread and wine, but this offer is grounded in God’s universal salvific will, the manifestation of a graced creation.81 Ontologically, God’s offer of grace is prior to any human attempts at signification, and that reality “is a mystery, the form, disclosing and concealing at the same time, in which God reveals himself [sic].”82 Ultimately, it is God’s reality that is revealed to us, 76

77 78 79 80 81 82

Similarly, a different inter-personal relationship can be reached with Christ through the forms of bread and wine, as with the ‘Lord’s supper’ as celebrated among certain Protestant denominations. There is a presence of Christ in these ceremonies, but not a Eucharistic one, because it is related differently to Christ and to Christ’s self-giving in the Eucharist. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 116. Schillebeeckx, “Transubstantiation, Transfinalization, Transfiguration,” 335. Cf. Schillebeeckx, Church, 75–78 [77–80]. Schillebeeckx, “Transubstantiation, Transfinalization, Transfiguration,” 336, Cf. Schoonenberg, “De tegenwoordingheid van Christus,” 149–150. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 128. Emphasis original. Cf. Schoonenberg, “De tegenwoordingheid van Christus,” 150.

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making the primary change in the Eucharist that which occurs on God’s side, through God’s agency, and only then concurs with what happens in our realm of symbols. It is the ob-jective offer that initiates the change in the reality of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. For human beings, this mediation can only occur via linguistic mediation and interpretation. The sacraments are meeting points between human signification, where ‘ordinary’ signs are made extra-ordinary and where their significance is altered such that they point beyond themselves.83 They can do this because of their liturgical-communal context – sacraments can only be interpreted as sacramental and revelatory because of the interpretive framework that comes with them, without which we cannot recognize what they are: an offer of salvation coming from God. All of this is to say that there is something ultimately sacramental about language in the way that it creates a bond between two persons. Communication and the process of reaching a kind of common-understanding takes the form of communicative action and negotiation between our understanding of a sign and the other’s understanding. What grounds this communicative activity for human beings is the givenness of creation itself. There is already a reality independent of us with its own direction for interpretation, and that is what first begins to shape our interpretive frameworks. From there we develop our ability to interpret the world through our transcendence of previous horizons of understanding.84 What is experienced as revelatory – that which is unexpected and forces us to change our thinking, that which ‘interrupts’ – these are the places “in which we recognize the deepest of ourselves” and realize that reality both is and can be other than what we had assumed.85 The finitude of humanity really makes this sacramental mediation possible. God meets us on our side of the divide and forces us to transcend our boundaries of experience by means of new experience, and it could not be otherwise.86 The sacraments themselves are at the limit of human speech 83 84

85 86

Cf. Borgman, Edward Schillebeeckx, 210–212. Here there is support for Lieven Boeve’s category of ‘interruption’. See Boeve, “The Sacramental Interruption of Rituals of Life,” 412: “The category of interruption can hereby render service to develop such a reflexive exercise. This is because interruption after all has not so much to do with breach, rupture, or discontinuity opposed to continuity, but rather actually presupposes continuity. Interruption ‘interrupts’ something which goes on, and by doing so challenges, influences and alters this going on. At the same time, however, interruption points out the limits of continuity and makes them more visible.” ‘Continuity’ here is envisioned as the presumption of an easy cohesion between contemporary culture and the Christian tradition, but it can also apply for interpretive frameworks where expectations run up against their limits in experience and are forced to continue in a different manner than before. Schillebeeckx, Church, 21–22 [22]. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 135: “In Israel these [cultic/liturgical] feasts were given a foundation in history, because Yahweh had not revealed himself [sic] primarily as the God of na-

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and the ability to understand reality. They represent the point where signs start to falter, not because they have no meaning, but because they are overdetermined.87 The infinite God is revealed in physical signs, and by being revealed as a determinate this thing here (τόδε τι), we must also consider the pieces that are inevitably left out as part of our interpretation. Each new reception the Eucharist is an occasion for re-understanding our experience of Christ’s presence, forming a self-conscious style of understanding and reception where we should become conscious of our repetition.88 A productive repetition of the sacrament is one that prompts us to just that consideration of our own finitude wherein we receive the mystery partially and through reflection, but where we also can recognize the eschatological dimension of this reception. There is an aspect that is ‘already’ in receiving the Eucharist, while through reflection we are also made aware of the ‘not-yet,’ that which remains hidden. Without the liturgical grounding, faithful reception of the Eucharist is impossible since it is this liturgical setting that carries the sacraments beyond mere cultic significance and places them within a historical-narrative tradition of Jesus’ ongoing salvific work.89 At the same time, the experience of salvation coming from God exists and can be felt outside of the sacraments. The sacraments as the discreet saving actions of God are grounded in the wider ongoing act of creation, in which we find already ourselves before we begin to understand. As the recipients of God’s self-communicative action in and through creation, and the history we have made of that creation, it is possible to consider reality to be sacramental.90 The linguisticality of being is the bond between God and humanity through humanity’s understanding of the world and God’s revealed Word in history. The history of this revelation is set against the backdrop of a history of God’s saving activity, grounded by creation.91 The creative act puts humanity in an interpersonal relationship to God, setting the stage for the places where salvation can be named, and revelation discerned. What occurs in the Eucharist is dependent on this interpersonal relationship, which allows for the elements to be transignified. The act of transignification, however “does not bring about real presence, but presupposes it as a metaphysical

87 88 89 90 91

ture, but as the God of history, who had even forced nature to serve this history of his people.” Schoonenberg, “De tegenwoordingheid van Christus,” 156. Gadamer, “On the Problem of Self-Understanding,” 45. The reception of the Eucharist outside of the context of mass, by the sick or homebound, for example, still presupposes a communal and liturgical dimension. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 127–128. Schillebeeckx, Church, 10–13 [11–13]. God’s salvific activity is independent of human consciousness of it, while revelation is only placed into a ‘history’ thanks to human understanding and interpretation of the revelatory event.

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priority” thanks to the setting in which it is placed.92 The liturgy celebrates the interpretability of God’s revelation in a cultic fashion, but without the ontological priority of God’s salvific work, the Eucharistic elements really would be ‘mere appearances,’ rather than the meeting place of human signification and God’s salvific work. Thus, ‘transignification’ alone is inadequate to describe the Eucharist as a sacrament because it is unable to take in all sides of the mystery, although it can quite adequately say something about the purely human side of things. Schillebeeckx also comes to this conclusion, emphasizing the priority of God’s action over our human “giving of meaning alone” or interpretation of experience even when it is done out of faith.93 Schillebeeckx is of the same opinion as Paul VI, such that neither transignification nor transfinalization (or some other ‘new’ term) alone is adequate to describe Eucharistic change, although he is careful to show that the intention of the new terminology is in line with the essential content of the Tridentine dogmas. In the theological climate after the publication of Mysterium fidei, it was necessary for him to emphasize this continuity, although in terms of content, Schillebeeckx’s theology was not in opposition to the position of the encyclical. He defends himself and other Dutch theologian’s efforts as being consistent with the Pope as well as with the pastoral letter from the Dutch bishops on the subject.94 The Dutch bishops in fact authorized free theological debate within the church, as long as they accepted “the eucharist [sic] in the biblical sense, explained by the Tridentine dogma.”95 In this case, theologians specifically had “the freedom to advance the understanding of the mystery.”96 Schillebeeckx praises the Dutch bishops and the Pope for their clarity on this issue, especially the affirmation of the ‘ontological’ nature of Eucharistic change,97 and he sees it as a positive step for those theologians who were in the first place reacting against a crude and outmoded ‘materialism’.98 What we have laid out here as a description of Eucharistic presence based on Schillebeeckx’s work from this tumultuous period is certainly in line with Paul VI’s definition of transubstantiation, albeit without 92 93 94 95 96

97

98

Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 150. Ibid., 150–151. Schillebeeckx, “Transubstantiation, Transfinalization, Transfiguration,” 332. Ibid., 332. Ibid., 332. See the pastoral letter of the bishops, printed in Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 41 (1965): 690–693. See especially p. 693. This letter was partially in defense of theologians like Piet Schoonenberg. And this is, indeed, a very significant point made by Paul VI. See especially Mysterium fidei, 46: “As a result of transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new signification and a new finality, for they are no longer ordinary bread and wine but instead a sign of something sacred and a sign of spiritual food; but they take on this new signification, this new finality, precisely because they contain a new ‘reality’ which we can rightly call ontological.” Schillebeeckx, “Transubstantiation, Transfinalization, Transfiguration,” 337.

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Scholastic terminology. Even so, it is difficult to be as irenic about the encyclical’s intentions, and its actual effects in closing the debate on the issue for quite some time afterwards.

Conclusion The first party to swear an oath and to make a bond is God who speaks God’s Word and makes that Word known in history. It is a sacramentum as a religious or legal commitment of one party to another, wherein God has made this oath to us as the foundation of a relationship. Understanding this relationship requires another grace, another gift, in the form of faith that is always prior. God uses our faith as the entry-point to touch humanity and draw human beings beyond themselves and beyond their own categories to the contemplation and participation in the divine mystery. ‘Participation’ here is not a Platonic category, but an active experiencing of a phenomenon as revelatory, and by experiencing and interpreting this phenomenon together, individual subjects are united to the mystery of God as a corporate body and can become what they already are through Christ’s gift of himself.99 “Revelation,” furthermore, “in biblical tradition, is a matter of relationship, of mutual presence,” which occurs in the embodied linguistic interpretation of symbols.100 The story of the Last Supper and the institution narrative is the foundational historical event. At the Last Supper, Jesus the human person did something in history by transignifying the elements of bread and wine, making them a concrete offer in words, deeds, and physical elements.101 This meal had an eschatological significance that was fulfilled in Jesus’ death and resurrection, only to be renewed in the gift of the church as an eschatological community of grace and itself a symbol and sacrament of the body of Christ. Jesus did with bread and wine what God does with reality, by using elements (physical, linguistic) to bond people to one another. Jesus bonded his disciples to himself with a new covenant, while God’s universal salvific will permeates all of creation and can be manifestly seen in the continued and explicit offer of salvation in the liturgy, as a sacramental parousia.102 This makes the liturgy a sacrament of creation, a manifestation of grace 99 100 101

102

Schoonenberg, “Eucharistische tegenwoordigheid,” 204. Cf. Augustine, Serm. 272. Morrill, Encountering Christ, 48–49. Schoonenberg, “Eucharistische tegenwoordigheid,” 201: “It is just as at the Last Supper, when himself Jesus handed over his body and blood with his own hands under the signs [of bread and wine] to his disciples; however, he no longer stands in our midst spatially, but only personally. Christ among us as subject gives himself as object.” (Translation ours.) Cf. Morrill, Encountering Christ, 24–25. Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist, 84.

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in ‘visible’ form. The community is directed towards God and receptive to grace, just as creation is meant to be. Of course, we cannot discount sin and the possibility that grace is not experienced in creation, or that salvation is not experienced. One can just as well fail to experience these things in the liturgy as well, but the offer from God always remains.103

103

Schoonenberg, “De tegenwoordingheid van Christus,” 155.

4. Looking Beyond the West and the Roman Rite

Mediating the Mystery of Forgiveness and Reconciliation Subukkono, the Service of Peace in the Malankara Rite

Unnatha Kavuvila

The conviction that God has forgiven and reconciled the world to himself through Christ is at the core of the Christian faith. Forgiveness and reconciliation are the good news, which Christians are called to share and embody through their proclamation, life, and practice. How Christians understand the concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation and how they transform these concepts into actions are very important topics. This is more explicit in the discussion of the relationship between liturgy and ethics, especially with regard to forgiveness and reconciliation. More research is now focused on the inter-personal, social, and political aspects of forgiveness and reconciliation.1 The important discussion of the relationship between reconciliation and peace building is just one example.2 This context challenges us to re-discover the Christian foundation of these concepts in order to give the Christian efforts at peace building a liturgical grounding. The themes of forgiveness and reconciliation have been articulated in various ways in Christian theology. The traditional Christian understanding and interpretation of these themes are often critiqued for their exclusive focus on God and the sinner.3 At the outset, these theologies presume a rupture in the relationship between God and human beings and understand reconciliation as a restoration of this relationship. Liturgical rites convey the theology of forgiveness and reconciliation with a clear emphasis on the vertical dimension. The emphasis on the verti1

2 3

O. Ernesto Valiente, “From Conflict to Reconciliation: Discipleship in the Theology of Jon Sobrino”, Theological Studies 74 (2013): 655; See for example, Mullet Étienne et al., “Religious Involvement and the Forgiving Personality,” Journal of Personality 71 (2003): 1–19; Robert Schreiter, “Religion as Source and Resource for Reconciliation”, Concilium 5 (2003): 109. See, Arthur McPhee, “Reconciliation and Peace Building Ministries: An Annotated Bibliography”, Review and Expositor 104 (2007): 635–647, 635. Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, The Art of Forgiveness: Theological Reflections on Healing and Reconciliation (Geneva: WCC, 1996), 15.

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cal dimension of forgiveness and reconciliation, however, limits the scope of these concepts in ethics. Now our query is whether we can draw out a more nuanced theology of these concepts in order to make the liturgical practices ethically relevant. In this paper, we try to answer this question by focusing on the service of peace in the Syro-Malankara Catholic church. The presumption is that, together with the traditional understanding of forgiveness and reconciliation in its vertical dimension, the service of peace also demonstrates a theology of forgiveness and reconciliation in its horizontal dimension.

1.

A Brief Introduction to the Service of Peace in the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church

The service of peace in the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is known as Subukkono.4 Subukkono is a unique reconciliation rite in the West Syrian tradition inherited by Syro-Malankara Catholic church.5 There is a tradition of celebrating this rite on the first Monday of Lent after the noon prayer or on Holy Saturday after the

4

5

Thomas Varghese Tharakanveedu, Sacraments of Healing: Sacraments of Penance and Anointing of the Sick in the Syro-Malankara Liturgical Tradition, Unpublished Thesis, KU Leuven, Faculty of Theology, 2003, 40. The order for the Monday of Lent called the Monday of forgiveness, Subukkono, is seen in the book named the m 'adh’ dhono, a special service book of principal feasts of Syrians. See, Stephen Plathottathil, “A Brief Historical Study on Evolution of the Liturgical Contents of the West Syrian Tradition”, in From Streams to Source: Essays on the Foundation of Malankara Theology Festschrift in Honour of Dr. John Berchmans, ed. Mathai Kadavil, James Puthuparampil and George Thomas Kallunkal (Pune: BVP Publications, 2010), 263– 290, 276. The oldest available manuscript of the Pontifical of Michael the Syrian, which contains the outline of the Service of Reconciliation on Holy Saturday, according to Baby Varghese, is Vatican Syriac 51, dated 1171/72 CE and conserved in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Besides that, we also have the manuscript British Library Additional 17230 dated 1337 CE. This also contains the outline of the ceremony. See, Baby Varghese, “Holy Week Celebrations in the Syrian Church,” in Hebdomadae Sanctae Celebratio. Conspectus Historicus Comparativus, ed. Atony G. Kollamparampil (Rome: C.L.V.–Edizioni liturgiche, 1997), 184. “The Malankara Catholic Church has belonged to the rich West Syriac liturgical tradition, and so it shares its liturgical texts with those of the Syrian Orthodox Church, with only minimal differences in wording.” Sebastian Brock, “Some Reflections on Sources for Theologising in the Malankara Catholic Church”, in From Streams to Sources: Essays on the Foundation of Malankara Theology, Festschrift in Honour of Dr. John Berchmans OIC, ed., Mathai Kadavil, James Puthuparampil and George Thomas Kallunkal (Pune: BVP Publications, 2010), 37– 45, 37.

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divine office of the ninth hour.6 In the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, it is celebrated on the first Monday of Lent.7 The literal meaning of the word Subukkono is ‘release’.8 It indicates release from sin. The theological meaning of the rite in a broad sense is embedded in the meaning of Lent. Lent is a time for participating in the paschal mysteries of Jesus Christ intimately. Also it is a preparation for the celebration of the resurrection. In other words, through Lent one prepares oneself to participate in Jesus’ suffering and resurrection. Experiencing forgiveness and reconciliation is part of the immediate preparation for a life closer to paschal mysteries.9 Celebrating Subukkono on Holy Saturday relates it more to the purposes of Holy Week, i.e., “to unfold gradually the ‘salvific passion’ before the eyes of the faithful.”10 The faithful not only perceive the salvific passion but also participate in it. The rites of the Holy Week allow them to partake in the paschal mysteries in a special way. “Through the Holy Week rites, the individual was to enter Jerusalem with Christ on Palm Sunday, be present at the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday, watch at the foot of the cross on Good Friday, mourn by the tomb on Holy Saturday and rejoice at the presence of the Lord on the day of resurrection.”11 The purpose of Lent and the celebration of the Holy Week, thus, is the participation in the resurrection. In the West Syrian tradition, the resurrection is the “decisive time” of history. Every liturgical activity is envisaged as the “re-presentation of the hour of glorification.”12

6

7

8 9 10

11

12

Tharakanveedu, Sacraments of Healing: Sacraments of Penance and Anointing of the Sick in the SyroMalankara Liturgical Tradition, 40. Baby Varghese in line with Burkitt holds that this rite was celebrated in the early West Syrian churches on Holy Saturday. See, Baby Varghese, “Holy Week Celebrations in the Syrian Church”, 165–186. Tharakanveedu, Sacraments of Healing: Sacraments of Penance and Anointing of the Sick in the SyroMalankara Liturgical Tradition, 40. The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Perunnalkramam (Malayalam) (Pattom: St. Mary’s Press, 2008), 117. R. Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 563. Varghese, “Holy Week Celebrations in the Syrian Church,” 186. Ibid., 186. “The week immediately preceding ‘Easter’ in Western Christian traditions, known instead as ‘Great Week,’ in the Christian East.” Paul F. Bradshaw, “Holy Week”, in New SCM Dictionary of Liturgical Worship (London: SCM Press, 2005), 237. As quoted from J.G. Davies, Holy Week: A Short History (London: John Knox Press, 1963), 16, quoted in Baby Varghese “Holy Week Celebrations in the Syrian Church,” 186. In the West Syrian tradition, the liturgical year is centered on the feast of Resurrection (Qyomto). Resurrection is very important theme in the liturgical life of West Syrian tradition. See, Baby Varghese, West Syrian Liturgical Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 135. Varghese, “West Syrian Liturgical Tradition”, 122.

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The Structure of Subukkono

The liturgy of Subukkono has the following structure:13 it starts with an introductory prayer said by the priest, which suits the theme of the occasion.14 The introductory prayer is followed by the recitation of Psalm 51. Recitation of this psalm after the introductory prayer is a common feature of the Malankara liturgy on all solemn occasions. This is something like a penitential service by which the congregation repents for its sins and prepares itself to become worthy of the celebration.15 The psalm is followed by a song, which is called enyono. An enyona after Psalm 51 also is a common feature of the Malankara liturgy. The main ideas expressed through this prayer are an acknowledgement of the sinfulness of the congregation and a prayer for forgiveness. The varied instances in the life of Jesus where he pardoned the sinners are cited as reminders, and pardon is requested.16 The enyono is followed by promiun-sedro, a set of two prayers. The first, the promiun, introduces the theme of the liturgy, and the second, the sedro, intercedes for the realization of the main theme.17 The Sedro is a long prayer, which is simultaneously a meditation on Jesus in his attribute as love and a plea to bind the congregation in unity of love. In the meditation all the events during and in which Jesus brought about peace and unity in the life of those individuals and communities who approached him are remembered. Christ’s incarnation is seen as the foundation of all these events of unification because that was the decisive event in which heaven and earth were reconciled to each other. The sedro is followed by a song, which continues the meditation started in the sedro on Jesus as love.18 Etro, the prayer of incense, is the next component in the structure of the liturgy. Here also love and unity are requested to be granted to the congregation.19 After the etro come two songs, one of which is a bovuto of St. James,20 and both of which are pleas for forgiveness of offences and for maintain13

14 15 16 17

18 19 20

The structure of Subukkono is similar to the structure of the divine office. Most of the sacramental celebrations have the basic structure of the Eucharistic ordo. The link between Eucharistic celebration and divine office is evident because Eucharistic ordo and divine office constitute the liturgical ordo. “A sacramental celebration includes the celebration of daily office.” See, Varghese, “West Syrian Liturgical Theology”, 150. The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Perunnalkramam, 117. Ibid., 117. Ibid., 117–118. Ibid., 118–121. To understand how the theme of repentance is reflected in sedros see, Jacob Thekeparambil, “Sedre of Absolution (“HUSSOYO”) And Repentance (“TYOBUTO”),” in TŪVAIK: Studies in Honour of Revd Dr Jacob Velliyan, Syrian Churches Series vol. XVI, ed., G. Karukaparampu (Kottayam: St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute 1995), 136–146. The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Perunnalkramam, 121–122. Ibid., 122. Ibid., 123–125.

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ing love and unity in the Church. The songs are followed by readings from the Bible. 1 John 4:11–21, 1 Cor. 13:4–10 and Matt. 18:18–35 are the readings selected for the occasion.21 The readings follow the theme of God as Love and the social implications of this belief. The readings are followed by two songs, a qolo and a bovuto.22 Here the main thrust is the plea for forgiveness and acceptance of the praying community by God. Making use of parables and symbols from the gospels, the congregation prays for the forgiveness of sins. After these comes the very special service of the day of Subukkono. It consists of the request for pardon on the part of the celebrant and the response of the congregation with the members’ request for forgiveness. It has three steps. In the first step, turning to the congregation and kneeling in front of it, the celebrant requests the congregation to pardon his offences against it. The congregation responds with prostration before him saying, “Father forgive us and bless us.”23 In the second step the priest invites the people for reconciliation with one another, to which the people respond in the same words as before. In the third step the priest requests and strictly commands the people to forgive one another and prays for forgiveness from God. After the third step, everyone gets up and the celebrant prays for the grace to observe Lent in a worthy manner. The ritual is concluded with the recital of the Creed, forty genuflections, and the offices of the Mother of God and saints, all of which are common elements in the Lenten prayers.24 The final ritual is a solemn program of exchanging peace with one another. The people come one by one and kiss the hand of the priest. The first one comes, kisses the hand of the priest and stands at the northern side of the church. The next one comes, kisses the hand of the priest, exchanges peace with the first one and stands at his right-hand side. The next one comes, kisses the hand of the priest and exchanges peace with the first two individuals and stands on the right side of the second one, and so on.25 The exchange of peace is done by placing one’s hands within the folded hands of the other person (kaikasoori).26

21 22 23 24 25 26

Ibid., 125. Ibid., 126–128. Ibid., 128–129. Ibid., 128–129. Ibid., 129. This is the ordinary way of exchanging peace in the Eucharistic celebration. In the monasteries, peace is exchanged in this way in everyday life and on special occasions.

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The Expression of Repentance in Subukkono

The predominant theme of Subukkono is repentance.27 The recitation of Psalm 51 is one of the worshipping community’s most important expressions of repentance. This penitential psalm is an integral part of West Syrian liturgy. Through this psalm, the faithful acknowledge their unworthiness before God. Only the mercy and grace of the Lord make them worthy to stand before Him.28 The worshipping congregants are aware of their sinfulness, and hence together with the psalmist they beg God to have mercy on them (Ps 51:1). The enyono reflects the theme of repentance more clearly, revealing the contrite heart of the worshipping congregation. Various biblical symbols are used to express the repentance of the community. The sinful woman (Lk 7:36–50) and the Levite (Lk 18:9–14) demonstrate the depth of repentance.29 In the song the faithful also acknowledge their sin by saying that, “we acknowledge our sins, O Lord, and knock at your door of mercy. Give us forgiveness from your treasure house.”30 The bovutos of St. James also pursues the theme of repentance. In the second bovuto, the worshipping community asks for tears in order that they may beg for God’s mercy. The situation of the faithful is compared to the time of death. The repenting congregation, hence, ask for help: “it is late in the evening and the shadow of death has encircled me. At this late evening, be my Sun, Lord, so that I may see your light.”31 The faithful follower is afraid of being lost forever in his or her sin. The begging for the light has rich implications. It is not just a plea for remission of personal sins. Rather the request for light refers to the acknowledgement of God as the creator and light of the whole creation. The acknowledgement of God as light also points to the self-realization of the faithful to be created in the likeness and image of God, the light. Being the light of the

27

28 29

30 31

Varghese, “Holy Week Celebrations in the Syrian Church,” 185. See also, Mathai Kadavil, “The Sacrament of Reconciliation in the Malanakara Church,” in Word and Worship 36 (2003): 248–261, 255. Tharakanveedu, Sacraments of Healing: Sacraments of Penance and Anointing of the Sick in the SyroMalankara Liturgical Tradition, 42. The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Perunnalkramam, 117. West Syrian liturgy is full of events and doctrines from the Bible. The Bible is quoted directly or paraphrased or transformed into prayers. The use of the Bible in this way is part of the methodology of the West Syrian tradition. See, John Berchmans Xaviervilas, “Doing Theology in the Malankara Catholic Church: Some Soundings on Methodology,” in From Streams to Sources: Essays on the Foundation of Malankara Theology, Festschrift in Honour of Dr. John Berchmans OIC, ed., Mathai Kadavil, James Puthuparampil and George Thomas Kallunkal (Pune: BVP Publications, 2010), 65–88, 71. The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Perunnalkramam, 124. Ibid., 128.

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world is the mission of the faithful. Because sin covers this illumination, the faithful pray for removal of the darkness that they may shine in the world.32 The liturgical action of prostrating oneself before God in a plea for forgiveness is the climax of the expression of repentance. This gesture of repentance is very important in the liturgical life of West Syrian Christians and this expression through gestures has its basis on the Bible: “In the biblical tradition, repentance was always accompanied by bodily gestures such as fasting and genuflection.”33 The first day of Lent, that is the day of Subukkono, is a day of fasting, since fasting is one of the most important ways of expressing repentance.34 Similarly, the ceremony is concluded by forty genuflections. All these are expressions of repentance through gestures.

