NIHIL OBSTAT: INNOCENTIUS APAP, S.TH.M.; O.P.
CENSOR DEPUTATUS
IMPRIMATUR: + JOSEPH BUTT
VIC. GEN.
WESTMONASTERII, DIE 27A IULII 1935
CONTENTS
1. THE PRAYER OF THE LITURGY
2. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE LITURGY
3. THE STYLE OF THE LITURGY
4. THE SYMBOLISM OF THE LITURGY
5. THE PLAYFULNESS OF THE LITURGY
6. THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE LITURGY
7. THE PRIMACY OF THE LOGOS OVER THE ETHOS
1. THE PRAYER OF THE LITURGY
AN old theological proverb says, "Nothing done by nature and
grace is done in vain." Nature and grace obey their own
laws, which are based upon certain established hypotheses.
Both the natural and the supernatural life of the soul, when
lived in accordance with these principles, remain healthy,
develop, and are enriched. In isolated cases the rules may
be waived without any danger, when such a course is required
or excused by reason of a spiritual disturbance, imperative
necessity, extraordinary occasion, important end in view, or
the like. In the end, however, this cannot be done with
impunity. Just as the life of the body droops and is stunted
when the conditions of its growth are not observed, so it is
with spiritual and religious life--it sickens, losing its
vigor, strength and unity.
This is even more true where the regular spiritual life of a
corporate body is concerned. Exceptions play a far greater
part, after all, in the life of the individual than in that
of the group. AS soon as a group is in question, concern is
immediately aroused with regard to the regulation of those
practices and prayers which will constitute the permanent
form of its devotion in common; and then the crucial
question arises whether the fundamental laws which govern
normal interior life--in the natural as in the supernatural
order--are in this case to have currency or not. For it is
no longer a question of the correct attitude to be adopted,
from the spiritual point of view, towards the adjustment of
some temporary requirement or need, but of the form to be
taken by the permanent legislation which will henceforth
exercise an enduring influence upon the soul. This is not
intended to regulate entirely independent cases, each on its
own merits, but to take into account the average
requirements and demands of everyday life. It is not to
serve as a model for the spiritual life of the individual,
but for that of a corporate body, composed of the most
distinct and varied elements. From this it follows that any
defect in its organization will inevitably become both
apparent and obtrusive. It is true that at first every
mistake will be completely overshadowed by the particular
circumstances--the emergency or disturbance--which justified
the adoption of that particular line of conduct. But in
proportion as the extraordinary symptoms subside, and the
normal existence of the soul is resumed, the more forcibly
every interior mistake is bound to come to light, sowing
destruction on all sides in its course.
The fundamental conditions essential to the full expansion
of spiritual life as it is lived in common are most clearly
discernible in the devotional life of any great community
which has spread its development over a long period of time.
Its scheme of life has by then matured and developed its
full value. In a corporate body--composed of people of
highly varied circumstances, drawn from distinct social
strata, perhaps even from different races, in the course of
different historical and cultural periods--the ephemeral,
adventitious, and locally characteristic elements are, to a
certain extent, eliminated, and that which is universally
accepted as binding and essential comes to the fore. In
other words, the canon of spiritual administration becomes,
in the course of time, objective and impartial.
The Catholic liturgy is the supreme example of an
objectively established rule of spiritual life. It has been
able to develop "kata tou holou," that is to say, in every
direction, and in accordance with all places, times, and
types of human culture. Therefore it will be the best
teacher of the "via ordinaria"--the regulation of religious
life in common, with, at the same time, a view to actual
needs and requirements.1
The significance of the liturgy must, however, be more
exactly defined. Our first task will be to establish the
quality of its relation to the non-liturgical forms of
spiritual life.
The primary and exclusive aim of the liturgy is not the
expression of the individual's reverence and worship for
God. It is not even concerned with the awakening, formation,
and sanctification of the individual soul as such. Nor does
the onus of liturgical action and prayer rest with the
individual. It does not even rest with the collective
groups, composed of numerous individuals, who periodically
achieve a limited and intermittent unity in their capacity
as the congregation of a church. The liturgical entity
consists rather of the united body of the faithful as such--
the Church--a body which infinitely outnumbers the mere
congregation. The liturgy is the Church's public and lawful
act of worship, and it is performed and conducted by the
officials whom the Church herself has designated for the
post--her priests. In the liturgy God is to be honored by
the body of the faithful, and the latter is in its turn to
derive sanctification from this act of worship. It is
important that this objective nature of the liturgy should
be fully understood. Here the Catholic conception of worship
in common sharply differs from the Protestant, which is
predominatingly individualistic. The fact that the
individual Catholic, by his absorption into the higher
unity, finds liberty and discipline, originates in the
twofold nature of man, who is both social and solitary.
Now, side by side with the strictly ritual and entirely
objective forms of devotion, others exist, in which the
personal element is more strongly marked. To this type
belong those which are known as "popular devotions," such as
afternoon prayers accompanied by hymns, devotions suited to
varying periods, localities, or requirements and so on. They
bear the stamp of their time and surroundings, and are the
direct expression of the characteristic quality or temper of
an individual congregation.
Although in comparison with the prayer of the individual,
which is expressive of purely personal needs and
aspirations, popular devotions are both communal and
objective, they are to a far greater degree characteristic
of their origin than is the liturgy, the entirely objective
and impersonal method of prayer practiced by the Church as a
whole. This is the reason for the greater stress laid by
popular devotion upon the individual need of edification.
Hence the rules and forms of liturgical practice cannot be
taken, without more ado, as the authoritative and decisive
standard for non-liturgical prayer. The claim that the
liturgy should be taken as the exclusive pattern of
devotional practice in common can never be upheld. To do so
would be to confess complete ignorance of the spiritual
requirements of the greater part of the faithful. The forms
of popular piety should rather continue to exist side by
side with those of the liturgy, and should constitute
themselves according to the varying requirements of
historical, social, and local conditions. There could be no
greater mistake than that of discarding the valuable
elements in the spiritual life of the people for the sake of
the liturgy, or than the desire of assimilating them to it.
But in spite of the fact that the liturgy and popular
devotion have each their own special premises and aims,
still it is to liturgical worship that pre-eminence of right
belongs. The liturgy is and will be the "lex orandi." Non-
liturgical prayer must take the liturgy for its model, and
must renew itself in the liturgy, if it is to retain its
vitality. It cannot precisely be said that as dogma is to
private religious opinion, so is the liturgy to popular
devotion; but the connection between the latter does to a
certain degree correspond with that special relation,
characteristic of the former, which exists between the
government and the governed. All other forms of devotional
practice can always measure their shortcomings by the
standard of the liturgy, and with its help find the surest
way back to the "via ordinaria" when they have strayed from
it. The changing demands of time, place, and special
circumstance can express themselves in popular devotion;
facing the latter stands the liturgy, from which clearly
issue the fundamental laws--eternally and universally
unchanging--which govern all genuine and healthy piety.
In the following pages an attempt will be made to select
from the liturgy and to analyze several of these laws. But
it is an attempt pure and simple, which professes to be
neither exhaustive nor conclusive.
The first and most important lesson which the liturgy has to
teach is that the prayer of a corporate body must be
sustained by thought. The prayers of the liturgy are
entirely governed by and interwoven with dogma. Those who
are unfamiliar with liturgical prayer often regard them as
theological formula, artistic and didactic, until on closer
acquaintance they suddenly perceive and admit that the
clear-cut, lucidly constructed phrases are full of interior
enlightenment. To give an outstanding example, the wonderful
Collects of the Masses of Sunday may be quoted. Wherever the
stream of prayer wells abundantly upwards, it is always
guided into safe channels by means of plain and lucid
thought. Interspersed among the pages of the Missal and the
Breviary are readings from Holy Scripture and from the works
of the Fathers, which continually stimulate thought. Often
these readings are introduced and concluded by short prayers
of a characteristically contemplative and reflective nature-
-the antiphons--during which that which has been heard or
read has time to cease echoing and to sink into the mind.
