{Lenten Book Club: The Spirit of the Liturgy}
As promised — and I do believe, in keeping with the mission of this blog, which is to talk about what we want to talk about — we will read The Spirit(s) of the Liturgy as a little book club together this Lent. I will post here exactly as I would talk to you about it if we were together. Please add your questions and comments!
- First, Romano Guardini’s The Spirit of the Liturgy. It’s free, online. You can also purchase it here, although be warned, this edition does not have the footnotes, which stinks.
- Then, Joseph Ratzinger: The Spirit of the Liturgy (yes, same name).
- (When you buy something via our Amazon affiliate link, a little cash rolls our way… just a little. Thanks!)
- I’ll post on Fridays. I’ll give you your homework, I’ll talk about what we read, we’ll discuss in the comments. You can do this study at any point, but if you want to stay current and join in the convo, that’s how it will go.
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Previously:
The Introduction: Escaping Preference
Chapter One: Seeking Universal Prayer
Chapters Three and Four: The Style and Symbolism of the Liturgy
Chapter Five: The Serious Rules of the Sacred Game
Homework: Read Chapter Seven, the Last, for next week.
Chapter Six: The Spirit of the Liturgy, Romano Guardini
The Seriousness of the Liturgy
(I feel the need to remind you that I'm only pulling out a few strands here, and trying to summarize. Feel free to bring up other passages in the comments — it's all so fruitful for thought and discussion! Thanks for reading with me!)
In this chapter, we have to be careful to consider the cultural state in which Guardini is writing. The temptation will be to imagine that he is reacting to a situation which he, in fact, did not experience (although he may have foreseen it), namely, the total collapse of the arts in the post-modern world, with the disaster that this has meant for the Liturgy. And we might fall into the error of thinking that he is, in effect, saying, “Ah, don't worry about it” — “it” being, in short, bad art in the Liturgy.
If we don't remember how things were (and how can we? We are too young! But we will try), we will mistake his meaning.
He has in mind the previous generation (as one always does), which was, in Europe especially, living out the very last gasp of the Renaissance mindset, which was to look upon beauty and art as simply aestheticism. At that point, having exhausted all the rapturous and exuberant explorations of the form, art had become something incompatible with worship, namely, it had devolved to a means of arousing emotions. (Today, if you ask someone what music is, he will answer, “an emotional experience.” Which is not what it is, although it may be an effect that music has, to rouse the emotions.)
In the previous chapter, Guardini wanted us to consider the Liturgy as a work of art, sharing in the philosophical idea of playfulness; that is, full of meaning and existing for its own sake rather than for the sake of something else.
Here, he brings us up short, lest we fall into this error of savoring the art — play — merely for itself as a diversion; even though it does exist for its own sake!
To explain the paradox, he offers a sharp reminder that it does art itself “an injustice” to fail to uphold the truth into which art is a window: he invokes the image of “the careworn man who seeks nothing at Mass but the fulfillment of the service which he owes to his God; the busy woman, who comes to be a little lightened of her burden; the many people who, barren of feeling and perceiving nothing of the beauty and splendor of word and sound which surrounds them, but merely seek strength for their daily toil” — reminding us that “all these penetrate far more deeply into the essence of the liturgy than does the connoisseur who is busy savoring the contrast between the austere beauty of a Preface and the melodiousness of a Gradual.”
Again, he is not resorting to that tired excuse used to turn aside or rebuke the genuine desire to adorn the Liturgy with what is fitting to its essence. Remember, he knows not of what has ensued. He is, rather, giving a quick primer on the relation of beauty to reality, and that is not an easy task.
Beauty is to the contemplative side of the Church what power is to her active side.
The preceding chapter endeavored to demonstrate that artistic self-sufficiency is actually compatible with the liturgy. Only a sophist could argue that the justification of a form of life resides exclusively in its manifest purposes. On the other hand, one must not forget as well that artistic worth — beauty — is as dangerous to the susceptible person as is power in the corresponding sphere of active communal life.
