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CONSTITUTION
ON THE SACRED LITURGY SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM SOLEMNLY PROMULGATED BY HIS HOLINESS POPE PAUL VI ON DECEMBER 4, 1963 8. In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, a minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle [22]; we sing a hymn to the Lord's glory with all the warriors of the heavenly army; venerating the memory of the saints, we hope for some part and fellowship with them; we eagerly await the Saviour, Our Lord Jesus Christ, until He, our life, shall appear and we too will appear with Him in glory [23]. The tenor of Paragraph 8 underscores a basic truth about all Catholic worship and prayer: namely, that we live not for this moment but for a future day of glory when the Lord Jesus will appear and bring all of creation to its glorious fulfillment. Sacraments as we currently understand them—as effective signs of Jesus’ presence worked by others—will no longer be necessary because the presence of Jesus will be perfect and complete for all eternity. The “we” in the first sentence no doubt refers to Catholics who pray and undertake participation in the Church’s worship life. As we saw in para. 7 a few weeks ago, our “separated brethren” in other Churches who baptize into life with Christ, proclaim the Word of Scripture, and pray in Jesus’ name must also be considered a sacramental people in journey with us to the heavenly Jerusalem. Implied here is the continuing imperative of John’s Gospel that “they all may be one,” for the text speaks of the “earthly liturgy” of our current time as a foretaste of the eternal heavenly worship. The present observable worship around the globe is not unified, certainly nowhere near this unity of pilgrims arriving at the new and eternal Jerusalem footnoted here from the Book of Revelation and several Epistles. I believe it was Dr. Martin Luther King who first coined the phrase that “Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America.” The disunion of races and Christian creeds alike is evidence enough that “Christian Union” is still a long way down the road. One of aging’s disappointments for me has been the “evolution of disunion.” When I was born the ecclesiology of Pope Pius XII held sway that Catholics were separate from all other faiths. At this point in my life Catholics are discovering more ways to disunite from themselves, a trend (among others) described in Kenneth Woodward’s Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama (2016). Para. 8 speaks of earthly liturgy as a foretaste of the heavenly liturgy, which speaks volumes about the attitudes we bring to worship and the fashion in which we celebrate it. Sacraments—in any circumstance—need to bear resemblance internally and externally to the final and lasting glorious liturgy of Jerusalem. It may come as something of a surprise that when speaking of the end times in a Roman Catholic document, the center of unmediated experience of Jesus is defined as Jerusalem. This is not a Vatican II innovation; Catholic eschatology has always spoken of Jerusalem in the future tense, as has Old Testament prophesy and expectation. The Catholic rubric for funeral Masses includes the ancient hymn In Paradisum, that the angels may bear the deceased to the new and eternal Jerusalem. Historically the importance of Jerusalem in the Christian narrative is one factor in the enthusiasm of the Crusades. Para. 8 goes on to describe Christ as presently exercising his priestly ministry while seated at the right hand of God while we his people labor to arrive there with him. He is “a minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle.” We in our present journey sing a hymn to his glory “with all the warriors of the heavenly army.” The imagery here is the union of the Church’s earthly sacramental action with the body of the blessed beyond, notably those who have fought the good fight ahead of us, the martyrs. Eucharistic Prayer I in today’s Missal as well as the Canon of the Tridentine Missal contain litanies of the early Church’s martyrs before and after the consecration. The text continues that even now “we hope for some part and fellowship with them….” The Liturgy is certainly an existential moment for us, an encounter with Christ in the present, but it can never be celebrated without a profound sense of its past and future. In pastoral terms, the conditions surrounding one particular sacramental celebration—a Mass disrupted by an antagonistic sermon, for example—ought not cause an individual to lose historical place or personal hope in the abiding power of the sacrament. The final sentence speaks of the eagerness with which we wait for the coming of Christ in the perfect Eucharistic moment, for at the time of his appearance “we too shall appear with him in glory.” The unspoken truth here is the link between participation in the Eucharist and eternal destiny. One of the earliest teachings on the Eucharist comes from St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, which states para. 8’s conclusion in the reverse: to eat and drink unworthily is to bring a condemnation upon one’s self. Paul was particularly incensed that the Corinthian community was somehow segregated, rich from poor. The primary sin seems to be disunity in the Body of Christ. Perhaps the final post of 2016 is as good a time as any to emphasize again that in God’s plan we are to draw closer in love and faith, in worship and in deed. Much has been said and written about the stress of 2016 in the United States, where fears and passions of many kinds have exhausted us. At the very least, we may be more acutely aware of our divisions, in society and in the Church, a fact that is always hard to admit. As I prepare for Vigil Mass tonight, my prayers are with all of you that whenever we gather to celebrate the sacraments and prayers of the coming year, we may be mindful of Christ’s Last Supper prayer of the first Eucharist, “that they all may be one.”