The liturgy, the "lex orandi," is, according to the old
proverb, the law of faith--the "lex credendi"--as well. It
is the treasure-house of the thought of Revelation.
This is not, of course, an attempt to deny that the heart
and the emotions play an important part in the life of
prayer. Prayer is, without a doubt, "a raising of the heart
to God." But the heart must be guided, supported, and
purified by the mind. In individual cases or on definite and
explicit occasions it may be possible to persist in, and to
derive benefit from, emotion pure and simple, either
spontaneous or occasioned by a fortunate chance. But a
regular and recurrent form of devotion lights upon the most
varied moods, because no one day resembles another. If the
content of these devotional forms is of a predominatingly
emotional character, it will bear the stamp of its
fortuitous origin, since the feeling engendered by solitary
spiritual occurrences flows for the most part into special
and particular channels. Such a prayer therefore will always
be unsuitable if it does not harmonize, to a certain degree
at least, with the disposition of the person who is to offer
it. Unless this condition is complied with, either it is
useless or it may even mar the sentiment experienced. The
same thing occurs when a form of prayer intended for a
particular purpose is considered to be adapted to the most
varied occasions.
Only thought is universally current and consistent, and, as
long as it is really thought, remains suited, to a certain
degree, to every intelligence. If prayer in common,
therefore, is to prove beneficial to the majority, it must
be primarily directed by thought, and not by feeling. It is
only when prayer is sustained by and steeped in clear and
fruitful religious thought, that it can be of service to a
corporate body, composed of distinct elements, all actuated
by varying emotions.
We have seen that thought alone can keep spiritual life
sound and healthy. In the same way, prayer is beneficial
only when it rests on the bedrock of truth. This is not
meant in the purely negative sense that it must be free from
error; in addition to this, it must spring from the fullness
of truth. It is only truth--or dogma, to give it its other
name--which can make prayer efficacious, and impregnate it
with that austere, protective strength without which it
degenerates into weakness. If this is true of private
prayer, it is doubly so of popular devotion, which in many
directions verges on sentimentality.2 Dogmatic thought
brings release from the thralldom of individual caprice, and
from the uncertainty and sluggishness which follow in the
wake of emotion. It makes prayer intelligible, and causes it
to rank as a potent factor in life.
If, however, religious thought is to do justice to its
mission, it must introduce into prayer truth in all its
fullness.
Various individual truths of Revelation hold a special
attraction for the temperaments and conditions to which they
correspond. It is easy to see that certain people have a
pronounced predilection for certain mysteries of faith. This
is shown in the case of converts, for instance, by the
religious ideas which first arrested their attention at
their entry into the Church, or which decided them on the
step they were taking, and in other cases by the truths
which at the approach of doubt form the mainstay and
buttress of the whole house of faith. In the same way doubt
does not charge at random, but attacks for the most part
those mysteries of faith which appeal least to the
temperament of the people concerned.3
If a prayer therefore stresses any one mystery of faith in
an exclusive or an excessive manner, in the end it will
adequately satisfy none but those who are of a corresponding
temperament, and even the latter will eventually become
conscious of their need of truth in its entirety. For
instance, if a prayer deals exclusively with God's mercy, it
will not ultimately satisfy even a delicate and tender
piety, because this truth calls for its complement-the fact
of God's justice and majesty. In any form of prayer,
therefore, which is intended for the ultimate use of a
corporate body, the whole fullness of religious truth must
be included.
Here, too, the liturgy is our teacher. It condenses into
prayer the entire body of religious truth. Indeed, it is
nothing else but truth expressed in terms of prayer. For it
is the great fundamental truths4 which above all fill the
liturgy--God in His mighty reality, perfection, and
greatness, One, and Three in One; His creation, providence,
and omnipresence; sin, justification, and the desire of
salvation; the Redeemer and His kingdom; the four last
things. It is only such an overwhelming abundance of truth
which can never pall, but continue to be, day after day, all
things to all men, ever fresh and inexhaustible.
In the end, therefore, prayer in common will be fruitful
only in so far as it does not concentrate markedly, or at
any rate exclusively, on particular portions of revealed
truth, but embraces, as far as possible, the whole of Divine
teaching. This is especially important where the people are
concerned, because they easily tend to develop a partiality
for particular mysteries of faith which for some reason have
become dear to them.5 On the other hand, it is obvious that
prayer must not be overladen and as a result form a mere
hotchpotch of ill-assorted thoughts and ideas--a thing which
sometimes does occur. Yet without the element of
spaciousness, spiritual life droops and becomes narrow and
petty. "The truth shall make you free"--free not only from
the thralldom of error, but free as a preparation for the
vastness of God's kingdom.
While the necessity of thought is emphasized, it must not be
allowed to degenerate into the mere frigid domination of
reason. Devotional forms on the contrary should be permeated
by warmth of feeling.
On this point as well the liturgy has many recommendations
to make. The ideas which fill it are vital: that is to say,
they spring from the impulses of the heart which has been
molded by grace, and must again in their turn affect other
eager and ardent hearts. The Church's worship is full of
deep feeling, of emotion that is intense, and sometimes even
vehement. Take the Psalms, for instance--how deeply moving
they often are! Listen to the expression of longing in the
"Quemadmodum," of remorse in the "Miserere," of exultation
in the Psalms of praise, and of indignant righteousness in
those denouncing the wicked. Or consider the remarkable
spiritual tension which lies between the mourning of Good
Friday and the joy of Easter morning.
Liturgical emotion is, however, exceedingly instructive. It
has its moments of supreme climax, in which all bounds are
broken, as, for instance, in the limitless rejoicing of the
"Exultet" on Holy Saturday. But as a rule it is controlled
and subdued. The heart speaks powerfully, but thought at
once takes the lead; the forms of prayer are elaborately
constructed, the constituent parts carefully
counterbalanced; and as a rule they deliberately keep
emotion under strict control. In this way, in spite of the
deep feeling to be found in, say, the Psalms (to instance
them once more), a sense of restraint pervades liturgical
form.
The liturgy as a whole is not favorable to exuberance of
feeling. Emotion glows in its depths, but it smolders
merely, like the fiery heart of the volcano, whose summit
stands out clear and serene against the quiet sky. The
liturgy is emotion, but it is emotion under the strictest
control. We are made particularly aware of this at Holy
Mass, and it applies equally to the prayers of the Ordinary
and of the Canon, and to those of the Proper of the Time.
Among them are to be found masterpieces of spiritual
restraint.
The restraint characteristic of the liturgy is at times very
pronounced--so much so as to make this form of prayer appear
at first as a frigid intellectual production, until we
gradually grow familiar with it and realize what vitality
pulsates in the clear, measured forms.
And how necessary this discipline is! At certain moments and
on certain occasions it is permissible for emotion to have a
vent. But a prayer which is intended for the everyday use of
a large body of people must be restrained. If, therefore, it
has uncontrolled and unbalanced emotion for a foundation, it
is doubly dangerous. It will operate in one of two ways.
Either the people who use it will take it seriously, and
probably will then feel obliged to force themselves into
acquiescence with an emotion that they have never, generally
speaking, experienced, or which, at any rate, they are not
experiencing at that particular moment, thus perverting and
degrading their religious feeling. Or else indifference, if
they are of a phlegmatic temperament, will come to their
aid; they then take the phrases at less than their face
value, and consequently the word is depreciated.