Just previously, he had stated: “But if power, the servant, were to be promoted to the position of master, the means to that of the end, the tool to that of the guiding hand, religion would then be stifled by despotism and its consequence, slavery.”
Likewise with beauty!
What beauty is, however, proves to be one of the more difficult philosophical questions, yet of the utmost importance to pursue, if we are to put it in right relation to other principles, and most of all, to escape preference, the goal of this whole study.
As Guardini says, beauty is a given — one of those objective qualities that must be accepted as axiomatic.
Truth is of itself a value, because it is truth, justice [goodness] because it is justice, and beauty because and in so far as it is beauty. No one of these qualities can derive its validity from another, but only from itself. The most profound and true thought does not make a work beautiful, and the best intentions of the artist avail as little, if his creation, in addition to a concrete, vivid and robust form, has not — in a word — beauty. Beauty as such is valid of itself, entirely independent of truth and other values…
… Beauty is the full, clear and inevitable expression of the inner truth in the external manifestation. “Pulchritudo est splendor veritatis” — “est species boni,” says ancient philosophy, “beauty is the splendid perfection which dwells in the revelation of essential truth and goodness.”
Where we stand now, this discussion is actually of supreme and vital importance.
It's really worth trying to figure out what he is saying. The ancients said things like “beauty is the radiance of truth” and we sort of nod and shrug… but when we consider the Liturgy, we suddenly see that God and the things of God are good (what Guardini here is calling just) — we know that God is true — but we also know that we can't know and receive this goodness and truth without light to see them by.
And then it dawns on us that God has made us with senses; we are human beings, connected by nature to the material world, and with a spirit, connected to the immaterial world. What is the connection of these connections? What is the light, the radiance?
Beauty.
And that dawning becomes the realization that beauty, far from being a nice little dollop of frosting on a cake (or maybe sugar to make the medicine go down), is precisely the means by which we can apprehend goodness and truth.
That is how the Western mind has expressed it. In the East, the simple way of putting it has been to say, “Beauty is a window on the unseen world.” (Knowing this helps us to understand icons better — we in the West who are so used to thinking of art as a merely aesthetic experience or as a tool to accomplish a goal.)
This is why Guardini insists that “truth is the soul of beauty” and that we not fall into the error of mere connoisseurship in the guise of honoring the Liturgy, or rather that in honoring the Liturgy, we honor the truth of it and trust that the art will follow.
… [T]ruth is at stake, and the fate of the soul, and real–yes, ultimately the only real–life. All this it is which must be revealed, expressed, sought after, found, and imparted by every possible means and method; and when this is accomplished, lo! it is turned into beauty.*
What makes us almost incapable today of understanding this in a deep way can be summed up in one word:
Rationalism.
We will speak of this again. For now, know that a serious breach occurred in man's thinking, and we turned away from knowledge of objective reality (and, ultimately, God) towards doubt. Rationalism refuses to accept reality as a gift, to receive truth from outside of itself.
When this breach happened, art was demoted inevitably from a window onto reality to an opaque wall, beyond which we don't even dare to look — lest we find nothingness.
Art, the expression of beauty, while (in Guardini's time yet) retaining many characteristics of the splendor of truth (harmony, graciousness, color, and simply good technique), having left aside its duty to truth — and indeed, despaired of the hope of knowing the truth, entered willy-nilly the sphere of the Will. Where there is no contact with something outside of oneself, only one's feelings — one's sense of power or lack of power — are left.
Soon (after Guardini's time, but in Ratzinger's and ours, so we will revisit this), even the vestiges of splendor in art fell away, and all that was left was the Will — the use of power to convey the desired effect. And that is why art today (as a larger cultural phenomenon, not speaking of exceptions) is ugly and seeks merely elicit reactions or to convey emptiness. Let's repeat what he said above:
The most profound and true thought does not make a work beautiful!
