The Nature of the Liturgy

The liturgy derives its greatness from what it is, not from what we make of it. Our participation is, of course, necessary, but as a means of inserting ourselves humbly into the spirit of the liturgy, and of serving Him Who is the true subject of the liturgy: Jesus Christ. The liturgy is not an expression of the consciousness of a community which, moreover is diffuse and changing. It is revelation received in faith and prayer, and its measure is consequently the faith of the Church, in which revelation is received.

Kids at Mass

Well, at least this can begin the discussion for our family: follow the links.
Thanks for the help Bettnet.

Children of Hope

HT: Children of Hope Adore

How to End the Holy Mysteries II

How to End the Holy Mysteries

About Catholic Advent Traditions

See here for a start.
More here too.
And don't forget this.

Amazing Accomplishment: Virtual Liturgy

Not what you might think from the title of this entry. Follow this link: download the pdf's: very rare indeed, and considered some of the very best ever produced.

Supernatural Power

Priests are not like the rest of us. As if that were not obvious. Wait: that does not seem to be obvious. So I say it again: priests are not like the rest of us. When I go around consecrating and blessing things, my wife - rightly - punches me in the ear. When a priest consecrates and blesses something, it becomes set apart for sacred use: this is because priests have supernatural power. This power is not of their own, it is not "magic" or a person casting a spell: no, when a priest blesses something or someone he is bestowing good from outside nature: supernatural good from God.

The implication, by the way, is that when Catholics approach the altar in the communion line, and instead receive a "blessing" from an extraordinary Eucharistic minister, it is just not the same. Think about that next time. There really is a good reason why more people line up on the "priest's side" to receive.

. . . on second thought: I do not mean to say "think about that next time" you are at the Sacred Mysteries. I mean "think about that next time" when appropriate. Just a point of clarification.

Good News

. . . for my wife, daughter and all the other children in the US.

The Spirit of the Liturgy

"Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment." - Josef Cardinal Ratzinger

Holy Water

Water is a mysterious thing. It is so clear and frictionless, so "modest," as St. Francis called it. It hardly pretends to any character of its own. It seems to have no other end or object than to be of service, to cleanse what is soiled and to refresh what is dry.

But at some time you must have gazed down into the still depths of a great body of water, and felt it tugging to draw you in, and have got a glimpse of the strange and secret thing water is, and of the marvels, terrors and enticements that lurk in its depths. Or, at another time when it was whipped to a boiling torrent by a storm, you have heard it rushing and roaring, rushing and roaring, and watched the sucking vortex of a whirlpool and felt a force so grim and dreary that you had to tear your thoughts away.

It is indeed a strange element. On the one hand smooth and transparent, as if it hardly existed in its own right, ready at hand to wash away dirt and satisfy thirst; and on the other a restless, foundationless, enigmatic force that entices us on to destruction. It is a proper image for the secret ground-source from which life issues and back into which death recalls it. It is an apt image for this life of ours that looks so clear and is so inexplicable.

It is plain why the church uses water as the sign and the bearer of the divine life of grace. We emerge from the waters of baptism into a new life, born again of water and the Holy Ghost. In those same waters the old man was destroyed and put to death.

With this elemental element, that yields no answer to our questioning, with this transparent, frictionless, fecund fluid, this symbol and means of the supernatural life of grace, we make on ourselves, from forehead to breast, from shoulder to shoulder, the sign of the cross.

By her consecration of it, the Church has freed water from the dark powers that sleep in it. This is not a form of language. Anyone whose perceptions have not been blunted must be aware of the powers of natural magic inherent in water. And are they only natural powers? Is there not present also a dark and preternatural power? In nature, for all her richness and beauty, there is something demonic. City life has so deadened our senses that we have lost our perception of it. But the Church knows it is there. She "exorcises" out of water those divinities that are at enmity with God. She blesses it and asks God to make of it a vehicle of his grace. Therefore the Christian when he enters church moistens forehead, breast and shoulders, all his person, with the clean and cleansing water in order to make clean his soul. It is a pleasing custom that brings grace and nature freed from sin, and man, who so longs for cleanness, into the unity of the sign of the cross.

At evening also we sign ourselves in holy water. Night, as the proverb says, is no friend to man. Our human nature is formed and fashioned for light. Just before we give ourselves over into the power of sleep and darkness, and the light of day and consciousness is extinguished, there is a satisfaction in making the sign of the cross on ourselves with holy water. Holy water is the symbol of nature set free from sin. May God protect us from every form of darkness! And at morning, when we emerge again out of sleep, darkness and unconsciousness, and life begins afresh, we do the same thing. But in the morning it is to remind ourselves of that holy water from which we have issued into the light of Christ. The soul redeemed and nature redeemed encounter one another in the sign of the cross.

- Roman Guardini

The Sign of the Cross

When we cross ourselves, let it be with a real sign of the cross. Instead of a small cramped gesture that gives no notion of its meaning, let us make a large unhurried sign, from forehead to breast, from shoulder to shoulder, consciously feeling how it includes the whole of us, our thoughts, our attitudes, our body and soul, every part of us at once, how it consecrates and sanctifies us.