4.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Subukkono

Subukkono does not present the expression of repentance separately. Repentance is related to forgiveness and reconciliation. The worshipping community is not only a repenting community, but also a community of forgiveness and reconciliation. It is a congregation that enjoys God’s forgiveness and reconciliation in a special way. The community of faithful both pleads for forgiveness and reconciliation and proclaims the experience of forgiveness and reconciliation. First, the request for forgiveness refers to the forgiveness of sins, the purpose of which is to make them worthy to stand before God and to praise God: “Make us worthy to praise you and your father and your Holy Spirit, now and forever”35 Sin has made the faithful impure, and the heart is filled with hatred and competition.36 The faithful realize that in order to dwell in the mercy of God there is an urgent need to get rid of sin and to turn back to the ways of God. Moreover, to escape from eternal judgment and death, the faithful must be liberated from sin.37 32

33 34

35 36 37

Light analogy is repeatedly used in West Syrian liturgy. Philip Vysaneth, “Cultural Commitment of the Malankara Liturgy,” in From Streams to Sources: Essays on the Foundation of Malankara Theology, Festschrift in Honour of Dr. John Berchmans OIC, ed., Mathai Kadavil, James Puthuparampil and George Thomas Kallunkal (Pune: BVP Publications, 2010), 311–332, 330. Varghese, “West Syrian Liturgical Theology”, 116. Fasting, in the early Christian tradition, was a requirement for reconciliation. See, Didascalia ch.6, available from, https://archive.org/stream/didascaliaaposto00gibsuoft/didascaliaaposto 00gibsuoft_djvu.txt, accessed on 27/01/2015. The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Perunnalkramam, 117, 123. In the song also the same idea is repeated. Ibid., 118. Ibid., 127–128.

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Second, throughout Subukkono, it is proclaimed that Jesus Christ has brought forgiveness and reconciliation. Christ is addressed as the one who sacrificed himself for sinners and for the reconciliation of the earthly people.38 In the sedro Christ is invoked as “the eternal peace of creatures and the union of all directions and parts of the world.”39 “He reconciled the earth and heaven on the cross by destroying the wall of hostility.”40 Because he sacrificed his life out of love of human beings, reconciliation is an act of his love. Jesus reconciled heaven and earth in his nature itself: being God and human at the same time, he united heaven and earth.41 Jesus is also qualified as the incense offered for us. The name of Jesus as incense is expressed both verbally and symbolically in West Syrian liturgy. Incensing is a part of all the official prayers of the church and it symbolizes the prayers of the community rising up to heaven. The community prays to God to be pleased by the ritual, as the incense pleases God.42 It also symbolizes healing from sins and physical ailments. In the context of the anointing of the sick, the priest offers incense, praying, “Lord God, we in order to praise you and your Son and Holy Spirit, bestow on this patient an evident sign.”43 In addition, it has a Christological meaning. Incense is Christ himself offered as reconciliation (Eph 5:2).44

5.

Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Peace

In Subukkono, the concepts of forgiveness, reconciliation and peace are integrally related. The introductory prayer itself manifests the importance of tranquility and peace. They are also linked with love. These three are understood as eternal, and hence the faithful pray to be bound with eternal peace and love.45 In prumion and sedro the idea of interconnection among these three appears. Christ is invoked as the giver of peace. Incarnation, death, and resurrection are moments of proclaiming reconciliation and peace to the world. Through the annunciation, Christ pro38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45

Ibid., 118. Ibid., 119. Translation ours. Ibid., 119. Translation ours. Ibid., 119. Ibid., 122. The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Malankara Suriyani Catholikka Sabhayude Araadhanakrmam, Kudasakal, Shavasamskaram, Bhavanasirvadam (Malayalam) (Pattom: St. Mary’s Press, 2008), 94–95. See also, Tharakanveedu, Sacraments of Healing: Sacraments of Penance and Anointing of the Sick in the Syro-Malankara Liturgical Tradition, 65. Varghese, “West Syrian Liturgical Theology”, 157–158. The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Perunnalkramam, 117.

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claimed reconciliation and peace to the world. Mary shares the same peace with Elisabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. John, though in the womb of his mother, experienced joy and peace. The angels proclaimed peace to the shepherds during the birth of Jesus. The resurrected Christ communicates peace to the disciples and the women and makes them rejoice, hence the joy of resurrection and peace are thickly connected.46 Each moment of salvation history relates forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace. A forgiven and reconciled community will be a community of peace. The prayer for peace ends with a prayer for the grace to praise the Triune God always and especially on the day of Easter .47 As a forgiven and reconciled community, the worshipping congregation wishes to be a community of peace and the end of this peace is to praise the Triune God and lead life in the resurrection.

6.

The Horizontal and Vertical Dimensions of Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Subukkono

Now the question is, what are the implications of the experience of forgiveness and reconciliation as conveyed through Subukkono? Does it promote a broad, horizontal practice of forgiveness and reconciliation or is it restricted to encouraging individual purification and union with God? The answer unfolds in a close reading of the text of Subukkono. Each element, without doubt, is highly eschatological, in keeping with the rest of the West Syrian liturgy.48 However, this eschatology does not underestimate history. The horizontal dimension of liturgy is also obvious in the prayers. The introductory prayer reveals that the ceremony emphasizes the bond between God and the worshipper, while at the same time also stressing the relationship among the worshippers. The faithful pray to be bound strongly with an unbreakable tie, i.e. with eternal love, tranquility, and peace.49 In the enyono they pray for their hearts to be cleansed from hatred and competition.50 Hatred and competition presuppose the presence of an ‘other’ that one can hate or compete with. It is evident that the worshippers are very well aware of their being in a community as they acknowledge the social dimension of sin. That prayer ties the worshippers to eternal love is a recurring theme in the ceremony. The commandment to love one another is remembered in the sedro. To 46 47 48 49 50

Ibid., 118–120. Ibid., 119. Varghese, “West Syrian Liturgical Tradition”, 107–118. The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Perunnalkramam, 117. Ibid., 118.

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enjoy the peace of Christ, disciples must love one another. The sharing of peace (Jn 14:27) and the love commandments (Jn 15:9–12) are blended in sedro.51 The combination of peace and love points to the need for loving each other as a condition to enjoy peace. Furthermore, these requests – to keep the hearts in perseverance, to keep divisions and quarrels away from the worshippers, to protect them from suffering and atrocities, to make them children of reconciliation and peace, to twine the sheep and the shepherds with peace, to make the church perfect with God’s peace, and prayer for the union among the children of the church and the reunion of those who keep away from the church, to reconcile those who are angry, and to make the sorrowing happy – are expressions of the horizontal concerns of the worshipping community.52 Similarly, the exhortations to forgive the brethren in the prayers and in the readings make the horizontal dimension evident.53 The worshipping community is aware of the social dimension of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace. They desire these gifts for the whole world; and because they find the root of all these in the love of Triune God, they plea for love of God and love of neighbor with equal desire. At the outset of the ceremony itself, love is presented as pleasing to God. The worshippers pray that God’s pleasing love may dwell in them eternally. Love is praised in the song: Blessed tree of love, how desirable you are! Your dwelling place is blessed because of you. Because of you God entered into the house of Abram. Because of you the priests enter into the holy place. Because of you, Paul said that suffering and afflictions will not separate me from the love of the Lord.54

This eternal love is the basis for forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace. It is exhorted in the song that you must forgive your brother whenever he sins against you. Sedro acknowledges love as the reason for Jesus’ death: he died because of his love for humanity. The community wishes to be in loving relationship with the triune God forever. Jesus is hailed as love in the prayer: “You are love and you are addressed as love. You are more pleased in that name [love] than any other name. Because of it you are known as lover of humankind. You respect those who love.” 55 This love is the reason for forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace among human beings.

51 52 53 54 55

Ibid., 120. Ibid., 118–121. Ibid., 121, 125. See the readings, 1 Jn 4:11–21; 1 Cor 13:4–10; Mt 18:18–35. The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Perunnalkramam, 121–122. Translation ours. Ibid., 118–119.

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Cherished as Community

Experiencing and sharing forgiveness and reconciliation in its horizontal aspects necessarily point to the role of the community. First and foremost, the Trinitarian character of forgiveness and reconciliation bring the community to the fore. Forgiveness and reconciliation in Subukkono is presented as an act of the Trinity. In the prumion the Father is hailed as the peace of heaven, the Son as the reconciliation of the earthly people, and the Holy Spirit as the one who fulfils everything. Again in the sedro the Son is addressed as the author of peace and the Holy Spirit as one who completes the movement of true love.56 Faith in the Trinity expressed through liturgy is a common characteristic of the Eastern churches since, “the Trinity is the unshakable foundation of all religious thought, of all piety, of all spiritual life, of all experience.”57 Subukkono also reflects the foundation of liturgy in the revelation of God as the triune God, “a ‘community’ of three divine hypostases that exists in mutual love and adoration.”58 Faith in the Trinity invites the faithful to build up a community based on this vision. From the perspective of the rite of Subukkono, this faith implies the social dimension of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace. The Great Lent, as we have mentioned, is a preparation for participating in the paschal mysteries of Jesus Christ. This sharing in the paschal mysteries is seen not as a private devotion; rather, it is as a community that the worshippers are preparing themselves to come closer to the paschal mystery by initiating the practice of Lent. When they gather to practice Subukkono, they proclaim the communitarian perceptive which motivates them to gather for this rite. As a community they come and gather before God, experience the gift of forgiveness and reconciliation from God, and share among themselves. As they experience this forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace as one body in Christ, the identity of Christ become theirs.59 From this perspective, no one can view his or her history as alienated from the history of the worshipping community. Consequently, when interpreted in light of this larger perspective, the worshipper cannot see the other as enemy and hence deny reconciliation.60 On the contrary, the worshipper is to enjoy the free gifts of forgiveness and reconciliation and find joy in sharing the same with 56 57 57 58 59

Ibid., 118, 121. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of Eastern Church (London: James Clarke & Co., 1957), 65. Varghese, “West Syrian Liturgical Theology,” 50. Therese Lysaught, “Suffering, Ethics, and the Body of Christ: Anointing as a Strategic Alternative Practice,” Christian Bioethics 2, no. 2 (1996): 172–201, 184. Donna Hicks, “The Role of Identity Reconstruction in Promoting Reconciliation,” in Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Religion, Public Policy and Conflict Transformation, ed. Raymond G. Helmick and Rodney L. Peterson (London: Templeton Foundation, 2001), 129–150, 129.

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the other. The other, for a worshipper, is not an enemy but a fellow-participant in the love, forgiveness, and reconciliation offered by Triune God in the person of Jesus Christ. Hence, the worshippers become not only the agents of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace, but also the embodiment of reconciliation, as Jesus is the reconciliation between God and human beings. Moreover, the community is not restricted to the worshippers. The community gathered around the table for Subukkono is representative of the community of all humanity. The peace that they share among themselves is extended to the whole of creation in order to achieve the eschatological communion. This eschatological dimension does not delimit or reduce the social commitment. The worshippers’ commitment to society at large is expressed throughout the prayers of Lent.61 In a context of conflict and restlessness, the community gathered for Subukkono is an alternative community that fosters forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace. However, this community is not an isolated community in the world, but is in dialogue with other communities and interacts with other communities with differing worldviews.62

8.

Progressive Forgiveness

The progressive nature of forgiveness and reconciliation has ramifications for the building-up of peaceful relationships among human beings. The worshipping community does not experience forgiveness and reconciliation and make peace at a static moment. There is a growth in the achievement of peace as well as forgiveness and reconciliation. The faithful receive forgiveness and reconciliation through a gradual liturgical process. We cannot narrow down such a process exclusively to any one liturgical moment or activity.63 This aspect is expressed through the understanding of the remission of sin as healing and the understanding the Eucharist as the “medicine of life.” Saints 60

61

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The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Malankara Katholica Sabha: Valiya Nombileyum Moonnu Nombileyum Prarthanakramam (Malayalam) (Pattom: St. Mary’s Press, 2012), 193, 204, 222, 231, 237ff.. Darrell L. Guder and Louis Barrett, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 119. See also, Rodney L. Petersen, “A Theology of Forgiveness,” in Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Religion, Public Policy and Conflict Transformation, ed., Raymond G. Helmick and Rodney L. Peterson (London: Templeton Foundation, 2001), 3–25, 24–25. Thomas Varghese Tharakanveedu, “Remission of Sins and Reconciliation through the Participation in the West-Syrian Eucharistic Liturgy,” Ephrem’s Theological Journal 10 (2006): 17–34, 17.

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Ephrem and Jacob of Serugh are important proponents of this theology of healing and “medicine of life.”64 Jesus is the medicine of reconciliation. He gradually cures the sin of human beings and restores them into the state of primordial sinlessness. The primordial sinless situation is the human situation of total harmony with God, all human beings, and the created world.65 The analogy of healing is biblical, since Jesus called himself a physician who came to heal the sick (Lk 5:31). The healing experience is gradually achieved through liturgical life. Subukkono is one of the moments in that progressive movement: Eucharistic celebration, partaking in the sacraments and sacramentals, the office of the hours, Lent and other acts of penance all help the faithful to restore the relationship with God, with one another, and with creation. Participation in the liturgy forms the worshippers into a community of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.66 As the community is built up gradually, it simultaneously achieves harmony with the other communities and with the whole creation. The vision, achieved in part by the practice of the liturgy of Subukkono, fuels the life and ethical practices of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. As a worshipping community, the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is aware of the fact that, “a liturgy is successful not because of its fidelity to the past, but because it builds up now the Body of Christ into a spiritual temple and priesthood by furthering the aim of Christian life: the love of God and neighbor; death to self in order to live for others as did Christ.”67

64

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66

67

This theology is reflected in the theology of Malankara Catholic Church in many ways. See for example, Mar Ivanios, The Sacrament of Confession: A Meditative Study, The Complete Works of Archbishop Mar Ivanios, no. 6, trans. Samuel Thaikkoottathil (Pattom: Catholicate Centre, 2006), 25. Tharakanveedu, “Remission of Sins and Reconciliation through the Participation in the West-Syrian Eucharistic Liturgy,” 20; J. Arathayil, “Mysticism in Syrian Tradition,” The Harp 8 (1995–1996): 241–250, 248. Liturgy forms and transforms the perception, affection and actions of the worshipping community. D.E. Saliers, “Liturgy and Ethics: Some New Beginnings,” Journal of Religious Ethics 7 (1979): 174; William C. Spohn, Go and Do Likewise: Jesus and Ethics (New York: Continuum, 1999), 72–77. To see how the participation in the Eucharistic celebration in the West Syrian tradition brings remission of sins, Brian Gogan, “Penance Rite of the WestSyrian Liturgy: Some Liturgical and Theological Implications,” Irish Theological Quarterly 27 (1975): 182–196, 184–196. See also, Kadavil, “The Sacrament of Reconciliation in the Malanakara Church,” 253–256. Robert F.Taft, “What is a Christian Worship?,” Worship 83 (2009): 2–18, 17. The social and cosmic dimension of the practical life is reflected in the prayers of Lent. See, The Synodal Commission for Liturgy, Malankara Katholica Sabha: Valiya Nombileyum Moonnu Nombileyum Prarthanakramam (Malayalam), 193, 204, 222, 231, 237ff..

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Conclusion The rite of Subukkono contains the themes of forgiveness and reconciliation both in their vertical and horizontal dimensions. The prayers of this rite expose these themes in numerous ways. On the one hand there are direct pleas for forgiveness and reconciliation, and on the other hand there are implied requests for these same aspects. Similarly, forgiveness and reconciliation are proclaimed as the gifts of God in some prayers. In all its forms, these concepts are embedded in the overall tone of repentance proper to the rite. Repentance is expressed through prayers and liturgical actions such as prostration and extending the kiss of peace. Fasting and abstinence practiced during Lent also are manifestations of repentance. In Subukkono repentance is not limited to contrition about individual sins, nor is reconciliation limited to restoring the relationship between the individual and God. Rather, repentance is related to forgiveness and reconciliation in both its vertical and horizontal aspects: it includes the restoration of the harmonious relationship among human beings and between human beings and the cosmos. The connection between forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace further reveals the comprehensive dimension of repentance. The worshipping congregation is a community of repentance and also a community of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace. Peace is a gift from the Triune God conveyed to all human beings throughout the history of salvation, and each event of salvation history is presented as communicating peace. The inspiring force behind peace is love. The love of the Triune God for the human beings is expressed throughout salvation history, and this love is the basis for the human obligation to forgive, reconcile, and live in tranquility and peace. The enjoyment of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace are envisioned in their eschatological and historical dimensions. Clearly, the worshipping community is called to love God and one another. This love inspires them to forgive and reconcile with others and thus be in peace. This peace is necessary to enjoy the joy of resurrection, which is the ultimate end of Lent. The themes of reconciliation, forgiveness, and peace are all integrally related to the orientation towards resurrection. The communitarian and progressive dimensions of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace are also ethically relevant. The experience of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace is an ongoing process. By partaking in the liturgical activities, the faithful gradually adopt these virtues, making the liturgy a primary, formative site of theological and ethical activity for the faithful. The analogy of healing expresses this progressiveness. The community of the faithful is formed as a community of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace that is in dialogue with other communities. This vision forms and transforms the moral perception, affection, and actions of the worshipping community on its way to peace building.

Recapturing the Mystery–Captured by the Mystery African Eucharistic Prayers in the Roman Rite

Elochukwu Uzukwu

The liturgical renewal of Vatican II was good news for African Catholics. It gave African Catholics a taste, no matter how limited, of being “truly Christian” and “truly African“. The limited freedom and creativity that ensued in the area of the celebration of the sacraments and the mysteries partly fulfilled the missional vision of the renowned secretary of the Church Missionary Society, Henry Venn (10 February 1796–13 January 1873). Venn and Rufus Anderson imagined the indigenization of the church in mission lands, embodied in the “three selfs”: “selfsupporting, self-governing, and self-propagating (Venn used the term “selfextending”).1 That the process of vernacularization or indigenization2 of the liturgy is part of the self-governance (or self-regulation) of the local Church (always in communion) is captured by the change in liturgical law by Vatican II. Sacrosanctum Concilium 22 made “regulation of the sacred liturgy” dependent not only on the “Apostolic See” but also on “the bishop” and the “competent territorial bodies of bishops”: 22. 1. Regulation of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church, that is, on the Apostolic See and, as laws may determine, on the bishop. 2. In virtue of power conceded by the law, the regulation of the liturgy within certain defined limits belongs also to various kinds of competent territorial bodies of bishops legitimately established. 3. There-

1

2

See among numerous citations and commentaries on this famous idea, J. Andrew Kirk, What is Mission?: Theological Explorations (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 89, 249 n32. See Lamin O. Sanneh, Translating the message: the missionary impact on culture, American Society of Missiology, no. 13 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989). See also Kwame Bediako, Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a non-Western Religion, 1997 ed. (Edinburgh/New York: University of Edinburgh Press/Orbis Press, 1995). Chapter VII: “Translatability and the Cultural Incarnations of the Faith.”

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fore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.3

This change in liturgical law by Vatican II reversed the “rigid uniformity” (SC 37) and centralization dominant since the promulgation of the Missal of Pius V (1570).4 The change inspired what is today received as inculturation – which Sacrosanctum Concilium 37–40 called “adaptation” (aptatio, 38–39) and “more radical adaption” (profundior aptatio, 40). Initial expectations in Africa of localization or indigenization under the impetus of the reform/renewal raised hopes that liturgical inculturation would flourish in the area of the mysteries, especially Christian initiation and marriage. In the indigenous African religious world, initiation and rites of passage marked the development and flourishing of the human person from ‘womb to tomb’. The inculturation of Christian initiation flourished in the diocese of Diebougou, Burkina Faso, and also in Tshikapa-Kele (Cijiba), Congo.5 To the best of my knowledge, the creative developments of Christian initiation rites that have the approval of the local church failed to come about in other local churches of Africa. Where one expected it to occur, like the rich postpartum rites and naming ceremonies, the rituals were surprisingly not absorbed into the official sacramental practice. For example, in Nigeria, the rich Yoruba naming ceremony is practiced as an independent Christianized ritual, totally unconnected to the sacraments of Christian initiation. Only in recent times did the complex indigenous Nigerian marriage rituals find their way into the celebration of Christian marriage, merging the canonical celebration of Christian marriage into the one social reality of an indigenous marriage rite.6 On the other hand, the Eucharistic celebration has been the preferred focus area of liturgical renewal and inculturation. In the central African region (Cameroon, Zaire-Congo), East Africa (AMECEA countries) and West Africa (Ghana and Nigeria) the Eucharistic liturgy and Eucharistic devotion attracted the creative energies of the Eucharistic community. The ecclesiology of Eucharistic community is captured by the vision statement of AMECEA (the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa): “The local church is essentially a Eucharistic 3 4 5

6

See, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_ const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html [accessed October 20, 2013]. See Pius V, Constitution Quo Primum, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius05/p5quopri.htm (accessed, Feb. 8, 2015). See François Kabasele Lumbala, Celebrating Jesus Christ in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, Faith and Cultures (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1998), 12–18; Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language: Introduction to Christian Worship: An African Orientation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 288–293. See Patrick Chukwudezie Chibuko, Traditional Marriage and Church Wedding in One Ceremony A Proposed Rite for Study and Celebration in Igbo and English (Enugu: SNAAP, 1999).

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community that is orientated to the Eucharist, finds its fullest meaning in the Eucharist, and lives from one Eucharist to the next.”7 This biblical and Patristic Eucharistic ecclesiology incarnates Eucharistic liturgical creativity. It is not restricted to the popularized “dancing church” at prayer,8 but rather it has made forays into the creation of new masses (Ndzon-Melen mass and Zairian mass) and Eucharistic Prayers. Eucharistic devotion such as the celebration of Corpus Christi in Ghana and Nigeria did capture the legitimate realization of the “dancing church,” patterned on the festive outing of the Asantehene (Kumasi king) or Onitsha king (Igbo of Nigeria) while not actually integrating into Christian worship the deep rituals surrounding such outings (and is therefore an example of limited adaptation rather than inculturation). The creation of new mass formularies and structures and the composition of new Eucharistic Prayers, responding to the religious cultural location of the Eucharistic community, is, to say the least, the display of African ecclesial communities as Eucharistic communities that integrate their world into the praise and worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. True, the instruction, Eucharistiae Participationem (1973, no. 8) of the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments insists that, “The Apostolic See reserves to itself the right to regulate a matter so important as the discipline of the Eucharistic prayer.” However, it leaves the door open for new compositions: “The Apostolic See will not refuse to consider lawful needs within the Roman Rite and will accord every consideration to the petitions submitted by the conferences for the possible composition in special circumstances of a new Eucharistic prayer and its introduction into the liturgy.”9 This essay will try to explore the question of what are and what has become of the new African Eucharistic Prayers. The question is pertinent at a time when the Roman policy of centralization stretching to the control even of translations has become the rule. The new African Eucharistic Prayers were published as from 1969. In 1974 the Congo-Zaire Prayer was used ad experimentum in Congo-Zaire. The other Prayers were used at least within the confines of the Gaba Pastoral Institute, Eldoret Kenya. Apart from the officially approved Zaire Prayer found in 7

8

9

Fifth Triennial AMECEA Plenary Conference, “Building Christian Communities,” African Ecclesial Review 18, no. 5 (1976): 251. This is consonant with the Eucharistic ecclesiology that Zizioulas argued for: Jean Zizioulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001). This is available on DVD. See Thomas A. Kane, The Dancing Church around the World. DVD Collection: http://www.thedancingchurch.com/dvd_africa.htm [accessed May 30 2012]. Eucharistiae Participationem #6, in Thomas C. O'Brien and International Commission on English in the Liturgy., Documents on the Liturgy, 1963–1979–Conciliar, Papal, and Curial Texts (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1982), 625.

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the Roman Missal for the Use of the Dioceses of Zaire (1988), the new African Eucharistic Prayers include the Kenya Eucharistic Prayer, the Ugandan Eucharistic Prayer, the Tanzanian Eucharistic Prayer, and the All Africa Eucharistic Prayer. All of them were created within the Gaba Pastoral Institute. There is also the Nigerian (Igbo) Eucharistic Prayer, the fruit of my ThD dissertation (1978–79). In addition to these, one notes that the Tanzanian Episcopal Conference commissioned its pastoral research group (in 1975) to produce a complete Eucharistia similar to the Zairian mass (published 1974). There were to be two Eucharistic Prayers. According to Shorter, “One prayer was to take the theme of Trinitarian unity and the other was to be based on African religious values.”10 I received a copy of the Swahili version of this prayer from Shorter in 1985; it was translated for me by Rogath Kilmaryo (presently the Bishop of Same Diocese in Tanzania). I was told that the prayer was never approved nor ever used in any Eucharistic celebration. Attentive to the Jewish influence on the structure and content of the Christian Eucharistic Prayer, one should critically examine the structures of and religious cultural influences behind the new African Eucharistic Prayers. In other words, what do they have in common with but also how are they different from the Roman Canon and the Anaphoras of the historic liturgies? Is the creation of new African Eucharistic Prayers purely a matter of identity, or do the Prayers genuinely open a refreshing access for the “local” recapture and diffusion of the mystery of Christ’s Death-Resurrection? What do these Prayers contribute to the World Church? This essay will respond to these questions through a thematic review of the texts of the Eucharistic Prayers to show that the liturgies of Africa, like those of the historic liturgies, display the density of the mystery of God in Christ, always available through local witness or incarnation.