Written prayer is certainly intended as a means of
instruction and of promoting an increased sensibility. But
its remoteness from the average emotional attitude must not
be allowed to become too great. If prayer is ultimately to
be fruitful and beneficial to a corporate body, it must be
intense and profound, but at the same time normally tranquil
in tone. The wonderful verses of the hymn--hardly
translatable, so full are they of penetrating insight--may
be quoted in this connection:
Laeti bibamus sobriam
Ebrietatem Spiritus . . .6
Certainly we must not try to measure off the lawful share of
emotion with a foot-rule; but where a plain and
straightforward expression suffices we must not aggrandize
nor embellish it; and a simple method of speech is always to
be preferred to an overloaded one.
Again, the liturgy has many suggestions to make on the
quality of the emotion required for the particular form of
prayer under discussion, which is ultimately to prove
universally beneficial. It must not be too choice in
expression, nor spring from special sections of dogma, but
clearly express the great fundamental feelings, both natural
and spiritual, as do the Psalms, for instance, where we find
the utterance of adoration, longing for God, gratitude,
supplication, awe, remorse, love, readiness for sacrifice,
courage in suffering, faith, confidence, and so on. The
emotion must not be too acutely penetrating, too tender, or
too delicate, but strong, clear, simple and natural.
Then the liturgy is wonderfully reserved. It scarcely
expresses, even, certain aspects of spiritual surrender and
submission, or else it veils them in such rich imagery that
the soul still feels that it is hidden and secure. The
prayer of the Church does not probe and lay bare the heart's
secrets; it is as restrained in thought as in imagery; it
does, it is true, awaken very profound and very tender
emotions and impulses, but it leaves them hidden. There are
certain feelings of surrender, certain aspects of interior
candor which cannot be publicly proclaimed, at any rate in
their entirety, without danger to spiritual modesty. The
liturgy has perfected a masterly instrument which has made
it possible for us to express our inner life in all its
fullness and depth, without divulging our secrets--"secretum
meum mihi." We can pour out our hearts, and still feel that
nothing has been dragged to light that should remain
hidden.7
This is equally true of the system of moral conduct which is
to be found in prayer.
Liturgical action and liturgical prayer are the logical
consequences of certain moral premises--the desire for
justification, contrition, readiness for sacrifice, and so
on--and often issue afresh into moral actions. But there
again it is possible to observe a fine distinction. The
liturgy does not lightly exact moral actions of a very far-
reaching nature, especially those which denote an interior
decision. It requires them where the matter is of real
importance, e.g., the abjuration at baptism, or the vows at
the final reception into an order. When, however, it is a
question of making regular daily prayer fruitful in everyday
intentions and decisions, the liturgy is very cautious. For
instance, it does not rashly utter such things as vows, or
full and permanent repudiations of sin, entire and lasting
surrender, all-embracing consecration of one's entire being,
utter contempt for and renouncement of the world, promises
of exclusive love, and the like. Such ideas are present at
times, fairly frequently even, but generally under the form
of a humble entreaty that the suppliant may be vouchsafed
similar sentiments, or that he is encouraged to ponder upon
their goodness and nobility, or is exhorted on the same
subject. But the liturgy avoids the frequent use of those
prayers in which these moral actions are specifically
expressed.
How right this is! In moments of exaltation and in the hour
of decision such a manner of speech may be justified, and
even necessary. But when it is a question of the daily
spiritual life of a corporate body, such formulas, when
frequently repeated, offer those who are using them an
unfortunate selection from which to make their choice.
Perhaps they take the formulas literally and endeavor to
kindle the moral sentiments expressed in them, discovering
later that it is often difficult, and sometimes impossible,
to do so truthfully and effectually. They are consequently
in danger of developing artificial sentiments, of forcing
intentions that still remain beyond their compass, and of
daily performing moral actions, which of their very nature
cannot be frequently accomplished. Or else they take the
words merely as a passing recommendation of a line of
conduct which it would be well to adopt, and in this way
depreciate the intrinsic moral value of the formula,
although it may be used frequently, and in all good faith.
In this connection are applicable the words of Christ, "Let
your speech be yea, yea,--nay, nay."8
The liturgy has solved the problem of providing a constant
incentive to the highest moral aims, and at the same time of
remaining true and lofty, while satisfying everyday needs.
Another question which arises is that concerning the form to
be taken by prayer in common. We may put it like this: What
method of prayer is capable of transforming the souls of a
great multitude of people, and of making this transformation
permanent?
The model of all devotional practice in common is to be
found in the Divine Office, which day after day gathers
together great bodies of people at stated times for a
particular purpose. If anywhere, then it is in the Office
that those conditions will be found which are favorable to
the framing of rules for the forms of prayer in common.9
It is of paramount importance that the whole gathering
should take an active share in the proceedings. If those
composing the gathering merely listen, while one of the
number acts as spokesman, the interior movement soon
stagnates. All present, therefore, are obliged to take part.
It is not even sufficient for the gathering to do so by
repeating the words of their leader. This type of prayer
does, of course, find a place in the liturgy, e.g., in the
litany. It is perfectly legitimate, and people desirous of
abandoning it totally fail to recognize the requirements of
the human soul. In the litany the congregation answers the
varying invocations of the leader with an identical act,
e.g., with a request. In this way the act each time acquires
a fresh content and fresh fervor, and an intensification of
ardor is the result. It is a method better suited than any
other to express a strong, urgent desire, or a surrender to
God's Will, presenting as it does the petition of all sides
effectively and simultaneously.
But the liturgy does not employ this method of prayer
frequently; we may even say, when we consider divine worship
as a whole, that it employs it but seldom. And rightly so,
for it is a method which runs the risk of numbing and
paralyzing spiritual movement.10 The liturgy adapts the
dramatic form by choice to the fundamental requirements of
prayer in common. It divides those present into two choirs,
and causes prayer to progress by means of dialogue. In this
way all present join the proceedings, and are obliged to
follow with a certain amount of attention at least, knowing
as they do that the continuation of their combined action
depends upon each one personally.
Here the liturgy lays down one of the fundamental principles
of prayer, which cannot be neglected with impunity.11
However justified the purely responsive forms of prayer may
be, the primary form of prayer in common is the actively
progressive--that much we learn from the "lex orandi." And
the question, intensely important to-day, as to the right
method to employ in again winning people to the life of the
Church is most closely connected with the question under
discussion. For it is modern people precisely who insist
upon vital and progressive movement, and an active share in
things. The fluid mass of this overwhelming spiritual
material, however, needs cutting down and fashioning. It
requires a leader to regulate the beginning, omissions, and
end, and, in addition, to organize the external procedure.
The leader also has to model it interiorly; thus, for
instance, he has to introduce the recurrent thought-theme,
himself undertaking the harder portions, in order that they
may be adequately and conscientiously dealt with; he must
express the emotion of all present by means of climaxes, and
introduce certain restful pauses by the inclusion of
didactic or meditative portions. Such is the task of the
choir-leader, which has undergone a carefully graduated
course of development in the liturgy.
Attention has already been called to the deep and fruitful
emotion which is contained in the liturgy. It also embraces
the two fundamental forces of human existence: Nature and
civilization.
In the liturgy the voice of Nature makes itself heard
clearly and decisively. We only need to read the Psalms to
see man as he really is. There the soul is shown as
courageous and despondent, happy and sorrowful, full of
noble intentions, but of sin and struggles as well, zealous
for everything that is good and then again apathetic and
dejected. Or let us take the readings from the Old
Testament. How frankly human nature is revealed in them!
There is no attempt at extenuation or excuse. The same thing
applies to the Church's words of ordination, and to the
prayers used in administering the sacraments. A truly
refreshing spontaneity characterizes them; they call things
by their names. Man is full of weakness and error, and the
liturgy acknowledges this. Human nature is inexplicable, a
tangled web of splendor and misery, of greatness and
baseness, and as such it appears in the prayer of the
Church. Here we find no carefully adapted portrait from
which the harsh and unpleasing traits have been excluded,
but man as he is.