Far less a banal or untrue thought!
Thus the warning:
People who have not enjoyed… human perfection** or the beauty of a work of art, but desire closer familiarity with it, must take the inner essence for their starting-point.
This admonition can be applied to those whose facility with the technique of art enables them to produce all sorts of fabulous creations as well as those who consider that a mere gesture or chord — or dissonance — constitutes a work of art.
It turns out, therefore, that the gaudiest and most sentimental Rococo or Romantic works have more in common with today's vapid, ugly, and formulaic compositions than we might think.
In fact, they are two sides of the rationalist coin: The two things that can happen, once you give up on knowing truth.
On the one side, you have art for art's sake, aestheticism. On the other, art as manipulation, targeted to arouse what are deemed appropriate emotions — a delivery system, and who cares about the packaging? It's well known that certain musical chords can produce certain feelings. But is it beautiful merely to produce feelings?
Maybe this observation relieves the anxiety we feel (I know I felt it) when considering Guardini's “careworn man” or “busy woman,” just because it's been used against us when we've tried to defend beauty, as a tacit recourse to preference. But Guardini affirms: yes, perhaps they “know nothing” of beauty — not consciously. Yet, surely they know, or can sense at some level, what is fitting and what is not — for we are they — and we know! And they seek repose and find it where beauty radiates the splendor of goodness and truth, in that restrained fashion that we have been reading about in previous chapters — that serene correspondence with what is unseen, which allows room for their souls to expand and rest in the Living God.
*Guardini's footnote:
The Abbot of Marialaach rightly remarks in this connection, “I stress the point that the liturgy has developed into a work of art, it was not deliberately formed as such by the Church. The liturgy bore within itself so much of the seed of beauty that it was of itself bound to flower ultimately. But the internal principle which controlled the form of that flowering was the essence of Christianity.” (Herwegen, “Das Kunstprinzip der Liturgie,”p. 18, Paderborn, 1916.)
** Consider: “human perfection” means holiness. A little glimpse into another earth-shaking thought: Holiness and Beauty are the two ways (as Ratzinger tells us elsewhere) that man can encounter God on earth. The saints and art are the means that the material world can deliver goodness to us by our senses. Jesus Christ is the Exemplar: the Holy One, Beauty Itself, uniting in Himself the material and the spiritual — Human and Divine — perfectly in Himself. His saints carry out His mission… as do His artists. Both must do what Guardini tells us at the end of this chapter:
On the whole, however, and as far as everyday life is concerned, this precept holds good, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all else shall be added to you” — all else, even the glorious experience of beauty.
Lisa G. says
I’m glad you included the footnotes, because I’m reading the book and I keep forgetting there are to be found in the online version.
Leila says
Lisa, I only included the one. Just click on the link at the top of the page to go to the online version and view all the footnotes (there were only a few for this chapter).
Angelique says
I think we also experience holiness as beauty, at least in the sense that holy people become beautiful to us no matter how ravaged or asymmetrical their features are, and noble deeds are bathed in a kind of light even if we “know” that in the actual moment they were probably pretty gross (like childbirth and war).
Our sense of the beautiful has been malformed in a parallel and probably related way to how our consciences have…if you grow up being told Pollock is equal to da Vinci you begin to lose trust in your ability to know what’s real and true. I read an article once that asserted that the point of Communist propaganda wasn’t to convince (everyone knew it was lies), but to force people to tolerate and then participate in lies in order to wear down their moral courage. What effect is it having on us to have to pretend all this post-modern ugliness is beautiful art?
Mrs. B. says
What a great coincidence that we were writing about propaganda practically at the same time! As they say, great minds… 🙂
Angelique says
I know exactly what you mean. The portraits of Kim Jong-Il feel almost blasphemous.
Leila says
Angelique, very true! Goodness radiates from a person and makes him beautiful. By the same token, someone who appears beautiful at first but proves to be full of malice becomes ugly. Their pleasing looks become a lie.