10

See Aylward Shorter, “Liturgical Creativity in East Africa,” African Ecclesial Review 19, no. 5 (1977): 265

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The Eucharistic Prayers of the Historic Liturgies11

Christian liturgy, as epiphany of the Church, dramatizes in celebration the power of God’s self-gift revealed in the Death-Resurrection of the Lord (the paschal mystery). The Eucharistic assembly, participants in the offering of the Christ, or “partners of Christ,” holding their “first confidence firm to the end” (Heb. 3:14), celebrates in assembly, the same mystery accomplished in the one sacrifice/oblation of the Son; a sacrifice accepted and perfected by God (Heb. 5:7–9). According to the Letter to the Hebrews, Christ Jesus, “the pioneer of their salvation [made] perfect through sufferings” (Heb. 2:10), is the leader (archegos) of this liturgy. The assembly looks up to Christ and follows him (12:2). The liturgy is therefore the focal point where the ‘whole Christ’ (as Augustine says) is displayed. This is particularly so in the Eucharistic celebration. Sacrosanctum Concilium rightly says, “From the liturgy, therefore, and especially from the Eucharist, as from a font, grace is poured forth upon us; and the sanctification of men in Christ and the glorification of God, to which all other activities of the Church are directed as toward their end, is achieved in the most efficacious possible way” (SC 10). The celebrating community is a Eucharistic community, living from “one Eucharist to another” (AMECEA). The shape of the Eucharistic Prayer received from the historic liturgies (liturgies Eastern and Western) was practically complete by the 6th century of the Common Era. From this shape, one can identify three basic types: the Syrian type (covering East and West Syria, and their Indian Malabar and Malankara cousins), the Alexandrian type (covering its Greek, Coptic and Ethiopian spheres), and the Roman type (dominant in the West, Milan, Spain and Ireland). It is generally admitted that the Jewish Table Prayers, the Grace (birkat ha-mazon), influenced, in structure and content, the later development of the Christian Anaphora. The three-paragraph structure of Praise, Thanksgiving, and Petition of the birkat hamazon has an undeniable impact on the Christian eucharistia. However, scholars also admit that there are other influences from within the Jewish liturgical repertoire, e.g. the Yozer of the Jewish morning liturgy (that praises God for light) or the Todah and Abodah of the synagogue and temple liturgies that give thanks to God within the oblation. Also the Amidah or Teffilah, the 18/19 Benedictions that close the synagogue liturgy, have influence not only on the Prayer of the Faithful (bidding prayers) but also on intercessions within the Eucharistic Prayer. It is however very difficult to say which influence is the great11

The best collection of the texts is Anton Hänggi and Irmgard Pahl., Prex eucharistica; textus e variis liturgiis antiquioribus selecti, Spicilegium Friburgense (Fribourg: Éditions universitaires, 1968). There is also an important but limited English translation in Ronald C.D. Jasper and G. J. Cuming, Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed, 3rd ed. (New York: Pueblo, 1987).

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est in the origin of this Eucharistic Prayer. Enrico Mazza gives priority to the liturgical structure of the rites that open the festive meal (Kiddush) and conclude the meal, the birkat ha-mazon or Grace with its prayer in three pericopes as displayed in the Didache.12 Very pertinent for this essay are the differences that are evident in the structure of the Anaphora of West Syria (Antioch) as compared to the structure of the Roman Canon dominant in the West. It is also interesting that there are commonalities in structure between the Roman Canon and the Egyptian Eucharistic Prayer along with their Coptic and Ethiopian cousins. Could one give a satisfactory explanation of the difference between the ancient structure of the 6th century Roman Canon, whose 4th century form was partially attested to by Ambrose of Milan, from the earlier Eucharistic Prayer of the Apostolic Traditions of Hippolytus and the Syrian type? The following tables display the structural elements of the Eucharistic Prayers of Hippolytus and the Syrian type, on the one hand, and Hippolytus and the Egyptian and Roman types on the other: Hippolytus: Apostolic Traditions Introductory Dialogue Thanksgiving for Creation and Redemption

Institution Narrative Anamnesis Epiclesis Doxology

Syrian Type: West Syria (Antioch) Introductory Dialogue Praise of God climaxing in the Sanctus Sanctus Commemoration of the mystery of Redemption climaxing in the person of Jesus Christ Institution Narrative Anamnesis Epiclesis Intercessions Doxology

TABLE 1: Hippolytus and the Syrian Type

12

See Enrico Mazza, The Origins of the Eucharistic prayer (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995). Chapter One.

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Egyptian Type

Roman Type

Introductory Dialogue Praise and Thanksgiving, to Oblation Intercessions Introduction to the Sanctus & Sanctus Post-Sanctus to Epiclesis I

Introductory Dialogue Vere Dignum (variable Praise), to Sanctus

Institution Narrative

Institution Narrative

Anamnesis

Anamnesis

Epiclesis

Epiclesis II

Institution Narrative: Quam Oblationem to Supplices; motif of pleading making the narrative (Qui Pridie) a warrant Anamnesis: Unde et Memores

Hippolytus: Apostolic Traditions Introductory Dialogue Thanksgiving for Creation and Redemption

Doxology

Doxology

(Sanctus) Post-Sanctus: Te Igitur to Hanc Igitur, incorporating the purpose of the oblation: Memento of the living & in communion (Communicantes) with the Saints

Memento of the dead; and Nobis quoque for celebrants (8th–10th century) Doxology

TABLE 2: Hippolytus, the Egyptian Type and the Roman Type

What should be noted in the two Tables is the position of the intercessions in all the Eucharistic Prayers: it is absent in Hippolytus but comes after the communion epiclesis in Syria. On the other hand, in Egypt, where the Eucharist is a sacrifice of praise, the oblation is offered through Christ, and the intercessions are placed before the Sanctus but immediately following the Praise. The intercessions are never allowed to disrupt the praise-oblation made through Christ. However, in Rome, the intercessions help to configure the purpose of the oblation-praise. As I

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put it in my study, following Stuiber and Keifer,13 Rome understands the Eucharist as a sacrifice of praise (as in Egypt). However, while the intercession does not disturb the Egyptian focus on praise-thanksgiving-oblation through Christ, Rome is preoccupied with the motif or intentionality of the “offering”; “the offering, which the Church begs God to accept through Christ (Te Igitur), is an offering made for a specific purpose (Te Igitur, Memento, Communicantes, Hanc Igitur).” In this development, the praise is no longer recalled as in Egypt, but rather the Canon is guided by the spirit of the Roman religious culture (sacrifice is for a purpose). The Roman rhetorical device of pleading (digneris occurs a number of times in the Canon) dominates the petition addressed to God to accept the oblation thanks to Christ’s mandatum.14 What is of interest in this short study is the structure of the African Eucharistic prayers, and the dominant motifs that preoccupy the prayers. Are these defensible from the history of the anaphora? Are the energies to compose new Eucharistic Prayers that dominated liturgical creativity in the 1970s and 1980s a genuine display of localization, in line with the Vatican II liturgical renewal, or are they an aberration, as perhaps suggested by the recent interest in the centralization of the liturgy under the Roman rite?

2. The African Eucharistic Prayers – Structure and Content What is important in the focus on the Eucharistic Prayers is that the ritual selfpresentation of the African Eucharistic community in gestures, prayers and chants fully integrates the complex world of the celebrating community into the sumptuous praise of the Creator-Redeemer. The Eucharistic community, participants in the oblation of the Redeemer, truly offers: memorializing the once for all saving offering of the Christ in its praise and thanksgiving. In this way, I affirm that the African Eucharistic Prayer structures and motifs are the same as those found in the parent/sister Roman rite and the historic liturgies. They retain their specificity through integrating the praise-thanksgiving vocabulary drawn from their ethnic location and incorporating their world into the praise-thanksgiving of their creator and redeemer. This is as far as they can go in specific African Christian liturgical creation. 13

14

See A. Stuiber, “Die Diptychon-Formel für die Nomina offerentium im römischen Messkanon,” Ephemerides Liturgicae LXIII (1954); Ralph A. Keifer, “The Unity of the Roman Canon: an Examination of its unique Structure,” Studia Liturgica XI(1976). See my dissertation, Eugene Elochukwu Uzukwu, Blessing and Thanksgiving Among the Igbo: Towards a Eucharistia Africana (Toronto,1978), 172–173.

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The publication of the first Eucharistic Prayer of African creation was at the Gaba Pastoral Institute in 1969. Its structure differed slightly from the structure of the Prayers in the 1969 Missal of Paul VI. The other three new African Eucharistic Prayers published in 1972/73 followed the same structure. Below is the comparative table of the 4 East African Eucharistic Prayers:15 All Africa Eucharistic Prayer

Kenyan Eucharistic Prayer

Tanzanian Eucharistic Prayer

Ugandan Eucharistic Prayer

Prayer of Thanksgiving

ThanksgivingPraise/Community Praise Response

Opening Praise

Epiclesis

Epiclesis – preceded by Praise linked to Ancestors Narrative of the Institution/same as in All Africa Acclamations

Epiclesis – in Praise and pleading posture

Opening Praisethanksgiving focused on Creationredemption Epiclesis

Narrative of the Institution Acclamations

Narrative of the Institution/same as in All Africa Acclamations

Narrative of the Institution/same as in All Africa Acclamations; in form of response, following the narrative

Anamnesis introducing intercessions

Intercessions Doxology

Prayer of Offering with an undeveloped Anamnesis Intercessions/ beautiful Doxology

Prayer of Offering with Anamnesis Intercessions

Intercessions

Doxology by all

Doxology

TABLE 3: Four African Eucharistic Prayers

The merit of these four prayers is the bold use of the indigenous religious texts of East Africa as dominant template to praise, thank, and implore God through 15

See Aylward Shorter, “Three More African Eucharistic Prayers,” African Ecclesial Review 15, no. 2 (1973). Also Aylward Shorter, “An African Eucharistic Prayer,” African Ecclesial Review 12, no. 2 (1970).

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Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit. The use of the indigenous texts is not limited to the prayer of praise and thanksgiving (for creation), but also in the prayer that memorializes the oblation of Jesus Christ; the oblation that has become that of the Eucharistic community. For example, the Opening Praise of the Kenya Eucharistic Prayer simply retouches, in a Christian way, the ancestral prayer that is supposed to have been pronounced by the eponymous ancestor of the Kikuyu (a prayer recorded by Jomo Kenyatta). There is just the slightest adjustment to make this prayer a Christian praise: Kikuyu Ancestral Prayer O, my Father, great Elder, I have no words to thank you, but with your deep wisdom I am sure that you can see how much I prize your glorious gifts. O my Father, when I look upon your greatness, I am confounded with awe. O great Elder, ruler of all things both on heaven and on earth, I am your warrior, and I am ready to act in accordance with your will.16

Kenyan Christian [Catholic] Eucharistic Prayer

O Father, Great Elder, we have no words to thank you, But with your deep wisdom We are sure that you can see How we value your glorious gifts. O Father, when we look upon your greatness, We are confounded with awe. O Great Elder, Ruler of all things earthly and heavenly, We are your warriors, Ready to act in accordance with your will.17

The response of the assembly that follows is a Galla indigenous Prayer, adopted and unchanged ALL Listen to us aged God, Listen to us ancient God, Who has ears. Look at us aged God, Look at us ancient God, Who has eyes. Receive us, aged God, Receive us, ancient God, who has hands.18

Still staying with the Kenyan Eucharistic Prayer, the intercessions are a new creation based on Kikuyu indigenous litanic prayer pattern. It is interesting and is worth reproducing: (Based on a Kikuyu Prayer)

16 17 18

John S. Mbiti, The Prayers of African Religion (London: SPCK, 1975), 151. See Brian Hearne and Nsolo Mijere, eds., Celebration, vol. II, Spearhead 42 (Eldoret, Kenya: Gaba Publications, 1976). Shorter, “Three More African Eucharistic Prayers,” 156, 153

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PC Say you, the elders may have wisdom and speak with one voice ALL Praise be to God. Peace be with us! PC Say you, the people may have peace and fellowship With Mary, the Great Mother, And all the Holy Ones. ALL Praise be to God, Peace be with us, PC

And our Bishop, Emmanuel, May have wisdom and life. ALL Praise be to God. Peace be with us! PC Say that the people, the herds and the fields may prosper. ALL Praise be to God. Peace be with us!

There are limitations, however, to these prayers. First, the Praise motif is slim; and Africans are peoples that have a highly developed praise vocabulary. Benedict Kahwolwe criticized the All Africa Prayer on this score.19 This perhaps led to the corrections and the incorporation of his suggested Praise poem as Opening Praise of the Tanzanian Eucharistic Prayer. This Opening Praise of the Tanzanian Prayer is worth citing alongside its indigenous or ancestral original. The original pleads with God for healing; but the Christian Eucharistic Prayer borrows only the praise element. Opening Praise: Tanzanian Eucharistic Prayer

Ancestral Original

You, Father God, Who are in the Heavens and below. Creator of everything and omniscient. Conserver of the earth and the sky; We are but little children. Unknowing anything evil.

You, Father God, Who are in the heavens and below. Creator of everything and omniscient; Of the earth and the heavens; We are but little children Unknowing anything evil; If this sickness has been brought by man We beseech you, help us through these roots. In case it was inflicted by you, the Conserver, Likewise do we entreat your mercy on your child; Also you, our grandparents, who sleep in the place of the shades. We entreat all of you sleep on one side. All ancestors, males and females, great and small

We entreat your mercy.

Also you, our Grandparents, Who sleep in the place of light. All ancestors, men and women, great and small. Help us, have compassion on us. So that we can also sleep peacefully. 19

Help us in this trouble, have compassion on us; So that we can also sleep peacefully.

See the critique of this prayer by Benedict Kaholwe, “Platform: An African Eucharistic Prayer,” African Ecclesial Review 12, no. 4 (1970).

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Elochukwu Uzukwu And thus do I spit out this mouthful of water! Pu-pu! Pu-pu! Please listen to our earnest request.

This is indeed a bold transformation of the praise segment of an indigenous ancestral prayer of healing into a Christian Eucharistic Prayer. The lack of a developed Praise motif in the Prayers prevents the incorporation of the angelic chant, Sanctus, which has been received in the historic liturgies. However, one must note that some liturgies, such as Hippolytus and Addai and Mari, lack the Sanctus. Next, the All Africa Eucharistic Prayer lacks an anamnesis on the basis of which the Eucharistic community’s oblation is justified. This unsatisfactory situation is partially replicated in the three other Eucharistic Prayers, despite the fact that their Praise motif is better developed (especially in Tanzania). All three include a short anamnesis that is immediately connected with the prayer of offering and the intercession. No Eucharistic Prayer is perfect, as the history of the Prayers of the historic liturgies makes abundantly clear. But composing prayers under the inspiration of the liturgical renewal of Vatican II could have aided the composers in training their eyes on the historic liturgies and also learn from the models presented in the new Eucharistic Prayers of the Roman rite. Despite their limitations, it is of interest to remark upon the enthusiasm of the episcopal conferences in supporting the research and experimentation of the new compositions. The pity is that the prayers have not been formally adopted in the dioceses like the Zairian liturgy. The Zairian Eucharistic Prayer, approved for use ad experimentum in 1974, and formally approved in the Roman Missal for use in the Dioceses of Zaire in 1988, is closer in structure to the new Eucharistic Prayers of the Roman rite. But it retains the Congo specificity in capturing the Congo world in the praise-thanksgiving and rhetorical style.20 The following structure is retained in both the new Eucharistic Prayers and in the liturgy of Zaire:

20

See Conférence Épiscopale du Zaïre, Missel Romain pour les diocèses du Zaïre (Kinshasa: Éditions du Secrétariat Général, 1989). Also Conférence Episcopale du Zaire, Supplement au Missel Romain pour les Diocèses du Zaire: Présentation de la Liturgie de la Messe (Kinshasa: Éditions du Scrétariat Général, 1989).

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New Roman Eucharistic Prayers II-IV

Congo Eucharistic Prayer

Opening Dialogue Opening Praise (Preface), variable in Eucharistic Prayer III

Opening Dialogue Opening Praise: Elaborate Theological and Christological Praise building up to the Sanctus Sanctus Post-Sanctus: Trinitarian Epiclesis I Institution Narrative Memorial Acclamation Anamnesis Epiclesis II Intercessions Doxology

Sanctus Post-Sanctus (anamnesis of Salvation) Epiclesis I Institution Narrative Memorial Acclamation Anamnesis Epiclesis II Intercessions Doxology

TABLE 4: Structure of the Roman Eucharistic Prayers II–IV and the Congo-Zaire Eucharistic Prayer

The Opening Praise, Theological and Christological, clearly captures the Congo indigenous-Christian location:21 C: Truly, Lord, it is right that we give you thanks, that we glorify you, our Father; you, the almighty; you, the sun at which we cannot stare; you, who are sight itself; you, the master of all people; you, the master of life; you, the master of all things; we praise you. We give you thanks through your Son, Jesus Christ, our mediator. People: Amen. He is the only mediator.

Christological part of the prayer C. Holy Father, we praise you through your Son Jesus, our mediator. He is your Word, the Word that gives life. Through him, you created-heaven and earth; through him you created our river, the Zaire. Through him, you created our forests, our rivers, our lakes. Through him you created the animals who live in our forests, and the fish who live in our rivers. Through him you created the things we see, and also the things we do not see. People: Through him you have created all things!

21

Translation taken from Kabasele Lumbala, Celebrating Jesus Christ in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, 39–41. The 1974 text was translated at the Gaba Pastoral Institute, see Zaire Rite, “The Zaire rite for the Mass,” African Ecclesial Review 17, no. 4 (1975).

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The Doxology invokes the name of the Trinity, recalling in its litany, the fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi, “I am a great King, says the LORD of hosts, and my name is reverenced among the nations.” (Mal. 1:14). It also adopts the callresponse rhetorical style that dominated and perhaps still dominates the Congolese political terrain. C: Lord, let us glorify your name. All: Amen. C: Your name. All: Amen. C: So honorable, All: Amen. C: Father, All: Amen. C: Son, All: Amen. C: Holy Spirit, All: Amen. C: Let us glorify your name, All: Amen. C: Today, All: Amen. C: Tomorrow, All: Amen. C: Forever and ever, All: Amen.

Conclusion The catholic energy that drove African local churches to compose new Eucharistic Prayers soon after the publication of the 1969 Missal of Paul VI derives from the best practices of liturgical inculturation, as recorded in the historic liturgies (Eastern and Western). The Prayers go beyond translations and adaptations to embrace “radical adaptations” or new creations: they fully integrate the life-world of the African peoples who in their diverse locations experience the listening ear and the gentle touch of God revealed in the novelty of the Death-Resurrection of Jesus. This new creation of texts is intended by the Instruction of the Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Comme le Prévoit (1969), which declared that “The creation of new texts will be necessary.” Translations of the editio typica ensure that “any new forms adopted [i.e. any new creations] should in some way grow organically from forms already in exist-

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ence.”22 The Eucharistic Prayers of Africa demonstrate a true exercise of dynamic equivalence and the parrhesia (boldness or freedom) that should reign in the household of God. The African Prayers reinvent the story of the Roman Canon: inserted within the Roman rite, the Prayers capture the heart of Christianity lived and prospering in the heart of Africa. Today, the preoccupation with “correct” translations of the editio typica of the liturgical texts (the closer to the Latin original the better) by the Congregation for Divine worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments appears to be a departure from the ecclesial boldness of the 1970s and 1980s.23 In the 1970s and the 1980s the focus was not only on translation but also on the creation of texts, including new Eucharistic Prayers (1973), that will ensure that people (including children) returned to the liturgy and the liturgy belonged to the people. Today, the pastoral and ecclesiological insight of Pope Francis should enable the Holy See, the Bishops and the “competent territorial bodies of bishops” to encourage strongly those “elements from the traditions and culture of individual peoples [that] might appropriately be admitted into divine worship” (SC 40). One welcomes the Eucharistic Prayers of the local liturgies in Africa, solidly rooted in their sister Roman rite and in historic liturgies. They testify to the living Eucharistic church communities that are “self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating.” The ritual texts drawn from African indigenous religious experience are transformed by the Christian faith and competently re-present, in praise-thanksgiving-petition, the density of the Paschal Mystery.

22

23

Consilium for Implementing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Comme le Prévoit: On the Translation of Liturgical Texts for Celebrations with a Congregation, 43: http://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CONSLEPR.HTM [accessed May 26, 2012). See the 2001 document of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Liturgiam Authenticam: “Fifth Instruction ‘For the Right Implementation of the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium art. 36)” http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc _20010507_liturgiam-authenticam_en.html. What does one make of the following statement in 43: “It should be borne in mind that a literal translation of terms which may initially sound odd in a vernacular language may for this very reason provoke inquisitiveness in the hearer and provide an occasion for catechesis.”

5. Liturgical Commotion in Eastern Europe

The Mystery of Divine-Human Cooperation in Freedom and Creativity An Example of Liturgical Life from the Russian Diaspora in France1

Katerina Bauerova

Can free creativity become a starting point for the innovation of liturgical life? This question was current in the life of the Russian Orthodox diaspora in France after the 1917 revolution. The new life circumstances in exile also meant new theological questioning, where the question of freedom was especially present. Paradoxically in this “unfree situation,” marked by distress and loss, people were freed from social commitments, public opinion, even the history of their own country,2 and therefore there was a space to create something new, because the old did not exist anymore and the new had not yet come into being.3 Freedom, together with creativity, became one of the main topics of exile life. In religious and theological life the issues of freedom and creativity were centered around two approaches: one theoretical, coming from the religious philosophy represented by Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) and Boris Vysheslavtsev (1877–1954) and the second, which directly affected ecclesial life, including liturgy, represented by Mother Maria Skobstova (1891–1945), Sister Joanna Rejtlinger (1898–1988) and Father Lev Gillet (1893–1980). This division was not strict, because both approaches were interwoven as were the lives of the five people just mentioned. These people were connected not only by the topic but also by the locus where free creating was realized in theological and ecclesial life. Apart from

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This study is a part of the research project “Symbolic Mediation of Wholeness in Western Orthodoxy,” GAČR P401/11/1688. Mother Maria Skobtsova, , “Pod znakom nashego vremeni,” (Under the Sign of Our Time) in Mother Maria Skobtsova, Vospominanija, stat'i, ocherki II (Paris: YMCA Press, 1992), 250– 60, 252. Mother Maria Skobtsova, “Pod znakom nashego vremeni,” 252.

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the famous St. Serge Theological Institute as the center of theological education,4 there was the house at rue De Lourmel with its small chapel, established on the initiative of Mother Maria Skobtsova as a shelter for Russian refugees and later for Jews.5 They lived at the time when the renewal of Roman Catholic liturgical life was starting in France,6 and for Orthodoxy it was a milieu for encountering other Christian traditions.7 These encounters also had practical results in the transformation of liturgical ecumenism, as we will see with the case of Father Lev Gillet, who was an embodied example of the appropriation of Orthodoxy among francophone Catholics.8 In this paper I will first trace the philosophical and religious preconditions for freedom and creativity in Berdyaev and Vysheslavtsev. Then I will look at how these topics were incorporated into the liturgical life through Mother Maria, Sister Joanna and Father Lev Gillet. At the end I will come back to the house at rue De Lourmel as a symbol of free creativity, where both approaches resulted in the 4

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For more about St. Serge Theological Institute see e.g. Boris Bobrinskoy, “Istorija bogoslovskogo instituta” (“History of the Theological Institute”), in ed. Boris Bobrinskoy, Prepodobnyj Sergij v Parizhe: Istorija Parizhskogo Svjato-Sergievskogo Pravoslavnogo Bogoslovskogo Instituta (Saint Petersburg: Rostok, 2010), 17–53; Cf. L´Institut de Théologie Orthodoxe Saint-Serge: 70 ans de théologie orthodoxe a Paris (Paris: Éditions Hervas, 1997); Kateřina Bauerová and Tim Noble, “Cesty od dispory k místním církvím,” (“The Ways From Diaspora to Local Churches”) in Ivana Noble et al. Cesty pravoslavé teologie ve 20. století na Západ (Brno: CDK, 2012), 226–232. Mother Maria first lived at 9 Villa de Saxe (Paris V) but later, due to the growth in the number of people she had to care for, she moved to a larger house on Rue de Lourmel. For more details see Sergei Hackel, One of Great Price: The Life of Mother Maria Skobtsova, Martyr of Ravensbrück (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1965), 28–45. We can observe the beginnings of the liturgical movement in the Roman Catholic Church in the late nineteenth century, especially in the Benedictine order in France, Belgium and Germany. By around the time of the Second World War it had spread to parishes in these countries and become more pastoral than monastic. In France it was especially due to work of the Benedictine monastery in Solesmes under the leadership of Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805–1875) and it was concentrated especially on the historical research of the sources of the liturgy. The more popular liturgical movement was addressed in the work of Belgian Benedictine monk Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873–1960) with his emphasis on the liturgical participation of all people. See Lambert Beauduin, Liturgy, The Life of the Church, trans. Virgil Michel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1926). See the chapter by Timothy Noble, “Springtime in Paris: Orthodoxy Encountering Diverse Others Between the Wars,” in Den Blick weiten: Wenn Ökumene den Religionen begegnet: Tagungsbericht der 17. Wissenschaftlichen Konsultation der Societas Oecumenica, eds. Andrew Pierce, Oliver Schuegraf, Beiheft zur Ökumenischen Rundschau 99 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2014), 295–310. Robert Taft sees it more as a Roman Catholic romantic vision of eastern liturgy. See Robert Taft S.J, “‘Eastern Presuppositions’ and Western Liturgical Renewal,” accessible at rcheparchy.ca/wcm-docs/docs/Taft_Eastern_Presuppositions.pdf

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realization of the two commandments of love as part of the mystery of divinehuman cooperation. I will also show that, even though the house at rue De Lourmel was destroyed, their work has had lasting effects and can, in some aspects, guide us in our approaches to liturgical life today.