Not less rich is the liturgy's cultural heritage. We become
conscious of the fact that many centuries have co-operated
in its formation and have bequeathed to it of their best.
They have fashioned its language; expanded its ideas and
conceptions in every direction; developed its beauty of
construction down to the smallest detail--the short verses
and the finely-forged links of the prayers, the artistic
form of the Divine Office and of the Mass, and the wonderful
whole that is the ecclesiastical year. Action, narrative,
and choral forms combine to produce the cumulative effect.
The style of the individual forms continually varies--simple
and clear in the Hours, rich in mystery on the festivals of
Mary, resplendent on the more modern feasts, delightful and
full of charm in the offices of the early virgin-martyrs. To
this we should add the entire group of ritual gestures and
action, the liturgical vessels and vestments, and the works
of sculptors and artists and musicians.
In all this is to be learnt a really important lesson on
liturgical practice. Religion needs civilization. By
civilization we mean the essence of the most valuable
products of man's creative, constructive, and organizing
powers-works of art, science, social orders, and the like.
In the liturgy it is civilization's task to give durable
form and expression to the treasure of truths, aims, and
supernatural activity, which God has delivered to man by
Revelation, to distill its quintessence, and to relate this
to life in all its multiplicity. Civilization is incapable
of creating a religion, but it can supply the latter with a
"modus operandi," so that it can freely engage in its
beneficent activity. That is the real meaning of the old
proverb, "Philosophia ancilla theologiae"--philosophy is the
handmaid of theology. It applies to all the products of
civilization, and the Church has always acted in accordance
with it. Thus she knew very well what she was doing, for
instance, when she absolutely obliged the Order of Saint
Francis--brimming over with high aspirations, and spiritual
energy and initiative--to adopt a certain standard of
living, property, learning, and so on. Only a prejudiced
mind, with no conception of the fundamental conditions
essential to normal spiritual life, would see in this any
deterioration of the first high aims. By her action in the
matter the Church, on the contrary, prepared the ground for
the Order, so that in the end it could remain healthy and
productive. Individuals, or short waves of enthusiasm, can
to a wide degree dispense with learning and culture. This is
proved by the beginnings of the desert Orders in Egypt, and
of the mendicant friars, and by holy people in all ages.
But, generally speaking, a fairly high degree of genuine
learning and culture is necessary in the long run, in order
to keep spiritual life healthy. By means of these two things
spiritual life retains its energy, clearness, and
catholicity. Culture preserves spiritual life from the
unhealthy, eccentric, and one-sided elements with which it
tends to get involved only too easily. Culture enables
religion to express itself, and helps it to distinguish what
is essential from what is non-essential, the means from the
end, and the path from the goal. The Church has always
condemned every attempt at attacking science, art, property,
and so on. The same Church which so resolutely stresses the
"one thing necessary," and which upholds with the greatest
impressiveness the teaching of the Evangelical Counsels--
that we must be ready to sacrifice everything for the sake
of eternal salvation--nevertheless desires, as a rule, that
spiritual life should be impregnated with the wholesome salt
of genuine and lofty culture.
But spiritual life is in precisely as great a need of the
subsoil of healthy nature--"grace takes nature for granted."
The Church has clearly shown her views on the subject by the
gigantic struggles waged against Gnosticism and Manichaeism,
against the Catharists and the Albigenses, against Jansenism
and every kind of fanaticism. This was done by the same
Church which, in the face of Pelagius and Celestius, of
Jovinian and Helvidius, and of the immoderate exaltation of
nature, powerfully affirmed the existence of grace and of
the supernatural order, and asserted that the Christian must
overcome nature. The lack of fruitful and lofty culture
causes spiritual life to grow numbed and narrow; the lack of
the subsoil of healthy nature makes it develop on mawkish,
perverted, and unfruitful lines. If the cultural element of
prayer declines, the ideas become impoverished, the language
coarse, the imagery clumsy and monotonous; in the same way,
when the life-blood of nature no longer flows vigorously in
its veins, the ideas become empty and tedious, the emotion
paltry and artificial, and the imagery lifeless and insipid.
Both--the lack of natural vigor and the lack of lofty
culture--together constitute what we call barbarism, i.e.,
the exact contradiction of that "scientia vocis" which is
revealed in liturgical prayer and is reverenced by the
liturgy itself as the sublime prerogative of the holy
Creative Principle.13
Prayer must be simple, wholesome, and powerful. It must be
closely related to actuality and not afraid to call things
by their names. In prayer we must find our entire life over
again. On the other hand, it must be rich in ideas and
powerful images, and speak a developed but restrained
language; its construction must be clear and obvious to the
simple man, stimulating and refreshing to the man of
culture. It must be intimately blended with an erudition
which is in nowise obtrusive, but which is rooted in breadth
of spiritual outlook and in inward restraint of thought,
volition, and emotion.
And that is precisely the way in which the prayer of the
liturgy has been formed.
ENDNOTES
1. It is not by chance that "the religious Pope" so
resolutely took in hand the revision of the liturgy. The
internal revival of the Catholic community will not make
progress until the liturgy again occupies its rightful
position in Catholic life. And the Eucharistic movement can
only effectually distribute its blessings when it is in
close touch with the liturgy. It was the Pope who issued the
Communion Decrees who also said, "You must not pray at Mass,
you must say Mass!" Only when the Blessed Sacrament is
understood from the point of view of the liturgy can It take
that active share in the religious regeneration of the world
which Pius X expected of It. (In the same way the full
active and moral power of the Blessed Sacrament is only free
to operate unchecked when Its connection with the problems
and tasks of public and family life, and with those of
Christian charity and of vocational occupations, is fully
comprehended.)
2. A proof of this is to be found in the often sugary
productions of sacred art--holy pictures, statues, etc.--
which appeal to the people. The people are susceptible to
powerful art when it is national; the Middle Ages are a
witness to this, and certain aspects of modern art. But the
danger of lapsing into mere insipidity is very great. The
same thing applies to popular songs, and holds good in other
directions as well.
3. This does not mean that these truths are merely a mental
indication of the existing spiritual condition of the person
concerned. It is rather a proof of the saying, "grace takes
nature for granted." Revelation finds in a man's natural
turn of mind the necessary spiritual premises by which the
truths, which are of themselves mysteries, can be more
easily grasped and adhered to.
4. It is a further proof of Pius X's perspicacity that he
made universally accessible precisely those portions of the
liturgy--Sundays, the weekly office, and especially the
daily Masses of Lent--which stress the great fundamental
mysteries of faith.
5. By this we do not mean that specific times (e.g., the
stress of war) and conditions (e.g., the special needs of an
agricultural or seafaring population) do not bring home
certain truths more vividly than others. We are dealing here
with the universal principle, which is, however, adaptable
and must make allowances for special cases.
6. From the Benedictine Breviary, Lauds (e.g., the prayer at
daybreak) of Tuesday. [Literally, "Let us joyfully taste of
the sober drunkenness of the Spirit."]
7. The liturgy here accomplishes on the spiritual plane what
has been done on the temporal by the dignified forms of
social intercourse, the outcome of the tradition created and
handed down by sensitive people. This makes communal life
possible for the individual, and yet insures him against
unauthorized interference with his inner self; he can be
cordial without sacrificing his spiritual independence, he
is in communication with his neighbor without on that
account being swallowed up and lost among the crowd. In the
same way the liturgy preserves freedom of spiritual movement
for the soul by means of a wonderful union of spontaneity
and the finest erudition. It extols "urbanitas" as the best
antidote to barbarism, which triumphs when spontaneity and
culture alike are no more.
8. Matt. v. 37.
9. We do not overlook the fact that the Office in its turn
presupposes its special relations and conditions, from which
useful hints may be gained for private devotion, such as the
necessity for a great deal of leisure, which enables the
soul to meditate more deeply; and a special erudition, which
opens the mind to the world of ideas and to artistry of
form, and so on.
