Zenit has a short piece today on the Pope’s latest deep insight into the liturgy, and I think its particularly useful for our day. About a year ago I visited a local parish and had the overwhelming sense that many of the people there were well-meaning liturgical zombies. They came to church, so good for them and for the Mystical Body… but somehow the lights were not on in their eyes and hearts. Of course, I can only judge by external signs, and only God knows what was really going on in their hearts. But the casual attitude and obvious indifference seemed to be everywhere. Sometimes it was people who only feared mortal sin by missing Mass, other time it was people who were simply going through the motions. Even with all of the rubrics followed, somehow it seemed a bit empty. Here’s what the Pope has to say:
“Today there arises the risk of a serpentine secularization even within the Church, which can convert into a formal and empty Eucharistic worship, in celebrations lacking this participation from the heart that is expressed in veneration and respect for the liturgy,” he cautioned.
And here is a good chance to discuss what the Church teaches on the disposition of the recipient of the Eucharist. With a belief in the Real Presence, one might be tempted to think that it is the power of the sacrament properly administered that changes us. This is true. But the Church teaches that sacraments also work ex opere operantis, that is, by the work of the worker, meaning that proper disposition allows the recipient of the sacrament to draw more deeply from its benefits.
Obviously, someone who hates the Eucharist and receives it under duress will not gain benefit from it. But on the everyday level, people who receive without love, without the desire for the Good in the sacrament, without awareness of receiving the very life of God in the Body of his Son, with an empty sense of busy participation, are not receiving to the fullest degree possible the very transformative Christ-life that God wants to share. Similar things can be said about receiving outside of the state of grace. This is why the fathers of Vatican II were so urgent about the term “active participation” and said it was the aim to be considered before all else. Active participation means drawing from the deepest wells of grace by knowing what you were doing and doing it to the fullest for transformation: full, conscious, active and fruitful participation were the words they used most often in Vatican II. The Pope added:
And nevertheless, he added, the Eucharist is “the bread of eternal life of the new world that is given us today in the holy Mass, so that starting now the future world begins in us.””With the Eucharist, therefore, heaven comes down to earth, the tomorrow of God descends into the present and it is as if time remains embraced by divine eternity,” the Bishop of Rome explained.
This beautiful language presumes some theological background. The Pope teaches that the Eucharist gives a foretaste of what living fully in the life of the Beatific Vision will be like at the end of time when God has fully renewed the heavens and the earth. Spiritually living on the very life of God will be the norm in heaven, and in the Eucharist we get to experience it in the mode of sacrament now on earth. Saying that heaven comes down to earth is not to speak so much of location as much as condition: we get a foretaste of our heavenly condition here on earth. By tasting, singing, proclaiming, seeing and hearing the things of heaven in the liturgy, we become more heavenly and get to experience divine eternity even in earthly time.
We can participate actively and fully or we can be liturgical zombies in either the novus ordo or the Extraordinary Form.
June 12, 2009 at 10:38 pm
I think a LOT more time needs to be invested in the ex opere operantis dimension of the Christian life. That is why I think we are in so much trouble. We've treated sacraments like they were magic, ie. if you are baptized you are 'in.'
Conversion, conversion, conversion… for the baptized.
(Writing from Dublin)
June 12, 2009 at 10:39 pm
I think a LOT more time needs to be invested in the ex opere operantis dimension of the Christian life. That is why I think we are in so much trouble. We've treated sacraments like they were magic, ie. if you are baptized you are 'in.'
Conversion, conversion, conversion… for the baptized.
(Writing from Dublin)
June 13, 2009 at 12:22 am
Over the years I have asked congregations the question as to whether we were at Mass or were a building where Mass happened to be going on. Of course the neo-trads get all huffy about how the novus ordo just lacks so much (as if to say that transubstantiation didn't take place or wasn't worth noting)or will get all defensive about if the music were better….you know the routine. It has been my contention that as the Eucharist is supposed to be an act of thanksgiving to God ( because He sure has very little to thank us for!)that acting like a piece of statuary doesn't look like thanks to me. Yes, I agree, most liturgical music anymore is poorly written folk music with at times quasi-heretical sentiments, and sometimes the priest sees the Mass a personal vehicle for expression (most of which is sappy, loony, or wicked ethereal), but we don't come to Mass to be entertained, or because we deserve some spiritual high for the week…we come to Mass to give thanks to God for His many blessings.
June 13, 2009 at 2:11 am
Neo-Trads? What a petty and ignorant thing to say. Beware of modernists in priests clothing.
June 13, 2009 at 5:42 am
Read the first chapter of the Popes book the Spirit of the liturgy
A disucssion of worship in the book of Exedous. He surmises that the Isrealites who worshiped the Golden Calf were "Litugically Correct," except for the calf, but they were worshipng human concerns representd by the calf not The LORD.
June 13, 2009 at 8:06 am
Hank, the pope as always is spot on here. This danger regarding the liturgy is as old as man. But the difference is a modernist/secularist's "solution" is to change or "updated" (modernize?) the liturgy to make it more "relevant" (see: what the clueless in their ivory towers feel is most relevant to their own agenda) while the traditionalist approach is to reevangelize and reaquaint the faithful with the symbolism and meaning BEHIND the liturgy AS WELL AS preserve it.
BTW, if any of you for a minute think the new-agers can't be just as hung up on their own liturgy (if not moreso) then they should stop by the church while the "liturgical committee" and the musicians are having their meetings. The priest is not nearly as important as Buffy getting to do her liturgical dance in homage to Sapho and the inner-goddess.