Sunday was the quiet day I had hoped for.
Morning Mass at St. Michael with my fellow postulants, followed by breakfast while meditating over the newspaper. There was a little physical exercise on a stationary bicycle in our basement early in the afternoon. This was followed later in the afternoon with a couple of spiritual exercises: reciting evening prayer while riding the L train to Union Square in Manhattan; and, once there, taking in a little faith in film. And the theme of the film was perfectly appropriate after our nine-day journey to the Midwest.
The Way, playing at a small cinema on East 12th Street, features Martin Sheen as a father who walks the pilgrimage trail to Santiago de Compostela in memory of his son, who died while beginning the camino in the Pyrenees Mountains. This film was a family affair, in that it was produced and directed by Sheen's son Emilio Estevez. It was also clearly a labor of love for Sheen, who as a devout Catholic has previously played Catholic Worker co-founder Peter Maurin in Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story. For a thoughtful review of the film, I recommend this article in National Catholic Reporter; and for a profile of Sheen as a real-life pilgrim, read this NCR interview.
We are ever on the way. Let us, you and I, resolve to remain on the way and help each other stay on the pilgrim path. This week your diarist continues his pilgrimage in the more conventional settings of New York and Connecticut. This week we learn about the early history of the Capuchin order from a brother, John Tokaz, who knows it well. Our resident art scholar, Brother John will take the postulants on a special guided tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Wednesday. On Friday, the brothers will meet in Middletown, Conn., for an annual get-together called Fraternity Day. We will worship and then share food and fellowship until late in the afternoon. I have been told that the postulants may be measured for their habits during this gathering. All this will happen around the usual pattern of prayer, chores, and ministry, and the usual interruptions in routine (I have spiritual direction on Tuesday evening).
Buen camino, my sisters and brothers.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Brooklyn Again
We are home safely at St. Michael Friary. Another great day for travel greeted us gently in Villa Maria, Pa. We traveled I-80 east through Pennsylvania with no incident at all, and we slowed only a little once we were in New Jersey. Not even tri-state traffic could keep us from cruising home.
Unpacked and now doing laundry, I will go gently into the evening and Sunday, which will be an off day the whole day for the postulants. That means we have no fraternal obligations -- no evening prayer or dinner as a household. We will resume our common schedule Monday morning.
As we debriefed on our trip during the ride home, our postulant director remarked at how well we the postulants get along with each other and how close we are as a group. This is a very good sign for the progress of our religious formation. As our director said, we are the primary agents of our own formation; as I would put it, we are the captains of our spiritual destiny. And it makes a great difference when each of us can shape our growth in the steady embrace of brothers who really love you warmly from the heart and support you unconditionally. Guided by the Spirit in Christ Jesus, we are the captains of our destiny; fortified by the Spirit of compassion we can feel pouring out from our brothers, we will grow in wisdom and favor and reach the end of our travels safely.
Amen, and let it be done.
Unpacked and now doing laundry, I will go gently into the evening and Sunday, which will be an off day the whole day for the postulants. That means we have no fraternal obligations -- no evening prayer or dinner as a household. We will resume our common schedule Monday morning.
As we debriefed on our trip during the ride home, our postulant director remarked at how well we the postulants get along with each other and how close we are as a group. This is a very good sign for the progress of our religious formation. As our director said, we are the primary agents of our own formation; as I would put it, we are the captains of our spiritual destiny. And it makes a great difference when each of us can shape our growth in the steady embrace of brothers who really love you warmly from the heart and support you unconditionally. Guided by the Spirit in Christ Jesus, we are the captains of our destiny; fortified by the Spirit of compassion we can feel pouring out from our brothers, we will grow in wisdom and favor and reach the end of our travels safely.
Amen, and let it be done.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Final Stage
Good evening from Villa Maria Education and Spirituality Center, near the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line. The Sisters of the Humility of Mary are hosting the postulants this evening, the last of our nine-day journey to the Midwest.
We left St. Conrad Friary in Milwaukee at 5 a.m., making it to Indiana in remarkably good time by beating the rush-hour traffic to Chicago. Though at departure our sleep-starved bodies were sagging, spirits soared steadily as the sun rose. One of the postulants thought it would be a good idea to go to Mass at the University of Notre Dame, and none but our postulant director had ever been there before, so we all agreed. To South Bend we went. Arriving shortly before 9:30, we learned there would be no Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart for another two hours. However, our resourceful postulant director found the sacristan, a Holy Cross sister, who arranged to let us use a chapel in the lower level to celebrate the Eucharist. Together we offered a blessing for the priests, brothers, and sisters of the Congregation of Holy Cross, who founded Notre Dame, and for all who work and study at this quintessentially Catholic institution.