10. The foregoing remarks on the liturgy have already made
it abundantly clear that the justification of methods of
prayer such as, e.g., the Rosary, must not be gainsaid. They
have a necessary and peculiar effect in the spiritual life.
They clearly express the difference which exists between
liturgical and popular prayer. The liturgy has for its
fundamental principle, "Ne bis idom" [there must be no
repetition]. It aims at a continuous progress of ideas, mood
and intention. Popular devotion, on the contrary, has a
strongly contemplative character, and loves to linger around
a few simple images, ideas and moods without any swift
changes of thought. For the people the forms of devotion are
often merely a means of being with God. On this account they
love repetition. The ever-renewed requests of the Our
Father, Hail Mary, etc. are for them at the same time
receptacles into which they can pour their hearts.
11. In earlier ages the Church practiced by preference the
so called "responsive" form of chanting the Psalms. The
Precentor chanted one verse after the other, and the people
answered with the identical verse, or the partially repeated
verse. But at the same time another method was in use,
according to which the people divided into two choirs, and
each alternately chanted a verse of the Psalm. It says much
for the sureness of liturgical instinct that the second
method entirely Supplanted the first. (Cf. Thalhofer-
Eisenhofer, "Handbuch der kathalischen Liturgik," Freiburg,
1902, I, 261 et seq.)
13. The above remarks must not be misunderstood. Certainly
the grace of God is self-sufficient; neither nature nor the
work of man is necessary in order that a soul may be
sanctified. God "can awaken of these stones children to
Abraham." But as a rule He wishes that everything which
belongs to man in the way of good, lofty, natural and
cultural possessions shall be placed at the disposal of
religion and so serve the Kingdom of God. He has
interconnected the natural and the supernatural order, and
has given natural things a place in the scheme of His
supernatural designs. It is the duty of his representative
on earth, ecclesiastical authority, to decide how and to
what extent these natural means of attaining the
supernatural goal are to be utilized.
2. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE LITURGY
THE liturgy does not say "I," but "We," unless the
particular action which is being performed specifically
requires the singular number (e.g., a personal declaration,
certain prayers offered by the bishop or the priest in his
official capacity, and so on). The liturgy is not celebrated
by the individual, but by the body of the faithful. This is
not composed merely of the persons who may be present in
church; it is not the assembled congregation. On the
contrary, it reaches out beyond the bounds of space to
embrace all the faithful on earth. Simultaneously it reaches
beyond the hounds of time, to this extent, that the body
which is praying upon earth knows itself to be at one with
those for whom time no longer exists, who, being perfected,
exist in Eternity.
Yet this definition does not exhaust the conception of the
universality and the all-embracingness which characterize
the fellowship of the liturgy. The entity which performs the
liturgical actions is not merely the sum total of all
individual Catholics. It does consist of all these united in
one body, but only in so far as this unity is of itself
something, apart from the millions which compose it. And
that something is the Church.
Here we find an analogy with what happens in the body
politic. The State is more than the sum total of citizens,
authorities, laws, organizations, and so on. In this
connection discussion of the time-honored question-whether
this higher unity is real or imagined--is beside the point.
In any case, as far as personal perception is concerned, it
does exist. The members of a State are not only conscious of
being parts of a greater whole, but also of being as it were
members of an overlapping, fundamental, living unity.
On an essentially different plane--the supernatural--a more
or less corresponding phenomenon may be witnessed in the
Church. The Church is self-contained, a structure-system of
intricate and invisible vital principles, of means and ends,
of activity and production, of people, organizations, and
laws. It does consist of the faithful, then; but it is more
than the mere body of these, passively held together by a
system of similar convictions and regulations. The faithful
are actively united by a vital and fundamental principle
common to them all. That principle is Christ Himself; His
life is ours; we are incorporated in Him; we are His Body,
"Corpus Christi mysticum."1 The active force which governs
this living unity, grafting the individual on to it,
granting him a share in its fellowship and preserving this
right for him, is the Holy Ghost.2 Every individual Catholic
is a cell of this living organism or a member of this Body.
The individual is made aware of the unity which comprehends
him on many and various occasions, but chiefly in the
liturgy. In it he sees himself face to face with God, not as
an entity, but as a member of this unity. It is the unity
which addresses God; the individual merely speaks in it, and
it requires of him that he should know and acknowledge that
he is a member of it.
It is on the plane of liturgical relations that the
individual experiences the meaning of religious fellowship.
The individual--provided that he actually desires to take
part in the celebration of the liturgy--must realize that it
is as a member of the Church that he, and the Church within
him, acts and prays; he must know that in this higher unity
he is at one with the rest of the faithful, and he must
desire to be so.
From this, however, arises a very perceptible difficulty. It
is chiefly to be traced to a more common one, concerning the
relation between the individual and the community. The
religious community, like every other, exacts two things
from the individual. The first is a sacrifice, which
consists in the renouncement by the individual of everything
in him which exists merely for itself and excludes others,
while and in so far as he is an active member of the
community: he must lay self aside, and live with, and for,
others, sacrificing to the community a proportion of his
self-sufficiency and independence. In the second place he
must produce something; and that something is the widened
outlook resulting from his acceptance and assimilation of a
more comprehensive scheme of life than his own--that of the
community.
This demand will be differently met, according to the
disposition of each individual. Perhaps it will be the more
impersonal element of spiritual life--the ideas, the
ordering of instruments and designs, the objectives, laws
and rules, the tasks to be accomplished, the duties and
rights, and so on--which first arrests the attention. Both
the sacrifice and production indicated above will in such
cases assume a more concrete character. The individual has
to renounce his own ideas and his own way. He is obliged to
subscribe to the ideas and to follow the lead of the
liturgy. To it he must surrender his independence; pray with
others, and not alone; obey, instead of freely disposing of
himself; and stand in the ranks, instead of moving about at
his own will and pleasure. It is, furthermore, the task of
the individual to apprehend clearly the ideal world of the
liturgy. He must shake off the narrow trammels of his own
thought, and make his own a far more comprehensive world of
ideas: he must go beyond his little personal aims and adopt
the educative purpose of the great fellowship of the
liturgy. It goes without saying, therefore, that he is
obliged to take part in exercises which do not respond to
the particular needs of which he is conscious; that he must
ask for things which do not directly concern him; espouse
and plead before God causes which do not affect him
personally, and which merely arise out of the needs of the
community at large; he must at times--and this is inevitable
in so richly developed a system of symbols, prayer and
action--take part in proceedings of which he does not
entirely, if at all, understand the significance.
All this is particularly difficult for modern people, who
find it so hard to renounce their independence. And yet
people who are perfectly ready to play a subordinate part in
state and commercial affairs are all the more susceptible
and the more passionately reluctant to regulate their
spiritual life by dictates other than those of their private
and personal requirements. The requirements of the liturgy
can be summed up in one word, humility. Humility by
renunciation; that is to say, by the abdication of self-rule
and self-sufficiency. And humility by positive action; that
is to say, by the acceptance of the spiritual principles
which the liturgy offers and which far transcend the little
world of individual spiritual existence.
The demands of the liturgy's communal life wear a different
aspect for the people who are less affected by its concrete
and impersonal side. For the latter, the problem of
fellowship does not so much consist in the question of how
they are to assimilate the universal and, as it were,
concrete element, at the same time subordinating themselves
to and dovetailing into it. The difficulty rather lies in
their being required to divide their existence with other
people, to share the intimacy of their inner life, their
feeling and willing, with others; and to know that they are
united with these others in a higher unity. And by others we
mean not one or two neighbors, or a small circle of people,
congenial by reason of similar aims or special relations,
but with all, even with those who are indifferent, adverse,
or even hostilely-minded.