Mother Theresa is a good example of the idea that holiness is beautiful, or radiates something from within. Her bent figure, her wizened face — so beautiful!
Mrs. B. says
I haven’t spent enough time with this chapter yet to comment, but the sentence that you highlight, “The most profound and true thought does not make a work beautiful!” made me smile and think that its corollary is that we shouldn’t feel guilty about throwing away sappy religious art!
Also, the expression “art as a delivery system” (something to produce a desired effect in the viewer/spectator) reminds us of why all tyrannies love to have the help of artists in establishing their ideological grip on the people. How instinctively we despise the artist at the service of a dictator! We sense a betrayal there, and that the truth has been wounded. No wonder propaganda is always so ugly.
Leila says
The comments about propaganda are right on target.
How to prevent art from becoming propaganda when the message is a good one? That is the question when it comes to the liturgy…
Lisa G. says
Your remark here: “that we not fall into the error of mere connoisseurship in the guise of honoring the Liturgy, or rather that in honoring the Liturgy, we honor the truth of it and trust that the art will follow.” The first part of this is what I was trying to express in my comment last week. I’ve seen too much of that in people’s preference for the Tridentine.
The second part of your sentence, Leila, is interesting. I have this thought: You have said that the Mass is Heaven. Yes, it must be, because God is there, and that’s what Heaven is, proximity to God. So, over time, the proximity to God has brought about the evolution of the Holy Mass, hopefully always going forwards and upwards, trying to express outwardly the heavenly nature of it. Now, we’re in an era where the common Mass has an ordinary feel to it. The translation is poor, the hymns are – many of them – awful, etc. How has this happened? We have forgotten where we are when we’re there. It’s still heaven, it has to be heaven, because even a terribly celebrated Mass is valid and God is there – but because we’re – I don’t know – distracted with other things, or just because of a modernist way of thinking – we have stopped honoring the truth of it. And things have gone downhill.
Leila says
You know, while I think that it’s good to try not to be distracted at Mass and to do our best with what is handed out to us, I think there is also a place to step back and consider *what the liturgy is.*
I’m hoping that this reading can be that place. It seems that very often our helplessness pushes us into a corner where we literally close our eyes and endure whatever is dished out to us and called “worship.” Sometimes it’s all we can do. I’ve been there.
But —
There has to be something objective in the celebration of the Liturgy that meets the criteria set by God, the Church, and even nature, which Guardini (and later, we will see, Ratzinger) try to explicate in a philosophical and theological way.
Yes, we can talk ourselves into a place where we try to overcome real obstacles. But we also need to ask questions about why those obstacles are there.
This goes way beyond whether some people chitchat after Mass or don’t dress properly. In fact, in this discussion, I’m really not very interested in that at all, since the real question is how it can come about that the most noble and meaningful ritual could be so obscured that people would lapse into thoughtless behavior. Even if they do, that bothers me much, much less than inappropriate music, ugly banners, flat language, absence of symbols, ignoring of saints, and a whole host of jarring omissions and commissions to the worship itself.
It seems to me that the obstacles come about because of a misunderstanding of what the Mass is — on the part of those whose responsibility it is to present it to us, the laity. WE can’t do anything about how it’s celebrated (other than complain!). Only priests can celebrate the Mass; only bishops can change the way the Mass is celebrated — and only then by acting in union with the Pope.
Changes have been made — legitimately and illegitimately. The latter because, again, of a (sometimes wilful) misunderstanding.
Very often in history, the laity — the ordinary folk who are on the receiving end of these things — are the ones to set things straight. Popular acclamation can be a real force!
What is so disheartening is not having the knowledge to be able to reply to the accusation that the way we worship is a matter of taste, of preference. “You do it your way [only you can’t], we’ll do it ours.”
It seems to me that this is the vital question: What is preference and what is the way it should be done? How can you tell?