It does so because it is the Sign of the universe and the sign of our redemption. On the cross Christ redeemed mankind. By the cross he sanctifies man to the last shred and fiber of his being. We make the sign of the cross before we pray to collect and compose ourselves and to fix our minds and hearts and wills upon God. We make it when we finish praying in order that we may hold fast the gift we have received from God. In temptations we sign ourselves to be strengthened; in dangers, to be protected. The cross is signed upon us in blessings in order that the fullness of God's life may flow into the soul and fructify and sanctify us wholly.

Think of these things when you make the sign of the cross. It is the holiest of all signs. Make a large cross, taking time, thinking what you do. Let it take in your whole being - body, soul, mind, will, thoughts, feelings, your doing and not-doing - and by signing it with the cross strengthen and consecrate the whole in the strength of Christ, in the name of the triune God.

- Romano Guardini

Better in Latin

Ad Orientem

Today will mark an important and liturgically interesting milestone in the Church. Read about it here.

On Liturgical Dance

In case you had any doubt:

Saying It Right

How long does it take to pray fourteen words? Iubite-voi Domme, virtutea mea. Domnul este intarirea mea si scaparea mea si izbavitorul meu (Psalm 18: I love You, Lord, my Strength; the Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer). Listen to this Romanian for the opening sung just before the Nicene Creed during the Divine Liturgy. The video is two minutes long, and not one syllable is rushed over, nor frittered away. Some things are worth saying right:

The Eucharist and Violence

by James M. Seghers

In God's request that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac (Gen. 22:2) we find the second of two Eucharistic types in the book of Genesis. The first is the bread and wine offered by the priest king, Melchizedek (Gen. 14:18), who is memorialized in our first Eucharistic Prayer. Isaac and Christ share many similarities. The birth of both was supernatural (remember, Abraham was a hundred years old and Sarah an elderly woman when she bore Isaac). Both are sons of promise. Both were called "the only begotten son." Both carried the wood of their own demise up the same mountain, Moriah. Both consented to endure death. Both were bound. Both were offered by their fathers. Both were laid on the wood. Both were in the vigor of life, and both lived again after the offering. Jesus and Isaac were both dead three days, though Isaac only figuratively. Isaac also prefigures Christ in the unique relationship each had with his bride— Isaac with Rebekah and Jesus with the Church.

In the sacrifice of Isaac and the offering of Melchizedek there is a Eucharistic imprint that deserves serious consideration and prayerful meditation. In fact, the Eucharist is present in the three distinct stages of salvation history: In the Old Testament it is present as a type; with the arrival of the Messiah it is present as the event; and in the age of the Church it is present as a sacrament. The purpose of the figure or type was to prepare for the event, and the purpose of the sacrament is to continue the event by actualizing it in Jesus' mystical body, the Church. From the marital-covenantal theme that the Holy Spirit inaugurates in Genesis and develops in the succeeding books of the Bible until its culmination in the marriage feast of the Lamb (Rev. 21), the Eucharist is seen as the sublime consummation of Christ's marital oneness with his bride. This union is anticipated in the covenants God established with the human race through Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Ezra, and Nehemiah, all of which find their fulfillment in the marital covenant that Christ established with his church: "This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20).

In a profound sense, as Raniero Cantalamessa points out in his book The Eucharist, Our Sanctification, the "entire Old Testament was a preparation for the Lord's Supper" (p. 6). In Matthew's Gospel Jesus proclaims the parable of the "king who gave a marriage feast for his son and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the marriage feast" (Matt. 22:2-3). In this light, those servants can be seen as the Old Testament prophets.

The first of these was Melchizedek. Paul declares that Jesus is "a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" (Heb. 6:20) who, in offering bread and wine, is clearly a type of Christ (Heb. 7:1 ff, Ps. 110:4, Gen. 14:18). John's Gospel (6:31) makes the connection between the Eucharist and the manna Yahweh sent to feed the Israelites in the desert (Ex. 16:4 ff), but it is Jesus who shows that the manna is a mere foreshadowing of the "true bread from heaven" (John 6:32-33).

The greatest Old Testament figure of the Eucharist is the Passover (Ex. 12:2 3). That night when God smote all the firstborn of the Egyptians, he spared the first-born of Israel. Why? "The blood shall be a sign for you upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you" (Ex. 12:13). But was it the blood of the Passover lamb alone, into which hyssop was dipped to sprinkle blood on their doorposts, that saved the Israelites? No. This was a type: What God foreshadowed by it was the blood of the Lamb of God—the Eucharist.

When Jesus, like other observant Jews, celebrated the Passover, it took place in two phases and in two different places. The first was the slaying of the lamb, which took place in the Temple. The second was the eating of the lamb during the Passover supper, which took place in the home or in some other suitable place outside of the Temple. This meal was a memorial, not only of the Passover and exodus from Egypt but of all God's merciful interventions in the history of Israel. Cantalamessa tells us the Passover celebrated creation of the world, the offering of Isaac, the exodus out of Egypt, and the coming of the Messiah (p. 7).