The demand here resolves itself into the breaking down of
the barriers which the more sensitive soul sets around its
spiritual life. The soul must issue forth from these if it
is to go among others and share their existence. Just as in
the first case the community was perceived as a great
concrete order, in the second it is perceived as a broad
tissue of personal affinities, an endless interweaving of
living reciprocal relations. The sacrifice required in the
first place is that of renouncing the right of self-
determination in spiritual activity; in the second, that of
renouncing spiritual isolation. There it is a question of
subordinating self to a fixed and objective order, here of
sharing life in common with other people. There humility is
required, here charity and vigorous expansion of self.
There the given spiritual content of the liturgy must be
assimilated; here life must be lived in common with the
other members of Christ's Body, their petitions included
with one's own, their needs voiced as one's own. There "We"
is the expression of selfless objectivity; here it signifies
that he who employs it is expanding his inner life in order
to include that of others, and to assimilate theirs to his.
In the first case, the pride which insists upon
independence, and the aggressive intolerance often bred by
individual existence, must be overcome, while the entire
system of communal aims and ideas must be assimilated; in
the second, the repulsion occasioned by the strangeness of
corporate life must be mastered, and the shrinking from
self-expansion, and that exclusiveness triumphed over, which
leads us to desire only the company of such as we have
ourselves chosen and to whom we have voluntarily opened out.
Here, too, is required continual spiritual abnegation, a
continuous projection of self at the desire of others, and a
great and wonderful love which is ready to participate in
their life and to make that life its own.
Yet the subordination of self is actually facilitated by a
peculiarity inherent in liturgical life itself. It forms at
once the complement of and contrast to what has already been
discussed. Let us call the disposition manifesting itself in
the two forms indicated above, the individualistic. Facing
it stands the social disposition, which eagerly and
consistently craves for fellowship, and lives in terms of
"We" just as involuntarily as the former bases itself on the
exclusive "I." The social disposition will, when it is
spiritually active, automatically seek out congenial
associates; and their joint striving towards union will be
characterized by a firmness and decision alien to the
liturgy. It is sufficient to recall in this connection the
systems of spiritual association and fellowship peculiar to
certain sects. Here at times the bounds of personality
diminish to such an extent that all spiritual reserve is
lost, and frequently all external reserve as well. Naturally
this description only applies to extreme cases, but it still
shows the tendency of the social urge in such dispositions.
For this reason people like this will not find all their
expectations immediately fulfilled in the liturgy. The
fellowship of the liturgy will to them appear frigid and
restricted. From which it follows that this fellowship,
however complete and genuine it may be, still acts as a
check upon unconditional self-surrender. The social urge is
opposed by an equally powerful tendency which sees to it
that a certain fixed boundary is maintained. The individual
is, it is true, a member of the whole--but he is only a
member. He is not utterly merged in it; he is added to it,
but in such a way that he throughout remains an entity,
existing of himself. This is notably borne out by the fact
that the union of the members is not directly accomplished
from man to man. It is accomplished by and in their joint
aim, goal, and spiritual resting place--God--by their
identical creed, sacrifice and sacraments. In the liturgy it
is of very rare occurrence that speech and response, and
action or gesture are immediately directed from one member
of the fellowship to the other.3 When this does occur, it is
generally worth while to observe the great restraint which
characterizes such communication. It is governed by strict
regulations. The individual is never drawn into contacts
which are too extensively direct. He is always free to
decide how far he is to get into touch, from the spiritual
point of view, with others in that which is common to them
all, in God. Take the kiss of peace, for instance; when it
is performed according to the rubric it is a masterly
manifestation of restrained and elevated social solidarity.
This is of great importance. It is hardly necessary to point
out what would be the infallible consequences of attempting
to transmit the consciousness of their fellowship in the
liturgy directly from one individual to another. The history
of the sects teems with examples bearing on this point. For
this reason the liturgy sets strict bounds between
individuals. Their union is moderated by a continually
watchful sentiment of disparity and by reciprocal reverence.
Their fellowship notwithstanding, the one individual can
never force his way into the intimacy of the other, never
influence the latter's prayers and actions, nor force upon
the latter his own characteristics, feelings and
perceptions. Their fellowship consists in community of
intention, thought and language, in the direction of eyes
and heart to the one aim; it consists in their identical
belief, the identical sacrifice which they offer, the Divine
Food which nourishes them all alike; in the one God and Lord
Who unites them mystically in Himself. But individuals in
their quality of distinct corporeal entities do not among
themselves intrude upon each other's inner life.
It is this reserve alone which in the end makes fellowship
in the liturgy possible; but for it the latter would be
unendurable. By this reserve again the liturgy keeps all
vulgarizing elements at a distance. It never allows the soul
to feel that it is imprisoned with others, or that its
independence and intimacy are threatened with invasion.
From the man of individualistic disposition, then, a
sacrifice for the good of the community is required; from
the man of social disposition, submission to the austere
restraint which characterizes liturgical fellowship. While
the former must accustom himself to frequenting the company
of his fellows, and must acknowledge that he is only a man
among men, the latter must learn to subscribe to the noble,
restrained forms which etiquette requires in the House and
at the Court of the Divine Majesty.
ENDNOTES
1. Cf. Rom. xii. 4 et seq.; I Cor. xii. 4 et seq.; Eph.,
chaps. i.-iv.; Col. i. 15 et seq., and elsewhere.
2. Cf I Cor. xii. 4 et seq.; M. J. Scheeben, "Die Mysterien
des Christentums," pp. 314-508 (Freiburg, 1911).
3. This does not apply, of course, to the communication
between the hierarchical persons and the faithful. This
relation is continual and direct.
3. THE STYLE OF THE LITURGY
STYLE is chiefly spoken of in a universal sense. By style we
understand those particular characteristics which
distinguish every valid and genuine production or organism
as such, whether it is a work of art, a personality, a form
of society, or anything whatever; it denotes that any given
vital principle has found its true and final expression. But
this self-expression must be of such a nature that it
simultaneously imparts to the individual element a universal
significance, reaching far beyond its own particular sphere.
For the essence of individuality embraces within itself a
second element; it is true that it is particular and
unreproducible, but it is at the same time universal,
standing in relationship to the other individuals of its
kind, and manifesting in its permanent existence traits
which are also borne by others. The greater the originality
and forcefulness of an individual thing, the greater its
capacity of comprehensively revealing the universal essence
of its kind,1 the greater is its significance. Now if a
personality a work of art, or a form of society has, by
virtue of its existence and activity, expressed in a
convincing manner that which it really is, and if at the
same time by its quality of specialness it does not merely
represent an arbitrary mood, but its relation to a corporate
life, then and to that extent it may be said to have style.
In this sense the liturgy undoubtedly has created a style.
It is unnecessary to waste further words on the subject.
The conception can, however, be given a narrower sense. Why
is it that in front of a Greek temple we are more intensely
conscious of style than we are in front of a Gothic
cathedral? The inner effect of both these structures is
identically powerful and convincing. Each is the perfect
expression of a particular type or form of space-perception.
Each reveals the individuality of a people, but at the same
time affords a profound insight into the human soul and the
significance of the world in general. Yet before the temple
of Paestum we are more strongly conscious of style than we
are before the cathedrals of Cologne and of Rheims. What is
the reason? Why is it that for the uncultured observer
Giotto has the more style in comparison with Grunewald, who
is without any doubt equally powerful; and the figure of an
Egyptian king more than Donatello's wonderful statue of St.
John?
In this connection the word style has a specialized meaning.
It conveys that in the works of art to which reference has
been made the individual yields place to the universal. The
fortuitous element--determined by place and time, with its
significance restricted to certain specific people--is
superseded by that which is essentially, or at least more
essentially, intended for many times, places and people. The
particular is to a great degree absorbed by the universal
and ideal. In such works an involved mental or spiritual
condition, for instance, which could only have expressed
itself in an abstruse utterance or in an unreproducible
action, is simplified and reduced to its elements.2 By this
process it is made universally comprehensible. The
incalculable ebullition is given a permanent basis. It then
becomes easily penetrable and capable of demonstrating in
itself the interweaving of cause and effect.3 The solitary
historical event serves to throw into relief the vital
significance, universal and unaffected by time, which
reposes within it. The figure which appears but once is made
to personify characteristics common to the whole of society.
The hasty, impetuous movement is restrained and measured.
Whereas it was formerly confined to specific relationships
or circumstances, it can now to a certain degree be accepted
by everyone.4 Things, materials and instruments are divested
of their fortuitous character, their elements revealed,
their purpose defined, and their power of expressing certain
moods or ideas is heightened.5 In a word, while one type of
art and of life is endeavoring to express that which is
special and particular, this other, on the contrary, is
striving to hold up to our view that which is universally
significant. The latter type of art fashions simple reality,
which is always specialized, in such a manner that the ideal
and universal comes to the fore; that is to say, its style
is developed and its form is fixed. And so whenever life,
with its entanglements and its multiplicity, has been
simplified in this way, whenever its inner lawfulness is
emphasized and it is raised from the particular to the
universal, we are always conscious of style in the narrower
sense of the word. Admittedly it is difficult to say where
style ends and arrangement begins. If the arrangement is too
accentuated, if the modeling is carried out according to
rules and ideas, and not according to its vital connection
with reality, if the production is the result, not of exact
observation, but of deliberate planning, then it will be
universal only, and therefore lifeless and void.6 True
style, even in its strictest form, still retains the
developed faculty of convincing expression. Only that which
is living has style; pure thought, and the productions of
pure thought, have none.
Now the liturgy--at any rate, as far as the greater part of
its range is concerned--has style in the stricter sense of
the word. It is not the direct expression of any particular
type of spiritual disposition, either in its language and
ideas, or in its movements, actions and the materials which
it employs. If we compare, for instance, the Sunday Collects
with the prayers of an Anselm of Canterbury, or of a Newman;
the gestures of the officiating priest with the involuntary
movements of the man who fancies himself unobserved while at
prayer; the Church's directions on the adornment of the
sanctuary, on vestments and altar-vessels, with popular
methods of decoration, and of dress on religious occasions;
and Gregorian chant with the popular hymn--we shall always
find, within the sphere of the liturgy, that the medium of
spiritual expression, whether it consists of words,
gestures, colors or materials, is to a certain degree
divested of its singleness of purpose, intensified,
tranquilized, and given universal currency.
Many causes have contributed to this result. For one thing,
the passing centuries have continually polished, elaborated
and adapted the form of liturgical expression Then the
strongly generalizing effect of religious thought must be
taken into account. Finally, there is the influence of the
Greco-Latin spirit, with its highly significant tendency
towards style in the strict sense of the word.
Now if we consider the fact that these quietly constructive
forces were at work on the vital form of expression, not of
an individual, but of an organic unity, composed of the
greatness, exclusiveness and strength of the collective
consciousness that is the Catholic Church; if we consider
further that the vital formula thus fashioned steadily
concentrates its whole attention upon the hereafter, that it
aspires from this world to the next, and as a natural result
is characterized by eternal, sublime and superhuman traits,
then we shall find assembled here all the preliminary
conditions essential to the development of a style of great
vigor and intensity. If it were capable of doing so
anywhere, here above all should develop a living style,
spiritual, lofty and exalted. And that is precisely what has
happened. If we reflect upon the liturgy as a whole, and
upon its important points, not upon the abbreviated form in
which it is usually presented, but as it should be, we shall
have the good fortune to experience the miracle of a truly
mighty style. We shall see and feel that an inner world of
immeasurable breadth and depth has created for itself so
rich and so ample an expression and one at the same time so
lucid and so universal in form that its like has never been
seen, either before or since.
And it is style in the stricter sense of the word as well--
clear in language, measured in movement, severe in its
modeling of space, materials, colors and sounds; its ideas,
languages, ceremonies and imagery fashioned out of the
simple elements of spiritual life; rich, varied and lucid;
its force further intensified by the fact that the liturgy
employs a classic language, remote from everyday life.
When all these considerations are borne in mind it is easy
to understand that the liturgy possesses a tremendously
compelling form of expression, which is a school of
religious training and development to the Catholic who
rightly understands it, and which is bound to appear to the
impartial observer as a cultural formation of the most lofty
and elevated kind.
It cannot, however, be denied that great difficulties lie in
the question of the adaptability of the liturgy to every
individual, and more especially to the modern man. The
latter wants to find in prayer--particularly if he is of an
independent turn of mind--the direct expression of his
spiritual condition. Yet in the liturgy he is expected to
accept, as the mouthpiece of his inner life, a system of
ideas, prayer and action, which is too highly generalized,
and, as it were, unsuited to him. It strikes him as being
formal and almost meaningless. He is especially sensible of
this when he compares the liturgy with the natural
outpourings of spontaneous prayer. Liturgical formulas,
unlike the language of a person who is spiritually
congenial, are not to be grasped straightway without any
further mental exertion on the listener's part; liturgical
actions have not the same direct appeal as, say, the
involuntary movement of understanding on the part of someone
who is sympathetic by reason of circumstances and
disposition; the emotional impulses of the liturgy do not so
readily find an echo as does the spontaneous utterance of
the soul. These clear-cut formulas are liable to grate more
particularly upon the modern man, so intensely sensitive in
everything which affects his scheme of life, who looks for a
touch of nature everywhere and listens so attentively for
the personal note. He easily tends to consider the idiom of
the liturgy as artificial, and its ritual as purely formal.
Consequently he will often take refuge in forms of prayer
and devotional practices whose spiritual value is far
inferior to that of the liturgy, but which seem to have one
advantage over the latter--that of contemporary, or, at any
rate, of congenial origin.
Those who honestly want to come to grips with this problem
in all its bearings should for their own guidance note the
way in which the figure of Christ is represented, first in
the liturgy, and then in the Gospels. In the latter
everything is alive; the reader breathes the air of earth;
he sees Jesus of Nazareth walking about the streets and
among the people, hears His incomparable and persuasive
words, and is aware of the heart-to-heart intercourse
between Jesus and His followers. The charm of vivid
actuality pervades the historical portrait of Christ. He is
so entirely one of us, a real person--Jesus, "the
Carpenter's Son"--Who lived in Nazareth in a certain street,
wore certain clothes, and spoke in a certain manner. That is
just what the modern man longs for; and he is made happy by
the fact that in this actual historical figure is incarnate
the living and eternal Godhead, One with the body, so that
He is in the fullest sense of the word "true God and true
Man."
But how differently does the figure of Jesus appear in the
liturgy! There He is the Sovereign Mediator between God and
man, the eternal High-Priest, the divine Teacher, the Judge
of the living and of the dead; in His Body, hidden in the
Eucharist, He mystically unites all the faithful in the
great society that is the Church; He is the God-Man, the
Word that was made Flesh. The human element, or--
involuntarily the theological expression rises to the lips--
the Human Nature certainly remains intact, for the battle
against Eutyches was not fought in vain; He is truly and
wholly human, with a body and soul which have actually
lived. But they are now utterly transformed by the Godhead,
rapt into the light of eternity, and remote from time and
space. He is the Lord, "sitting at the right hand of the
Father," the mystic Christ living on in His Church.
It will be objected that in the Gospels of the Mass we can
still follow the historical life of Jesus in its entirety.
