No Past, No Future: Just a Plastic Present

1067 "The wonderful works of God among the people of the Old Testament were but a prelude to the work of Christ the Lord in redeeming mankind and giving perfect glory to God. He accomplished this work principally by the Paschal mystery of his blessed Passion, Resurrection from the dead, and glorious Ascension, whereby 'dying he destroyed our death, rising he restored our life.' For it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth 'the wondrous sacrament of the whole Church."' For this reason, the Church celebrates in the liturgy above all the Paschal mystery by which Christ accomplished the work of our salvation.
 
I can see that a Catholic attempting a self-study of the Catechism might be inclined to bang his head against the wall after attempting to decipher para. 1067, the second paragraph of the Catechism’s treatment of the liturgy. In the earlier post in this stream two weeks ago [scroll down], I pointed out that Pope John Paul II expected the local churches to teach the catechism to Catholics with personnel who had been appropriately trained and commissioned for this sacred task, that a “translating process” take place to create local catechetical aids, and that the Catechism truths be taught in a manner that connects the listener to the body of Christ’s followers, with respect for the age, education, and culture setting of the listeners.
 
Para. 1067 covers a great deal of territory, so I will attempt to break it down into digestible pieces. There are three distinct themes in the text: [1] the relative place of the Old Testament or Hebrew Scripture next to the New Testament; [2] the relation of Christ’s death to the sacramental life of the Church we engage in today, and [3] our loss of emotional realization that Christ as the savior of the world.
 
The first sentence of para. 1067 can be misinterpreted as depicting the Jewish history as a warm-up to the Christian era heralded by Christ, which is a common misconception, for the Hebrew Scripture is of one weave with Jesus, God and Man. For starters, Jesus was born and died a Jew. He was even buried under Jewish law and custom. There is no evidence that Jesus intended to start a new religion. He drew his identity from his Israelite heritage and his chosen disciples were Jews—twelve, in fact, after the twelve tribes of Israel. The Acts of the Apostles details how after the Resurrection and Pentecost events, Peter, John, and Stephen [and others of Jesus’ intimates] maintained their ties with the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus never separated Jewish history and tradition from the idea that the Kingdom of God was at hand. He saw the future as the fulfillment of Israel, not its demise or replacement.
 
There is no denying that Jesus was critical of structures and attitudes of his native faith, i.e., excessive legalism, commercialism at the Temple, loss of a missionary spirit, easy divorce, and—most of all—a complacency of faith. [Ironically, many of the same afflictions impact twenty-first century Catholicism.] It was his fidelity to Jewish history and the morality of the prophets that led to Jesus’ execution. Several New Testament authors have foisted Jesus’ crucifixion om the entire Chosen People, which is absurd and utterly dangerous. [For example, St. Matthew records the Good Friday crowd as crying, “Let his blood be upon us and upon our children.”] Christians of following centuries—to this very day—find such writing as justification for antisemitic attitudes and behaviors.
 
Unbelievably just two decades after the Holocaust, Vatican II [1962-1965] found it politically difficult to formulate a document of reconciliation with the Jews. The justification during Vatican II for remaining alienated from the Jewish Faith—which endures in many quarters today—is that Jews still await a savior, that Jesus is not recognized as the Messiah. One journalist put it this way: “But one awaits the return of the Messiah who died and rose from the dead and is recognized as Lord and Son of God; the other awaits the coming of a Messiah, whose features remain hidden till the end of time; and the latter waiting is accompanied by the drama of not knowing or of misunderstanding Christ Jesus.” But thanks to the heroic efforts of Boston’s Cardinal Richard Cushing, The Council did finally produce the document Nostra Aetate [“in our time”] in 1965; the shortest of all Vatican II statements, the full text is here.
 