This chapter gets us ever closer… don’t you think?
Lisa G. says
I hope I didn’t seem like I was disagreeing with you, because I’m not. I am afraid I often express myself very inadequately. 🙂 I am getting a lot from these readings – so, thank you. xoxo
When I said we’re distracted with other things, a better word might have been “occupied”. And I was meaning, not people at weekly Mass, but the Catholic church as a whole – we got lost along the way and stopped “honoring the truth” as you put it so well. Now we’re in the ditch.
There was a paragraph I actually underlined in my book, where he says: “The Church has not built up the ‘Opus Dei’ for the pleasure of forming beautiful symbols…but…for the sake of our desperate spiritual need.” How many Christians, even Catholics would even understand or agree with that remark? “It is to give expression to the events of the Christian’s inner life: the assimilation, through the Holy Ghost of the life of the creature to the life of God in Christ; the actual and genuine rebirth [I wish I could type that in boldface]…We see, then, that it is primarily concerned with reality, with the approach of a real creature to a real God, and with the profoundly real and serious matter of redemption. There is no question of creating beauty, but of finding salvation for sin-stricken humanity.”
This struck me greatly.
Leila says
Yes, Lisa — I know you agree 🙂 Thank you so much for discussing and sharing your very pertinent thoughts. It’s a joy to read your comments, believe me! And I resonate with all your concerns, for they are mine as well.
I guess what I am trying to say is that it’s very hard for us to move away, just for a bit, from the consideration of what our personal response is to the Mass, in order to discuss what worship is and how it should be celebrated. Not because I don’t think that we need to know what it is, despite shortcomings. But because I think that if we examine what it is in its essence, we can encourage a renewal and perhaps escape from this place we are in, where in many cases we have to exert the utmost effort not to lose hope.
Maybe an illustration would work — offered not at all in response to your comments, but just to expand on what it is that I think that maybe, for the sake of worship itself, for doing our duty by our children! our point of view could be here, or what mine is…
Suppose, after much study, we were convinced of the goodness of a well prepared, nutritionally balanced meal. We take to heart that it must be made of good ingredients, sourced from hygienic suppliers who respect their work. This meal must then be lovingly prepared with attention to the requirements of each of the ingredients in turn. It must then be presented appealingly, so that not only the vision of this banquet, but its aromas might entice the most jaded of palates, and the hungry would gratefully clamor to be let in to partake.
And then suppose that this knowledge began to fall away, and the meals that were actually presented in our time (for the sake of argument — there are many different ways this meal could be corrupted) were more like a sort of TV dinner (do they still have those?) — just slapped down with the minimum of effort, and ended up a fairly dried out, sad kind of nourishment indeed. (Again, in this case.)
One response would be to get angry and rant about how WE KNOW how food should be served. This would tend to be my response 🙂
One response would be for us to be grateful that we have food at all. No question. We could go to this meal, try to conjure up the image of what it is meant to be, and swallow it down, knowing that the calories would sustain us and that human life can survive on much less. Are there not prisoners who would be overjoyed to eat this vermin-free supper? Yes. We would sadly bring our children to this, the only meal that is available, hoping that somehow they will acquire knowledge of what dining ought to be — even though, without memory, how can they?
And this, I think, is the response of the good, pious, reverent people who don’t like the TV-dinner-makers to get upset (mainly because they know there would be no point) and who genuinely do just think that they will be able to be healthy and happy with this kind of dining, even if it’s not perfect. They also just give up on communicating with the people who genuinely just love this kind of thing (and honestly, judging by the frozen-food section in the grocery store, there are many of them!).
OR — we can begin the conversation with as many people as we can about what food is, what our nature is that we need food to live, and what the various means of preparing and serving this food would be.
And that is what my focus is here: the way the banquet (vs. tray meal) is meant to be in itself, apart from our response to it.
