A New Enthusiasm

What is needed at the present time is a new enthusiasm, a new joy and serenity of mind in the unreserved acceptance by all of the entire Christian faith, without forfeiting that accuracy and precision in its presentation which characterized the proceedings of the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council. What is needed, and what everyone imbued with a truly Christian, Catholic and apostolic spirit craves today, is that this doctrine shall be more widely known, more deeply understood, and more penetrating in its effects on men's moral lives. What is needed is that this certain and immutable doctrine, to which the faithful owe obedience, be studied afresh and reformulated in contemporary terms. For this deposit of faith, or truths which are contained in our time-honored teaching is one thing; the manner in which these truths are set forth (with their meaning preserved intact) is something else.

These words sound as if they could have bee written today. Instead, they were proclaimed forty-eight years ago today, as Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council.

For people of my generation and older, Vatican II is part of our living history. For people in their 30's and younger, it is a thing of the past, something they read and hear about but have not really experienced. Still, Vatican II seems to be part of the collective Catholic lexicon, often cited with little real knowledge of why the Council was called, what the Council said, and what all of this means to the life of the Church and to each human person.

We argue about what the Second Vatican Council said about the Church Universal, the liturgy, the laity, the clergy, and many other important matters. But have we achieved the "new enthusiasm," called for by Pope John? Do we crave "that this doctrine shall be more widely known, more deeply understood, and more penetrating in its effects on men's moral lives?"

Today may be a good day to read Pope John's opening address to the Council. Towards its conclusion he reminded the gathered prelates of the importance of the Council saying,

The eyes of the world are upon you; and all its hopes.

Let us give thanks to God for his servant, Pope John XXIII and for all of those who so faithfully sought the counsel of the Holy Spirit during that important time in history. May we show our thanks by honoring their work and seeking the Spirit with the same fervor, charity and patience.

"This Sacred Council"

Forty six years ago today--December 4, 1963--the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) [CSL] was promulgated during the Second Vatican Council. This was the first document of the Council that was approved and promulgated, and its opening lines establish the goals of the Council in general:

This sacred Council has several aims in view: it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church. The Council therefore sees particularly cogent reasons for undertaking the reform and promotion of the liturgy.

The CSL was the first of four Constitutions promulgated during the Second Vatican Council. The others were on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), the Church (Lumen Gentium), and the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes). Constitutions are the most authoritative documents issued by a Council. The Second Vatican Council also issued three declarations and nine decrees.

There is much division in the Church today over what the Council "really wanted" or what the documents produced by the Council "really said." While it is healthy and good to vigorously debate these important aspects of our faith, I have failed to see a real debate of these issues during the past decade. What I mostly observe is an apologia from this perspective or that, which skewers the opponent and shows the ultimate wisdom and holiness of the "correct" interpretation. In fact, one blog I visited recently referred to those who thought differently as "evil," and said that they want to bring the Church down. While we certainly have issues that must be resolved, I have to say that I have never worked with anyone, regardless of their ideology, who wanted anything less than a flourishing and vital Catholic Church!

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy built upon nearly a century of papal pronouncements. Pope St. Pius X (1903-14) described the necessity of the faithful's "active participation" in his motu proprio on sacred music, Tra le sollecitudine (1903). Pius XII's (1939-58) encyclical Mediator Dei (1947) speaks of the Mystical Body of Christ. During his pontificate the liturgical movement was gaining momentum. While Pope Pius severely discouraged innovation and experimentation at the local level, he allowed for limited use of the vernacular language, outside of Mass and mostly in mission lands, for some of the rites. He reformed the rites of Holy Week (1951, 1954) and reformed the calendar, eliminating all celebrations of the octaves, with the exception of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.

Pope Pius X wrote in Mediator Dei:

The Church is without question a living organism, and as an organism, in respect of the sacred liturgy also, she grows, matures, develops, adapts and accommodates herself to temporal needs and circumstances, provided only that the integrity of her doctrine be safeguarded. (paragraph 59)

This certainly prefigures the opening of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy quoted above. The Constitution goes on to say:

In order that the Christian people may more certainly derive an abundance of graces from the sacred liturgy, holy Mother Church desires to undertake with great care a general restoration of the liturgy itself. For the liturgy is made up of immutable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change. These not only may but ought to be changed with the passage of time if they have suffered from the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy or have become unsuited to it.