We overestimated the duration of our journey because we erroneously factored in a visit back to the Capuchins in Detroit, which we never made. So we crossed the Ohio-Pennsylvania border four hours early! This was perfect, because we had plenty of time to unpack, do our evening prayer, and have a leisurely dinner at a lively Italian restaurant in Youngstown, Ohio.
With about 400 miles to go and no reason to hurry, we will reach New York City tomorrow in the late afternoon to early evening, traffic, weather, and God willing. I am eager to be back in Brooklyn. One always rests a little more soundly in one's own bed after a time apart from home.
Our sojourn in the Midwest has done us all kinds of good. Here I name two goods:
We are blessed to have studied with Fr. Bill Cieslak, who knows and loves the liturgy like few other souls I have met. From him I have gained a theological thinking to give a sure voice to what my heart longs for when it longs, often in vain, for the presence of God in the very temples the Church has built for Christ. Brother Bill speaks to Catholics' frustration when they feel that their liturgy shrinks God the Father, makes Jesus look ugly, obscures the Holy Spirit, and draws a velvet rope between them and Christ. I feel like my prayer life has been enriched, for it has been given both new direction and fresh intention. Thank you, Brother Bill.
It is very good that we met the five postulants of the Province of St. Joseph, because we will be living with them, and with all the Capuchin postulant classes in North America and the Pacific, during our combined novitiate next year in California. Our two-month pre-novitiate program next summer in Victoria, Kan., with all the postulants across the continent, is meant to bond us before we begin our year of retreat, but every prior opportunity to get acquainted with our brothers is beneficial. I pray we will become better brothers to each other through the grace of Jesus.
Our week of pilgrimages draws to a close. In the final stage of this journey home, I have been reminded of the homeless, who live a life of involuntary pilgrimage. A friend of mine shared a story of several homeless women and men of remarkable faith who have consecrated their pilgrimage -- who have made it a holy sacrifice. They remind us that we have no fixed home in this world but within God's incarnate love, and God has no fixed home but within these temples of flesh and blood. The path has no end in this life; its end is in the eternal newness of life.
Be on your journeys. May they be good; step by little step, may they set you free.
We left St. Conrad Friary in Milwaukee at 5 a.m., making it to Indiana in remarkably good time by beating the rush-hour traffic to Chicago. Though at departure our sleep-starved bodies were sagging, spirits soared steadily as the sun rose. One of the postulants thought it would be a good idea to go to Mass at the University of Notre Dame, and none but our postulant director had ever been there before, so we all agreed. To South Bend we went. Arriving shortly before 9:30, we learned there would be no Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart for another two hours. However, our resourceful postulant director found the sacristan, a Holy Cross sister, who arranged to let us use a chapel in the lower level to celebrate the Eucharist. Together we offered a blessing for the priests, brothers, and sisters of the Congregation of Holy Cross, who founded Notre Dame, and for all who work and study at this quintessentially Catholic institution.
We overestimated the duration of our journey because we erroneously factored in a visit back to the Capuchins in Detroit, which we never made. So we crossed the Ohio-Pennsylvania border four hours early! This was perfect, because we had plenty of time to unpack, do our evening prayer, and have a leisurely dinner at a lively Italian restaurant in Youngstown, Ohio.
With about 400 miles to go and no reason to hurry, we will reach New York City tomorrow in the late afternoon to early evening, traffic, weather, and God willing. I am eager to be back in Brooklyn. One always rests a little more soundly in one's own bed after a time apart from home.
Our sojourn in the Midwest has done us all kinds of good. Here I name two goods:
We are blessed to have studied with Fr. Bill Cieslak, who knows and loves the liturgy like few other souls I have met. From him I have gained a theological thinking to give a sure voice to what my heart longs for when it longs, often in vain, for the presence of God in the very temples the Church has built for Christ. Brother Bill speaks to Catholics' frustration when they feel that their liturgy shrinks God the Father, makes Jesus look ugly, obscures the Holy Spirit, and draws a velvet rope between them and Christ. I feel like my prayer life has been enriched, for it has been given both new direction and fresh intention. Thank you, Brother Bill.
It is very good that we met the five postulants of the Province of St. Joseph, because we will be living with them, and with all the Capuchin postulant classes in North America and the Pacific, during our combined novitiate next year in California. Our two-month pre-novitiate program next summer in Victoria, Kan., with all the postulants across the continent, is meant to bond us before we begin our year of retreat, but every prior opportunity to get acquainted with our brothers is beneficial. I pray we will become better brothers to each other through the grace of Jesus.
Our week of pilgrimages draws to a close. In the final stage of this journey home, I have been reminded of the homeless, who live a life of involuntary pilgrimage. A friend of mine shared a story of several homeless women and men of remarkable faith who have consecrated their pilgrimage -- who have made it a holy sacrifice. They remind us that we have no fixed home in this world but within God's incarnate love, and God has no fixed home but within these temples of flesh and blood. The path has no end in this life; its end is in the eternal newness of life.
Be on your journeys. May they be good; step by little step, may they set you free.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Just a Little More on Liturgy
Just a few more points from Brother Bill's presentations on Eucharist that put me in thoughtful places, here concerning beauty.
1. In the Franciscan tradition, beauty is a fundamental way of seeing the divine in our life. Without prejudice to the philosophical claims of traditional theism that God is one, all good, all powerful, and all knowing, we can say that God is Beauty, the beauty beyond every lovely and beautiful thing. The act of creation is an act of divine beauty, and everything that is created participates in the beauty of God.
2. Communion with God is intimate friendship in the beauty and love of God. The beautiful is a conduit to the holy because what is beautiful resonates with the harmony of God. As we recognize the beautiful in every person and respond to it in our life with love, we become holy. And we affirm everything that lives as holy, for what we behold as beautiful, we also reverence. This speaks to the quality of delight, that is, the divine pleasure in creation, of who we are and who we are becoming.
3. It is becoming for our liturgies, especially our celebration of Eucharist, to be beautiful, if we wish for the faithful in Christ to worship with reverence and live sacramental lives. If the people of God are to acknowledge the holy and make holy in themselves and their world, we must begin to respect the beauty of holiness abiding already in them.
4. What is needed in the liturgy of the Eucharist is a heightened sense of the real presence of Jesus Christ, not only in the bread and wine, but also and especially in the Word of God, the ministers, and the rest of the assembly! Rather than apologetics for the mystery of Christ's substance under the accidents of bread and wine, we need an unapologetic affirmation of the presence of God's beautiful Jesus in the prayer, speech, and song of the people; the prophetic proclamation of the Word; and the healing pastoral touch of the ministers who serve humbly. When every person baptized into the body of Christ is fully, consciously, and actively present through, in, and with Christ at the celebration of Eucharist, then they can receive the ultimate presence of God in Jesus' simple gifts of bread and wine.
After this we learned about liturgical laws regulating the celebration of Eucharist, and we examined the new English translation of the Roman Missal, which contains all the prayers for Mass for the church's seasons and special occasions. We also beheld the beauty of the liturgy in a special Mass through which Brother Bill illuminated the origin and significance of the elements of divine worship. I will not relate any more of what we heard and discussed, interesting though it is, because I think beauty is the right note on which to end.
Now, off to meditation and evening prayer.
1. In the Franciscan tradition, beauty is a fundamental way of seeing the divine in our life. Without prejudice to the philosophical claims of traditional theism that God is one, all good, all powerful, and all knowing, we can say that God is Beauty, the beauty beyond every lovely and beautiful thing. The act of creation is an act of divine beauty, and everything that is created participates in the beauty of God.
2. Communion with God is intimate friendship in the beauty and love of God. The beautiful is a conduit to the holy because what is beautiful resonates with the harmony of God. As we recognize the beautiful in every person and respond to it in our life with love, we become holy. And we affirm everything that lives as holy, for what we behold as beautiful, we also reverence. This speaks to the quality of delight, that is, the divine pleasure in creation, of who we are and who we are becoming.
3. It is becoming for our liturgies, especially our celebration of Eucharist, to be beautiful, if we wish for the faithful in Christ to worship with reverence and live sacramental lives. If the people of God are to acknowledge the holy and make holy in themselves and their world, we must begin to respect the beauty of holiness abiding already in them.
4. What is needed in the liturgy of the Eucharist is a heightened sense of the real presence of Jesus Christ, not only in the bread and wine, but also and especially in the Word of God, the ministers, and the rest of the assembly! Rather than apologetics for the mystery of Christ's substance under the accidents of bread and wine, we need an unapologetic affirmation of the presence of God's beautiful Jesus in the prayer, speech, and song of the people; the prophetic proclamation of the Word; and the healing pastoral touch of the ministers who serve humbly. When every person baptized into the body of Christ is fully, consciously, and actively present through, in, and with Christ at the celebration of Eucharist, then they can receive the ultimate presence of God in Jesus' simple gifts of bread and wine.
After this we learned about liturgical laws regulating the celebration of Eucharist, and we examined the new English translation of the Roman Missal, which contains all the prayers for Mass for the church's seasons and special occasions. We also beheld the beauty of the liturgy in a special Mass through which Brother Bill illuminated the origin and significance of the elements of divine worship. I will not relate any more of what we heard and discussed, interesting though it is, because I think beauty is the right note on which to end.
Now, off to meditation and evening prayer.
More on Eucharist
Still backtracking on Brother Bill's excellent presentations on Eucharist from yesterday afternoon and this morning. Here are a few more of his theses that hit me like a spiritual bullet, making their mark but causing no pain, only enlightenment.
1. The Catholic Church is presently undertaking a recovery of the meaning of the Eucharist as sacrifice. This is leading the Church into choppy waters, but it can be an opportunity to gain something of value. Sacrifice may lose something of its disturbing edge and gain more of a luminous character if it is imagined not so much as an action that confers holiness as an action that acknowledges holiness. Sacrifice, literally "make holy" or "holy making," has to do with things becoming sacred or holy. Something "becomes" holy if it takes you back to God. That is sacrifice at its simplest.
2. Many things are sacrifices, that is, they become holy things. When people are led back to God, they become holy, and so they become sacrifices.
3. How do humans become holy? Through a radical dependence on God -- through a doing and being that relies totally on God for its beginning, its progress, and its completion.
4. Jesus is a mirror of God in the world. As the Gospels testify, especially in John, Jesus' life is radical dependence on God. He does everything only because God does it in him. The life of Jesus Christ is radical dependence on God; his life is holy, and therefore it is a sacrifice in its basic meaning.
5. Today, the followers of Jesus Christ believe the totality of Jesus, his life and death, is a sacrifice because it is a radical dependence on God, done not of his own will, but God's. Followers of Jesus Christ, from the days of the apostles to ours, also believe that we are to become holy as Christ is holy, and that means to live in sacrifice -- to be a holy offering, a holy making that shows others the presence of the living God and all that is holy.
6. There is a distinction between real personal sacrifice, an offering of ourselves, made by ourselves; and ritual sacrifice, a holy making that is offered by a priest on behalf of others. Both are done in acknowledgment of a radical dependence on God. The intrinsic connection between radical dependence on God and sacrifice may not severed without a loss of meaning or participation in the sanctification.
7. What is the relationship between the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the sacrifice of the Church in the celebration of the Lord's Supper? Jesus Christ is the real priest and the real sacrifice. What he did was a real action and not ritual. What the Church does in its celebration of the Eucharist is not a new real personal sacrifice, but a ritual sacrifice that is the sacrament, or symbol, of the once-for-all real personal sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The sacrifice offered at the Mass has power because it points to and has a share in the sacrifice of Christ. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which is believed to have real redemptive power, is available sacramentally, symbolically, in the ritual sacrifice of the Mass.
8. Why is the language of sacrifice valuable? It speaks to God's promise of who we are to become and the invitation to do as Jesus has done. If we are called to communion, then we share from the holy making of Christ and become empowered personally to also make holy. As Christ offers a real and personal sacrifice in his life, we who follow Jesus bring our personal life to God. In the ritual context of the Eucharist, our real and personal offerings are taken up to God by Christ, as an offering of praise, which is made holy by God in Christ. The ritual sacrifice of the Eucharist creates a mighty awareness that enables the Church, the people of God, to enter into their own adventure of making holy.
Okay, time to go to Eucharist for Brother Bill's teaching Mass.
1. The Catholic Church is presently undertaking a recovery of the meaning of the Eucharist as sacrifice. This is leading the Church into choppy waters, but it can be an opportunity to gain something of value. Sacrifice may lose something of its disturbing edge and gain more of a luminous character if it is imagined not so much as an action that confers holiness as an action that acknowledges holiness. Sacrifice, literally "make holy" or "holy making," has to do with things becoming sacred or holy. Something "becomes" holy if it takes you back to God. That is sacrifice at its simplest.
2. Many things are sacrifices, that is, they become holy things. When people are led back to God, they become holy, and so they become sacrifices.
3. How do humans become holy? Through a radical dependence on God -- through a doing and being that relies totally on God for its beginning, its progress, and its completion.
4. Jesus is a mirror of God in the world. As the Gospels testify, especially in John, Jesus' life is radical dependence on God. He does everything only because God does it in him. The life of Jesus Christ is radical dependence on God; his life is holy, and therefore it is a sacrifice in its basic meaning.
5. Today, the followers of Jesus Christ believe the totality of Jesus, his life and death, is a sacrifice because it is a radical dependence on God, done not of his own will, but God's. Followers of Jesus Christ, from the days of the apostles to ours, also believe that we are to become holy as Christ is holy, and that means to live in sacrifice -- to be a holy offering, a holy making that shows others the presence of the living God and all that is holy.
6. There is a distinction between real personal sacrifice, an offering of ourselves, made by ourselves; and ritual sacrifice, a holy making that is offered by a priest on behalf of others. Both are done in acknowledgment of a radical dependence on God. The intrinsic connection between radical dependence on God and sacrifice may not severed without a loss of meaning or participation in the sanctification.
7. What is the relationship between the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the sacrifice of the Church in the celebration of the Lord's Supper? Jesus Christ is the real priest and the real sacrifice. What he did was a real action and not ritual. What the Church does in its celebration of the Eucharist is not a new real personal sacrifice, but a ritual sacrifice that is the sacrament, or symbol, of the once-for-all real personal sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The sacrifice offered at the Mass has power because it points to and has a share in the sacrifice of Christ. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which is believed to have real redemptive power, is available sacramentally, symbolically, in the ritual sacrifice of the Mass.
8. Why is the language of sacrifice valuable? It speaks to God's promise of who we are to become and the invitation to do as Jesus has done. If we are called to communion, then we share from the holy making of Christ and become empowered personally to also make holy. As Christ offers a real and personal sacrifice in his life, we who follow Jesus bring our personal life to God. In the ritual context of the Eucharist, our real and personal offerings are taken up to God by Christ, as an offering of praise, which is made holy by God in Christ. The ritual sacrifice of the Eucharist creates a mighty awareness that enables the Church, the people of God, to enter into their own adventure of making holy.
Okay, time to go to Eucharist for Brother Bill's teaching Mass.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Eucharist
Continuing our study of liturgical theology and the Eucharist, here are several more insights that flooded my mind with light and warmed my heart, the seat of my faith.
1. In Christian worship, and especially the celebration of the sacraments, it is first of all Christ who shares with us, not we who share with God. We can offer only what we have received first from God in Christ. Through its celebration of the Eucharist, the Church does what Jesus did, but it must be kept in mind that Jesus Christ has done and is doing the work of God before any human initiative.
2. From the account of the Last Supper in the Gospel of Matthew, which is an elaboration and development of the account in Mark's Gospel, we learn that early Christian communities recognized the Eucharist as itself the principal sacrament of the forgiveness of sins. The Church knew and affirmed this before there even was a distinct sacrament of reconciliation. In truth, all the sacraments of the Church contain God's power of forgiveness, because all the sacraments convey grace.
3. In the beginning of the Church, Eucharist was not celebrated daily in the morning. Rather, it was celebrated on the evening of the first day of the week, the day of Resurrection: the Lord's Day, that is, Sunday. This was in accordance with Scripture accounts of the appearances of the risen Christ. Also, these celebrations were held in believers' households, as at this time there were no special buildings to gather assemblies for public worship.
4. The presiders at these ancient eucharistic celebrations were the apostles and first disciples themselves, as well as missionary preachers and travelling prophets. But mainly the heads of households were themselves the presiders, and they were both men and women. There were no cultic priests at this time. Jesus Christ was seen as the sole "high priest" of believers' worship, because he had offered himself as the once-for-all sacrifice. Furthermore, the Christian community itself was identified as a priestly people, that is to say, a holy people set apart to inherit the kingdom of heaven promised by God and inaugurated by Jesus.
5. Only later, as a concern for order brought about the hierarchical church and the charismatic church faded away, did the offices of bishop, presbyter, and deacon evolve and the cultic priesthood emerge. Over time, the office of bishop became spiritualized. Drawing upon the ancient Israelite cultic priesthood of service and sacrifice under the covenants God made with Abraham, Moses, and David, these leaders figured themselves as priests of the New Covenant sealed by the blood of Jesus Christ.
6. As the cultic priesthood developed, the meaning of Eucharist evolved from that of gift to offering, then oblation, and ultimately sacrifice. By analogy, the table of fellowship became the altar, and bread and wine became the real presence of the body and blood of Christ. The bishop-priest saw himself as offering the sacrifice of the high priest Jesus. And, along the way, the people stopped taking communion; rather, they attended the sacrifice of the Mass. Adoration of Christ present in the reserved sacrament superseded the act of receiving Christ in the bread and wine. Eucharist had ceased to be an interactive and transformative encounter with the living God.
7. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, biblical scholarship on the historical Jesus revealed the history of the early Church and awakened a desire among Catholics to have Eucharist as the early Church had done. The liturgical movement was born, leading to a reform of the entire sacramental system, beginning with Easter and Holy Week celebrations. By mid-century and the Second Vatican Council, the Church came to understand that worship is the central act of Christian life and that because of this, the liturgy had to be renewed. More than this, however, the renewal had to restore to all the baptized faithful their proper role in worship.
8. Baptism is the sacrament that both grounds and leavens liturgical practice. The renewal of the Eucharist would flow from a baptismal warrant for the full, active, and conscious participation of all the faithful, all the people of God.
9. As the theology of the Mass had changed, so would the identity and function of its ministers. The priest leads worship, not for the people, but with the people. The priest is not the sole minister at Eucharist; all the faithful in Christ, are ministers. The priest-presider brings together the assembly of the baptized, not by any special virtue of his office of priest, but by virtue of his own baptism. And as the priest offers the sacrifice of the Mass, it is an offering with the people who learn to offer themselves as they participate with devotion and full involvement.
10. What is the meaning of all the disputes over real presence and transubstantiation? It has to do with the belief that God is with us through Christ in the Eucharist. The basis for this claim is Jesus' own words at the Last Supper, which Christians interpret as God's promise to them that Christ will be there in the bread and wine offered and received in his memory. The desire to understand how the historical Jesus is connected to the Christ of the Eucharist prompted centuries of reflection, and no little controversy, on the mystery of real presence. The doctrine of transubstantiation emerged as a way around difficulties that surrendered the Eucharist into the traps of magical and literalist thinking. By moving all understanding of Christ's presence in the Eucharist from the physical to the metaphysical, the Church preserved the Eucharist as a symbol and, therefore, as a most deeply real encounter of God.
Okay, that is enough for now. Tomorrow I hope to do some backtracking and follow up with highlights of the lessons of the day.
1. In Christian worship, and especially the celebration of the sacraments, it is first of all Christ who shares with us, not we who share with God. We can offer only what we have received first from God in Christ. Through its celebration of the Eucharist, the Church does what Jesus did, but it must be kept in mind that Jesus Christ has done and is doing the work of God before any human initiative.
2. From the account of the Last Supper in the Gospel of Matthew, which is an elaboration and development of the account in Mark's Gospel, we learn that early Christian communities recognized the Eucharist as itself the principal sacrament of the forgiveness of sins. The Church knew and affirmed this before there even was a distinct sacrament of reconciliation. In truth, all the sacraments of the Church contain God's power of forgiveness, because all the sacraments convey grace.
3. In the beginning of the Church, Eucharist was not celebrated daily in the morning. Rather, it was celebrated on the evening of the first day of the week, the day of Resurrection: the Lord's Day, that is, Sunday. This was in accordance with Scripture accounts of the appearances of the risen Christ. Also, these celebrations were held in believers' households, as at this time there were no special buildings to gather assemblies for public worship.
4. The presiders at these ancient eucharistic celebrations were the apostles and first disciples themselves, as well as missionary preachers and travelling prophets. But mainly the heads of households were themselves the presiders, and they were both men and women. There were no cultic priests at this time. Jesus Christ was seen as the sole "high priest" of believers' worship, because he had offered himself as the once-for-all sacrifice. Furthermore, the Christian community itself was identified as a priestly people, that is to say, a holy people set apart to inherit the kingdom of heaven promised by God and inaugurated by Jesus.
5. Only later, as a concern for order brought about the hierarchical church and the charismatic church faded away, did the offices of bishop, presbyter, and deacon evolve and the cultic priesthood emerge. Over time, the office of bishop became spiritualized. Drawing upon the ancient Israelite cultic priesthood of service and sacrifice under the covenants God made with Abraham, Moses, and David, these leaders figured themselves as priests of the New Covenant sealed by the blood of Jesus Christ.
6. As the cultic priesthood developed, the meaning of Eucharist evolved from that of gift to offering, then oblation, and ultimately sacrifice. By analogy, the table of fellowship became the altar, and bread and wine became the real presence of the body and blood of Christ. The bishop-priest saw himself as offering the sacrifice of the high priest Jesus. And, along the way, the people stopped taking communion; rather, they attended the sacrifice of the Mass. Adoration of Christ present in the reserved sacrament superseded the act of receiving Christ in the bread and wine. Eucharist had ceased to be an interactive and transformative encounter with the living God.
7. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, biblical scholarship on the historical Jesus revealed the history of the early Church and awakened a desire among Catholics to have Eucharist as the early Church had done. The liturgical movement was born, leading to a reform of the entire sacramental system, beginning with Easter and Holy Week celebrations. By mid-century and the Second Vatican Council, the Church came to understand that worship is the central act of Christian life and that because of this, the liturgy had to be renewed. More than this, however, the renewal had to restore to all the baptized faithful their proper role in worship.
8. Baptism is the sacrament that both grounds and leavens liturgical practice. The renewal of the Eucharist would flow from a baptismal warrant for the full, active, and conscious participation of all the faithful, all the people of God.
9. As the theology of the Mass had changed, so would the identity and function of its ministers. The priest leads worship, not for the people, but with the people. The priest is not the sole minister at Eucharist; all the faithful in Christ, are ministers. The priest-presider brings together the assembly of the baptized, not by any special virtue of his office of priest, but by virtue of his own baptism. And as the priest offers the sacrifice of the Mass, it is an offering with the people who learn to offer themselves as they participate with devotion and full involvement.
10. What is the meaning of all the disputes over real presence and transubstantiation? It has to do with the belief that God is with us through Christ in the Eucharist. The basis for this claim is Jesus' own words at the Last Supper, which Christians interpret as God's promise to them that Christ will be there in the bread and wine offered and received in his memory. The desire to understand how the historical Jesus is connected to the Christ of the Eucharist prompted centuries of reflection, and no little controversy, on the mystery of real presence. The doctrine of transubstantiation emerged as a way around difficulties that surrendered the Eucharist into the traps of magical and literalist thinking. By moving all understanding of Christ's presence in the Eucharist from the physical to the metaphysical, the Church preserved the Eucharist as a symbol and, therefore, as a most deeply real encounter of God.
Okay, that is enough for now. Tomorrow I hope to do some backtracking and follow up with highlights of the lessons of the day.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Studying Liturgy
Peace and all good things from St. Lawrence Friary, perched on a hilltop overlooking Mt. Calvary, Wis.
We arrived in the afternoon Monday after an hour's journey from Milwaukee, with a pilgrimage on the way to Kopp's, a local favorite for fans of frozen custard. We met some of the friars last evening and shared a meal with them after evening prayer.
We are staying at a guest house on the campus of St. Lawrence Seminary High School, which the friars have been operating for over 150 years. This morning we celebrated Eucharist with the 250 students of this boys' academy in their wonderful chapel, built in 1969, built in the round, and which resembles in spirit the Italian caves where Francis of Assisi retreated to contemplate the glorious presence of God. It is one of the most beautiful sanctuaries built in a modern architectural style that I have ever seen. (Last night I spent an hour reposing in God's soft, invisible caress in the chapel darkness. What sweetness.)
In between our lessons today we toured the academic buildings and dormitories. The students who attend this school are blessed indeed with the best that a Catholic education can offer, in both spiritual and intellectual development.
Today, the second day of our study of ritual and liturgy under Capuchin Fr. Bill Cieslak, we turned to Eucharist, the summit of Christian worship and source of Christian life. Yesterday we had preliminary lessons on symbol, ritual, and sacrament so as to enter into a deeper understanding of what we experience when we celebrate the Eucharist at Mass. I have taken many notes, more than I expected. Brother Bill is a gifted teacher, and his love of liturgy is completely clear. He has done much to awaken in the postulants a more profound appreciation of what goes on in the sacraments of the Church. In me he has awakened a sense of wonder at the invitation God makes to all of us, both in the official sacraments of the Church and (just as graciously) in the sacramental presence of the divine in all of creation and human life.
I have come away from these two days of lessons determined to worship with a fuller consciousness of what God is giving and how I am responding.
There are many things I could share with you from our class sessions. Before I go to meditation and evening prayer, here let me point out only a few of the ideas that shine most brightly for me at this moment:
1. The language of theology, especially the theology of Christian liturgy, is symbolic, not literal. This is its strength, not its weakness. If something is real, it is deeply symbolic. Therefore, God's self-communication to us in the gift of the Eucharist is a deep symbol and utterly real.
2. Ritual is not always logical. In fact, its patterns and actions can be contradictory. But ritual is beautiful. And it is powerful, even if illogical.
3. A sacrament both points to a reality and contains a share of that reality. A Christian sacrament both points to Christ and contains Christ, who points to and contains God. If we receive Christ in the sacraments of the Church, then even we, too, point to and contain God.
4. We human beings are what we are, and we are more than what we are, because we are creation and therefore point to the Creator. Thus, we are sacraments of God, even as Christ is the ultimate sacrament of God.
5. A sacrament is a sacrament for someone of some reality. There is no such thing as a purely objective sacrament. A sacrament does not work like magic. A sacrament offers the presence of God, and the presence of God is always there in the sacrament, but a person needs the senses of faith to perceive that presence. Without the senses of faith, there is no sacrament, even though the presence of God remains in it and remains immediately before us.
6. Brother Bill defines Holy Eucharist as "the table fellowship (table of the Lord's Word and table of the Lord's body and blood) of believing disciples of Christ, gathered by God through baptism, and fed by God, so that we, in turn, might be transformed into that which we hear, eat, drink and share."
7. The Eucharist, the gift of God's very life in the body and blood Jesus Christ, is primarily to be received, not adored. Communion, not consecration, is the central ritual element of the eucharistic celebration.
Okay, enough for now. Surely more of the good things I am learning will emerge on the public diary by and by.
We arrived in the afternoon Monday after an hour's journey from Milwaukee, with a pilgrimage on the way to Kopp's, a local favorite for fans of frozen custard. We met some of the friars last evening and shared a meal with them after evening prayer.
We are staying at a guest house on the campus of St. Lawrence Seminary High School, which the friars have been operating for over 150 years. This morning we celebrated Eucharist with the 250 students of this boys' academy in their wonderful chapel, built in 1969, built in the round, and which resembles in spirit the Italian caves where Francis of Assisi retreated to contemplate the glorious presence of God. It is one of the most beautiful sanctuaries built in a modern architectural style that I have ever seen. (Last night I spent an hour reposing in God's soft, invisible caress in the chapel darkness. What sweetness.)
In between our lessons today we toured the academic buildings and dormitories. The students who attend this school are blessed indeed with the best that a Catholic education can offer, in both spiritual and intellectual development.
Today, the second day of our study of ritual and liturgy under Capuchin Fr. Bill Cieslak, we turned to Eucharist, the summit of Christian worship and source of Christian life. Yesterday we had preliminary lessons on symbol, ritual, and sacrament so as to enter into a deeper understanding of what we experience when we celebrate the Eucharist at Mass. I have taken many notes, more than I expected. Brother Bill is a gifted teacher, and his love of liturgy is completely clear. He has done much to awaken in the postulants a more profound appreciation of what goes on in the sacraments of the Church. In me he has awakened a sense of wonder at the invitation God makes to all of us, both in the official sacraments of the Church and (just as graciously) in the sacramental presence of the divine in all of creation and human life.
I have come away from these two days of lessons determined to worship with a fuller consciousness of what God is giving and how I am responding.
There are many things I could share with you from our class sessions. Before I go to meditation and evening prayer, here let me point out only a few of the ideas that shine most brightly for me at this moment:
1. The language of theology, especially the theology of Christian liturgy, is symbolic, not literal. This is its strength, not its weakness. If something is real, it is deeply symbolic. Therefore, God's self-communication to us in the gift of the Eucharist is a deep symbol and utterly real.
2. Ritual is not always logical. In fact, its patterns and actions can be contradictory. But ritual is beautiful. And it is powerful, even if illogical.
3. A sacrament both points to a reality and contains a share of that reality. A Christian sacrament both points to Christ and contains Christ, who points to and contains God. If we receive Christ in the sacraments of the Church, then even we, too, point to and contain God.
4. We human beings are what we are, and we are more than what we are, because we are creation and therefore point to the Creator. Thus, we are sacraments of God, even as Christ is the ultimate sacrament of God.
5. A sacrament is a sacrament for someone of some reality. There is no such thing as a purely objective sacrament. A sacrament does not work like magic. A sacrament offers the presence of God, and the presence of God is always there in the sacrament, but a person needs the senses of faith to perceive that presence. Without the senses of faith, there is no sacrament, even though the presence of God remains in it and remains immediately before us.
6. Brother Bill defines Holy Eucharist as "the table fellowship (table of the Lord's Word and table of the Lord's body and blood) of believing disciples of Christ, gathered by God through baptism, and fed by God, so that we, in turn, might be transformed into that which we hear, eat, drink and share."
7. The Eucharist, the gift of God's very life in the body and blood Jesus Christ, is primarily to be received, not adored. Communion, not consecration, is the central ritual element of the eucharistic celebration.
Okay, enough for now. Surely more of the good things I am learning will emerge on the public diary by and by.
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