1.

Religious-philosophical Assumptions for Freedom and Creativity

Russian Religious philosophers Nikolai Berdyaev and Boris Vysheslavtsev knew each other very well.9 Vysheslavtsev, after being expelled from Russia,10 emigrated to Berlin and worked at Berdyaev’s Academy of Religion11 and Philosophy.12 After moving to Paris in 1924 he founded with Berdyaev the journal Put’ (The Way), as a vehicle for Russian religious thought.13 Vysheslavtsev´s book The Ethics of Eros Transfigured: Problems of Law and Mercy (Paris, 1934),14 which presented his ethics of sublimation, reminds us in many aspects of Berdyaev’s ethics of creativity as detailed in his book The Destiny of Man (1931).15 Both of them elaborate the idea of freedom linked with creativity. Vysheslavtsev, more than Berdyaev, and due to his acquaintance with Carl Jung, aspired to a synthesis of religious philosophy with the insights of psychoanalysis. Berdyaev on the other hand developed a 9

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Both were also expelled from their homeland after the revolution in 1918 on the Philosophers’ Boat, which was a mass deportation of the intelligentsia. For more see e.g. Lesley Chamberlain, The Philosophy Steamer: Lenin and the Exile of the Intelligentsia (London: Atlantic Books, 2006) 13–33. Prior to emigration Vysheslavtsev studied in Moscow, where he received a doctorate from the University, in which, in 1917, he was made professor of philosophy. Expelled from the Soviet Union in 1922, he emigrated first to Berlin and then Paris. From the time of the German occupation of France until his death he lived in Switzerland. For more information about Berdyaev in Berlin see his own autobiographical writing, Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1950) or Kateřina Baureová, “The Experience and Theology of the Russian Émigres,” in Ivana Noble, Tim Noble, and Parush Parushev The Ways of Orthodox Theology in the West (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2015). He worked there between 1922–1924. His collaboraters there included Bulgakov, Vysheslavtsev and Anton Kartashev. See for more Robert Johnston, New Mecca, New Babylon: Paris and the Russian Exiles, 1920–1945 (Montreal/Kingstone: McGill/Queen’s University Press, 1988), 54. Tatiana Blagova, “Boris Vysheslavtsev on the Russian National Character,” in New Zealand Slavonic Journal (1999): 203–216. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40922032. Boris Petrovich Vysheslavcev, Etika preobrazhennogo erosa (Moskva: Respublika, 1994). Nikolai Berdyaev, O naznachenii cheloveka: Opyt paradoksal'noj etiki (Moskva: Respublika, 1993).

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more existential philosophy. However, there are several aspects which they share in common and which illustrate very well the atmosphere of thought in the Russian diaspora of that time. Both of them place in opposition the ethics of law and mercy. Berdyaev recognizes the social function of the law; therefore it cannot be simply rejected, but still it is overcome by mercy. The ethics of law is the expression of the herd, not of unique individuality.16 He proposes an ethic of creativity, which respects individuality because it comes out of redemption and freedom. He emphasizes the connection of freedom to creativity. Freedom is present in all creativeness because the human person is a free being, in whom there is primordial, uncreated, pre-cosmic freedom.17 For an ethics of creativeness freedom means not the acceptance of the laws but the individual creation of values. He considers that individuality is the highest of moral values. To be an individual to the end is an absolute imperative. It is to realize God’s idea in oneself.18 Creative work is fully personal but at the same time involves forgetfulness of self19 and thus has also a cosmic significance. It cannot be selfish because a selfish person cannot imagine a better world, cannot create anything new. “Moral life must be determined not by a purpose but by a norm of imagery and the exercise of creative activity.”20 Such a creative person is always prophetic, related to the communal spiritual whole via the conscience and not via social compulsion and authority. Berdyaev considers such ethics to be infinite,21 because for a creative act there is no fate, no time. The ethics of creativeness also brings generosity and compassion to all creation. Striving for freedom, compassion and creativeness are eternal.22 Similarly Vysheslavtsev works from the basis of the antinomy of the law and mercy. Creativity is possible only by mercy. The law can be destroyed by the creativity of love, which pulls apart the formal norms of social rules and cannot anticipate the richness of concrete life situations.23 History is not created by the vicious circle of the law but by restless free pilgrims who imagine a better world.24 Vysheslavtsev notes that it is our subconscious which resists the ethics of law and he looks for a way to use its power to create something new. He finds the solution in the sublimation of eros.25 He draws on the concept of eros in Plato, adopted 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Berdyaev, O naznachenii cheloveka, 91. Ibid., 100. Ibid., 122. Ibid.,127. Ibid.,131. Ibid.,122. Ibid.,138. Boris Petrovich Vysheslavcev, Etika preobrazhennogo erosa, 21. Ibid., 24. He also speaks about sublimation as the struggle with sinful sexual passion. Every creative inspiration transfigures it. See ibid., 45–47.

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by the Church Fathers,26 where eros is a power that lifts humans up to God. Here the imagination plays its role, because it is able to descend into the subconscious and transform sublimation into a power that gravitates to God and restores God’s image and likeness in humans. Our subconscious does not submit to the Law but to imagination. Vysheslavtsev sees imagination as giving us the ability to escape all that is constituted and rational and as enabling the impossible and irrational. Imagination is equal to creativity. However, to really create is not only a matter of human freedom but together with it there is always God’s mercy involved as “uncreated beauty.”27 Creativity is a divine-human process.28 The ethics of sublimation of eros, for which Vysheslavtsev calls, is the opposite of the ethics of the law and moralism or juridicism, which simply act to constitute taboos.29 This new ethics is based on eros as it is found in Plato or in St Paul’s hymn on love. Its main aim is ars amandi (the art of loving),30 in which human creativity together with divine grace works on the divinization of the whole cosmos.

2.

Freedom and Creativity Celebrated by “Restless Pilgrims”

The ethics of creativity and sublimation, where the law is overshadowed by mercy, where the formal rules of the church are overcome by the free creative power of individuals, and where imagination and beauty stand higher than morality or following dead forms could be seen in the ecclesial milieu of the Orthodoxy of that time. It took concrete shape via the lives of those Vysheslavtsev called the “restless pilgrims.”31 Their free creating impacted the liturgical life of the church by overcoming a legalistic and moralistic approach to liturgy, thus bringing liturgical innovation too. The first example of free creating in liturgical life can be found in the work of Mother Maria Skobtsova,32 who perceived the new situation in diaspora as a free space for the Holy Spirit. As a divorced woman, full of passion and desire for monastic life, she was not afraid to imagine the impossible, that is, to become an 26

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The Plato’s teaching about eros was used by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, later by Maximus the Confessor or Gregory Palamas. This tradition was again resurrected by Vladimir Solovyov. See Vysheslavcev, Etika preobrazhennogo erosa, 47. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 86. Ibid., 68. Ibid., 24. For the detailed information about her life see Sergei Hackel, One, of Great Price: The Life of Mother Maria Skobtsova Martyr of Ravensbrück (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1965).

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Orthodox nun in Paris where there were no Orthodox monasteries.33 She started with a question: why speak about freedom, if we cannot freely combine our creative efforts? Her personal response began by gaining permission from Metropolitan Eulogii,34 responsible at that time for Western Europe, to become a nun.35 She understood that there are two ways of life: one dry and legitimate, where one can measure and plan, the other, where one is walking on water, where it is not possible to measure but necessary to imagine and believe.36 Her extraordinary approach toward monasticism in the city was based on this second way, as Jim Forest shows,37 where God’s two commandments of love were not overshadowed by any regulations, any customs, any traditions, any aesthetic considerations, or even any piety. Therefore in her approach she followed what St. John Chrysostom calls the ‘liturgy after the liturgy,’ which is not celebrated on the stone or wood of the altar but on the altar of flesh and blood, that of our brother and sister,38 and where the whole world is the church community. Similarly her friend Julia Rejtlinger, (Joanna was her monastic name)39 represents “creative icon-painting” in exile.40 As both an icon-painter and an artist, who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague,41 she believed not only in the important role of tradition but also in the spiritual power of art in general. Rejtlinger, following theologically her spiritual father Sergei Bulgakov,42 saw art as belonging to the sphere of human co-creativity with God, because it is able to depict the original beauty, which was fully at the beginning in the moment of creation. Artists thus take part in the iconization of the world as they uncover this 33 34

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Jim Forest, “Introduction,” in Mother Maria Skobtsova, Essential Writings (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2003) 13–43, 24. Metropolitan Evlogii was named by Patriarch Tikhon in 1921 as metropolitan for Western Europe. For more details see his biography Metropolitan Evlogii, Put’ moej zhizni (The Journey of My Life) (Paris: YMCA Press, 1947). She chose her monastic name after Mary of Egypt. Jim Forest, “Introduction,” 24. Ibid., 24. See Michael Plekon, “The ̒Sacraments of the Brother/Sister̕: The Lives and Thought of Mother Maria Skobtsova and Paul Evdokimov,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, no. 3 (2005): 313–334. She chose her monastic name Joanna, as her clothing was on the feast of John the Baptist. See Nikita Struve, Soixante-dix ans d´émigration russe 1919–1989 (Paris: Fayard, 1996) 90–92. For the detailed information about her life in Czechoslovakia see For the detailed information about her life see Julie Jančárková, “К вопросу о рождении ‘творческой иконописи’ (на примере чехословатских работ Ю. Рейтлингер),” (On the Issue of the Birth of ‘Artistic Iconography’ (Using the Example of the Czechoslovak Works of J. Reitlinger) Вестник русского христианского движения 191, no. 2 (2006): 285–94. See their mutual correspondence Julia Rejtlinger/Sergei Bulgakov, Dialog hudozhnika i bogoslova. Dnevniki. Zapisnye knizhki. Pis'ma (A Conversation between an Artist and a Theologian: Diaries, Notes, and Letters) (Moscow: Nikeja, 2011).

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beauty. That is why, for her, to follow the icon-painting tradition did not entail a mere copying and following the iconographic rules of those who had gone before, but the use of inspiration, which in her view comes from the Holy Spirit.43 She was aware that tradition is not possible without respect to our ancestors, but this respect means to see their visions rather than copying the attributes belonging to a different world than ours. For her, tradition is not just an individual activity but “a profound communal (соборное) creativity of all humankind,”44 which comes out of our love. On the basis of her belief that creativity and inspiration belong to the sphere of human cooperation with God she developed in exile a new creative form of icon-painting that included elements from the Symbolists.45 On the one hand she was criticised for her free style and for not following iconographic rules, but on the other hand this approach brought a fresh creative innovation in icon-painting, which enriched many liturgical places,46 as well as spiritual and ecclesial life. She gave many of her icons to her spiritual father Sergei Bulgakov, who remembers: “Julie (Sister Joanna) gave me a remarkable picture of Sophia, The Holy Wisdom. Remarkable girl, and remarkable picture (…) The icon of Holy Sophia gives me joy: it shines and burns.”47 The last example of a free creating in liturgical life is Father Lev Gillet,48 who, like Mother Maria, represents monasticism in the city. He was also a pilgrim between the East and West,49 starting life as a French Benedictine and later in his life entering the Orthodox Church. As a member of a Benedictine community he was present in the liturgical renewal movement in the Roman Catholic Church. His friendship with Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873–1960) had an influence on the encounters of the Benedictines with the Orthodox World and resulted in the foundation of a mixed Eastern-Western monastery at Chevetogne in Belgium.50 He was also one of the co-founders of the first French-language Orthodox parish 43 44 45 46

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Julia Rejtlinger/Sergei Bulgakov, Dialog hudozhnika i bogoslova. Dnevniki. Zapisnye knizhki. Pis'ma, 144. Ibid.,153. Nikita Struve, Soixante-dix ans d´émigration russe 1919–1989, 90–92. In 1946 she decorated the chapel of St. Basil of Great in London, which belongs to the fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius. In 1947 she decorated the main orthodox church of st. Cyril and st. Methodius in Prague. Between 1947–1948 she painted the iconostasis in Slovakia (Medzilaborce) in the chapel of the Holy Spirit. Sergei Bulgakov, “Iz pamjati serdca: Praga (1923–1924),” in ed. M.A. Kolerov, Issledovanija po istorii russkoj mysli: ježegodnik za … god: periodičeskij naučnyj sbornik (Studies in Russian intelectual history) (Moskva: Ob jedinennoje gumanitarnoje izdatel’stvo, 1998), 165. Prior to entering the Benedictine order he studied philosophy and psychology. Berdyaev knew all of them and supported the ecumenical activities of Father Lev Gillet. Elisabeth Behr Sigel, Lev Gillet, un moine de l'Eglise d'Orient: Un libre croyant universaliste, evangelique et mystique (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1993). See Louis Bouyer, Dom Lambert Beauduin: un homme d'Eglise (Paris: Cerf, 2009).

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in Paris.51 He considered himself to be a wanderer whose desire was to live fully ecclesia una sancta. Gillet’s dream of living in various churches, social groups, and worlds came from a mystical experience of God’s limitless love, which abolishes all borders, all laws and morality. From this deep experiencing of God’s radical kenosis he felt himself unable to exist anymore in only one world. Like Mother Maria52 he was more interested in a “lived-out” gospel way of being a monk than a ritualistic, ascetic, or aesthetic way.53 His desire for ecclesia una sancta based on God’s love for all humanity without borders also led to attempts to obtain canonical recognition for using the Western rite for liturgical worship within an Orthodox jurisdiction.54 Due to Gillet’s lived freedom and the openness of Metropolitan Eulogii Father Lev was allowed to enter the Orthodox Church simply by Eucharistic concelebration with the Metropolitan. The usual formalities were not required.55 But as a real nomad in the city, which was like his desert, he was not owned by any jurisdiction to which he belonged. He rather stayed on the margins of the official church, because ultimately the private devotion of the faithful was more important than

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The parish of Sainte-Geneviève-de-Paris. Elisabeth Behr Sigel, Mere Marie et Le Pere Lev Gillet, available on http://www.pages orthodoxes.net/saints/mere-marie/mmarie-temoignages.htm#ebs2 Mother Maria, “Types of Religious Life,” in Essential writings, 140–186. This attempt was not successful. Father Lev Gillet participated in the group of people who desired for new liturgical forms that would come out of the Orthodox inheritance of the West and at the same time be incarnated in local culture. At the beginning of this process there were two people Louis-Charles Winnaert (1880–1937), a Roman Catholic Priest and Eugraph Kovalevsky (1905–1970), a young Russian theologian who emigrated to France. There were other people involved such as Vladimir Lossky, who later left the group and stayed under the Moscow patriarchate. Kovalevsky began to restore the Gallician rite based on the letters of Saint Germanus, a sixth-century Bishop of Paris. Later from this group the Orthodox Church in France was formed, returning to Gallic roots. It passed through several different jurisdictions. In 1972 the Church and its bishop, Germain, were accepted by the Romanian Orthodox Church. Problems arose again, however, when Bishop Germain married and was unwilling to accept the canonical consequences of his decision. Most parishes at this time went under the jurisdiction of Constantinople. Germain remained a Bishop, although he had been laicized by the Romanian Patriarch, and with a small group of some twenty priests, a few deacons, and about 500 believers he sought a new jurisdiction. Today the Church is under the jurisdiction of the Coptic Church in Alexandria. For more see Kateřina Bauerová and Tim Noble, “Cesty od dispory k místním církvím,” (“The Ways From Diaspora to Local Churches”) 226–132. Metropolitan Eulogii received him into the Orthodox church and its priesthood simply by concelebration of the eucharistic liturgy in the Trubetskoy home-chapel in Clamart on May 25, 1928.

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the official teaching of the church. Therefore he devoted his spiritual life to the practice of Jesus Prayer and contributed to its survival in exile.56

3.

Celebration as Free Laboring in the Mystery of Divine-human Cooperation

The paradoxical situation of freedom in the unstable life of the Russian diaspora also allowed new inspiring impulses to happen because the various aspects of life – religious, intellectual or artistic – were not isolated from each other but created integral unity. Both Berdyaev and Vysheslavtsev met with Mother Maria, Sister Joanna, and Father Lev Gillet at the house at rue de Lourmel 77, where Mother Maria established a shelter for those in need. She would feed up to a hundred people there. It was a place where she could celebrate the “liturgy after liturgy.” Her friend Sister Joanna decorated the chapel in her own style and helped Mother Maria with her own embroidered icons. Father Lev Gillet was the first chaplain between 1935–1938, able to live there between worlds and celebrate liturgy together with a broad variety of people. He remembered that there was “a sort of ‘pandemonium’ in which bums, streetwalkers, and the Benedictine choir (of Dom Malherbe) were mixed.”57 Berdyaev and Vysheslavtsev were part of Orthodox Action and helped Mother Maria and others run many practical projects for refugees: hostels, schools, camps, assistance for elderly, publication of books, and other activities. Freedom and creativity coming out of both religious philosophy and the ecclesial context led them all to a “free labouring”58 for others and to real and authentic celebration, to mystical communion not just with God but also with people, where the law was overcome by mercy, where an individual was more than the church forms and regulations and where the world together with human beings became an altar, an icon, a sacrament of love. The house at rue de Lourmel 77 stopped operating in this way when Mother Maria and her close co-workers were arrested by the Gestapo in 1943.59 In spite 56 57 58

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See his book Lev Gillet, The Jesus Prayer (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987). Hélène Klepinin-Arjakovsky, Dimitri’s Cross: The Life & Letters of St. Dimitri Klepinin, Martyred During the Holocaust. (Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press Ministries, 2008), 106–107. Mother Maria Skobstova, “Krest i serp s molotom” (“The Cross the Hammer-and-Sickle”), in Mother Maria Skobtsova, Vospominanija, stat'i, ocherki I (Paris: YMCA Press, 1992), 238– 243, 243. Together with her also her son Yuri, Fr. Dimitri, Theodore Pianov, Georege Kazachkin, and Anatoly were arrested. For more information see e.g. Hélène Arjakovsky-Klepinine, “The Raid in February,” in Dimitri’s Cross: The Life & Letters of St. Dimitri Klepinin, Martyred

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of the fact that Mother Maria did not have disciples or create a theological school,60 she influenced many61 by her authentically lived gospel life of freedom, love and service, as for example the famous female theologian Elisabeth BehrSigel.62 Also icons of Sister Joanna remain key examples of what has been termed the “creative icon-painting,”63 characteristic of the revivalist trend among Russian refugees in Paris. Father Lev Gillet, for his part, continues to serve as an example of incarnated openness and the absolute freedom to realize the secret mystic unity of Eastern and Western Christendom.64 Their legacy remains and serves as an inspiration for today’s theology. However, for at least two reasons it is not possible simply to ‘imitate’ the path of their spiritual and liturgical life: the innovative changes they brought were the result of the specific historical context of the transmission of Russian Orthodoxy to the West together with a broader liturgical renewal within the Roman Catholic Church in France. Secondly it would be against the belief in the embodied creative power of every person. As Robert Taft emphasizes, describing the western perception of the myth about the eastern liturgy: “we are dealing here not with past facts but with present perceptions. These perceptions tell us not about the past, nor about the east, but about ourselves.”65 Exactly from this hermeneutical key we can learn from their lives how important it is to incorporate the antinomies as a inseparable part of lived reality, in which freedom and creativity sometimes oppose law and morality, where in our consciousness we find also signs of the unconscious, where prayer is not always in accord with service to others, liturgy is sometimes ambiguous to life and where ecclesia una sancta is still found frag-

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During the Holocaust (Ben Lomond, California: Conciliar Press Ministries, 2008), 125–127. In 2003 there was a commemorative plate affixed to the walls of the present-day house at 77 rue De Lourmel by the Paris city government. The two nuns she cooperated with – Mothers Evdokia and Blandina – established a more traditional monastery, which still exists in Bussy-en-Othe in France. For more information about Mother Maria’s legacy see John Witte Jr., Frank S. Alexander eds., The Teachings of Modern Orthodox Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 262–264. See Michael Plekon, Sarah E. Hinlicky eds., “Mother Maria Skobstova, 1891–1994,” in Discerning the Signs of the Times: The Vision of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (Creswood, New York: St Vladimir´s Seminary Press), 41–54. See Kaari Kotkavaara, Progeny of the Icon: Émigré Russian Revivalism and the Vicissitudes of the Eastern Orthodox Sacred Images (Ǻbo: Ǻbo University Press, 1999) 223– 224. See for example Michael Plekon, “Lev Gillet: The Monk in the City, a Pilgrim in Many Worlds,” in Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 81–101; Elisabeth Behr Sigel, Lev Gillet, un moine de l'Eglise d'Orient: Un libre croyant universaliste, evangelique et mystique (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1993); Peter Galadza, Unité en division: Les lettres de Lev Gillet (“Un moine de l’Eglise d’Orient”) à Andrei Cheptytsky – 1921–1929 (Paris/Ottawa: Parole et Silence, 2009). Robert Taft, “Eastern Presuppositions̕ and Western Liturgical Renewal,” 7.

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mented. To integrate the opposite aspects into unity in diversity means not to end up in one extreme, but to make the dynamic possible, including openness in liturgical life.

Attempts to Use the Vernacular Language in the Catholic Liturgy in the Czech Lands in the 1920s Jitka Jonová

Despite efforts to introduce the vernacular language to the liturgy as early as before the Second Vatican Council, these efforts were unfortunately only realized in the non-Catholic churches. The churches of the Reformation (Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist, and others) and also the Old Catholic traditions altered their liturgies more or less radically: the vernacular language was used at mass. The Catholic Church approved the introduction of the vernacular language in the liturgy in the case of Sts. Cyril and Methodius Mission, namely the papal consent to the liturgy in the Old Slavonic language in the 9th century (papal bulls: Gloria in excelsis Deo, 869 CE; Industriae Tuae, 880 CE). This did not last long, in 1080, Pope Gregory VII forbade Slavic liturgy in the Czech lands. Despite the fact that the Catholic Slavs later adopted the Roman rite, the precedent prevailed1 for missionary reasons, specifically the mission in the Far East (unfortunately Chinese rites were soon also banned). The Old Slavonic language was again permitted in the 19th century as a liturgical language in certain cases. Pope Leo XIII specifically stressed the consent to liturgical celebrations in the Old Church Slavonic language (not in the vernacular language, however) in his Encyclical Grande Munus (1880).2 Having said this, the use of vernacular language in the liturgy was considered an important element for strengthening national awareness and not for merely understanding liturgy. The Holy See was aware of this fact and this was the reason why it proceeded ex1

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Josef Vašica, “Slovanská bohoslužba v českých zemích” [Slavonic liturgy in the Czech Lands], Církevní dějiny [Church history] 11 (2013): 48–63. Righetti states that permission to celebrate the Roman-Slavonic Liturgy (romano-slava) was withdrawn by the Pope, but today the liturgy is celebrated in this manner in Bohemia and in Dalmatia. Cf. Mario Righetti, Manuale di storia liturgica. Volume I, Introduzione generale, (Milano: Àncora, 2005), 192. This does not reflect, however, the provisions of the encyclical Grande munus and other decisions, let alone the fact that the Slavonic liturgy was only “re-licensed” for the Czech countries at the beginning of the 20th century. Cf. Leo XIII, Grande Munus, 1880.

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tremely carefully when permitting languages other than Latin in the liturgy.3 After the establishment of an independent Czechoslovakia (1918) there was an effort to institute and require the use of the Czech language in the liturgy among the reformist clergy, who supported their argument by citing the historical use of Old Slavonic as a liturgical language in that region.

1.

The Question of the vernacular language in the Catholic liturgy in the Czech Lands in the 19th century

When the First Vatican Council was convened, discussions were held on widening the permission to use vernacular languages in the liturgy. Even the Prague Theological Faculty allegedly handed over a desideratum concerning the use of the vernacular in the liturgy to the Czech Bishops at the Council.

1.1

Barták: Should the Liturgy Remain in Latin?

One article, justifying Latin as the liturgical language from 1870, noted that in the 18th century there was a ritual to which the bishops consented in the Czech Lands, according to which the vernacular language was used when sacraments and the Holy Communion were administered. The author noted the papal consent to the use of the vernacular (Slavonic) language in the liturgy in the 9th century. He questioned whether Old Church Slavonic, which was not understandable at present, or rather, whether the current language should be promoted. The letter also contained the interesting argument that because the people did not hear the words that the priest used, it was therefore useless to utter them in the vernacular. While in the case of the Mass the author strongly recommended preserving the Latin language, in the case of the administration of the sacraments and Holy Communion he recommended the use of the vernacular language. He supported his argument by claiming that the Eucharist was effective ex opere operato and therefore the language did not play any role here. In addition, this supported the efficacy of the agent (opus operantis), apart from, of course, the sacrament of holy orders and the sacrament of reconciliation. He pointed out that the claim that the vernacular language would profane the liturgy was sometimes grounded in the “negligence” of priests: in an unintelligible liturgy they may have made mistakes without people 3

Andreas Gottsmann, “La questione nazionale e la Chiesa Cattolica in Austria-Ungheria (1878–1887),” in I Romeni e la Santa Sede. Miscellanea di studi di storia ecclesiastica, ed. I. Cârja (Bucarest – Roma, 2004), 148–155.

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noticing them. He claimed that the development of the vernacular language may have been an issue necessitating repeated revisions of the translation, while the Latin language was stable. He rejected the argument that the liturgy in the vernacular language would attract more people to the church. In conclusion, he expressed the wish that bishops would have the right to permit the vernacular language in the liturgy without seeking special permission from Rome, to the extent they would consider it to be beneficial or appropriate.4 The requirement to use Czech in the liturgy referring to the Cyril and Methodius heritage is an item in the program of the Czech Catholic Modernism.5

2.

