Summer School

Each summer I try to take some time to review a few documents from the Second Vatican Council. As part of this, I always re-read the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy [CSL] and then try to review one or two others. To some extent, this provides me an opportunity to reflect upon the work that I do as well as on my own spiritual journey. Is my ministry in harmony with these documents? Have I veered off course? Have I become too preoccupied with one aspect at the expense of others?

Reading the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy is always a shot in the arm, as well. The first 14 paragraphs alone provide such a wonderfully hopeful and optimistic synopsis of liturgical theology.

Paragraph 11 (one that I go back to again and again) enunciates an important, though challenging, truism about how the liturgy works:

But in order that the liturgy may be able to produce its full effects, it is necessary that the faithful come to it with proper dispositions, that their minds should be attuned to their voices, and that they should cooperate with divine grace lest they receive it in vain.

This paragraph, in my mind, says that in order for the liturgy to do what it is supposed to do, everyone (not just priest, organist, reader, etc.) has to come ready to be there and pay attention to what they are doing. In other words, God gives a full amount of grace to us whether we participate fully or not. We have to be open to it ("cooperate with it") in order to receive its full effects. It's not magic...it takes cooperation (work) from everyone!

How do we "cooperate with divine grace?" The U. S. Bishops Committee on the Liturgy, in their document Music in Catholic Worship (first published in 1972), summarized this very succinctly:

We are celebrating when we involve ourselves meaningfully in the thoughts, words, songs, and gestures of the worshiping community ‑‑when everything we do is wholehearted and authentic for us ‑‑ when we mean the words and want to do what is done. (paragraph 3, emphasis added)

I have often told the story of a question I was asked about 20 years ago when I was first working with some candidates for initiation. A young woman asked, "Why do Catholics scratch their heads before the Gospel?" What a great question!

Of course, we don't scratch our heads. We make the sign of the cross with our thumbs on our head, lips and heart. Some have a prayer that they recite, but the general idea is that prior to hearing the Gospel (Christ himself speaking to us, according to CSL 7), we want to remind ourselves that Christ is in our thoughts, on our lips, in our hearts. Her question made me realize that for many--myself included--these gestures can become meaningless or empty.

But the liturgy demands more. When we make this gesture--or dip our fingers into holy water, genuflect to the Blessed Sacrament, bow to the altar, offer another the sign of Christ's peace--we are reminding ourselves of how we are called to live, how we relate to God, and how we relate to neighbor.

The words of the liturgy are as powerful as the gestures. How many times have I said the Lord's Prayer, with its petition that God "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Do I consider that phrase when I am wronged by another? Do I hold on to grudges? Do I grant forgiveness as freely as I seek it?

Paragraph 11 of CSL reminds us that the words, gestures, and postures of the liturgy mean something--and require something of us. They are not magical formulas. They are there to change us through God's grace. God does the work but he seeks our cooperation.