What I think you are saying is that when we realize that we have a desperate need for this — that we are HUNGRY — then we will be much more inclined to take the meal issue seriously.
And if I’m correct, that’s a very good point.
There still remains the problem of the cooks… 🙂
Lisa G. says
You are correct – my usual way of thinking is that any authentic change has to come, in a natural way, from within. But you are right also when you suggest beginning the conversation with others, because if they never *heard* a different idea or way, that makes a bigger obstacle to any hoped-for change up the road. Yes. And your illustration brings to mind “Babette’s Feast”, which I saw once, and I know is considered to be a very “Catholic” film. I get that today better than I did a few years ago when I saw it. 🙂
I am aware that my dislike of the old rite is mostly based on my preferences. But I hope even a small part of it isn’t. Before the sixties, when everything started visibly falling apart, there must have been something very wrong, or things could not have collapsed in the way they did. Where was the foundation? Carl Rogers comes to mind, and the awful influence he had on those nuns. But if those sisters had had a solid faith, knew what they believed and why (if they’d only had Leila for their mother!), would they have fallen like ninepins? The Tridentine Mass wasn’t enough to prevent it; there was something rotten in Denmark. So, I guess I associate an attachment to it with an attachment to religion as the object. (Well, I am probably still being preferential and subjective – I don’t know anymore.)
For you, the important thing is to engage people to think about the rite, the “meal”. For me, the big thing is trying to get people to love God. I think Pope Francis is also coming from this direction. (not that that has anything to do with you or me!) That is the root. I assume if a person genuinely loves God, properly, He will be able to lead them in the Right Direction, and they will come to the truth. Still, I won’t guarantee that by the end of it, my ideas will still be exactly the same. 😉 I have already learned much, and can see your point better than before.
You are working very hard with this discussion. It’s much more difficult to express on the page than just in speaking. I wish more would give opinions. 🙂
Angelique says
I am not a historian, but the best explanation I have heard for the rot was that the culture at large being given over to Modernism, the family and then the Church became infected as well…that goes back almost a hundred years before Vatican II. When you think about it, the family rosary Crusade and even Leave it to Beaver are not symptoms of a healthy culture but a desperate plea to fight for one under attack.
I think the focus on the rite is meant to HELP us in our love of God. In the same way we need to study the teachings of the Church in order to have properly formed consciences in order to be able to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, we need to study the teachings of the Church in order to have a properly formed sense of worship so that we can worship God not only in a way that’s most fitting for His glory, but in a way that’s most sanctifying for us.
Lisa G. says
I’m sure you’re right, Angelique – I guess it’s naive of me to imagine it happening naturally, without anything else in the way of beauty and guidance. 🙂
sibyl says
Oh, my goodness. How pertinent this comment is to the things I’ve been mulling over lately! I came to this book discussion late, having to borrow the book from an elderly priest friend first. Thank you so, so much for making this particular analogy. We are currently attending an FSSP parish, with an EF Mass, and I’m so conflicted about driving so far to get to it, although my husband is the one who really feels drawn and wants to be there.
I have been struggling so much with the problem of how to say why it isn’t just about preference, and why this liturgy isn’t just about nostalgia, or a desire to ignore history beginning with 1965, or something. This really helps me to understand the point about what the liturgy IS, as opposed to what we have gotten used to, and why it might be all right to find something as ornate as the EF fitting and worthy to worship God.
Not that regular, reverent OF Masses don’t worship Him too. But there really is a difference between TV dinners off plastic trays and home-cooked food presented as carefully and lovingly as a family has the means to do.
Angelique says
I think part of the equation is that it’s not just enough to be saying something that’s true, but we need to have a humility before Truth. There is such a temptation on all sides to cherrypick our preferences so that we can cut truth down to a nice handy seize to wield as a weapon. But truth is usually bigger than that. I think that’s why Those pictures of Our Lord and Lady of different nationalities don’t seem like propaganda, but pictures of child Jesus and Joseph with crew cuts do. The first is just meant to be an expression of the doctrine that Jesus came from all nations, whereas the second seems to just be a repudiation of hippies.
