{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
The Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament
Homework: Read Chapter One of Part III.
Chapter Five, Part II: Sacred Time
Of course, I love all the chapters of this book.
But this one speaks so deeply to us, we who are trying to live family life with a sense of beauty, order, and wonder. We are raising our children, and we want them to be connected with each other, with us, with the larger human family, with nature and the whole of creation, and with God. We want to worship in a connected way. I believe that is what we are all searching for. And we wrestle with time.
The questions that are answered in this chapter are the following: Is time something we ought to mark? How? Is the way we celebrate feasts arbitrary, or not — and if not arbitrary, why not?
(Did you find this chapter a little rougher than some of the others? Try reading the last paragraph first.)
Obviously, the first question is simply, “What is time?”
We could get lost in a philosophical discussion, but since Cardinal Ratzinger declines to do so, we will follow his example. It's true that Aristotle observed that time is the principle of corruption. And for anyone on this earthly journey, it can seem that time and eternity are separate.
But for Christians, things are different. As we've been reading, we've seen how Jesus Christ is the bridge. He became Incarnate “and drew time into the sphere of eternity…. in the Son, time co-exists with eternity.”
Time is a given. But it's not strictly linear — it has a rhythm. This rhythm is set by the sun and the moon. “The first thing to say is that time is a cosmic reality… the course of the sun and the moon leaves its mark on [man's] life.”
After considering the many facets of how time is marked in nature, Ratzinger begins with the weekly rhythm and the question of the Sabbath: Is the Sunday the new Sabbath? The connection between Old and New, we have seen, is crucial for Christianity. The Sabbath is the original Covenant that God makes with man. But now we have the New Covenant:
Jesus' giving of himself unto death gives the words he speaks at the supper their realism…. only through the Resurrection does the covenant come fully into being,” uniting man with God. “Thus, the Day of Resurrection is the new Sabbath.
On page 96 we have a fantastic discussion of the importance of number in this covenant. I will try to unpack it for you, the “three different names for this day” — the Sunday.
- It's the third day, seen from the Cross: “the day of theophany, the day when God entered into the world.” Death and Resurrection give the Incarnation its full meaning for man.
- It's the first day, in terms of the week: It's the beginning of creation, the new day, the day of rebirth, the day of the sun. Jesus has emerged from the “virgin tomb” just as he emerged from the virgin womb, inaugurating a new covenant for man.
- It's the eighth day, looking back on the week, because it's the seventh day (last day of the week, Sabbath in terms of the Old Testament, the old creation) and first day (first day of the week) — giving it significance as the eighth day, which is the “new time” connected with eternity, the heavenly day! Here we see again our spiral. The closed circle of the week is opened up — upwards!
The massive and magnificent Florence Baptistery, which is eight-sided as are many baptismal fonts and chapels, to symbolize the truth that the Sacrament of Baptism gains us entry into heaven.
Sunday is “time's proper measure” — it is not arbitrary. We can't have a day of rest to fulfill the Commandment on any other day. Sunday is Sunday.
Likewise, “Jesus did not want to die on just any date.” Now this opens up all sorts of questions about when to celebrate Easter. And I will say that this section certainly might cause a little eyes-rolling-up-in-their-sockets action, but stick with it just a bit.
What was essential was the connection with the date of the death and Resurrection of Jesus, which was of its very nature linked with the Jewish liturgical calendar. Now this link, raising as it does the question of the relation of New Testament to Old and of the newness of Christianity, was to have explosive potential.
The Council of Nicaea (325) had to settle the question of whether to fix the day by the lunar calendar (following the Jews and the celebration of Passover) or the Sunday, which relates to the solar rhythm. The Council determined that Easter should be celebrated on the Sunday after the full moon of the spring. “Through [the Council's] ruling, the solar and lunar calendars were interconnected, and the two great cosmic forms of ordering time were linked to each other in association with the history of Israel [the Passover] and the life of Jesus [the Resurrection].” (P. 99)
And it gets more interesting! When the question arose of when the latest date of Easter could be, St. Leo the Great made it clear that according to Scripture, Easter should fall in the first month — “not April, but the time when the sun is passing through the first part of the Zodiac — the sign of Aries. The constellation in the heavens seemed to speak, in advance and for all time, of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” — and, of course, the prefiguration of Christ in the story of Isaac and his “replacement” sacrifice of the ram, caught in the thicket.
And don't miss how the date of Easter ties in with the significance of March 25 (the feast of the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary), on page 100.
“It seems clear to me,” Ratzinger says, “that we have to recapture this cosmic vision if we want once again to understand and live Christianity in its full breadth.”