The Situation After the Foundation of an Independent Czechoslovakia – Negotiations with the Holy See

The situation changed after the foundation of the independent Czechoslovakia. The Catholic clergy wrote an appeal to Pope Benedict XV requiring permission of the vernacular language in the liturgy and celebration of the Old Slavonic liturgy.6 The Pope refused to grant this request and the radical clergy separated and established their own national Czechoslovak Church (January 8, 1920) with the liturgy in Czech and translating the liturgical books for themselves.

2.1

The Campaign for the Introduction of the Vernacular Language in the Liturgy

The campaign by the reformist clergy for the introduction of the vernacular language in the liturgy was considered illegitimate (Campagna per l‘abusiva introduzione della lingua volgare nella liturgia).7 The bishops noted that the clergy must not celebrate in any other language than the permitted one and that any innovations were subject to the consent of the Holy See.8 The situation became uneasy for the bishops: the reformist clergy argued that both Czechs and Slovaks had been unfairly deprived of a liturgical language and 4 5 6 7 8

J. Barták, “Máme-liž v liturgii zůstati při latině? [Should the liturgy remain in Latin?],” in Časopis katolického duchovenstva [Journal of the Catholic clergy]1–2, 4 (1870), 176–206, 284–293. Josef Doležal, Český kněz [Czech priest], Životem, 1931, 48. Josef Doležal, Český kněz [Czech priest], Životem, 1931, 63–64 . Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Città del Vaticano (ASV), Archivio Nunziatura Cecoslovacchia (Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia), borso 16, f. 3–6. February 2, 1919. ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 15, fasc. 64, f. 78. November 5, 1919.

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that it was their duty to demand its restoration for both religious and national reasons.9 The bishops therefore postulated a request – permission from the Holy See: (1) the possibility to sing the epistle and the Gospel in the vernacular language; (2) to celebrate the liturgy in Old Church Slavonic on certain days and at certain places; (3) the possibility to use the vernacular in the case of certain processions and burial rites, and finally (4) in the case of the administration of other sacraments.10 Some argued, however, that the vernacular language in the liturgy was not permissible and that the bishops were not supposed to agree with concessions but should instead require obedience.11 Negotiations concerning the permission of Old Slavonic in the liturgy were held by the Congregation for Relations with States (Congregatione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari) and the Sacred Congregation of Rites.12 The answers to the demands of the bishops stated that concerning: (1) reading of the epistle and the Gospel in the vernacular language at the Mass – consent was expressed in accordance with the canon of 1345; (2) vernacular language was allowed in the case of questioning the parents during baptism and for engaged couples during weddings; (3) in the case of processions; and (4) in the case of burial rites where prayers were allowed to be recited in Latin and repeated in the vernacular language.13 The Archbishop of Prague František Kordač14 responded to the March concessions by pleading for an extension of the permission to remove the most efficient weapon from the hands of the schismatic clergy, which was the use of the vernacular language. He considered Old Church Slavonic to be similar to the vernacular one.15 But this was unrealistic, as Old Church Slavonic was an extinct language and it was not really similar to spoken language. Concerning the intelligibility of Old Church Slavonic, the nuncio declared that if it was read slowly and clearly,

9 10

11 12 13 14

15

ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 15, fasc. 64, ff. 225–226. Segreteria di Stato. Sezione per i rapporti con gli stati, Archivio Storico, Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari (AA.EE.SS.), Austria-Ungheria, 1920, pos. 1356, fasc. 545, ff. 14–18. February 2, 1920. AA.EE.SS., Austria-Ungheria, 1920, pos. 1356, fasc. 545, ff. 7–8. February 5, 1920. AA.EE.SS., Austria-Ungheria, 1920–21, pos. 1464, fasc. 593, f. 7r. Alessandro Verde, March 9, 1920. ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 15, fasc. 69, f. 15rv. Romae 10. 3. 1920. Cf. Appendix 1. František Kordač (1852–1934), studies in Rome (Collegium Germanicum–Hungaricum), 1889–1905 rector of the priest’s seminar in Litoměřice (Leitmeritz), 1878 priest, 1905–1919 professor of philosophy and fundamental theology in Prague University, 1919–1931 (resigned) archbishop of Prague. AA.EE.SS., Austria-Ungheria, 1920–21, pos. 1464, fasc. 593, ff. 9–11. Kordač, April 14, 1920. Cf. Appendix 2.

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people might understand certain words, making it more comprehensible than the Latin language.16 P. Girolama Maria Mileta OFMConv., consulter of the Congregation of Rites, mentioned in his extensive paper that the requirement of the Old Church Slavonic liturgy from the Bohemian-Moravian episcopate is not in conflict with the existing Decrees because the bishops wanted it for specific places, churches and only for Missae cantatae on particular days. He noted the historical development in Great Moravia. The Old Slavonic language was de jure allowed as a liturgical language there. From his point of view, however, it was an auxiliary cult language (culto suppletorio) used for singing the parts affiliated with the people (Gloria, Credo …). It was later prohibited in the Czech Lands by the Pope. The current permission was not supposed to become a precedent for other languages, for example Hungarian and German (which was his reaction to the objections claiming that the introduction of the Slavonic language in the liturgy was perceived as an unsubstantiated favoritism towards the Slavs – in this sense the liturgical language was perceived as a purely political issue not as a matter of Church discipline). He approved of the argumentation of the bishops that it was a way to disarm the schismatics who were introducing the vernacular language in the liturgy arbitrarily. He recommended the respective Decree not to be published in Acta Apostolicae Sedis to prevent unrest from the southern Slavs.17

2.2

The Result of the Negotiations: The Decree of 21st May 1920

The negotiations of the congregation was the Decree dated 21st May 1920, establishing in Czechoslovakia resulted in the following:18 1. The possibility of repeating the Epistle and the Gospel in the vernacular language at Missa cantata. 2. The questioning of the parents during baptism and engaged couples during the wedding could be also done entirely in the vernacular. After having been read in Latin, the other parts could be repeated in the vernacular. 3. During the burial rites, the prayers could be recited in the vernacular language. 4. The litany and other supplications during the processions of St. Mark, the supplication processions, and the Feast of Corpus Christi could be uttered in the vernacular language to the extent necessary. The bishops should ensure that the 16 17 18

AA.EE.SS., Austria-Ungheria, 1920–21, pos. 1464, fasc. 593, f. 12rv. Micara, April 21, 1920. Nuncius consulted Professor of Slavonic Studies, priest Josef Vajs (1865–1959) AA.EE.SS., Austria-Ungheria, 1920–21, pos. 1464, fasc. 593, f. 13–25. Girolamo Maria Mileta OFMConv., May 6, 1920. AA.EE.SS., Austria-Ungheria, 1920–21, pos. 1464, fasc. 593, f. 40r. Gasparri, May 26, 1920.

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versions used in the vernacular language were uniform and should be submitted to the Holy See for approval. 5. In Old Church Slavonic the Missa Cantata could be celebrated on the holidays of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, St. Wenceslas, St. Ludmila, St. Prokop, and St. Jan of Nepomuk in St. Wenceslas’ Chapel and at the grave of St. Jan of Nepomuk, in St. Vitus’ Cathedral, at the grave of St. Ludmila in St. George’s Church at the Prague Castle in Stará Boleslav Basilica and at Svatá Hora near Příbram.19Eventual disagreements were to be dealt with separately. Special instructions were created and attached to the indult, which stated that the bishops would ensure that the welfare of the other nationalities in Czechoslovakia would be considered.20 The indult of the Holy See was accepted with great gratification and as proof of interest of the Holy See in the Bohemian and Moravian tradition.21 The decree was indeed not published in the Acta Aposotlicae Sedis and was sent only to the Czech and Moravian bishops, who published it in particular ordinariate sheets and in other clerical periodicals.22

3.

“Unwanted” Violation of the Decree

The priests themselves, responding to the aggressive campaign by the Czechoslovak sect exploiting the “Czech Mass” to entice believers away, stated: “Would it be a grave sin if one sung instead of Gloria – Sláva na výsostech (Praise to God in Heaven)? I am aware of the difficulties of permitting anything.”23 They did not approve, however, of the disobedience of the Decree by celebrating the Czech Mass: “Surely we would not convert nor win anybody, we would just confuse the diocese … unity is of essence as well as strict measures taken by the archbishop or on his behalf by the general vicar.”24 Not everyone shared the opinion that the introduction of the vernacular language to the liturgy would prevent apostasy. 19 20 21 22

23

24

ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 15, fasc. 69, f. 41rv. Decree, May 21, 1920. Cf. Appendix III. ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 15, fasc. 69, f. 42r. Isturzione riservata 38/1920. Appendix IV. AA.EE.SS., Austria-Ungheria, 1920–21, pos. 1464, fasc. 593, f. 42. Osservatore Romano, June 13, 1920 (Praga 9 Giugno). Eg. Karel Reban, “Lidový a staroslovanský jazyk v liturgii” [Vernacular and Old Slavonic Language in the liturgy ], in Časopis Katolické duchovenstva [Journal of the Catholic clergy]5+6 (1920), 174–174–176. Zemský archiv Opava, pobočka Olomouc [The Land Archive of Opava, branch office of Olomouc] (ZAO), Arcibiskupství Olomouc [Archbishopric of Olomouc] (AO), sign. PR 10, box 1732. August 23, 1920. ZAO, AO, sign. PR 10, box 1732.

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The Critical Remarks of the Bishops

The bishops themselves made critical remarks on the failure to comply with the provision of the Decree. Karel Kašpar,25 the bishop of Hradec Králové noted that only the priests in favor of the reform wanted the Decree, and as a result, the provisions were breached and a number of priests spontaneously (without consent) introduced the vernacular language, even in other parts of the Mass. He remarked that the number of holidays and the places where the Mass could be sung in Old Church Slavonic with or without the consent of the archbishop had increased. He considered the possible expansion of the Decree neither necessary, nor useful. On the contrary, it could lead to a breach in Church discipline through the efforts to introduce the Czech language in the liturgy for nationalistic motives.26 The Holy See requested the statement of compliance with the Decree from all the bishops, requiring them to suggest possible solutions. 27 Kašpar mentioned in his paper that Kordač supported the Czech language in the liturgy as a means of preventing apostasy but contended that that Kordač’s stance actually extended the possibility of apostacy. Those priests who were breaching the Decree therefore often referred to Kordač, who was not interested in the opinion of his fellow suffragan bishops and even ignored them.28 Kordač mentioned in his response that the breach takes place only rarely. A number of priests used the translation of the reformist priests (the Czech missal) and also read the Lord’s Prayer in Czech. He was convinced, however, that this hindered the efforts of the Czechoslovak Church. Kordač argued that the liturgical law was a positive law, and in this case God’s law was not breached and unity with Rome was sustained. For pastoral reasons concerning the salvation of souls, he would permit this state of things until the danger had passed away.29 The nuncio confirmed that Kordač’s effort to prevent apostasy, even at the cost of the violation of the Decree, was often misused due to Kordač’s attitude. Kordač made public the regulation to stay within the framework of the Decree, but even this announcment was not respected.30 25

26 27 28 29 30

Karel Kašpar (1870–1941), studies in Rome (Bohemicum), 1893 priest, 1899 spiritual director of Straka’s Academy, 1907 canon at the Chapter of St. Vitus, 1920 auxiliary bishop of Hradec Králové, 1921 residential bishop of Hradec Králové, 1931 Archbishop of Praha (Prague), 1935 Cardinal. AA.EE.SS., Austria-Ungheria, 1920–21, pos. 1464, fasc. 593, ff. 49–51r. August 10, 1921. AA.EE.SS., Austria-Ungheria, 1920–21, pos. 1464, fasc. 593, f. 52r. August 25, 1921. ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 17, f. 181–182. Kašpar, September 3, 1921. AA.EE.SS., Austria-Ungheria, 1920–21, pos. 1464, fasc. 593, ff. 55–56r. September 16, 1921. AA.EE.SS., Austria-Ungheria, 1920–21, pos. 1464, fasc. 593, ff. 53–54v. October 15, 1921.

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The reformist priests sent a request for the permission of the vernacular language in the entire liturgy in September 1921, reasoning that the Latin language was unintelligible for the laity and that the bishops were aware of this and tolerating the violation of the Decree.31 In this respect it is necessary to agree with Kašpar and his view that the present concessions were not effective. Kašpar communicated to the nuncio in October 1921 that Kordač defended his position with pastoral interests advocating the revocation of the prohibitions in the area of the liturgical language. Archbishop Antonín Cyril Stojan32 even required that the epistle and the Gospel be sung solely in Czech.33 A year later, the nuncio Clemente Micara34 made mention of the fact that the liturgical regulations were still being violated. After the notice, Kordač promised to take immediate action, but the nuncio added that Kordač did not have sufficient support for vigorous solutions. The nuncio suggested that the Holy See would send the Czech bishops a list calling for the prevention of the breach of the regulations by the use of the mother tongue in the liturgy and adopting the necessary policies.35 Instead, Kordač affirmed the movement to introduce the vernacular language in the liturgy among the clergy, referring to the missionary work of Cyril and Methodius. The provincial priests defended themselves by claiming that they had been forced to implement the use of the vernacular by parishioners threatening apostasy. In the end, however, Kordač expressed the conviction that when the attitudes again became calmer, the disobedience would disappear. All the bishops had allegedly agreed with this.36 The bishop of Leitmeritz (Litoměřice) Josef Gross37 referred to the unauthorized use of the Czech-Slavonic language in the liturgy. According to Gross, the Decree did not prevent the sacrilegious activities of the schismatic Slavonic priests. By breaching the Decree, their activities were equal to those of the sectarians. He remarked that he had been repeatedly protesting against the introduction 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

AAEESS, Cecoslovacchia, 1922–1946, pos. 2 P. O., fasc. 2, ff. 26–37. September 28, 1921. Antonín Cyril Stojan (1851–1923), 1876 priest, supported the Cyril and Methodius Idea, organized Unionist Congresses, 1921–1923 Archbishop of Olomouc. ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 17, ff. 167–168. Kašpar, October 16, 1921. Clemente Micara (1879–1966), 1919–1920 Apostolic Delegate and 1920–1923 nuncio in the Czechoslovakia, 1946 Cardinal. Cf. AA.EE.SS., Cecoslovacchia, 1925–1929, pos. 69 P.O., fasc. 70, f. 6. printed: Lingua liturgica (individual pages are not foiled). September 8, 1922; october 21, 1922. ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 17, f. 250–255. 31. 10. 1922. AAEESS, Cecoslovacchia, 1922–1934, pos. 5 P.O., fasc. 6, f. 60–63. Josef Gross (1866–1931), 1889 priest, 1910–1931 bishop of Litoměřice (Leitmeritz). He tended toward German nationalism – after the formation of Czechoslovakia (1918), requirements arose calling for his resignation. Nevertheless he remained diocesan bishop until his death. He was the only diocesan bishop of German nationality in Czechoslovakia.

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of the vernacular language in the liturgy.38 The bishop of České Budějovice Šimon Bárta39 noted that the schismatic group was leading Catholic believers away under the pretext of providing the liturgy in the vernacular language. Bárta alerted his priests, however, to the fact that priests had not wilfully changed the liturgical language because they were not preventing the conflict, but on the contrary were supporting it.40 Kašpar was supposed to remind the other bishops that according to the Pope (he had had a private audience with the Pope) there would be no other concessions on the question of the vernacular in the liturgy (Piú non possiamo fare!). It was necessary to prohibit the activities of the priests who were breaching the Decree, sub poena suspensionis ipso facto incurrendae! After all, there is more apostasy at the places where it is sung in Czech than at the ones where the liturgy is in Latin. Even Bishop of Brno Norbert Klein41 noted that there were quite a large number of Catholics who stipulated in their last will and testament that they wanted the burial rites to be performed in Latin and not in Czech. Kordač did not like hearing such arguments and stated that it was necessary to implement the prohibition individually and not in general. Kašpar rejected the opinion that such misuse would take place in exceptional cases only. Kordač did not have, however, the courage for a vigorous solution, he was too lenient from the very beginning and did not make sufficient progress on the question of a solution to the liturgical language problem. Kordač allowed himself to be influenced by those claiming that supporting Czech in the liturgy would prevent apostasy, although the opposite seems to have been true. In addition to this, Kordač incorrectly used natural law as an argument. According to Kašpar, the Holy See should have made a statement concerning his argumentation. Kordač claimed that when the danger would disappear, the breach in the area of the liturgical language would vanish. Kašpar did not understand how Kordač could dare argue in such a manner notwithstanding the prohibition following from Can. 2378. He had additionally introduced his arguments without the consent or awareness of the other bishops.42 According to Kašpar, there was, therefore, a need (1) to provide instructions to the bishops so that everyone would act in a uniform manner even in the case 38 39 40 41 42

AA.EE.SS., Cecoslovacchia, an. 1925–1929, pos. 69 P.O., fasc. 70, f. 6. printed: Lingua liturgica (individual pages are not folioed) Gross, November 8, 1922. Šimon Bárta (1864–1940) studies in Rome (Bohemicum), 1889 priest, 1920–1940 bishop of České Budějovice. AA.EE.SS., Cecoslovacchia, an. 1925–1929, pos. 69 P.O., fasc. 70, f. 6. printed: Lingua liturgica (individual pages are not foiled). Bárta, November 11, 1922. Norbert Jan Nepomuk Klein OT (1866–1933) entered into Ordo Teutonicum (1888), 1890 priest, 1916–1926 bishop of Brno (Brünn), 1923–1933 grand master of the Teutonic Order. ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 17, ff. 284–289. November 17, 1922.

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of the punishment of the guilty priests; (2) to clarify the incorrect perception of the application of positive and liturgical law, and natural and divine law; (3) the translations were to be uniform and approved of by the Holy See.43 Gross also disagreed with Kordač’s opinion that the misuse was taking place only exceptionally. Unfortunately the misuse had not been supressed at the exact beginning because of a fear of a reaction on the part of the Czech nation. The metropolitan argued that these ‘bona fide’ offences should rather have been condemned, for they had played into the hands of schismatic priests. The fear was that if the rites of the Catholic priests did not differ significantly from the rites of the sect, an illusion of similarity may arise.44 Stojan was closer to Kordač’s attitude and also considered the use of the vernacular language in the liturgy to be above the framework of the Decree, mentioning a ‘lesser evil’ in the fight against the aggression of the schismatics.45 Bishop Klein claimed there was a stronger tendency to use the vernacular language in the parishes where sectarians of the Czechoslovak Church lived than in other parishes.46

3.2

The Letter of Cardinal Gasparri

The nuncio confirmed that the schismatics were boasting about Czech being introduced into the liturgy. While all the bishops condemned the misuse, the energy that they invested in the prevention of abuses was not equal. Although Kordač repeatedly argued that he would not punish the “bona fide” offences favoring the believers, the Holy See did not approve of this idea. There was no proof that the vernacular language in the liturgy would prevent apostasy. The Dean of Plzeň stated that even though the Mass is sung in Czech, the attendance had decreased in comparison with the churches where it was celebrated in Latin. The Nuncio

43 44 45 46

AA.EE.SS., Cecoslovacchia, an. 1925–1929 pos. 69 P.O., fasc. 70, f. 6. Printed: Lingua liturgica (individual pages are not foiled). Kašpar, November 21, 1922. ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 17, ff. 294–295. November 23, 1922. AA.EE.SS., Cecoslovacchia, an. 1925–1929, pos. 69 P.O., fasc. 70, f. 6. printed: Lingua liturgica (individual pages are not foiled). Stojan, January 10, 1923. He recommended considering the use of the vernacular language in the same way in the anointing and baptism b) In sacramental, blessings and also for Ecce Agnus Dei, Domine non sum before the communion of the faithful, Panem de coelo followed by the prayer of the blessing of the holy sacraments, and various awards such as blessing Aperges, Veni Sanctae Spiritus, Veni Creator Spiritus, Te Deum and the blessing of women after childbirth could be reciting respectively. Only sung in the vernacular language. AAEESS, Cecoslovacchia, an. 1925–1929, pos. 69 P.O., fasc. 70, f. 6. printed: Lingua liturgica (individual pages are not foiled), Klein, March 27, 1923.

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considered it necessary to carefully call upon Kordač to make a more energetic intervention.47 The reaction from the Holy See was a letter from Cardinal Gasparri. In his letter, Gasparri interpreted Pope Pius XI’s wish to Kordač: “all the bishops have to use unanimously all means necessary to prevent apostasy in the Church. In this respect, it is necessary to be lenient and at the same time strict. It is not correct to be lenient with the ones who violated the regulations of the Church in the area of the sacred liturgy, even if they claimed that they were trying to prevent worse damage.” A silent consent of the hierarchy in this question was marked as an encouragement for the enemies thus trying to enforce even other “reforms” conflicting with discipline. Gasparri refused the argumentation that the toleration of the breach of some Church regulation could prevent more evil. “It is unfortunately evident that the believers turned away from or abandoned the ones who were trying to abase to the manners of the opponents and in contrast the priests who were faithful to the Church stated that the number of their believers had not decreased.”48 The Holy See refused any tolerance for violations of discipline.

3.3

A “Neutral view” of Bohumil Spáčil

Taking into account the diversity of opinions and reports of individual bishops, it is not surprising, that a “neutral view“ was sought after. The Jesuit Bohumil Spáčil49 was asked to assess the situation and suggest possible solutions. Spáčil mentioned the reasons for the breach: an excessive nationalistic awareness on the part of the clergy and insufficient theological education of the clergy who interpreted the Church’s regulations as it suited them. The reformist priests had postulated entirely wrong principles and requirements for celebration of the entire liturgy in the vernacular language. He supported Kašpar’s opinion that a great deal of those breaching the regulations referred to the argumentation of the archbishop of Prague. As an immediate measure, he accented Grosse’s suggestion: the Holy See should vigorously ban sacrilegious steps and reject the incorrect principles that the priests and the others referred to. There was no reason why Czechoslovakia should receive any special privileges, which could cause pastoral problems particu47 48 49

ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 17, ff. 226–246. 2. 12. 1922. AAEESS, Cecoslovacchia, 1922–1934, pos. 5. P. O., fasc. 6, ff. 47–58. AA.EE.SS., Cecoslovacchia, 1922–1934, pos. 5. P. O., fasc. 6, ff. 78–79v Gasparri, January 18, 1923. ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 17, fasc. 76, ff. 100–101v. Bohumil Spáčil (1875–1950) studies in Rome, 1901 priest of diocese of Brno (Brünn), 1905 entered the Jesuit order, 1907–1910 taught philosophy and fundamental theology in Klagenfurt, 1910–1918 taught fundamental theology in Innsbruck, 1918–1937 taught at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, 1937 returned to Czechoslovakia.

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larly between both nationalities (Czech and German) in shared parishes. Liturgical innovations were a sign of poor discipline on the part of the clergy.50

3.4

Istruzione riservata (1924)

Negotiations between representatives of the Congregation of Rites and the Congregation for Matters of Religion were held again at the end of 1923 in order to discuss the issue of the liturgical language in Czechoslovakia. They stated that the misuse of the vernacular in the liturgy took place more or less in all of the dioceses. The vernacular was used in other ceremonies where it had not been permitted, for example, when distributing the Eucharist and various chants, as well as the Blessing of Palms on Palm Sunday, or the ceremonies of the Holy Week (according to Klein, the priests would welcome permission to have it extended). In certain places the mass was celebrated in Czech. This situation could not be tolerated, since all the priests used the Czech missal published by the Czechoslovak sect.51 Pope Pius XI required the Congregation of Rites and the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs to write an istruzione riservata, which was addressed to the Czechoslovak bishops. The bishops were asked to comply with the Decree whereas the Holy See could not provide any other extensions. If the reason for the spread of the breach of the regulation lay in insufficient formation of the priests, the education and seminaries should be reorganized. Ordinands had to swear an oath that they would act within the limits established by the Holy See. A revision of the liturgical books should be carried out so that the books published by schismatic and the adherents of the reformists would not be used. The bishops needed to act collectively when possible, particularly in the case of the adoption of the necessary preventive and repressive measures. According to this instruction, there was a need to refute the incorrect arguments claiming that the use of the vernacular language in the liturgy in Bohemia and Moravia was approved by Pope John VIII and that believers had the right to claim it. Similarly, it was necessary to refuse the statement that using the vernacular language would prevent the disorderly conduct of the reformists. When adhering to natural and divine law in the area of the liturgical language it was necessary to realize that divine law took precedence.52 Exceptional cases of the breach of the Decree occurred over the following years although the now-vigilant bishops 50 51 52

AA.EE.SS., Cecoslovacchia, an. 1925–1929, pos. 69 P.O., fasc. 70, f. 6. printed: Lingua liturgica (individual pages are not foiled) Spáčil, March 29, 1923. AA.EE.SS., Cecoslovacchia, an. 1925–1929, pos. 69 P.O., fasc. 70, f. 6. printed: Lingua liturgica (individual pages are not folioed). ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 39, fasc. 236, ff. 4–5v. Copia. Praga February 4, 1924.

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always immediately mentioned that they had created a remedy.53 Subsequently a strict adherence to ecclesiastical discipline was required.