The memorial of the Passover looked forward as a prefigurement to mankind's exodus from the slavery of sin. We are left with a sense of wonder and awe as we contemplate the mediator of the new covenant holding the unleavened breed in his sacred hands and saying: "This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19). The tragic irony was that, after centuries of longing for the Messiah's coming, the Jewish authorities crucified him during the Passover feast. Their closed minds and hard hearts made them unwilling to recognize that on Calvary they immolated the true Lamb of God (John 1:29, 36; Rev. 5:6).

Jesus' use of the words "remembrance" and "new covenant" (Luke 22:19-20) would remain forever fixed in the minds of the apostles, reminding them that in instituting a new Passover Jesus was perfectly fulfilling the old Passover. The world had arrived at the "fullness of time" (Eph. 1:10) in which the type became the reality, "for Christ our Paschal Lamb has been sacrificed" (1 Cor. 5:7).

The four Evangelists explicate in complimentary ways the event that brought the new Passover, the Eucharist, into existence. The beloved disciple John interweaves throughout his Gospel the Passover theme (1:29, 36; 2:13, 23; 6:4; 11:55; 12:1; 13:1; 18:28, 39; 19:14). In unfolding Jesus' first miracle John develops the Eucharistic motif he introduced the chapter before from the lips of John the Baptist: "Behold, the Lamb of God!" (1:29, 36). In one sublime verse he shows how Jesus identifies his mother, "woman," with the "woman" of Genesis 3:1 whose "seed" will crush Satan's head, and the event of that crushing, "[m]y hour" (2:4). The same Jesus who by a miracle changes water into wine will by a deeper miracle change wine into his blood.

John also employs the Passover motif prior to the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves (6:4), which in turn introduces Jesus' bread of life discourse (6:26-71). Here Jesus connects the Eucharist with its Old Testament type, the manna in the desert (6:31-35). In the second reference (12:1) John connects the resurrection theme with that of the Passover by his citation of Lazarus' rising from the dead.

It is John who confirms that Jesus died on the cross at the precise hour that his Old Testament type, the Passover lambs, were being slain in the Temple (19:14). In the Passover liturgy God instructs the Jews not to break a bone of the sacrificial lamb (Ex. 12:46); it is John who makes the connection with that rite and Jesus' death on the cross: "For these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled, 'Not a bone of him shall be broken'" (19:36). Here John is quoting Exodus 12:46, Numbers 9:12, and Psalm 34:20. And it is John's alone of the four Gospels that touches on the Passover significance of the hyssop: "Jesus, knowing that all was now finished said, I thirst.' A bowl full of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished,' and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit" (19:28-30).

Matthew, Mark, and Luke (called the synoptic Gospels because they take a common view regarding the events of Jesus' life) focus on the other part of the Passover ritual, the supper. They portray the Eucharist as the transformation of the old Passover to the new. They understand that the Eucharistic consecration already contains the event of Christ's immolation on the cross, just as future Eucharistic celebrations are inseparably linked to that same event. Jesus' words and actions are literally creative—that is, they produce what they signify.

Thus in the consecration at the Last Supper and in the breaking of the bread, which became synonymous with the consecration of the Eucharist (Luke 24:35), we have the supreme symbolic and prophetic action that restores mankind in a new covenant (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25; 2 Cor. 3:6; Heb. 8:8, 13; 12:24). In breaking the bread Jesus breaks his body on the cross. The words of consecration constitute the moment of the mystical immolation of Christ which (in the sense in which we have used the word) "figures" Jesus' real immolation on the cross. The great event of all history is that moment when Jesus allowed his own death on the cross. His death and subsequent resurrection constitute the event that institutes the Eucharist and ushers in the final stage of salvation history, the Church.

And so we come to the time in which we live. The Eucharist is present to us sacramentally. As a sacrament it is in the signs of bread and wine which were instituted by Christ at the Passover supper with the words: "This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. . . . This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:19-20; 1 Cor. 11:24-25).

The difference between Christ's death on the cross (the event) and the Eucharist (the sacrament) is the difference between history and liturgy. The historical event happened once and it will never again be repeated (Heb. 9:25-26). The liturgical sacrament, however, not only keeps the past from being forgotten; through it the Eucharist of history—Jesus' passion and death—is made present again. We are brought to the foot of the cross and invited to witness with Mary, John, and the holy women. The old spiritual asks the question, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" Through our participation in the sacrament of the Eucharist we can answer: "I was there at the foot of the cross."

Jesus' sacrifice on the cross is concluded as an event, but through the Holy Spirit it continues in time sacramentally and in eternity mystically. This insight provides the key to understanding John's heavenly vision of the resurrected Jesus, who appeared as "a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered" (Rev. 5:6). While his act of physical death will never be repeated, Jesus' act of total self-giving to the Father for us (Rom. 8:32) continues eternally in Love—that is, the Holy Spirit.