The second part of para. 1067 focuses upon Jesus as our Savior by virtue of his Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension. In fact, the paragraph quotes from the Roman Missal of 1970, “dying he destroyed our death, rising he restored our life,” the congregational response to the consecration of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. Before the Council Catholics participated in the salvation of the cross by attending Mass. It is worth remembering here that we old timers were raised in a Church that defined the Mass as “the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary.” We came to Mass to participate in the saving grace of Christ’s death, particularly in the reception of Holy Communion [preceded by confession, if necessary.] One might say that before Vatican II the word “salvation” was as likely as any to fall from our It was after several centuries of historical, biblical, and sacramental research that the Church began to incorporate the words “celebration” and “community” when speaking of sacraments, particularly the Eucharist. For example, it was common for priests to celebrate Mass alone if not required to meet a congregational obligation like a public parish Mass. If you have visited large medieval or renaissance churches in Europe, for example, you noticed that both walls of the church are lined with impressive side altars. Even in my seminary, built in 1904, there were enough altars for ten priests to offer Mass at the same time, not counting the seminarians’ Mass at the high altar.
 
But by the time I left this old seminary in 1968, all the seminary professors were offering Mass together, “concelebrating,” and we in the pews were singing the parts of the Mass [often to guitars] and sharing the bread and the cup at communion. The pastoral thinking regarding the sacraments turned to the baptized congregation coming together in tangible, social expression [e.g., the congregation wide Kiss of Peace. We were celebrating what Christ has done for us, not just upon the cross but by conquering death and sending forth his Spirit. As a T-shirt of the times put it, “We are Easter People—Alleluia is our song!”
 
For those of us who lived through that era of change in the 1960’s and 1970’s, official worship went through this tectonic shift. I was ordained in 1974 and thus never celebrated the “old Mass”, but I became a pastor and listened to complaints about the changes in the Mass for twenty years. Unfortunately, Vatican II’s theological reasoning behind the changes was never made clear from the pulpit or through religious education or it was done poorly, with little care for the spiritual sensitivities of the faithful. Truthfully, having been trained and ordained to “build community” through the sacraments, it is only in recent years that I have come to appreciate how plastic the word “community” really is. Which leads me to the third point of 1067.
 
This paragraph of the Catechism ends thus: “For this reason, the Church celebrates in the liturgy above all the Paschal mystery by which Christ accomplished the work of our salvation.” Per Wikipedia, “the term ‘liturgy’ in Greek literally means to ‘work for the people, but a better translation is ‘public service’ or ‘public work,’ as made clear from the origin of the term as described above. The early Christians adopted the word to describe their principal act of worship, the Sunday service (referred to by various terms, including Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion, Mass or Divine Liturgy), which they considered to be a sacrifice. This service, liturgy, or ministry (from the Latin "ministerium") is a duty for Christians as a priestly people by their baptism into Christ and participation in His high priestly ministry.”
 
We are in something of a conundrum here when talking about the sacraments, our liturgy. The references to worship in the New Testament era are rare. What we have looks like this: the first Christians worshipped in the Temple, and then on the first day of the week convened to recount memories or recollections of Jesus, shared the bread and cup as Jesus had commanded, and then partook in a community meal. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians [1 Corinthians 11], written in the mid-50’s A.D., gives indication, alas, that the community fest at the end was not always an edifying experience and needed catechetics.
 
Sacraments will always present a mystery with roots in the past, present, and future. Present day Eucharist, for example, is afflicted with a weekly blandness because [1] Catholics have little or no consciousness of their Judeo-Christian roots, and [2] a fuzziness about the future takes the urgency out of our sacramental experiences of the present. Why repeat Christ’s saving death every Sunday, for example, if—as is quite common—many do not believe in hell or purgatory, or the consequences of conduct beyond the grave.
 
Thus, ignorant of our history and assuming an easy destiny, we have focused for years now on our present—the celebratory factor—which falls flat most Sundays because, well, we bypass the urgency of past and future. There is little to celebrate if Christ’s death and resurrection are not at the center of things. Our young people understand this at some level, and many go off seeking experiences of the Lord that cut to their souls. I don’t know how to fix the rest of us…except to refer to the examples of the monks, who not only pray frequently but devote significant time each day to reflection and study of our sacred texts…and thus eat and drink the Eucharist because they know their lives depend upon it.