Conclusion In Czechoslovakia the effort to introduce the vernacular language in the liturgy contributed to the creation of the new Czechoslovak Church (1920). Bishops asked the Holy See for permission to use the vernacular language in the liturgy (e.g. in the administration of the sacraments and sacramentals) and celebrate the Old Church Slavonic liturgy in certain places and at certain festivals. The Holy See allowed it (Decree from May 1920) in connection with efforts to prevent the spread of the reformist Czechoslovak Church. But maintaining the Latin language in liturgy could give the impression of maintaining orthodoxy. Until the liturgical reforms after Vatican II, the above-mentioned Decree was valid for the use of the vernacular language in the liturgy in Czechoslovakia.54 However, the Holy See granted permission to use the vernacular language only in the administration of the sacraments like baptism, anointing of the sick and funeral ceremonies, as in in other countries in the middle of the twentieth century.55 In addition, efforts to introduce the vernacular language in the liturgy appeared not only in Czechoslovakia, but in other countries such as Germany as well. The Catholic Church, however, continued to retain Latin as the liturgical language, which was also confirmed by Pope John XXIII (Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientia, 1962). Council fathers’ discussion about the introduction of the vernacular language in the liturgy was very stormy, as one of the arguments the proponents of the vernacular language in the liturgy also referred to the Old Slavonic liturgical language.56 However, the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium made the Decree redundant by permitting the use of the vernacular language in the liturgy. Henceforth, 53 54 55

56

AA.EE.SS., Cecoslovacchia, 1925–1929, pos. 69 P.O., fasc. 70, f. 4. November 23, 1925. ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 39, fasc. 236, f. 45r. Bárta, Dezember 30, 1925. Manuale Rituum (Praha: Česká katolická charita, 1955). Mario Righetti, Manuale di storia liturgica. Volume I, Introduzione generale, (Milano: Àncora, 2005) 193. Carlo Braga – Annibale Bugnini, Documenta ad instaurationem liturgicam spectantia 1903 – 1963 (Roma: CLV – edizioni liturgiche, 2000), 815, 884, 899, 982. Jaroslav V. Polc, Posvátná liturgie [The Sacred Liturgy] (Roma: Křesťanská akademie, 1981) 183–188, 205–206, 224–240. Annibale Bugnini, La reforma liturgica (1948–1975) (Roma: CLV-edizioni liturgiche, 1997), 37–39, 111–124. Jitka Jonová, “Blick auf das Sakrament der Firmung und der Zelebrierung der Heiligen Messe “versus populum” in der Korrespondenz von M. Pícha, L. Precan und S. Braito, “in Ecclesia orans 27 (2010): 301–309. Mario Righetti, Manuale di storia liturgica. Volume I, Introduzione generale, (Milano: Àncora, 2005) 194 196.

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any vernacular language (not only Slavonic) could be used in the liturgy, although of course the liturgical books had to be authorized by the Church. Thus the regulation of the binding character of the Latin language in the liturgy defined by the Council of Trent was adjusted – moderated. The arguments of the adherents or opponents of the introduction of the vernacular language in the liturgy were resolved by Vatican II in favor of the vernacular.

Appendices Appendix 1 ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 15, fasc. 69, f. 15rv. I. “In missis solemnibus item in missis lectis fidelibus adstantibus diebus festis post cantum vel lectionem epistolae et evangelii illam et hoc cani et legi iterum posse lingua vulgari secundum can. 1345 codicis iuris canonici.” II. “In sacramento baptismi conferendo et matrimonio celebrando lingua vulgari uti licere in percontationibus, quibus patrini in illo et sponsi in hoc interrogantur” … quaestionibus hisce accurate indicatis; III. “In defunctorum exsequiis preces latino sermone recitatas vulgari lingua iterari posse;” IV. „Ubi viget consuetudo recitandi lingua vulgari litanias et alias preces in processionibus S. Marci, Rogationum et festi SSmi Corporis Christi, eam retinere licere. Dubia circa usum linguae vulgaris in S. Liturgia Huic S. C. Rituum proposita fuerunt dubia: I. An in Missis solemnibus, itemque in Missis lectis, fidelibus adstantibus, post cantum vel lectionem Epistolae et Evangelii, illa et hoc cani possint lingua vulgari? II. An in Sacramento Baptismi conferendo, et in Matrimonio celebrando, lingua vulgari uti liceat in percontationibus quibus patrini in altera, in altera sponsi interrogantur? III. An in defunctorum exequiis preces, latino sermone recitatas, vulgari lingua iterari possint? IV. An, ubi viget consuetudo recitandi lingua vulgari litanias et alias preces in processionibus S. Marci, Rogationum et festi SSmi Corporis Christi, eam retinere liceat? Eadem S. Congregatio, omnibus sedulo perpensis, respondendum censuit:

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Ad I. Affirmative secundum can. 1345 CIC. Ad II. Affirmative, ita tamen ut vulgari lingua hae tantummodo fiant interrogationes. Ad III. Afirmative. Ad IV. Affirmative. Et SSmus Dominus noster Benedictus XV. in audientia diei 10. Martii 1920 infrascripto cardinali benigne concessa praefatas responsiones approbare dignatus est.

Appendix 2 AA.EE.SS., Austria–Ungheria, 1920–21, pos. 1464, fasc. 593, ff. 9–11. Kordač, April 14, 1920. Ad 1) ut liceat in missis cantatis iterare cantum epistolae et evangelii lingua vulgari etiam si non habeatur exhortatio ad populum. 2) ut in sacramento baptismi conferendo et matrimonio celebrando, praeter interrogationes patrinorum et sponsorum solummodo lingua vulgari faciendas, etiam exhortationes baptizandorum et sponsorum, quae in rituali continentur, nec non orationes pro eis dicendae, lingua vulgari iterari possint. 3) ut in exsequiis defunctorum preces solummodo lingua vulgari dici possint. 4) ut ubique litaniae aliaeque preces in processionibus S. Marci, Rogationum et festi SSmi Corporis Christi lingua vulgari dici queant, si periculum perversionis populi id exigit. 5) ut in certis locis determinatisque temporibus, quae in litteris die 10. februarii 1920 de coetu Episcoporum Pragensi oblatis enummerantur, cantari possit missa lingua paleoslavica, quae linguae vulgari est similis.

Appendix 3 ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 15, fasc. 69, f. 41rv. Decree. Ditionis Czecoslovacae SSmus Dominus Noster Benedictus Papa XV, supplicibus votis ac precibus Episcoporum Bohemiae et Moraviae benigne annuens, speciali de gratia indulget:

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I.Ut in territorio ditionis Czeco-Slovacicae liceat in Missis cantatis iterare cantum epistolae et evangelii lingua vulgari, etiam si non habeatur exhortatio ad populum. II. Ut in praefato territorio in sacramento baptismi conferendo et matrimonio celebrando, praeter interrogationes patrinorum et sponsorum solummodo lingua vulgari faciendas, etiam exhortationes baptizandorum et sponsorum, quae rituali continentur, nec non orationes pro eis dicendas, lingua vulgari iterari possint. III. Ut in supradicto territorio in exequiis defunctorum preces solummodo lingua vulgari dici possint. IV. Ut in memorato territorio litaniae aliaeque preces in processionibus S. Marci, Rogationum et Festi SSmi Corporis Christi lingua vulgari dici queant, si periculum perversionis populi id exigit, et ad mentem. Mens est quod recitatio litaniarum aliarumque precum in processionibus S. Marci et Rogationum lingua vulgari peracta, non valeat ad satisfactionem obligationis pro iis qui ad horas canonicas tenentur. Episcopi oratores quam primum studeant uniformi curandae versioni illorum, quae prefatis quattuor numeris lingua vulgari dici permittuntur, et huic Sanctae Sedi pro opportuna approbatione exhibeant; interim curent ut fideles qui ex una ad aliam transeunt diocesim vel parochiam, in nullam versionum diversitatem offendant. V. Ut lingua veteroslavica, characteribus glagoliticis expressa (ex libris ab Aplica Sede recognitis et approbatis) possit certis diebus, in anno, (festo die Ss Cyrilli et Methodii, S. Vencaslai, S. Ludmilae, S. Procopii, S. Joannis Nepomuceni) celebrari Missa cantata integra in locis et sanctuariis sequentibus: Velehrad in Moravia; in Sázava, in Vyšehrad Pragae, in Emaus, monasterio O. S. B. Pragae fundato, in Capella S. Venceslai et ad sepulchrum S. Joannis Nepomuceni in ecclesia cathedrali ad S. Vitum; ad sepulchrum S. Ludmilae in ecclesia S. Georgii in arce Pragensi, Vetero-Boleslaviae in basilica, ubi S. Venceslaus martyrii mortem subiit, in monte sacro (Svatá Hora) prope Příbram. Contrariis non obstantibus quibuscumque etiam speciali mentione dignis. Die 21. Maii 1920. A Card. Vico Ep. Portuen. Et S. Rufinae, Praef. Alexander Verde, S. R. C. Secretarius

Appendix 4 ASV, Arch. Nunz. Cecoslovacchia, b. 15, fasc. 69, f. 42r. Isturzione riservata 38/1920. Ditionis Czecoslovacae

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Instructio adjecta indulto “Dictionis Czechoslovacae” de usu linguae veteroslavicae et lingua vulgari slavica in sacra liturgia. Cum in ditione Czechoslovacae morentur non solum czechi et slovachi, sed etiam germani, magiari et alii, curandum erit sedulo ab animarum pastoribus, praesertim episcopis, ne indultum, a S. Pontifice in bonum spirituale concessum czecorum et slovacorum, cedat in spirituale detrimentum germanorum, magiarum et aliorum fidelium in ditione C-S morantium. Hinc relate ad n. I indulti cavendum erit ubique, sed praesertim in locis ubi germani, magiari vel alii praevalent numero Czechoslovacae cantus epistolae et evangelii, lingua slavica vulgari, cedat in offensionem fidelium, neque det ut his occasio non impendi praeceptum audiendi Missam die festo, potius quam assistere cantui epistolae et evangelii lingua slavica vulgari. Relate ad n. II et III indulti, servetur dispositio decreti S. C. R. N. 4196 “De usu lingua slavica in sacra litugia” die 18. decembris 1906, N. XI, quod si quis fidelis ostenderit se cupere vel velle, ut baptismus vel matrimonium sibi suisque administrentur secundum rituale Romanum (nempe lingua liturgica latina), et quidem publice, eademque lingua habeantur rituales Preces in sepultura mortuorum, huic desiderio aut voluntati districte prohibentur Sacerdotes ullo pacto obsistere.

6. The Liturgy Enters Society Exploring its Social Relevance and Existential Value

When Liturgy Empowers Rutilio Grande, S.J. and the Church of El Salvador

Thomas M. Kelly

Introduction Rutilio Grande, S.J. was a Jesuit from El Salvador who used new and creative liturgies to empower the poor and marginalized communities he served to become agents of their own change. He did this by re-centering the liturgy around the concerns and challenges of particular communities and framing the Eucharist as the ideal community initiated by Jesus. “All are welcome at the table of the Lord” was his mantra, and that “table of creation” included the social, economic and political realities that oppressed so many in El Salvador. But the capacity to respond to the dehumanizing realities of El Salvador required a new Church. This new Church required new leadership that emerged from within and was inspired by the Gospel. A significant portion of Rutilio’s efforts at evangelization was the work of inviting new lay leaders to come forth and take responsibility for how their community would work for the Kingdom of God in their context. The liturgy became one way he affirmed and confirmed them in this new role. Both liturgies of the Word, often animated by lay leaders known as Delegates of the Word as well as Eucharistic celebrations presided over by a priest, but always with the active participation of lay leaders, were used to reinforce this message of a new Church in service to a new world. In what follows I will outline when Rutilio first realized his commitment to the importance of community-centered liturgy his initial efforts at social transformation, what he learned about conscientization, and how it influenced his approach to leadership and liturgy. Finally, I will conclude with how he lived this out as a priest through his concrete ministry in El Salvador. While Rutilio Grande, S.J. died a martyr on March 12, 1977, his servant-leader ministry to the poor of El Salvador continues to inspire the Church in Latin America.

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1.

Beginnings

Rutilio Grande, S.J. initiated “community-based immersion ministry” specifically to poor and marginalized communities in El Salvador from the 1960’s–1970’s which allowed the church to teach theology and hand on the faith.1 Shortly after Vatican II at an Institute named Lumen Vitae in Brussels, Belgium, Rutilio acquired the fundamental pastoral orientations that would later help him do his work so effectively in El Salvador. He was influenced at this time by the renewed liturgical, biblical spirituality of the Benedictines of San Andres, with whom he spent Holy Week in 1964. This experience caused him great restlessness. Many of Rutilio’s friends indicate that his first conversion came at this moment. According to his biographer: Very probably in this moment his fundamental lines of pastoral action matured. Certainly a part of this epoch in pastoral theological development was to always look for the greatest participation possible by the base or least empowered part of a community and to never proceed autonomously or without hearing the community.2

This liturgical principle grounded his first conversion and stayed present throughout his ministry in El Salvador. The results of this principle were critical to social transformation – by advocating a church “from below” Rutilio used liturgical creativity to empower the social transformation called for by the Latin American Bishops at Medellín. It also resulted in some creative and powerful liturgical celebrations that served to deepen the evangelization to which he was committed.

2.

New Directions

Rutilio embraced this commitment to participation for the least empowered of a community through an experiment in pastoral formation while he directed the major seminary in El Salvador in the late-1960’s. Throughout his time teaching and forming seminarians, Rutilio would often return home to his own community of El Paisnal when short vacations allowed him to do so. His ministry to people there put him in direct contact with the tremendous problems they faced in all facets of their lives. He witnessed them struggle for the basic necessities of life.

1 2

This article draws on material from chapters 5–9 of my book When the Gospel Grows Feet, Rutilio Grande, S.J. and the Church of El Salvador (Liturgical Press, 2013). Rodolfo Cardenal, Historia de una Esperanza: Vida de Rutilio Grande, Colección Teología Latinoamérica 4 (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2002), 73. (Ttranslation ours).

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During his many visits to Paisnal, Rutilio began organizing the pastoral outreach of the church. At the center of Rutilio’s approach to ministry in Paisnal was a focus on the “adoradores,” or worshippers who had a deep commitment to the spirituality of Eucharistic adoration. Their principal action of faith was the all-night adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Rutilio chose these people to ground his ministry to the community because of their deep piety. He introduced this committed group of parishioners to Bible study and discussion groups where they would converse about hundreds of exemplary stories from the New Testament. The principal activity of these groups continued to be acts of adoration and traditional piety, and Rutilio saw in them the spirit and force he wished to harness for evangelization. His hope was that the intentional celebration of the Eucharist would result in a “mystical community action” that would mirror the early Christian communities, where all would sell what they had and put it at the feet of the Apostles to be distributed as was necessary.3 The power of the Eucharistic celebration, for Rutilio, was highly explosive. His hope was that devotion to the Eucharist would result in unity, community and greater fraternity. This momentum would then translate into a life of action with the dynamism to transform a person integrally (economically, sociologically, politically, spiritually) as well as the community in which he or she lived. Choosing ‘exemplars’ in the community, as indicated by their piety, came from a belief that sacraments had the power to transform both people and their reality. However, something was missing. What began as a powerful experiment in pastoral activity and community development veered off its intended goals. Two years after Rutilio began this pastoral work the groups had lost their effectiveness. Grounding the pastoral outreach to the community in Eucharistic piety resulted in a line of narrow moralizing, communal prayer, religious acts, and scriptural discussion. ‘Narrowness’ here indicates a fundamental separation of one’s piety from the social, political and economic conditions of one’s context. While this failed experiment in Paisnal centered on what a cooperative society could be, it did not create any real change. It seemed Rutilio’s dreams of social and spiritual transformation would not be fulfilled. It is important to remember this failed experiment in Paisnal. The intuition that founded this pastoral approach was for the priest to choose lay leaders in the community to deepen the faith life in collaboration with priests and Bishops. The missing element was a trust in the community to allow its own leaders to emerge, chosen by the community, who would respond to their own situation motivated and sustained by their faith commitments. To learn how to do this, Rutilio went back to school – literally. 3

Ibid., 110–111.

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3.

Conscientization

The Pastoral Institute for Latin America in Quito, Ecuador (IPLA) combined training in pastoral theology with service in the actual ministry of the church. Even after years of working in seminaries in El Salvador, it was at this Institute where Rutilio discovered “the reality of Latin America and the Church of Latin America.”4 He attended IPLA from March through July of 1972.5 Candidates for IPLA, both lay and ordained, had studied theology and had at least five years of pastoral experience in Latin America. The program opened with a course on the reality of Latin America with a focus on its socio-economic and cultural dimensions. Later, candidates studied theology with an eye towards the “signs of the times,” the secularization of faith and other ideologies. Following the path set forth by Vatican II, participants studied the relationship between the Church and society with special interest, while concentrating on the Christian perspective on change, revolutions, violence, liberation theology, and the socialpolitical implication of pastoral work. This is certainly what the Second Vatican Council’s document Gaudium et spes had in mind when it taught that, In pastoral care, sufficient use must be made not only of theological principles, but also of the findings of the secular sciences, especially of psychology and sociology, so that the faithful may be brought to a more adequate and mature life of faith.6

The vision of the church emerging from IPLA stressed the following themes: the Church and the Kingdom of God, salvation and the visible Church, the Church as sacrament, communion and context, theological and pastoral sense of ministers, the laity, pastoral ministers and consecrated life, and base Christian communities. All of these themes come directly from the documents of Vatican II as well as the Bishops conference meeting at Medellín. Without a doubt the most important time for him was the three days he spent in Riobamba with Bishop Proaño. For two weeks, Rutilio and a friend worked to implement the method developed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. This method, known as conscientization, was utilized in the diocese of Riobamba in its ministry with Christian base communities. In 1968 Freire published a book titled Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a philosophy of education combining classical approaches with anti-colonial and neo-Marxist overtones. Implicitly Christian, both Freire and his work became instrumental in overturning and unmasking the dynamic between ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ throughout Latin America. Of particular interest to Freire was responding to what has been termed the “psychology of oppression” so characteristic among the vast 4 5 6

Ibid., 193. Ibid., 194. Cardenal, Historia de una Esperanza, 193; Guadium et spes, 62.

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majority of poor common people in Latin America. Thus, Freire was focused on the capacity for the ‘oppressed’ to separate from their ‘oppressors.’ This was only possible through conscientization which fundamentally rejected ‘charity,’ or what Freire called “false generosity” as a model for human development.7 This is not to be confused with the theological virtue of caritas or charity (Christian love) as it is translated into English. For Freire, charity or “false generosity” is responding to the symptoms of injustice (immediate needs such as hunger, oppression, medicine, etc.) but never responding to the causes of this suffering which is a work of justice. According to Freire, the first step to overcome the situation of oppression was for people to “critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation, one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity.”8 This method was actually appropriated into the “see, judge, act” method of Catholic Social teaching adopted by the Latin American bishops at Medellín in 1968. According to the method of conscientization, the struggle “to be more fully human, has already begun in the authentic struggle to transform the situation.”9

4.

Conscientization and Power

It is vital to emphasize that simply understanding a situation does little to liberate anyone from it – it is only when people act upon that situation that they become conscientized. For Freire, conceptualizing a problem or understanding the reasons behind some social reality does not constitute conscientization. In the context of oppression, conscientization only occurs when knowledge is followed by action upon the problem understood by those who are oppressed. Unmasking oppression without a corresponding action changes little when power is so unequal. Nobody can conscientize another person, only they can conscientize themselves. Those from privilege can accompany and serve oppressed peoples, but we cannot do for them what only they can do for themselves – decide to act on their situation. As a method of education, conscientization transformed the power relationship between teacher and student. The traditional teacher-student relationship (very similar to traditional catechesis and liturgical celebrations) included a “narrating Subject (the teacher) and 7 8 9

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum Press, 2006), 66. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 47. Ibid.

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patient, listening objects (the students).”10 Teachers traditionally gave students information, usually disconnected from their lived reality, in order for the students to memorize and repeat back what they had learned. “Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into ‘containers,’ into ‘receptacles’ to be ‘filled’ by the teacher.”11 Insofar as students were ‘receptors’ for teachers’ knowledge, Freire named this model of education the “banking model.” Teachers made ‘deposits’ which were kept in student’s minds until teachers made a withdrawal. This method of educating was stultifying at best and harmful at worst, as it made the learning process one of drudgery disconnected from the world one inhabited. Conscientization embraced a different approach which is described by Freire in the following: “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”12 Thus, the more students were educated according to the banking model, the less critical consciousness was developed and the more improbable it was that oppression would be identified and resisted. This new model of education, this conscientization, would also alter the relationship between student and teacher. Replacing the former hierarchy would be a communicative solidarity where a teacher brought knowledge of theory and the student brought knowledge of their reality. “Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.”13

5.

Evangelical Conscientization

Everything Freire taught was related to political, economic and social conscientization. Rutilio took this and applied it to his ministry, and specifically to how he lived out his priesthood in service to a community. Applied to pastoral interaction, this model of conscientization would totally transform the role of the priest in relation to the community within which he ministered. In the past, priests were holy outsiders (members of the ‘sacred’) who brought in disconnected ‘grace’ or universal ‘knowledge’ in the form of catechism or sacraments to people (in the 10 11 12 13

Ibid., 71. Ibid.,71–72. Ibid., 72. Ibid., 77. For helpful examples of conscientization, see Joseph Nangle, O.F.M. Birth of a Church (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY), 64–66.

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‘secular’). Now the priest was someone who dialogued with the community and tried to make connections between the tradition of faith and the reality within which people lived. This is the particular contribution of Rutilio’s model for ministry and the basis for his liturgical creativity. He brought the texts and doctrines of the past into dialogue and eventual acceptance in the present – through mutual communication and sharing. This transformed pastoral ministry from simple delivery of sacraments, or narrow moralizing, into real engagement. People did not passively accept and memorize their faith; they lived out their faith in an effort to transform the world in the direction of the Kingdom of God very concretely. When conscientization was applied to pastoral engagement, it revealed that Rutilio’s original immersion education with mission teams in El Paisnal and Aguilares was very insightful. First, go and learn the situation of the community, their aspirations and their reality – then respond to it with the resources of the tradition and the church with the people. For Freire this was critical: “The starting point for organizing the program content of education or political action must be the present, existential, concrete situation, reflecting the aspirations of people.”14 It is never simply about ideas. Rutilio would go one step further and embody this in the liturgy. “First we (the mission team) have to be conscientized by their reality through a sensitization and awareness of their world which brings us to incarnate and identify with their problems.”15 The method the missionary team used to interact was consistent with their attitude. This approach does not speak truth from above in order to be received below, rather the team wanted their ministry, and therefore their liturgies to be “personalizing, dialogical, creative and critical, based on the pattern of action-reflection-action, that theologized their reality starting from the solidarity of love, faith and hope in this person, here and now.”16 To ‘theologize reality’ was to view one’s context through the lens of the gospels. True evangelization with people in oppressive contexts moves away from the paternalistic imparting of knowledge (sacred or secular) or charity (donation for immediate needs) and into dialogical creativity which results in action that responds to the roots of oppression. In order to do this effectively, the role of the Church shifted with “priority given to evangelization and conversion before the (traditional approaches to) the sacramental and cultic.”17

14 15

16 17

Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 77. Rutilio Grande, “Aguilares: Una Experiencia de Evangelización Rural Parroquial,” translated as “Aguilares: An Experience of Rural Parish Evangelization,” Búsqueda 3, no. 8 (El Salvador, March 1975): 21–45. (Translation ours). Grande, “Aguilares: An Experience of Rural Parish Evangelization,” 23. Ibid., 22.

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Thomas M. Kelly

Liturgy as Vehicle for Conscientization

This new model for being Church was different than former static models that focused on ‘participation’ as proper observance of required rituals. Most importantly in this new method, the community became the center for evangelizing activity since it was the community responding to oppression, not only the priest. “We want a mobile church, not a church that waits for people to come to it, or brings the church to the people, but to be the church of the people.” This is how Lumen gentium’s “people of God” was appropriated and lived out on the ground in Central America. Finally, and most critically, the evangelical goal was to remove the mindset of fatalistic surrender to poverty and the situation of sharp inequality shared by the vast majority of people. There were three particular moments in the two-year mission plan to poor communities where Rutilio and the Jesuit mission team employed creative liturgies to deepen and communicate the transformative evangelization that had occurred. The first happened at the end of the first year of the mission and related to the communal choosing of lay ministers. The second occurred at the conclusion of year two, and included first an affirmation of the communities receiving the mission. Finally, there was a liturgical commissioning by the archbishop of lay leaders who had emerged from these same communities. Faithful to the principle that prompted Rutilio’s first conversion, the participation of the layperson became the center and focus of Rutilio’s missionary efforts and this extended to the liturgy. Clericalism had no place in a pastoral ministry aimed at liberation because liberation required that people become the agents of their own development and not objects of paternalism. “One of the objectives is that laypersons take their responsibility and place in the church and that the priest, only by substitution, does what can and should be done by the layperson.”18 This meant that the first goal of evangelization was for the community to choose its own leaders. Rutilio initiated a process of Gospel reflection and discussion to identify emerging leaders. According to Rutilio, this process of communal selection of leaders “resulted in 1 Delegate of the Word for every 4 or 5 people,” comprised of both men and women depending on the location, with the position and number of delegates open to revision. Initially, it was important to have numerous delegates “in order to place the engine of the community within the community.” The means and motives for transformation came from within the community. Numerous delegates also allowed for a diversification of their roles and the ability to purge or 18

Grande, “Aguilares: An Experience of Rural Parish Evangelization,” 22. I define “clericalism” as centering the pastoral work in a community around the needs and desires of the cleric over those of the people, in an authoritarian manner.