In this restoration, both texts and rites should be drawn up so that they express more clearly the holy things which they signify; the Christian people, so far as possible, should be enabled to understand them with ease and to take part in them fully, actively, and as befits a community. (paragraph 21)

This brings liturgical reform, 60+ years old, to its next level and has set the stage for what has followed. I think that any level-headed person sees that the reforms, though often awkwardly implemented, have been a source of grace for the Church.

In my own mind, I have seen two major issues that all of us who prepare and celebrate liturgy need to address. The first is a rather cavalier attitude toward the liturgical texts, rubrics and rituals of the Roman Rite. There is a sense that if something doesn't work or feel right, I will change it. Conversion requires the exact opposite: If something doesn't work or feel right, I must change. I think that this conversion requires a great deal of humility and trust in the Spirit. While often the most visible infractions in this area occur when a priest omits a part of the Mass or changes words, this often manifests itself quietly in the return to practices which were changed or omitted during the reforms, thus nullifying paragraph 21 of the CSL (above). (In any honest approach we have to first remove the plank from our own eye before helping our neighbor remove the speck of dust from his own!)

The second issue has to do with ongoing catechesis for the congregation regarding their important role in the liturgy.

...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. Pastors of souls must therefore realize that, when the liturgy is celebrated, something more is required than the mere observation of the laws governing valid and licit celebration; it is their duty also to ensure that the faithful take part fully aware of what they are doing, actively engaged in the rite, and enriched by its effects. (CSL 11)

Notice that the liturgy's effectiveness doesn't depend on the priest, the organist, the choir, the lector, the environment, or any of the myriad of things that we fuss about. It depends on the people in the pew!

Helping people "take part fully aware of what they are doing, actively engaged...and enriched" is not easy and can't be accomplished with a bulletin article now and then. This type of catechesis requires a full-court press in the schools and religious education programs, in adult education, through homilies and, most importantly, through well-celebrated liturgy. It has been my experience that people want to know more about the liturgy and about their faith. We don't want to sell them short.

Finally, I think that we have to acknowledge some inherent tensions in liturgical norms and documents. For example, we know that the Council confirmed Latin as the language of the Roman Rite (CSL 36). At the same time it said that the people should be able to understand the liturgy with ease (CSL 21) and take part fully aware of what they are doing (CSL 11). This creates a tension and no sentence trumps another. We have to reflect on ways to reconcile these two seemingly different approaches.

So happy anniversary. Much has been accomplished but much more lies ahead.

You may want to check out this blog sent to me by a colleague: http://www.liturgicalleaders.blogspot.com/

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.

Anniversary of the death of Pope John XXIII

Wednesday, June 3 marks the anniversary of the death of Blessed Pope John XXIII (1881-1963). In the third month of his pontificate, he surprised many people by announcing his intention to convene the Twenty-First Ecumenical Council of the Church, now know as Vatican Council II. Through God's grace, he lived to convene the Council on October 11, 1962. His opening address is available on many websites and includes a passage that I always find insightful and inspiring:

In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former Councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty.

We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.

In the present order of things, Divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations which, by men's own efforts and even beyond their very expectations, are directed toward the fulfilment of God's superior and inscrutable designs. And everything, even human differences, leads to the greater good of the Church.

I am often struck by the wisdom of this phrase. It is easy to forget, but while the challenges of our day may be unique, they are no more severe than many other epochs. As we face these challenges, God gives us the grace to glorify him and build up the Church.

Today would be a good day to review a biography of Blessed John XXIII (click here for one on the Vatican's website). I have always been most inspired by this holy man because of his tremendous trust in the working of the Holy Spirit and his true sense of love for God's people.

It also serves as a reminder to regularly consider the rich documents of that Council, which are available on the Holy See's website. For those involved in liturgy, the first 14 paragraphs of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy would provide ample material for summer prayer and reflection.

Finally, remember to thank God today for his servant Pope John XXIII. May we listen to the Spirit as intently as Good Pope John.