Angelique says
Sorry, that wa meant to be a reply to the propaganda discussion. 🙂
Leila says
Angelique, yes, Guardini keeps mentioning humility, doesn’t he? And what other attitude *could* we have before the vastness and grandeur that is the Truth?
I think it’s interesting to think about how thinly veiled *power* is, behind “art” that is designed to instruct or manipulate. We see it right away — but we are conditioned to accept it, alas, in all but its most obvious forms, or I should say forms that have already been revealed to be totalitarian.
Those pictures of the Holy Family that arise from specific cultures have no “will” behind them, no urge to dominate. They simply present something for the viewer’s contemplation. They are universal too, paradoxically, because they invite the viewer to turn from them to his own culture and imagine the Holy Family to be like him as well. As they are…
Nancy says
I am a little late on the discussion. If I am understanding the prior comments & chapter reading, it is that beauty, truth, art, music, gestures will be universal (community & community of saints) yet personal, and will lead us in union (both in soul & in our human senses) with God. I personally think we have forgotten or need to be awakened to the liturgy as our SUMMIT in life. I have a magnet on my refrigerator door that reminds me to “be the change you wish to see in the world” and I have begun talking, discussing, and asking questions.
Leila says
The modern tendency is to make everything refer to the self — how the self sees things, how we feel. That is because the self has been cut off from the OTHER — that which exists outside of the self. Modernism — rationalism (which has been ascendant for centuries now! we will talk about this) — doubts and finally despairs of objective (external) truth.
Remember what Guardini says in chapter 1:
“The primary and exclusive aim of the liturgy is not the expression of the individual’s reverence and worship for God. It is not even concerned with the awakening, formation, and sanctification of the individual soul as such.”
To us, this is unthinkable. NOT ABOUT ME???
🙂
The reading is to answer the question… then what?
Nancy says
As to the question…then what? The answer to the question is “Seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all else shall be added to you”-along with “Opus Dei”. Am I on the correct path in my comprehension?
You make a great point. I am sure I fall into this modern tendency fully unaware of doing so.
Sidenote-When I was writing my last sentence, I was thinking about the discussions that I am having in trying to get the tabernacle back on the main altar.
Libby Jane says
Oh, Leila!
“When this breach happened, art was demoted inevitably from a window onto reality to an opaque wall, beyond which we don’t even dare to look — lest we find nothingness.”
This is such an important moment. Rationalism, and how it has changed the way we look at everything! I have been fighting to express this convincingly to our senior high sunday school class. We have discovered, to my great surprise, though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, that every one in our small class is a rationalist.
It is a hinge point, and I can’t figure out how to communicate across it.
sibyl says
Sorry to be such a latecomer to this discussion, but I just must say, that in my early adulthood when I came to the faith from a sinful life, I was profoundly bothered by how ordinary Mass was. Just so blase, about the God who made the universe, who made my soul, who keeps the world spinning and who deigns to come down into a tiny piece of bread for my eternal salvation. Where is the rejoicing? I’m sorry, but there was such a disconnect — not in the other Mass-goers, but between what we said we were doing and what the liturgy was. If I was receiving a magic food that would make me immortal, from a god who came down bodily every Sunday to feed me with this bread of immortality, wouldn’t my actions, my songs, my posture, be different? I mean, if it were really real?
That’s why despite the “artificiality” of the older form of the liturgy, there are in some ways more true expressions. We should kneel to receive our God. The priest should be heavily, even regally dressed and not look like himself. The environment, the vessels, they should reflect the fact that our Lord is doing an unthinkable thing here.
Yet at the same time, many of the symbols may not be connected with an interior reality anymore. It would be great to go back and talk more about what a symbol is and if it could ever lose its efficacy.