What does he mean? He is saying here that we are hungering for this connection with history and with the stars. Without even knowing it, the connection is there. “That is why the calendar of the Christian feasts is not to be manipulated at will.”
When pondering the very beautiful rhythm of the seasons of nature in concert with the liturgical seasons, I often guiltily wondered about our dear antipodean friends. What about those who end up celebrating Christmas at the beach? How can Easter come during Autumn?
Well, our dear Pope Benedict anticipates just this question. On p. 103 he even brings up the issue of inculturation. Ought things to be changed on account of those living in a different hemisphere? He says, “If the cosmic symbolism is so important, ought we not to adjust the liturgical calendar for the Southern Hemisphere?… if we did this, we would reduce the mystery of Christ to the level of a merely cosmic religion… the cosmic serves the historical… we are not chasing myths… God really has acted in our history and taken our time into his hands.”
And he goes on to show that within each event in Christ's life are contained all. Even over the darling coziness of the manger hovers the menace of Herod's edict; even while contemplating the babe in his mother's arms, we can't escape the innocents' death. “Christ connects the world's spring and autumn.” (P. 104)
Many times we hear the scornful “fact” from popular experts that Christmas is celebrated on December 25 because Christians were co-opting pagan sun-worship or Roman imperial religion, as though the Gospel story is without any sort of intrinsically compelling narrative of its own.
[T]hese old theories can no longer be sustained. The decisive factor was the connection of creation and Cross, of creation and Christ's conception… these dates brought the cosmos into the picture… the pre-annunciation of Christ, the Firstborn of creation (cf. Col 1:15). It is he of whom creation speaks, and it is by him that its mute message is deciphered. (P. 108)
You might as well say that the pagans were dimly miming some reality the details of which they were unaware, or the Romans were unconsciously patterning their artificial religion on the real one. Those explanations make more sense!
St. Jerome: “Even creation approves our preaching. The universe itself bears witness to the truth of our words. Up to this day [Christmas Day] the dark days increase, but from this day the darkness decreases…”
So this chapter looks closely at Easter, the fulfillment of the mission of Jesus Christ, and Christmas, the great feast of his Incarnation, to demonstrate that the celebration of these feasts fits with history and nature. Of course, all the other feasts flow from these two, and all are ordered to God — but so is the sun and so is the moon. Thus, so is time itself.
When we think of the moon, we think of how it “has no light of its own but shines with a brightness that comes from the sun. This is a sign to us that we men are in constant need of a “little” light, whose hidden light helps us to know and love the light of the Creator, God one and triune.”
These “little lights” are the saints, whose feasts are kept in the sacred time, in the rhythm of the passing year. Just as the stars feed our souls, so does the beauty of holiness. Beauty, the radiance of truth, is known to us within time — that is to say, in creation — by means of holiness. We can't do without God's saints, any more than we can do without the radiance of nature (beautiful things of creation) or of art (beautiful things made by man).
And it must be so:
One might say that the saints are, so to speak, new Christian constellations, in which the richness of God's goodness is reflected. Their light, coming from God, enables us to know better the interior richness of God's great light, which we cannot comprehend in the refulgence of its glory.
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.
Sherrylynne says
I can’t stop chasing my husband around, saying, “Now listen to this part! This is amazing!” Each chapter just gets better and better but this chapter, in particular, was very illuminating. (Sorry about the pun.) Now having had a college level astronomy class and finding that course (very unrelated to my major) so much more than I expected, I cannot help but think that as the Earth revolves around the sun, we get a fresh view every year of all the stars whose light Ratzinger refers to as all the Saints reflecting back Christ’s light. This information provides a fresh look at the quarterly turns of many of the feast days.
Leila says
Yes! I agree! I love finding out more and more about how the faith connects with reality. You knew it does… it’s just mind-blowing to know how much!
Marie S. says
So glad I’m not the only one who keeps insisting on reading my husband snippets because it is so wonderful! Thanks for giving me a good excuse to finally read some Ratzinger/Benedict. Anything by him has been on my list for a long time, but aside from some short essays on various feasts, this is the first.
Lauren says
Very interesting article. Thank you for sharing this book study.
Leila says
Thanks for reading along with us, Lauren!
Lisa G. says
I keep finding, for some reason, that I have almost nothing to say during this book discussion. But it doesn’t mean I’m not reading, or getting anything out of this excellent book.
I will say the comparison of the saints and the stars is very nice.
Leila says
Thanks, Lisa! I really appreciate that you are reading along with us. As I see people discussing the ad orientem posture, I just want to yell: READ THIS BOOK!!!