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self-eliminate someone if they didn’t finish the work the community had entrusted to them.19 To consolidate the first stage of missionary activity, the team called for a huge multi-community celebration on the feast of Pentecost. This was no accident, as Pentecost celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit to the followers of Jesus who were then inspired to preach and teach fearlessly what the Lord had done for them. Rutilio used this opportunity to offer a homily that summarized the goals of the mission team and address criticisms from outside the community. Rutilio was well aware of the criticism that was leveled at the communities as they progressed along the new path of pastoral engagement as prescribed by Vatican II and later by Evangelii nuntiandi (1974). The homily he gave on this occasion was a greeting to the people of God and it first encouraged them, gave them confidence, and tried to dissipate difficulties. Among those difficulties were accusations along the following lines: The first accusations against them will be of ‘Protestantism,’ of moving to the material and not the spiritual, of communism, of politics, of illegal meetings that are bad and the National Guard who will come and tie their hands and take them away, and what will happen with internal conflicts of power, threats and fear? The same accusations were made against Jesus and will be made against all true Christians.20

Following this homily was a liturgical celebration of “commitment” within the community. On the last night of the first year of the mission, the chosen leaders accepted publically and individually their unique call from their community. “From this moment on, they will be in charge of leading and caring for their community.” Of course, they did not do this alone. They were mentored by leaders from other communities and foreign missionaries who to helped ensure their growth. In the final part of this liturgy, the sacraments of baptism, marriage, and First Communion were oriented toward community commitment. Rutilio suggested the following symbolic way to articulate this: “The Delegates elected by the community make a commitment, light a candle and pass it to the community that makes a commitment, who then takes the light and passes the light to the parents and godparents who are having children baptized, as well as those getting married, and finally the candles are passed to parents of children receiving First Communion.”21 In this way ‘commitment’ to the community was the overriding theme of sacramental reception, not merely the elevation of personal holiness. Or rather, personal holiness came to be defined as being in service to the common good and not merely one’s individual salvation. 19 20 21

Grande, “Aguilares: An Experience of Rural Parish Evangelization,” 22. Ibid. Ibid., 7.

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This integration of the sacraments into one liturgy that emphasized the horizontal commitments made through Baptism, First Communion, Matrimony and leadership is notable. By emphasizing the social dimension of the sacraments in a large-scale liturgy, and explicitly tying that social dimension to leadership, the liturgy as a whole embodied the reality necessary for Christian liberation. God is present when we fulfill our commitments to each other and the community within which we live. This is not about individual holiness, but about a community transforming in the direction of the Kingdom of God. What became clear through this final message preached at the conclusion of the first stage was that Rutilio and his team promoted a pastoral version of liberation that began with the proclamation of the Word of God to all people. Such a proclamation had significant social and political consequences, but the social and the political were secondary in terms of means and motive. What mattered most was the faith formation and preparation necessary for people to understand, partake, and live out the sacraments they received in a new and integral way. While some of the positions emerging from this faith stance aligned themselves with one party or policy over another, doing so was not the primary intention of the team. The goal was to focus all human activity and orient it in line with God’s will – i.e., to humanize and encourage people toward integral development. Part of integral development was denouncing the “anti-kingdom,” or those parties, policies, and people who dehumanized others. Finally, the overall intent and goal of the mission team was a new faith community, which imaged the kind of covenantal relationships in the plan of God.22

7.

Culmination of the Deepening

For Rutilio and the mission team the culmination of the second year of evangelization took place in two multi-community celebrations – one was in the Fiesta del Maíz where the “co-existence and creativity of the community” was celebrated.23 The other was a festival-tribute to the archbishop, which included the recognition and commissioning of the Delegates of the Word. Let us take a closer look at both. In the Festival of Corn, the corn and its production was chosen as the theme and symbol of the rural peasant. The preparation and creativity for the liturgy, 22

23

A covenantal relationship “is a mutual commitment of self-donation between free beings capable of self-conscious reflection and self-possession.” John F. Kavanaugh, S.J., Following Christ in a Consumer Society (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006), 75. Ibid., 25.

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how it was made unique and special, came from the most basic levels of the community. The criteria for the events included: that “everything will be community, nothing individual; the money factor would not detract as a determinant; it will be a party of both denunciation (of oppression) and hope (for liberation).”24 The fiesta was first celebrated at the village or hamlet level and later at the parish level which included various communities. Each community brought a collection of corn for the communal “corn meal” and the only charge was for the processing of the corn. Each community brought their best ear of corn, the best ornament created from a corn plant, and the best song about the work and harvest of the corn. Each community put forth a godmother and godfather who served as a model of service and work in the community. The female was responsible for presenting the work of her community’s women in the festival, while the male did the same on behalf of the men. Competition was avoided and emphasis was given to sharing and celebration. The gathering was lively with everyone participating and singing songs containing strong messages and protests. Its purpose was to provide a happy time for all. This liturgy is notable for integrating what is most important to the people as they lived their actual lives – the production of basic foodstuffs. By honoring and integrating these dimensions into a liturgy, it is a way of offering to God and bringing God into the basic work of the community to feed and clothe itself. Because peasants then (and now) were despised as poor, dirty failures this liturgical approbation of their lives and work gave dignity to a people when almost no one else did. Finally, the fiesta-tribute to Archbishop Chavez y Gonzalez was to honor his fifty years of service and the culmination of this was the Eucharistic service. It was also the moment Rutilio chose to validate the leaders chosen by the community. About four hundred Delegates of the Word gathered in the pews and after the greeting and blessing, two delegates gave the homily. The first delegate spoke on how they were “delegates of God in service to the community.”25 This homily affirmed their call from God to serve. The second part of the homily was titled “We are Church, Responsible for the New Person for a New Community.” This part affirmed their call from their community in order to serve it. The two parts together, called by God and invited to serve by their communities, established them as ‘ministers’ in the theological sense. Following the homily, the bishop accepted their profession of faith, “accepted their commitments and ‘confirmed’ them in their community functions.”26 Now they were lay ecclesial ministers. 24 25 26

John F. Kavanaugh, S.J., Following Christ in a Consumer Society, 22. Parentheses mine added. Ibid., 26. Ibid.

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The purpose of this ceremony was to validate the call and ministry of the Delegates of the Word by the highest authority in the Salvadoran church, thereby bestowing legitimacy on their work as they formed new base-level communities. Note that these lay ministers were always in communion with their bishops, and even commissioned by them. Allowing them to give the homily while the archbishop listened was an act bestowing authority and empowering them to be “Delegates of the Word” in the literal sense.

Conclusion Rutilio Grande, S.J. and the mission team he led used the liturgy at critical moments in their evangelization of poor and marginalized communities. For the first time in the lives of the poor and marginalized, the liturgy became something more than a spectator sport. Rutilio tried to integrate the lives and challenges of the community into the celebration of the Eucharist in ways that validated their work, their culture and the lay leadership that emerged from it. The first major liturgical moment occurred at the conclusion of the first year and integrated the choosing of lay leaders into the sacramental celebrations of the community all the while emphasizing service, commitment and faith. The second and third moments came at the conclusion of the two-year mission where first the community was validated with the Festival of Corn and role models were held up by the communities for the communities. Finally, when the Delegates of the Word gave the homily for the commissioning mass to the archbishop, they were empowered to serve and be recognized as communicators of the Word of God. In all three cases, Rutilio would use the liturgy to deepen the evangelization of the communities and the conscientization begun there. What resulted was a movement of the entire church toward the Kingdom of God. Just before his assassination by a right wing death squad, Rutilio stated what I believe to be the defining purpose of his ministry – to empower the common person to work for the Kingdom – and not to leave it to someone or something else. This embodied the commitment to the Kingdom outlined in Lumen gentium and thus faithfully represents the new pastoral direction of Vatican II. This purpose was reflected in the liturgies he presided at in these communities. Said Rutilio, When we organize ourselves, when we get into a village organization, these motivations are the motor of our journey through the parish and through the communities of the country. These profound motivations of the Gospel: we want a new world. All who go out as a result of the global work of the parish should carry the label of a Christian, not only as a cov-

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er. This must be the deep root of their validity and of their being, of the overall work of the parish, of our community, and of the numerous communities in the countryside and the city. All of you, the one who speaks and all those perched here, we are all responsible together. Because of this, the message of Corpus Christi (Body of Christ) and of all the great fiestas is: Christians, we are the parish!, not the bricks and walls of the temple. We are all responsible.27

Rutilio Grande, S.J. and his ministry in El Salvador offered one concrete embodiment of the move from a pre-Vatican II model of liturgy to one that embraced the best of Vatican II as the Church worked for the Kingdom of God.

27

Rutilio Grande, “Homilía en el Tercer Festival del Maíz,” XXV Aniversario de Rutilio Grande. Sus Homilías, eds. Salvador Carranza, Miguel Cavada Diez, Jon Sobrino, and Centro Monseñor Romero (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2007), 64.

Cruciform Salvation and Emergent Probability The Liturgical Significance of Lonergan’s Precept

Christopher McMahon

[Eucharistic communion] includes the reality both of being loved and of loving others in turn. A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically flawed. (Deus caritas est 16)

Pope Benedict XVI’s now widely quoted admonition powerfully calls to mind the fundamental nature and ultimate end of the Eucharistic celebration – the redemptive transformation of the world through God’s love poured out in Christ and mediated through His Body, the Church.1 Recent developments in Roman Catholic liturgical theology and practice suggest to some observers that a conservative and even retrograde trend threatens to compromise the clarity of the connection between the celebration of the Eucharist and concrete loving practice.2 The extent of this conservative trend and whether it in fact threatens that clarity are matters to be debated, but the relationship between liturgy and the full realization of 1

2

Of course, this theme is developed elsewhere in his theology, but especially in the first chapter of his Geist der Liturgie: Eine Einführung (Freiburg: Herder, 2000), trans. John Saward, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000). The desire to undertake a ‘reform of the reform’ of Vatican II has led to some provocative trends. For example, an emphasis on the highly Latinized English of the Vox Clara Commission’s translation of the Roman Missal and the promulgation of Summorum pontificum, are two of these developments. The ecclesiological implications of these trends are addressed by Massimo Faggioli in True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012). For a discussion of many of the liturgical debates see, Nathan D. Mitchell, “Summorum pontificum.” Worship 81, no. 6 (2007): 549–65. The exchange between Pierre-Marie Gy, O.P. and then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger over the latter’s book, The Spirit of the Liturgy provides a snapshot of many issues involved on both “sides” of the debate (see, Pierre-Marie Gy, O.P., “L'Esprit de la liturgie du Cardinal Ratzinger est-il fidèle au Concile, ou en réaction contre?” La Maison-Dieu 229, no. 1 (2002): 171–78 and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Réponse du Cardinal Ratzinger au Père Gy,” La Maison-Dieu 230/2 [2002] 113–20; both essays were reprinted and translated in Antiphon 11, no. 1 (2007): 90– 102). See also e.g., Aidan Nichols, O.P., Looking at the Liturgy: A Critical View of Its Contemporary Form (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1996). For a complex and philosophically robust defense of the contemporary value of the medieval Roman Rite see Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).

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Christian salvation implicit in Benedict’s statement, clearly depends on an adequate account of soteriology and its enactment through the liturgical celebration. The recent commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC) provides an opportunity to recall the progress made at the Second Vatican Council in developing this relationship through its emphasis on the centrality of the paschal mystery in liturgical theology and pastoral practice within the dynamics of human history. Although Bernard Lonergan was not a significant figure at the Council nor in liturgical theology in general,3 his seminal work on the cruciformity of Christian salvation as well as his understanding of world process and human history provide an important guide for developing the soteriological dimensions of liturgy articulated at the Council and echoed over the years by so many, including both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.4 Lonergan’s contribution to soteriology, as it has been amplified by his interpreters, is particularly noteworthy given his own emphasis on the paschal mystery in the form of what he termed, the “Law of the Cross.” Lonergan’s approach to soteriology demands that the liturgy be grounded not only in the symbolic dimensions of human experience but also oriented to the concrete and recurring patterns of human history, patterns often shaped by sin that are open to and in need of redemption (Gaudium et spes 38). The construction of such redemptive patterns would benefit from a critical reflection on Lonergan’s soteriology and its broad implications for liturgical theology and pastoral practice. This essay will provide an entry into that reflection by first recalling the place of the paschal mystery at the Second Vatican Council, particularly in SC. The essay will then locate the paschal mystery within the theology of Bernard Lonergan as it resonates with the theology of the Council, particularly in its reform of the liturgy. Finally, the role of emergent probability in Lonergan’s account of the redemptive work of Christ, mediated by the church, provides the open-ended envoi characteristic of Lonergan’s Law of the Cross.

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Lonergan was listed among the periti at the third and fourth sessions of the Council, but he played no major role either in the preparations for the Council (he was ill) or at the Council itself. Lonergan, however, wrote two essays in which he directly endorsed the pastoral purpose of the Council. See “Pope John’s Intention,” in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., ed. Frederick E. Crowe, S.J. (New York: Paulist, 1985), 224–38 and “Existenz and Aggiornamento,” in Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., Collected Works of Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., vol. 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 222–31. The first apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis (Evangelii gaudium) centered on the renewal of the Church’s missionary mandate and anchored that mandate in the cruciform transformation of believers in the celebration of the Eucharist (see e.g., Evangelii gaudium 13 and 138).

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Christopher McMahon

The Paschal Mystery in the Liturgy

The centrality of the paschal mystery in the economy of salvation stands as one of the relatively few uncontested points in contemporary theology.5 The paschal mystery logically stands at the heart of Christian theology and the liturgy, especially in the sacraments of initiation, as the symbolic expression of the saving work of God in Christ. It also stands at the heart of any account of Christian discipleship and at the heart of the Church’s engagement with the world. The retrieval of this theology in the twentieth century owes itself, of course, to the work of Dom Odo Casel, who pioneered the recovery of ‘mystery’ from the writings of the early church fathers and moved beyond the approach of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the ‘history of religions’ school.6 While disagreement persists concerning some of the specifics articulated in Casel’s account of “mystery-presence,” his work anchored much ecumenical dialogue by making the theology of the paschal mystery central for any adequate account of Christian worship and soteriology.7 In fact, only a vocal minority objects to the renewed emphasis on the paschal mystery in the Eucharistic celebration, claiming that this emphasis focuses too much attention on the response of the assembly, thus attenuating the robust visibility of the Eucharist as a “true and proper sacrifice” (verum et proprium sacrificium) as taught by Trent.8 Concerns about the relationship

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6 7

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For presentation of the importance of the paschal mystery in liturgical theology, see e.g., Hans Bernard Meyer, Eucharistie: Geschichte, Theologie und Pastoral, Gottesdienst der Kirche 4 (Regensburg, 1989); Irmgard Pahl, “The Paschal Mystery in its Central Meaning for the Shape of the Christian Liturgy,” Studia Liturgica 26 (1996): 16–38. For the centrality of the paschal mystery in NT accounts of salvation, see e.g., Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009). Odo Casel, O. S. B., Das christliche Kultmysterium (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1932); trans. The mystery of Christian Worship (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1962). See P. Edwall, E. Hayman and W. Maxwell, eds., Ways of Worship: The Report of a Theological Commission of Faith and Order (New York: Harper, 1951). Among some traditionalist Catholic groups, however, the paschal mystery and its emphasis on the Resurrection threatens their understanding of the truly propitiatory nature of the Eucharistic sacrifice, making the theology more ‘Protestant’ and less authentically ‘Catholic’ (See CCC, 1367 and Trent, DS, 1753). On Trent and the language of sacrifice see, e.g., David N. Power, The Sacrifice We Offer: The Tridentine Dogma and Its Interpretation (New York: Crossroad, 1987) and Edward J. Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998), 169–78. DS, 1751 and 1753. The vocal opposition comes from ‘traditionalists,’ particularly those associated with the Society of Saint Pius X; see, Bernard Fellay, The Problem of the Liturgical Reform – A Theological and Liturgical Study (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2001); on the reworking of the Offertory Prayer to omit the term “sacrifice” see Klaus Gambler, The Reform of the

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between the canons of Trent and their applicability to the reformation of the liturgy are beyond the scope of the present essay, but the frailty of these concerns do not detract from the near unanimous acceptance of paschal mystery as the theological centerpiece of the liturgy endorsed at the Council.9 Although the phrase, “paschal mystery,” occurs only twelve times in the documents at the Second Vatican Council, eight of those occurrences are in SC, making the connection between liturgy and soteriology particularly pronounced.10 The use of the phrase in the conciliar documents points to the relationship between conversion and the narrative of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. This point is made clearly in SC 6 in the discussion of baptism and Eucharist. Here, the language of mystery connects the faithful to the love and obedience of Christ as he passes through death, transforming death into new life. His purpose also was that they might accomplish the work of salvation which they had proclaimed, by means of sacrifice and sacraments, around which the entire liturgical life revolves. Thus by baptism [humans] are plunged into the paschal mystery of Christ: they die with Him, are buried with Him, and rise with Him; they receive the spirit of adoption as sons “in which we cry: Abba, Father” (Rom 8:15), and thus become true adorers whom the Father seeks. In like manner, as often as they eat the supper of the Lord they proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes. (SC 6)

The Church, through its worship, draws the world more deeply into the divine life, which, in a world torn by sin, takes the form of the cross. Through the cross of Christ there is resurrection, new life in God. These rites of initiation provide the ritual or cultic expression of the mystery of salvation, understood as a passage or transitus from death into life.11 The paschal mystery, present in the celebration of the liturgy, is a reality in which humans are called to participate, and through the liturgy, the faithful call the world to conversion and to full participation in the divine life.

9

10 11

Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background (San Juan Capistrano, CA and Huntington, NY: Una Voce Press and The Foundation for Catholic Reform, 1993), 55. For the paschal mystery as a theme or Herzwort of the Council, see Angelus A. Häussling, “Pascha-Mysterium. Kritisches zu einem Beitrag in der dritten Auflage des Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche,” Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 41 (1999): 157–65. The phrase occurs twice in SC 5, and once in SC 6, 61, 104, 106, 107, 109. See e.g., the presentation of the paschal mystery in Irénée H. Dalmais, “Theology of the Liturgical Celebration,” in Principles of the Liturgy, ed. I. H. Dalmais, trans. Matthew O’Connell, The Church at Prayer, vol. 1 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1987), 253–72.

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At the Council, the fathers affirmed that the liturgy itself is formative; it is not merely an obligatory action or simply a matter of church discipline. The formative character of the liturgy was clearly central to the Church’s mission in the world.12 The liturgy in its turn moves the faithful, filled with “the paschal sacraments,” to be “one in holiness;” it prays that “they may hold fast in their lives to what they have grasped by their faith;” the renewal in the Eucharist of the covenant between the Lord and [humans] draws the faithful into the compelling love of Christ and sets them on fire. From the liturgy, therefore, and especially from the Eucharist, as from a font, grace is poured forth upon us; and the sanctification of [humans] in Christ and the glorification of God, to which all other activities of the Church are directed as toward their end, is achieved in the most efficacious possible way. (SC 10)

Moreover, the Council fathers recognized that in order for the liturgy to be formative, to be wholly activated in the lives of the faithful, the liturgy needed to be fully accessible and to invite, even demand, the “full, active, and conscious participation of all” (SC 14). These two principles of liturgical renewal – emphasis on the paschal mystery and active participation in the liturgy – emerged during the twentieth century and together anchored much of the liturgical renewal and reform at the Council.13 Moreover, the Council determined that greater instruction in the liturgy itself and the development of a “noble simplicity” (SC 34) in the liturgy was necessary in order to facilitate that participation. Clergy, religious, laity, musicians, architects, and artists all required better training in order to achieve the fullest participation.14 After all, the reform and renewal of the liturgy is meant to be more than a mere updating of texts and rituals; rather, the reform facilitates “a living experience of the paschal mystery“ (Inter Oecumenici 6).15 The full import of the emphasis on the active and conscious participation in the paschal mystery, on actually living the paschal mystery, comes to perhaps its boldest and clearest liturgical expression in the years following the Council with 12

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14 15

For an insightful account of the moral and social dimensions of the prayerful appropriation of the paschal mystery in the liturgy see e.g., Bruce T. Morrill, S. J., Encountering Christ in the Eucharist: The Paschal Mystery in People, Word, and Sacrament (New York: Paulist, 2012). The work of Odo Casel was pivotal in connecting these two principles. For a lucid appreciation of Casel’s contributions see Rose M. Beal, “The Liturgical Legacy of Odo Casel, O.S.B.,” Worship 86, no. 2 (2012): 98–123. SC 14–19. The following quote from Burkhard Neunheuser anticipated so much of what was affirmed at the Council and subsequently concerning the participation of the faithful in the paschal mystery through the liturgy: “The greatness of Casel’s intuition lies in his having taught us Christians of today to see this truth once more: that in the sacred actions of the liturgy I come into Real contact with Christ’s redemptive act, performed by Him once and for all in its historical reality; and I gain this contact in such a way that I myself live by the power of Christ’s redemptive act: I live in Christ, am crucified with him and rise with Him;” “Mystery Presence,” Worship 34, no. 3 (1960): 120–27, at 126. See also CCC 1115.

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the restoration of the catechumenate and the emergence of the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA). The ground for RCIA was laid in many places at the Council, but notably in the second chapter of Ad gentes (AG), which takes up many of the practical issues associated with the Church’s missionary activity and the intimate connection between social justice, the proclamation of the gospel, conversion, initiation, and the formation of individuals and communities. Then, when the sacraments of Christian initiation have freed them from the power of darkness (cf. Col. 1:13), having died with Christ been buried with Him and risen together with Him (cf. Rom. 6:4–11; Col. 2:12–13; 1 Peter 3:21–22; Mark 16:16), they receive the Spirit (cf. 1 Thess. 3:5–7; Acts 8:14–17) of adoption of sons and celebrate the remembrance of the Lord’s death and resurrection together with the whole People of God. […] But this Christian initiation in the catechumenate should be taken care of not only by catechists or priests, but by the entire community of the faithful, so that right from the outset the catechumens may feel that they belong to the people of God. And since the life of the Church is an apostolic one, the catechumens also should learn to cooperate wholeheartedly, by the witness of their lives and by the profession of their faith, in the spread of the Gospel and in the building up of the Church. (Ad gentes 14)

So many themes of the liturgical renewal are present in the groundwork for the catechumenate that Bruce Morrill rightly notes the post-conciliar contribution of the restored/renewed rite: […] the flourishing of the RCIA has contributed to seismic shifts across the ecclesial landscape: the meaning, practice, and interrelationship of baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist; the fundamental sacramentality of the members of the assembly (ekklesia) as Christ’s church in the world; a practical-theological recovery of ministry as a panoply of authorized services provided by women and men in response to the evangelical, pastoral, and prophetic needs of the local church; an expectation that all the rites of the church sanctify people, and thereby glorify God, by connecting word and sacrament with life and death;[. . . ]16

The renewal and reform envisioned in SC and echoed throughout the reforms inaugurated at the Council centers on an understanding of the liturgy as a work (avodah/ergon/opus) that demands the transformative engagement and response of those who participate, and this work is deeply connected to the soteriological import of the liturgy. Engagement and transformation, reflected in the concern for all aspects of the liturgical reform, including the concern for the appropriate inculturation of the liturgy (SC 65), ground the recovery of the catechumenate as the theological paradigm for conversion and the life of discipleship and their connection to the sacraments of initiation.

16

Bruce T. Morrill, “The Paschal Mystery Personified: A Commentary on the Rites of the RCIA,” Liturgical Ministry 15, no.1 (2006): 73–86, at 73.

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Christopher McMahon

The liturgical life of the Church clearly centers on the saving mystery and enacts the paschal transitus from death to life in the lives of individual believers and the Church community as a whole. Moving beyond the symbolic dimensions of the paschal mystery to a theoretical account of God’s saving work in Christ helps to spell out the connection between liturgy and the challenges of living a life of discipleship within the dynamics of a complex and changing world. Few theologians have accomplished this task as ably as Bernard Lonergan.

2.

Lonergan’s Cruciform Soteriology and the Liturgy

Those familiar with Lonergan’s work have recognized its significant implications for understanding liturgy, especially given Lonergan’s foundational and systematic approach and the privileged place he affords religious conversion in the life of the individual and in human history.17 Lonergan’s view of the human person as fundamentally oriented to truth and goodness provides the framework for his entire theology, his understanding of history, and particularly his soteriology.18 For Lonergan, the human drive to self-transcendence in truth and goodness is redirected by sin so that this drive comes to serve merely selfish ends. Sin produces what Lonergan calls “bias” – the fundamental disorientation of this human drive to know and value what is authentically true and good.19 Moral evil projects itself into the world through bias, erecting social and cultural structures of evil, and these structures serve to perpetuate and amplify bias. As the failure of selftranscendence accumulates and expands over the course of time to infect entire 17

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19

Through the work of his interpreters Lonergan’s legacy has made an impact in liturgical/ritual studies (e.g., Margaret Kelleher, O.S.U., “Liturgical Theology: A Task and a Method,” Worship 62, no. 1 (1988): 2–25) and in the study of the symbolic mediation of meaning (e.g., Stephen Happel, “Prayer and Sacrament: A Role in Fundamental Theology,” The Thomist 45 (1981): 243–61). Lonergan’s writings on the Eucharist, particularly his reading of Aquinas’s theology of the Eucharist, have been fruitful (see e.g., Edward Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West and Raymond Moloney, S.J., “Lonergan on Eucharistic Sacrifice,” Theological Studies 62 (2001): 53–70). So much of Lonergan’s soteriology is built upon the insights of Aquinas and the manifold dimensions of Christ’s saving work (e.g., ST III q. 1 a. 2; see also., William P. Loewe, “Lonergan and the Law of the Cross: A Universalistic View of Salvation,” Anglican Theology Review 59 (1977): 162–74). Like Aquinas, Lonergan examines the cross as a matter of convenientia rather than a matter of strict necessity He also follows Aquinas in trying to incorporate the moral dimensions of the cross in conjunction with promoting or “furtherance the good” and the “withdrawal from evil.” See Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Collected Works of Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 242–51.