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CONSTITUTION
ON THE SACRED LITURGY SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM SOLEMNLY PROMULGATED BY HIS HOLINESS POPE PAUL VI ON DECEMBER 4, 1963 7. To accomplish so great a work, Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of His minister, "the same now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross" [20], but especially under the Eucharistic species. By His power He is present in the sacraments, so that when a man baptizes it is really Christ Himself who baptizes [21]. He is present in His word, since it is He Himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church. He is present, lastly, when the Church prays and sings, for He promised: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20) . Paragraph 7 speaks of the ways that Christ is present in the sacraments how he is encountered by the faithful in the rites. Of primary importance is the belief that Christ is always present in his Church. The phrase “especially in her liturgical celebrations” is an important qualification, avoiding suggestion that Christ’s presence is found only in sacramental rites. Vatican II devoted considerable discussion to God’s relationship with the unbaptized in other documents. For our purposes here, the Council wisely speaks of sacraments as the optimum encounters with Christ, which is why the Church constantly encourages mission and evangelization. The first sentence does raise an issue of frequent misunderstanding in parochial and catechetical settings, namely the definition of “Church” itself. It is habitual to assume that the Catholic Church in full unity in Rome is the intended subject. However, in view of all the Council documents, the term “church” cannot automatically exclude all communities and individuals who are baptized in the name of the Trinity and profess faith in the Creed, which would cover the Protestant churches, at the very least. Catholic Canon Law reinforces this broader understanding in many ways, one example being that Catholic law forbids the baptism of a Protestant who is entering full communion with the Catholic Church, thus recognizing the saving legitimacy of Protestant baptism. The question that logically follows is whether Protestants celebrate valid sacraments. In the question of Baptism, it would certainly seem so, as Catholics and Protestants understand a common purpose. Beyond Baptism, our understandings of sacramental experience do digress—there is significant disagreement on the very definition of sacrament in many cases—so it would be inappropriate to suggest a commonality of sacramental experiences. That said, para. 7 proceeds past explicit definition of sacraments to speak of other moments when Christ is present: in the reading of the Scriptures, and in common singing and praying. To suggest, then, that Protestants do not meet Christ meaningfully in private prayer and common worship is a position Vatican II could not and would not ever endorse. The document’s second sentence talks of Christ’s presence in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, using language from the 1563 Council of Trent. Trent was the Catholic reform council, called to address Lutheran and Calvinist deviations from Catholic teaching. On the matter of sacraments, Catholic teaching was and remains ex opere operato, “by the work of the work.” What this means is that Catholic sacraments, celebrated per Church law, are effective (i.e., sins are forgiven, the bread and wine changed, etc.] The character and disposition of the priest offering the Mass had no bearing on the effect of the sacrament, at least in principle. Martin Luther and his successors took issue with this Church teaching. Protestant theologians were more at home with a conflicting principle, ex opere operantis, “By the work of the one doing the work.” Essentially, by this principle the priest or minister’s spiritual disposition counts a great deal in the religious experience of the ministers of worship. It is helpful to remember that Luther’s theology of worship included only two sacraments, Baptism and Sunday worship. (The other five he believed were inventions of the Roman Church with no Biblical basis.] If you permit me to paint with a wide brush, the critical post-baptism encounter with Christ is the Sunday sermon, and Luther was logically consistent that a bad priest/minister probably would not preach an effective sermon fired with faith and worship rhetoric. The second sentence is admittedly unclear. Prior to the Council it was very common to speak of a priest as an alter Christus or “other Christ.” At the moment of consecration, the priest became Christ and thus possessed the sacramental power to transform the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. Vatican II reaffirms the spirit of this teaching in the context of explaining Christ’s presence through the sacraments. Para. 7 goes on to use the example of the sacrament of baptism in the same way. In the continuing discussion over the possibility of women priests over the years, one of the Church’s arguments against the idea has been the symbolism of the male priest assuming the alter Christus role, and whether the priest’s masculinity is indeed part of the sacramental sign. [We will have a more detailed discussion of this matter down the road.] Para. 7 comes to its completion with a description of what we might call para-liturgical or para-sacramental practices familiar to all of you. While the language of the text seems to imply that the subject here is happenings within the church building—reading of the Word, singing and common prayer, etc.—I believe the use of the word Church should be taken in its universal sense, inclusive of all the baptized wherever they may be, alone and in group. The citation of Matthew 18:20 puts no restraints upon the presence of the Lord in terms of who is praying, where they are praying, or how many are praying. A family at prayer, a religious community reciting or singing the Liturgy of the Hours, a Christian studying the Sacred Scriptures in his or her own home—Jesus is present in every example, to the benefit of the pray-ers. |
LITURGY
August 2024
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