liturgical – Communio

The Liturgical Vocation of Man

In the liturgy of St John Chrysostom, the Cherubic Hymn (“We who mystically represent the Cherubim”) shows the icon of the angelic ministry of adoration and of prayer in man. It is also the moment where the angelic hosts join the liturgical celebration. Man is associated with their song first in the Trisagion (“Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal”) and then the Sanctus resumes the theme of the Anaphora, the eucharistic praise of the Trinity. Men and angels are united in the same élan of adoration (“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of Thy Glory”). The content of the age to come, “full of glory,” begins already on earth.

A saint is not a superman, but one who discovers and lives his truth as a liturgical being. The best definition of man comes from the Liturgy: The human being is the one of the Trisagion and of the Sanctus (*I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live”). St Antony speaks of a doctor who gave the poor all that he did not need and sang the Trisagion all day long, uniting himself to the choir of angels. It is for this “action” that man is “set apart,” made holy. To sing to God is his one preoccupation, his unique “labor”: “And there came from the throne a voice that said: ‘Praise God, all you his servants’ ” (Rv 7:11). In the catacombs, the most frequent image is the figure of a woman in prayer, the Orant; she represents the one true attitude of the human soul. It is not enough to say prayers; one must become, be prayer, prayer incarnate. It is not enough to have moments of praise. All of life, each act, every gesture, even the smile of the human face, must become a hymn of adoration, an offering, a prayer. One should offer not what one has, but what one is. This is a favored subject in iconography. It translates the message of the Gospel: chaire, “rejoice and be glad,” “let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” This is the astonishing lightening of the weight of the world, when man’s own heaviness vanishes. “The King of Kings, the Christ is coming, and this is the “one thing needful.” The doxology of the Lord’s Prayer (“the kingdom and the power, and the glory”) is the heart of the liturgy. It is to respond to his vocation as a liturgical being that man is charismatic, the one who bears the gifts of the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit Himself: “You have been sealed with the Holy Spirit … you whom God has taken for His own, to make His glory praised” (Eph 1:14). One could not state more precisely the liturgical essence and destiny of man.

Paul Evdokimov (1901-70)

The Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

With the Church we pray…

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we, who glory in the Heart of your beloved Son and recall the wonders of his love for us, may be made worthy to receive an overflowing measure of grace from that fount of heavenly gifts.

At the period of Jesus’ coming upon this earth, man had forgotten how to love, for he had forgotten what true beauty was. His heart of flesh seemed to him as a sort of excuse for his false love of false goods: his heart was but an outlet, whereby his soul could stray from heavenly things to the husks of earth, there to waste his power and his substance. To this material world, which the soul of man was to render subservient to its Maker’s glory–to this world, which, by a sad perversion, kept man’s soul a slave to his senses and passions–the Holy Ghost sent a marvelous power, which, like a resistless lever, would replace the world in its right position: it was the sacred Heart of Jesus; a Heart of flesh, like that of other human beings, from whose created throbbings there would ascend to the eternal Father an expression of love, which would be a homage infinitely pleasing to the infinite Majesty, because of the union of the Word with that human Heart. It is a harp of sweetest melody, that is ever vibrating under the touch of the Spirit of love; it gathers up into its own music the music of all creation, whose imperfections it corrects, whose deficiencies it supplies, tuning all discordant voices into unity, and so offering to the glorious Trinity a hymn of perfect praise. The Trinity finds its delight in this Heart. It is the one only organum, as St. Gertrude calls it, the one only instrument which finds acceptance with the Most High. Through it must pass all the inflamed praises of the burning Seraphim, just as must the humble homage paid to its God by inanimate creation. By it alone are to come upon this world the favors of heaven. It is the mystic ladder between man and God, the channel of all graces, the way whereby man ascends to God, and God descends to man.

Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB

The Liturgical Year

Sacra Liturgia 2013: a preview

There are few opportunities for good and solid learning on the sacred Liturgy these days. Many of the conferences that pass for the advancement of Catholic thinking on the Liturgy are ideological. BUT, the forthcoming conference in Rome, Sacra Liturgia 2013, provides a great venue, a a clear context, a group of well-informed speakers dealing with the Catholic worship of the One Triune God.

Recently, a member of the Catholic World Report interviews one of the organizers, Dom Alcuin Reid, of Sacra Liturgia 2013 which will take place 25-28 June.

Dom Alcuin answers a question on Pope Benedict’s contribution to liturgical life of the Church:

Primarily in fostering the “new liturgical movement,” I think. Firstly, by his teaching, above all in Sacramentum Caritatis, which is a profound tutorial on the liturgical and ecclesial celebration of the Blessed Eucharist. Also by his acts, most certainly through Summorum Pontificum, where he authoritatively asserted that that the rites that were once “sacred and great…cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or considered harmful.” Finally, by his example: papal liturgies have shown us the meaning of ars celebrandi–the manner of celebrating the sacred mysteries with a true noble simplicity. And always, at the head of these liturgies has stood a man who has looked together with us toward the cross he had placed in the center of the altar. The liturgy is about Him, not me, he has taught us.

Clergy, religious and laity are welcome!

Dom Alcuin Reid is a monk of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, France.

Reid’s major work, The Organic Development of the Liturgy (Ignatius Press, 2005); he updated The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described (Burns & Oates, 2009) and he is the editor of From Eucharistic Adoration to Evangelization (Burns & Oates, 2012).

Sacra Liturgia 2013

Msgr. James Moroney talks about new Missal translation

In some corners of the church world the sacred Liturgy is a very neuralgic topic. But it does not need to be painful. There are those who will complain about anything and they doing just that over the forthcoming new translations of the 2002 Roman Missal due to be published on the First Sunday of Advent 2011. The 2002 Missal was published in Latin by Pope John Paul II and it needed to be translated. Today, the Worcester Telegram published a benign and positive with a few good details about the translations.

Monsignor James P. Moroney, is a wonderful man and a great priest. He’s a priest of the Diocese of Worcester, MA, and is currently the Rector of the Cathedral of Saint Paul; Moroney was the head of the US Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship for several years and he continues to serve as the executive secretary of Vox Clara, the Vatican committee appointed to oversee the liturgical translations.

Today’s article on Monsignor Moroney is here.