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communities and cultures, these failures of self-transcendence are perpetuated through recurring patterns of socialization and the formation of culture (e.g., bigotry, sexism, violence, materialism, etc.). The historical process enshrines many dehumanizing dynamics alongside towering technological and cultural achievements, but distinguishing between surd and real progress becomes difficult as bias skews the collective social and cultural understanding of truth and value. Within this context, sources of creative and responsible change, those concrete acts of love for which Pope Benedict called, remain muddled, and attempts to address moral evils often simply wind up repeating those evils. Ultimately, moral impotence takes hold, resulting in what Lonergan labels “the reign of sin,” from which humanity cannot extract itself.20 In his Latin textbook on Christology (De Incarnatione Verbi; DVI), Lonergan offers what one might call the symbolic-narrative formulation of the solution to the reign of sin offered from an explicitly religious/theological perspective. The Son of God became man, suffered, died, and was raised again because divine wisdom ordained and divine goodness willed, not to remove the evils of the human race through power, but to convert those evils into a supreme good according to the just and mysterious Law of the Cross.21

The Law of the Cross represents, for Lonergan, the intrinsic intelligibility of redemption, which is revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. This solution to the problem of sin and evil that God provides does not stand apart from the world as an alien ordinance; rather, the solution coincides with the actual order of the universe and represents a universal law.22 Put simply, rather than conquer evil through the exercise of domination and violence, the man Jesus learned to consent to and to obey the Law of the Cross.23 As Charles Hefling notes, in order to make the Law of the Cross his own, Christ conformed his actions to a divine meaning, which he had to discover only gradually in human terms, to incarnate on the cross, and to fulfill by rising again.24 Through his choice to conform himself to the cruciform demands of God’s work of redemption, the new life of Christ’s resurrection invites the faithful to make the same choice and 20 21

22 23

24

Lonergan, Insight: A Study in Human Understanding, 715. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., De Verbo Incarnato, third edition (Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University, 1964), 552. The English is taken from Charles Hefling’s translation, The Incarnate Word (Toronto: Lonergan Research Institute, 2006). Lonergan, Insight, 696–703. For a nuanced defense of the positive role violence plays in atonement theology see Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2004). See Charles C. Hefling, Jr., “Lonergan’s Cur Deus Homo: Revisiting the ‘Law of the Cross,’” in Meaning and History in Systematic Theology: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Doran, S. J., ed., John D. Dadosky (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009), 145–66.

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embrace the Law of the Cross in their lives. The cross of Christ symbolically communicates the principle of transformation, of conversion, and – as a precept by which one is to live – it moves the faithful to embrace the same choice made by Christ. Salvation from the reign of sin emerges not through redemptive violence or a transaction of divine justice; rather, redemption involves shifts in human acts of meaning and value, through which the heart and mind are reconfigured to increase the likelihood of the reign of sin’s reversal and the corresponding decline in human history. Thus a Christian soteriology, for Lonergan, rests on an understanding of emergence and development consistent with the processes by which the world itself functions. The work of Christ does not offer the world a new form of control, a false certainty; rather, the work of Christ creates the essential conditions for the possibility of transformation and authentic redemption in history – opening that history up through concrete acts that mediate God’s own love for the world. As a community of faith, of redemptive recovery, the Church continues to proclaim the Law of the Cross both in the liturgy and most especially in the daily lives of the faithful, who confront the death-dealing power of evil, and through the gift of God’s love in Christ and the Spirit (Rom 5:5) transform that power to new life. The Law of the Cross thus gives symbolic form to the precept that the faithful are called to embody in sacramental worship. They appropriate it as their own in the course of daily living.25 When Lonergan uses the term “mystery” to describe the Law of the Cross (i.e., “the just and mysterious Law of the Cross”) he understands the term in a quasi-liturgical sense. A mystery in this context is a symbol, an affect-laden image or cluster of images that (1) express the human person’s orientation toward unrestricted being and value, to God; (2) the image-pattern will involve an interpretive element clarifying the significance of its symbolism; (3) the image-pattern as sensible will evoke affect that helps to integrate human psychic spontaneity with the orientation toward God and more specifically with the concrete deeds of love. In other words, the mind of Christ becomes the mind of the believer (Phil 2:5) and the self-sacrificing love of Christ arising from friendship has the power to move the believer to participate in the love of Christ for the world.26 Within the liturgy, the faithful encounter the sacrifice of Christ, and Lonergan, as a good Thomist, affirms the sacrificial character of the Eucharist. While the term “sacrifice” remains a complex part of the history of theology and worship, it finds a comfortable place within the work of Lonergan, for whom the term means 25

26

DVI, 571. On the nature of the Church as the instrument of redemptive recovery in history see Joseph A. Komonchak, Foundations in Ecclesiology, Supplementary Issue of the Lonergan Workshop, Volume 11 (Boston: Lonergan Workshop, 1995), 167–89. See Summa contra gentiles III Q 158, 7.

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nothing less than “the proper symbol of a sacrificial attitude.”27 The Eucharist is the symbol of this attitude in Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary and presents itself as the source of this attitude for the faithful. In taking this approach to the Eucharist, Lonergan demonstrates not only particular concern for the mystery of the Body of Christ and for the social dimensions of the Church, but also reaffirms the language of the real and substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist. For Lonergan, it is precisely because the bread and wine of the Eucharist offers the faithful full communion with the sacrificial attitude of Christ that these elements contain the sacrificial attitude of Christ, his incarnate meaning, or Christ himself. The Eucharist thus offers human beings a participation in the sacrificial attitude of Christ of which the cross is the proper symbol. Although the cross and the Eucharist both incarnate the meaning of Christ, they are distinct in their perfection. The Eucharist is a symbolic mediation of the cross’s meaning in the sharing of a meal. The paschal mystery, the symbolic expression of the saving work of God in Christ, stands as the centerpiece of the Council’s liturgical theology and provides a point of convergence with Lonergan’s Law of the Cross. The Church, through its worship, draws the world more deeply into the divine life, which, in a world torn by sin, takes the form of the cross. Through the symbol of the cross of Christ, human beings apprehend the love of God, new life, and healing from the ravages evil. The paschal mystery is a reality in which humans are called to participate, and in the Church’s mission through the liturgy they are empowered to call the world to conversion and full participation in the divine life (SC 10). But the world in which this conversion is enacted is a moving target. In other words, in all its goodness and fallenness, the world is not simply a given, a static reality; rather, it emerges in the course of history. And the love of God for the world unfolds within human history amidst all its diversity, contingency, and vagaries.

3.

Emergent Probability and the Cross

The epigraph to this essay from Pope Benedict finds a corresponding admonition from Lonergan, who states: “For just as the creative process, when unaccompanied by healing, is distorted and corrupted by bias, so too the healing process,

27

Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., “The Notion of Sacrifice (De Notione Sacrificii),” in Early Latin Theology, Collected Works of Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., trans. Michael Shields, S. J. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 2–51. See also Raymond Moloney, S. J., “Lonergan on Eucharistic Sacrifice,” Theological Studies 62 (2001): 53–70.

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when unaccompanied by creating, is a soul without a body.”28 The work of Christ, often understood in terms of what Lonergan would describe as “the healing vector” of God’s grace, transforms the horizon of meaning and value in the religiously converted subject, unmasking and defeating biases. Christian worship, the liturgy, plays an indispensable role in mediating grace as healing. But it is also clear that the liturgy orients the believer and the entire Christian community to the world, to the creative engagement with the concrete challenges of the human community. For Lonergan, God’s work in Christ enacts a “creative vector” within history, and it is this creative vector or trajectory that occupies so much of Lonergan’s theology in which he implores the creative integration of the religiously converted subject with a ‘revisioning’ and reworking of human history. In other words, the Church’s redemptive mission in the world addresses the basic task of human living and therefore is fundamentally oriented to praxis, but it is a praxis informed by the experience of healing and conversion. The course of human living is marked by uncertainty and contingency, even as it is ordered by divine Providence.29 Lonergan’s account of theological method as well as his understandings of the human person, sin, and redemption embrace this uncertainty and make it central. Emergent probability (EP) is the expression Lonergan uses to designate the unfolding of world process at every level, from the subatomic to human decision-making and action in history.30 Such an approach accounts for the deterministic aspects of existence as well as its contingent aspects, and it provides the necessary nuance for an account of sin and redemption. The order of nature itself, the reign of sin within human history, and the dynamics of grace all unfold within “schemes of recurrence,” patterns of interrelated events that occur with certain statistical probability. Statistical science makes sense of events by counting and calculating probabilities that yield patterns connected to one another so that various schemes emerge and are sustained with a certain degree of predictability. These schemes of recurrence, whether in the natural order or in the order of human history, are neither permanent nor inevitable. Moreover, individual cycles themselves are part of larger schemes or patterns which emerge 28 29

30

Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., “Healing and Creating in History,” in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J. (New York: Paulist, 1985), 100–09 at 107. Lonergan’s early work, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas , Collected Works of Bernard J.F. Lonergan S.J., eds. Bernard Lonergan and Frederick Crowe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), set the stage for his approach to theological method and history as well as economics. For a helpful and detailed account of the sacramental dimensions of Lonergan’s account of grace, Providence, and human freedom see John M. McDermott, S. J., “The Sacramental Vision of Lonergan’s Grace and Freedom,” Sapientia 50 (1995): 115–48. Insight, 144–62. The best presentation of Lonergan’s notion of EP is to be found in Kenneth Melchin, History, Ethics, and Emergent Probability: Ethics, Society, and History in the Work of Bernard Lonergan (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987).

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with a certain statistical probability. New patterns or schemes depend on a series of underlying events that cause them to emerge. As patterns of human activity emerge and become stable, the relative freedom of human intelligence and volition becomes more apparent. Environments or contexts are no longer defined primarily by biology or nature (or fate); rather, human beings come to craft their environment and their identity. The Law of the Cross and EP both focus on what Lonergan calls “emergence.”31 Note that schemes of recurrence form hierarchies in which higher schemes depend on lower ones; in other words, higher integrations systematize recurrent schemes of lower processes that are otherwise merely coincidental. These higher integrations are at once dependent on lower manifolds of events, yet something new and different emerges with a higher integration. At this point it is worth noting that Lonergan’s account of emergence was developed through his reading of Aquinas’s appropriation of Aristotelean psychology. For Lonergan, in the act of understanding, the experience or apprehension of an image produces something new in the mind; something more is added to what has been merely presented to the senses.32 Insight, or understanding, emerges from apprehension in the senses, and it is this exploration of the structures and movement of human cognition that provides Lonergan with his account of world process as emergent. Thus emergence needs to be distinguished from mere change. A change of state can occur because certain probabilities shift, whereas emergence comes about through the addition of something new. In the case of redemption, that “something new” is a higher viewpoint born of religious conversion, symbolized (in sacrament) and enacted through the Law of the Cross. For Lonergan, the solution to the problem of evil involves the emergence of a higher viewpoint that will open up the possibility both of grasping truth that has otherwise been obfuscated and the possibility of willing and acting for justice that has been perverted. But according to the Law of the Cross, this will not be the result of violent actions or coercion but will occur through embracing the consequences of the distortions themselves. In other words, because moral evils are enshrined within recurrent schemes of irrationality, violence, and systemic injustice, these need to break down, to exhaust their faulty expectations, in order for some new set of habits and practices to emerge. The decisive point here is so counterintuitive that it might be rightly termed the “scandal of cross,”33 namely, any solutions to the problem of evil that remain at the same level as the problem 31

32 33

See Cynthia Crysdale, “The Law of the Cross and Emergent Probability,” in Finding Salvation in Christ: Essays on Christology and Soteriology in Honor of William P. Loewe, ed. Christopher Denny and Christopher McMahon (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011), 193–214. Patrick H. Byrne, “The Thomistic Sources of Lonergan’s Dynamic World-View,” The Thomist 46, no. 1 (1982): 108–43. Cf. 1 Cor 1:18 – 2:8.

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itself, solutions that involve merely a change of state, will result only in shifts of power. The focus on mere shifts of power may be at the root of the failures experienced by so many ecclesiastical bodies who are engaged at the political level. In order for real transformation to occur, the system itself, the distorted schemes of recurrence, need to be dismantled. And it is precisely through allowing the evil embedded in them to be exposed for what it is that this dismantling can occur.34 The life of Christ, the Incarnate Word, who did not retaliate but let evil run its course at Calvary, revealed the true nature of moral evil embedded in human selfishness and oversight. This revelation, made possible in Christ’s death and resurrection, became the opportunity for the emergence of a truly radical set of meanings and values embedded in healing and forgiveness: a new life. The earliest disciples experienced this new set of meanings and values and established new schemes of recurrence in which truth, fellowship, sharing, forgiveness, authentic worship, and healing were perpetuated. The Letters of Paul, the Acts of the Apostles, and the entire New Testament bear witness to this emergence, and the writings of contemporary non-Christian writers testify to the unique form of life manifested by the early Christian community and the impact that had on Roman imperial society. Thus the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the Church and its worship sets the conditions of possibility for further redemption.35 To the degree that the worshipping community continues to embody and practice self-sacrificing love, recurrent schemes of new life continue to emerge and survive.36 And the only way these recurrent schemes can emerge and survive is through the power of the cross understood as a precept, an invitation, that constantly requires disciplined and cultivated attention within the concrete historical and cultural circumstances in which it is enacted. And it is within the context of liturgy that the precept is encountered and habituated within the community of believers. Within a cultural context informed by historical consciousness, the temptation to embrace ancient forms of worship for their own sake runs up against a soteriological proviso: God’s work of salvation in Christ, realized in the paschal mystery, must be the criterion for liturgical practice. The paschal mystery, appropriated as a 34

35

36

On the similarities and differences between Lonergan’s account of the Law of the Cross and Girard’s mimetic theory and scapegoat mechanism see Robert M. Doran, S. J., “The Nonviolent Cross: Lonergan and Girard on Redemption,” Theological Studies 71 (2010): 46– 61. For a broad historical overview of the soteriological values mediated through the Church see Neil Ormerod, Revisioning the Church: An Experiment in Systematic-Historical Ecclesiology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014). John M. McDermott, S. J. has cogently identified the tensions apparent in Lonergan’s account of conversion, moving from a focus on the knowing subject in his early work to a more pragmatic and historical approach in the later Lonergan. See, “Tensions in Lonergan’s Theory of Conversion,” Gregorianum 74, no. 1 (1993): 101–40. Lonergan’s interpreters (e.g., Crysdale and Melchin) tend to interpret Lonergan’s body of work through his later writings.

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precept to be enacted within the concrete historical and cultural situations of the day, eschews any nostalgia for the enchanted world of a bygone culture. Rather, the paschal mystery requires concrete enactment within the dynamic world defined by EP. Within the context of the various attempts to “reform the reform” of the liturgy, an overemphasis on obscure rituals, unintelligible language, and any sort of distance from the lives of the faithful will serve to frustrate the soteriological import of the liturgy and leave in place the reign of sin.37 And it seems as though this is precisely what is operative in the liturgical reforms inaugurated at the Council, particularly as expressed in SC and AG. The thought of Bernard Lonergan helps to highlight the dynamic tension involved in the experience of conversion and its outgrowth within the process of human history. Certainly, Lonergan calls attention to the need for integration and cooperation in building the structures that would reverse decline in every age and every context, but his thought also highlights the fact that even as the experience of graced healing in conversion requires a kind of dying to sin, so too does the creative process itself demand attentiveness to the ongoing working out of that conversion amidst the exigencies of any given age. A kind of eschatological proviso thus attaches to his work: there are no utopias for disciples of the Crucified One.

Conclusion As Pope Benedict admonishes, “a Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically flawed.” The love to which the Eucharist calls and empowers the Christian faithful unfolds in a world that is in motion, emerging. For the on-going reform of the liturgy, which all participants in the current liturgical debates embrace, this essay suggests that the framework of Lonergan’s thought helps place an emphasis on the disposition of the worshipper, hopefully moving the Christian faithful to see their faith amidst personal and social obligations in keeping with the pastoral emphasis taken up by Pope Francis in recent addresses and in his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii gaudium. Moreover, Lonergan’s thought helps liturgical theologians to subordinate the historical ele37

Lonergan is clearly uninterested in innovation for its own sake and retains deep concern for the various dimensions of meaning. For an important distinction between appropriate sacralization and securalization see, Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., “Sacralization and Secularization” in Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965–1980, Collected Works of Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J. , eds. Bernard Lonergan and Frederick Lowe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 259–81.

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ments of liturgy and their development to the higher viewpoint of religious conversion mediated by the symbolic language of the paschal mystery. Christian liturgy, as an act of communication oriented to the disposition of the worshipper and directed toward the Church’s complex and cooperative task of mediating redemption, remains a work, a task constantly opened up to particular contextual exigencies, or “signs of the times.” The critique of redemptive violence offered within contemporary theology finds an important ally in Lonergan, whose work bridges the debates regarding sacrifice, its place in the liturgy, and its place in soteriology. Lonergan underscores the important role sacrifice plays both in his soteriology as well as in his Eucharistic (liturgical) theology, and this language preserves traditional aspects of the liturgy while offering an account of God’s saving work that is focused on redemptive transformation. Deeply imbedded in the human person, radically transformative, and tied to the paschal events, Lonergan’s soteriology is also dynamic, open, adaptive, critical, and historical. As such, Lonergan’s account offers liturgical theology an important resource for structuring perhaps a more basic and foundational discussion of the liturgy. After all, so much is riding on the Church’s worship. The work of Christ and the Holy Spirit are uniquely encountered in the liturgy, and it is in and through the historical form of the liturgy that the faithful are sent forth into the world to live the demands of the gospel. Moreover, as the concrete expression of the fellowship for which human beings are created, the goal of this evangelical living is to draw people into authentic worship. The liturgy not only provides an anticipation of participating in the divine life, it also is the source from which the work of the Church flows into the world (SC 10). In the liturgy, heaven erupts into the space and time of a fallen world, renewing human vision, and worshippers, through an active participation in the celebration. Worshippers are trained to see and shape the world differently. The liturgy becomes the unique locus of redemption, of saving transformation in Christ.38

38

It should be noted that comments and feedback from Luke Briola, Julie Pomerleau, Debra Faszer-McMahon and the anonymous readers have substantially improved this text.

Personalia

Katerina BAUEROVA Bauerová teaches in the Theology of Christian Traditions program at the Protestant Theological Faculty in Prague, Charles University, from which she also earned her doctorate. She has taught courses in both Western and Eastern hermeneutics, in iconography and in the history of doctrine. For the past five years she has also been working as a senior researcher under the project Symbolic Mediation of Wholeness in Western Orthodoxy. She has published a book on LouisMarie Chauvet’s theology of symbol and articles among other things on symbol, Russian émigrés in Paris and Prague, and on the theology of icons. Bert DAELEMANS, S.J. Daelemans earned his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from KU Leuven in 2013. He is currently Professor of Pneumatology and Sacramental Theology at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid, Spain. He graduated as an engineerarchitect in 1998 and became a Jesuit priest in 2008. He studied piano, organ, and harpsichord at the Conservatoire National de Région in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (France). His academic and pastoral interests revolve around the theological and spiritual depth of art, especially contemporary architecture. He has published three books related to art, architecture, and Ignatian spirituality. Joris GELDHOF Geldhof is Professor of Liturgical Studies and Sacramental Theology at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, where is coordinator of the Research Unit Pastoral and Empirical Theology. He studied philosophy, religious studies, and theology at KU Leuven and defended his PhD on the provocative nature of the Christian revelation in 2005. Geldhof was appointed Assistant Professor in 2007 and has lectured in Lithuania, Congo, and Germany. He is the chair of the Liturgical Institute and the editor-in-chief of the bilingual journal Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy. Samuel GOYVAERTS Goyvaerts studied theology at the KU Leuven. From 2009 to 2013 he was attached, as research-fellow, to a project led by Prof. Joris Geldhof on eucharistic theology and liturgy in 19th century Germany. He defended his doctoral dissertation in August of 2013, entitled, Unity and Presence, Sacrifice and Community.

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The Theology of the Eucharist and of the Liturgy according to the Catholic Tübingen School and Döllinger. Currently he is employed as pastor and responsible for Christian formation at the Boerenbond & Landelijke Gilden. As scientific volunteer, he belongs to the Research Unit Pastoral and Empirical Theology, KU Leuven. Kevin GROVE, C.S.C. Grove is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. Prior to that appointment, Grove was a post-doctoral researcher at L’Institut Catholique de Paris. Grove completed his PhD in philosophical theology at the University of Cambridge in 2015 with a dissertation entitled “Memory and the Whole Christ: Augustine and the Psalms.” At Cambridge, Grove was a Gates Cambridge Scholar, member of Trinity College, and Assistant Roman Catholic Chaplain. Grove is a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, ordained in 2010 at the University of Notre Dame. Jitka JONOVÁ Since September 2008, Jonová has served as assistant professor at the Department of Church History and Christian Art, Sts. Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic. She deals with the church history, mainly with the relationship between the Holy See and the Czech Lands (Czechoslovakia) in the 19th and 20th century, with the appointment of bishops, the issue of nationalism, the history of liturgy and the history of the Archdiocese of Olomouc in the 19th and 20th century. Unnatha KAVUVILA Kavuvila is a doctoral researcher and a member of the Research Unit Theological and Comparative Ethics at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven. She received her Master’s and Advanced Masters in Theology from KU Leuven. Her research areas are fundamental ethics, the uses of Scripture and the liturgy in theological ethics. At present, she is a fourth year Ph.D. student in theological ethics under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Johan De Tavernier. Thomas M. KELLY Kelly is Professor of Systematic Theology at Creighton University. Kelly has taught immersion courses about the Church in Latin America in El Salvador, Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic over the past 12 years and serves as Immersion Coordinator for the Ignatian Colleagues Program. He has published nationally and internationally on philosophical hermeneutics, liberation theology, Jesuit martyrs, and Catholic social thought, specifically on the work of Rutilio Grande, S.J. and the church in El Salvador.

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Walter KNOWLES Knowles is a presbyter in the Episcopal Church and pastoral associate at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, WA. He holds a doctorate in liturgical studies with a secondary specialization in Art and Religion from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. His research currently has two foci: improvisation in the development of early plainsong and Augustine’s catechetical process with his community of believers. The current paper explores the place of deification in Augustine’s continuing mystagogia, not just of his neophytes, but of his entire conversation. Christopher MCMAHON McMahon is Associate Professor of Theology at Saint Vincent College (Latrobe, PA, USA). His contribution to this volume, “Cruciform Salvation and Emergent Probability: The Liturgical Significance of Lonergan’s Precept” explores the seminal work Bernard Lonergan and its relevance for understanding the soteriological dimensions of the liturgy. His research concerns Lonergan’s approach to soteriology, and construction of redemptive patterns occurring in human history in dialogue with liturgy and ecclesiology. Trevor MAINE Maine is a doctoral researcher and member of the Liturgical Institute at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven. He received his Master of Theological Studies from Boston University School of Theology in 2010, his Advanced Masters from KU Leuven in 2012, and has studied at Université catholique de l’Ouest. Currently his research, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Joris Geldhof, relates to the epistemological underpinnings of Liturgical Theology and seeks to put the field into greater dialogue with such philosophical thinkers as Catherine Pickstock and French phenomenologist Jean-Yves Lacoste. Daniel MINCH Minch is doctoral researcher and a member of the research group Theology in a Postmodern Context, at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven. He is the research assistant for the Edward Schillebeeckx Project under the direction of Prof. Dr. Lieven Boeve and Prof. Dr. Leo Kenis. Minch has studied and researched at Villanova University, KU Leuven, and the University of Vienna. His research concerns the hermeneutical turn in the theology of Edward Schillebeeckx applied to ontology and the human subject, and a theological retrieval of Schillebeeckx’s work in a postmodern context.

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Philip J. ROSSI, S.J. Rossi is Professor of Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. He works in the areas of philosophical theology, Christian ethics (with particular focus on questions of war and peace), and the continuing theological import of Kant’s critical philosophy. He is currently completing a monograph articulating a theological anthropology focused upon the presence and working of grace in the cultures of secularity and its aftermath. He is planning a monograph exploring the possibilities for the mutual engagement of philosophy and theology in the context of global intellectual and cultural plurality. Elochukwu UZUKWU, C.S.SP. Uzukwu holds the Rev. Pierre Schouver C.S.Sp. Endowed Chair in Mission, at Duquesne University. He has taught at seminaries and universities in Nigeria, France, Congo, India, and Ireland. His research interests are in the areas of liturgy-sacraments, ritual studies, ecclesiology, missiology, and contextual theology, with particular focus on continental Africa and the African diaspora. His most recent research project focuses on ritology: its performative dimensions, its uses and abuses in the wars that plague the African continent: ritual technology in the initiation of child soldiers, rethinking God from the perspective of African Traditional Religions, and the church as ‘Family-of-God’.

The Book   Approaching the Threshold of Mystery brings two recently estranged strands of theology back together, to explore the same ‘liturgical worlds’ and to chart ‘theological spaces’. The editors have assembled a formidable group of scholars from systematic and liturgical theology with the express purpose of examining the mystery of the liturgy with both expert perspectives in mind. The result is thirteen essays that return to a more ‘synoptic’ theology, seeing speculative and liturgical approaches as united together for a common purpose, and ultimately approaching the same mysterious, sacred reality. In today’s fragmented world, this approach is sorely needed, and although many postmodern authors point out the need for healing this division, this volume actually attempts to bridge the disciplinary divide by placing specialists within the same prayerful ‘space’, oriented towards something greater than what is merely enacted in human words and deeds.     

Editors    JORIS GELDHOF is Professor of Liturgical Studies and Sacramental Theology at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, where he is director of the Liturgical Institute and coordinator of the Research Unit Pastoral and Empirical Theology.

TREVOR MAINE is a doctoral researcher and member of the Liturgical Institute at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven. DANIEL MINCH is doctoral researcher and a member of the research group Theology in a Postmodern Context, at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven.