{Book Club: The Spirit of the Liturgy}
- I hope you will read along in this book club (or just read my posts, that’s okay): Joseph Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy.
- (When you buy something via our Amazon affiliate link, a little cash rolls our way… just a little. Thanks!)
- I’ll post on Fridays, although for this longer book, perhaps not every Friday. I’ll give you your homework, I’ll talk about what we read, we’ll discuss in the comments. Even if you read later, the comments will still be open.
Previously:
Introduction to the reading: Joseph Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy: A Book Club for Easter and Beyond
Nature or history in worship? Or both?
The Relationship of the Liturgy to Time and Space: preliminary questions
Homework: Read Chapter Three of Part II.
Chapter Two, Part II: Sacred Places — The Significance of the Church Building
This chapter is pretty straightforward, although I suppose that there are those people from hippie days who see no reason for buildings, but insist that it's more authentic to worship in the great outdoors. I would like to have time to bring up the subject of whether, as originally intended by the Creator, the outdoors itself (the entire Cosmos, that is) was meant to be a Temple, and that these free spirits are misguided when they suppose that they are rejecting the notion of any sort of structure when they choose to commune with the Great One without the “necessity” of walls.
Such an inquiry is not within my competence, however, as I am not a Hebrew scholar or a theologian, so we will go with the assertion at the start of the chapter to the effect that everyone agrees that the Christian community needs a place to meet.
{By the way, if we were discussing this out on the deck, I would have to exclaim a bit about how this is the sort of discussion I love — seemingly obvious or even mundane, but getting, finally, to the bottom of why things are, and not taking anything for granted, but rooting it all in the rich soil of reality. I do love Pope Benedict! A friend said that he thought that future centuries would look at ours and proclaim Joseph Ratzinger the greatest theologian of this time, even when compared with John Paul II. A thinker for the ages. So true!}
Breezing along past the interesting observation that “other religions” didn't see worship as involving gathering at all — quite the contrary, temples were “cultic spaces reserved to the deity” or, in the Old Covenant, the place where the priest alone may enter to perform the rites, and only once a year — we see that the “calling together,” the assembly, becomes the “domus ecclesia” which then means the building as well as the people gathered therein.
We need to look at this building. What is going on there? What kind of a building is it, then? It has close relationship with the synagogue, which in turn has a close relationship with the Temple. Not only is it a place for instruction, “its orientation was always toward the presence of God.” So, two places within the building: the place for the Word (the “seat of Moses” and itself a kind of presence) and the place for the Shekinah — the cloud of God's presence. (P. 64)
This presence, however, came to be characterized by absence, during the Exile. “The empty Holy of Holies had now become an act of expectation, of hope, that God himself would one day restore his throne.” (P. 65)
And here the subject of “orientation” comes up. Although this chapter is really about the building, the groundwork is being laid for understanding this concept of focus, which for the synagogal worship was Jerusalem. The people and their priest prayed together, orienting themselves to the Holy City.
The prayers they prayed link the Scriptures, the word, to the sacrifice, but without the Temple, the sacrifice is the prayer. This reminds Ratzinger of the Trisagion of the Christian liturgy: a prayer that doesn't originate with the people or the priest, but is a joining in with the prayer of the heavenly host, “the cosmic song of praise of the cherubim and the seraphim.”
{I want you to hear this Trisagion (“Holy God”) composed by a contemporary, Roman Hurko. We sing this at our church — so beautiful!}
Well, helpfully, Ratzinger has a little list of points at the end of this chapter, laying out the three innovations that “give Christian liturgy its new and proper profile,” specifically in relation to the connection of church to synagogue — between Old and New Testaments, as to form, so let's just look at those:
1. Orientation: The replacement of Jerusalem as the focus of prayer with the East, towards the rising sun.
This is not a case of Christians worshipping the sun but of the cosmos speaking of Christ… The east supersedes the Jerusalem Temple as a symbol…
In the Incarnation, human nature truly becomes the throne and seat of God, who is thus forever bound to the earth and accessible to our prayers… it is certain that [this turning to the east] goes back to the earliest times and was always regarded as an essential characteristic of Christian liturgy (and indeed of private prayer)… (P. 68)
It expresses the basic christological form of our prayer… The liturgy, turned toward the east, effects entry… into the procession of history toward the future, the New Heaven and the New Earth… in parts of Christendom, the eastward direction for prayer was given added emphasis by a reference to the Cross. (P. 69)
This is an important point to remember: “the symbolism of the Cross merges with that of the east… this turning toward the east also signifies that cosmos and saving history belong together. The cosmos is praying with us… waiting for redemption.” (P. 70)
Remember our previous discussion about whether nature or history comprise the essence of worship? In the church building, the orientation and the Cross represent the synthesis of these two seemingly opposed ways of liturgy.
2. The altar. “At the east wall, or in the apse, there now stands an altar on which the Eucharistic Sacrifice is celebrated.” This is not a table in our modern sense of “place to eat,” but truly an altar of sacrifice, that has its own symbolism: “the entry of him who is the Orient into the assembled community and the going out of the community from the prison of this world through the curtain, now torn open, a participation in the Pasch, the ‘passing over' from the world to God, which Christ has opened up. It is clear that the altar in the apse both looks toward the Oriens and forms part of it.” (P. 70)
Thus it brings heaven into the community assembled on earth, or rather it takes that community beyond itself into the communion of saints of all times and places. We might put it this way: the altar is the place where heaven is opened up. (P. 71)
Paradoxically, we worship in a space that is closed — a building with a roof and walls — but this building contains within it the opening to the beyond.
3. The two holy places. The early church retains the bema, the holy place at which to proclaim the Word. The Gospels replace the Torah but do not abolish it; they open up its meaning. Without the Scriptures (the Old Testament writings), the Gospels “would have no foundation.”
Quite spontaneously, the new, second holy place, the altar, is surrounded by a curtain, from which, in the Eastern Church, the Iconostasis develops… thus, in the early church buildings, the liturgy has two places. First, the Liturgy of the Word takes place at the center of the building. The faithful are grouped around the bema, the elevated area where the throne of the Gospel, the seat of the bishop, and the lectern are located. The Eucharistic celebration proper takes place in the apse, at the altar, which the faithful “stand around.” Everyone joins with the celebrant in facing east, toward the Lord who is to come. (P. 72)
These conclusions are drawn simply by tracing the development of the liturgy in the early Church and examining how the people worshiped.
Were there any other passages you'd like to talk about?
Questions? Comments? I'd love to hear from you!
(Emphases added in quotes are mine.)
Click here to see our previous discussion of Romano Guardini’s The Spirit of the Liturgy, which you can read free, online. You can also purchase it here, although be warned, this edition does not have the footnotes, which stinks.
Mrs. B. says
Speaking of the church as a building, today I saw this: http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2016/06/ugly-churches-win-awards.html
It links to the newspaper owned by the Italian Conference of Bishops: the article reports the architects’ opinions (one building is asymmetrical to “convey the tensions in today’s world”, and its walls are white “to match the flowers in the nearby park”) without a peep, as if this was normal. It makes me mad…
sibyl says
You know, I went to Catholic school for really a darn long time and never learned why the lectern was placed where it is, why the priest’s chair was placed off to the side, etc. Somewhere recently I read an article about the way people organized themselves at the very earliest recorded worship: the men sat on one side, women on the other, and within those divisions there were further divisions based on state in life as well as age. I wonder if that had something to do with the placement of the Mary statue and the Joseph statue on opposite sides, or not.
This is all so foreign to today, where the composition of the interior of a church seems, like everything else, to be random, at the whim of whoever designed the place. The function as well as the interior meaning of what was being done dictated — and still ought to! — what the architecture is.
Lisa G. says
“The altar is the place where heaven is opened up” – that was a BOING with me! It, in a phrase, seemed to clearly state things he had said previously, not so clearly (to me). Not that I didn’t get it myself, but often, when I’m reading this stuff, I am also imagining how obscure this would seem to a low-church Protestant, at least to some I know. And frankly, I can’t imagine myself being able to express it, or bothering to try. But that was very clearly put!
I read this chapter earlier, and now your post. I’ll read the chapter again and come back, hopefully.
Amy Johnson says
Do you know where I could view/purchase the sheet music for the Hurko piece? I’m having no luck with Google…I did find a website with some of his works for sale but not Holy God. I’ve never heard of him before – but that was stunning! Thanks.
Leila says
Amy, I will work on getting info for you on the score. The Trisagion is part of his Liturgy No. 3, which is available on his website. But we might be able to get just the score for that one piece. I will let you know soon.
Lisa G. says
Yes, that music is beautiful!
About this chapter: I wasn’t clear about when Pope Ratzinger says, “…the word first makes its appearance with the appointment of Aaron”. A funny thing – I got my Bible, hoping I could find said appointment of Aaron without taking too much time, and lo! opened the book and found I was at Exodus, chapter 7. when God said to Moses, “Behold, I have appointed thee the God of Pharao; and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.” !(Douay)
But I’m not sure if that’s the text he’s referring to. Later in that paragraph, he says the Sinai community came together “to hear God’s Word and to seal everything with sacrifice”. That struck me.
And what seems to be at the heart of what Leila’s trying to get us to understand here, was expressed rather more forcibly and clearly to me, as I mentioned in my earlier comment. He says, “the Eucharist is an entry into the liturgy of heaven”. And the rest is in Leila’s point #2.
So I guess I don’t have too much more to say, except that even though he’s speaking of the liturgy, I actually wondering while reading if I could figure a way to change the way my bedroom is set up, so the statues or holy pictures are on the eastern wall. hmm
Leila says
Wow, Lisa!
In our book, The Little Oratory, we do mention that if you can put your little oratory on an eastern wall, that is most propitious, for the very reasons discussed in this chapter. (I do think it’s interesting that very few children today seem to know which way is east! or compass points in general… )
But note carefully the little passage about how the early church put a crucifix on the eastern wall, and thus there came to be an identity between the crucifix and all that is symbolized by the east. So if you have the crucifix in the center of your oratory, you are essentially bringing in this meaning.
This comes up in the next chapter!
Mrs. B. says
I wanted to pass along a link to a post Msgr. Charles Pope, of the DC Achdiocese, wrote last year, in which he describes how Catholic churches have always followed a biblical model, and takes his current parish church as an example: http://blog.adw.org/2015/07/on-the-biblical-roots-and-requirements-of-church-design/
Every detail is accounted for, and every detail is there for a reason – it is marvelous. He writes: “My own parish church is a sermon in stone, wood, and glass. […] In effect, the builders of my church (built in 1939) were saying, when you walk into this church, you have entered Heaven.” It is also fascinating when he explains how the instructions God gives in the OT match very well with what St. John sees in his vision of Heaven and records in the Apocalypse.
So yes, building and liturgy are intertwined, and they are all about Heaven, not about us.
And what this really means is that the main argument against monstrous church buildings like the ones I linked to in my first comment is not that they insult the eye and deny beauty (though they do, and it’s telling that they do!), but that they forget (I want to be charitable here) what the church building is all about, and that there is a link between building and liturgy, and that God is the author of the link, and we tamper with this at our own risk (in the sense that shoving to the side meaningful things, and treating them like superfluous details, when not something we’ve finally “grown out of” as a Church, has an effect on our faith).
Lisa G. says
I think your charitable comment may be true – there is much from the past which is forgotten now. Of course, it happened because at some point it was deemed unimportant. Some of these modern buildings are not so ugly on the inside, but only as something other than a church, which should be – and IS – very different from everything else.
I wonder if these modern architects are even Catholic, or practicing Catholics. It may be that the blame doesn’t lie with them entirely. These people should not be hired for something like a church. What a muddle.
Lisa G. says
Which reminds me of something – I’ve never been to D.C., but my brother was just telling me the other day that the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception doesn’t have any windows, or hardly any. He didn’t say it was an ugly place, but that seems a little strange. Perhaps there’s a good reason for this. It’s certainly pretty on the outside.
Mrs. B. says
Lisa, that’s a strange impression your brother got: the Shrine has in fact many windows. They are rather high, so perhaps that’s the reason.
I’m not a huge fan of the main upper church (the mosaics are breathtaking, the statues much less so), but the crypt church is a different story! I *almost* feel back to Italy, in one of my beloved dark churches. In two hundred years it will have acquired some decay and mustiness, and then it will be perfect: American churches are too prim and proper for me 🙂
Lisa G. says
I’ll have to ask him again. Maybe if it was crowded he didn’t notice them. (but let me not give the impression he’s dumb – he pays better attention to detail than I do!)
Mrs. B. says
I don’t begrudge the architects the ambition to build something that will win a prize. It is rather sad, though, that an architect is commissioned a church, and all he can come up with is a white box. How stale. How predictable. Aren’t we tired of this kind of “art” yet? As you say, perhaps that’s exactly what their client wanted: there ARE contemporary architects who would have delivered a completely different building, after all.
There is a book, Ugly As Sin, by Michael Rose, that documents what you say, that the design principles governing church building at some point left Catholicism behind. That’s not a very good sign, is it not, that those clients got what they wanted? Crisis of faith is an expression that might come to mind.