That is absolutely true. But if we endeavor to listen more
attentively, we shall still find that a particular light is
thrown on these narratives by their context. They are a part
of the Mass, of the "mysterium magnum," pervaded by the
mystery of sacrifice, an integral part of the structure of
the particular Sunday office, current season, or
ecclesiastical year, swept along by that powerful straining
upwards to the Hereafter which runs through the entire
liturgy. In this way the contents of the Gospels, which we
hear chanted, and in a foreign language, are in their turn
woven into the pattern. Of ourselves we come to consider,
not the particular traits which they contain, but their
eternal, super-historical meaning.
Yet by this the liturgy has not--as Protestantism has
sometimes accused it of doing--disfigured the Christ of the
Gospels. It has not set forth a frigid intellectual
conception instead of the living Jesus.
The Gospels themselves, according to the aims and purpose of
the respective Evangelists, stress first one, then another
aspect of the personality and activity of Christ Facing the
portrait contained in the first three Gospels, in the
Epistles of St. Paul Christ appears as God, mystically
living on in His Church and in the souls of those who
believe in Him. The Gospel of St. John shows the Word made
Flesh, and finally, in the Apocalypse God is made manifest
in His eternal splendor. But this does not mean that the
historical facts of Christ's human existence are in any way
kept back; on the contrary, they are always taken for
granted and often purposely emphasised.7 The liturgy
therefore has done nothing that Holy Scripture itself does
not do. Without discarding one stroke or trait of the
historical figure of Christ, it has, for its own appointed
purpose, more strongly stressed the eternal and super-
temporal elements of that figure, and for this reason--the
liturgy is no mere commemoration of what once existed, but
is living and real; it is the enduring life of Jesus Christ
in us, and that of the believer in Christ eternally God and
Man.
It is precisely because of this, however, that the
difficulty still persists. It is good to make it absolutely
clear, since the modern man experiences it more especially.
More than one--according to his instinctive impulse--would
be content to forego the profoundest knowledge of theology,
if as against that it were permitted to him to watch Jesus
walking about the streets or to hear the tone in which He
addresses a disciple. More than one would be willing to
sacrifice the most beautiful liturgical prayer, if in
exchange he might meet Christ face to face and speak to Him
from the bottom of his heart.
Where is the angle to be found from which this difficulty is
to be tackled and overcome? It is in the view that it is
hardly permissible to play off the spiritual life of the
individual, with its purely personal bearing, against the
spiritual life of the liturgy, with its generalizing bias.
They are not mutually contradictory; they should both
combine in active co-operation.
When we pray on our own behalf only we approach God from an
entirely personal standpoint, precisely as we feel inclined
or impelled to do according to our feelings and
circumstances. That is our right, and the Church would be
the last to wish to deprive us of it. Here we live our own
life, and are as it were face to face with God.8 His Face is
turned towards us, as to no one else; He belongs to each one
of us. It is this power of being a personal God, ever fresh
to each of us, equally patient and attentive to each one's
wants, which constitutes the inexhaustible wealth of God.
The language which we speak on these occasions suits us
entirely, and much of it apparently is suited to us alone.
We can use it with confidence because God understands it,
and there is no one else who needs to do so.
We are, however, not only individuals, but members of a
community as well; we are not merely transitory, but
something of us belongs to eternity, and the liturgy takes
these elements in us into account. In the liturgy we pray as
members of the Church; by it we rise to the sphere which
transcends the individual order and is therefore accessible
to people of every condition, time, and place. For this
order of things the style of the liturgy--vital, clear, and
universally comprehensible--is the only possible one. The
reason for this is that any other type of prayer, based upon
one particular set of hypotheses or requirements, would
undoubtedly prove a totally unsuitable form for a content of
different origin. Only a system of life and thought which is
truly Catholic--that is to say, actual and universal--is
capable of being universally adopted, without violence to
the individual. Yet there is still an element of sacrifice
involved in such adoption. Each one is bound to strive
within himself, and to rise superior to self. Yet in so
doing he is not swallowed up by, and lost in, the majority;
on the contrary, he becomes more independent, rich, and
versatile.
Both methods of prayer must co-operate. They stand together
in a vital and reciprocal relationship. The one derives its
light and fruitfulness from the other. In the liturgy the
soul learns to move about the wider and more spacious
spiritual world. It assimilates--if the comparison is
permissible--that freedom and dignified restraint which in
human intercourse is acquired by the man who frequents good
society, and who limits his self-indulgence by the
discipline of time-honored social usage; the soul expands
and develops in that width of feeling and clearness of form
which together constitute the liturgy, just as it does
through familiarity and communion with great works of art.
In a word, the soul acquires, in the liturgy, the "grand
manner" of the spiritual life--and that is a thing that
cannot be too highly prized. On the other hand, as the
Church herself reminds us--and the example of the Orders who
live by the liturgy is a proof of this--side by side with
the liturgy there must continue to exist that private
devotion which provides for the personal requirements of the
individual, and to which the soul surrenders itself
according to its particular circumstances. From the latter
liturgical prayer in its turn derives warmth and local
color.
If private devotion were non-existent, and if the liturgy
were the final and exclusive form of spiritual exercise,
that exercise might easily degenerate into a frigid formula;
but if the liturgy were non-existent--well, our daily
observations amply show what would be the consequences, and
how fatally they would take effect.
ENDNOTES
1. The essence of genius, of the man of genius (e.g., of the
Saint), and of the really great work or deed consists in
this, that it is immeasurably original and yet is still
universally applicable to human life.
2. Cf. the inner life in Ibsen's plays, for instance, with
that of Sophoclean tragedy, the "Ghosts," perhaps, with
"Oedipus."
3. Cf. the line of action adopted by, e.g., Hedda Gabler and
Antigone.
4. Such is the origin of social deportment and of court
usage.
5. Such is the origin of symbols--social, state, religious
and otherwise.
6. It is this which differentiates various classical periods
from the classical age.
7. As, for instance, in the beginning of the Gospel of St.
John.
8. Even if here, as in the whole range of spiritual things,
the Church is our guide. But she is so in a different manner
than where the liturgy is concerned.
4. THE SYMBOLISM OF THE LITURGY
IN the liturgy the faithful are confronted by a new world,
rich in types and symbols, which are expressed in terms of
ritual, actions, vestments, implements, places, and hours,
all of which are highly significant. Out of this the
question arises--what is the precise significance of all
this as regards the soul's intercourse with God? God is
above space; what has He to do with directions as to
specific localities? God is above time; what does time,
beginning with the liturgical hours and ending with the
ecclesiastical year, matter to Him? God is Simplicity; then
how is He concerned with specific ritual, actions and
instruments? Let us desist from the attempt to enter more
fully into the question, and content ourselves with asking:
God is a Spirit--can matter therefore have any significance
in the soul's intercourse with Him? Is not the intervention
of material things bound to pervert and to degrade this
intercourse? And even if we admit that man consists of soul
and body, that he is not pure spirit, and therefore as a
logical conclusion that a material element will always play
a certain part in his spiritual life--must we not regard
this as a defect against which we must strive? Should it not
be the task of all true religion to come to be the "worship
of God in spirit and in truth," and at least to aim at, if
not to succeed in, eliminating the bodily and material
element as far as possible?
This question penetrates deeply into the essence and nature
of the liturgy.
What meaning has matter--regarded as the medium of spiritual
receptivity and utterance, of spiritual impression and
expression--for us?
The question depends upon the manner in which the Ego,
within its bodily-spiritual personality, experiences the
relationship between body and soul.1 There exists a peculiar
form of this self-experience, in which the boundary between
the "spiritual" and the "bodily" or "physical" is sharply
defined. In such cases the spiritual plane appears as
entirely self-contained, lying within--or perhaps it would
be better to say beyond--the physical plane, and having
little or nothing to do with the latter. The two planes--
spiritual and physical--are felt to be two distinct orders,
lying closely adjacent, between which communication
certainly takes place; but communication of such a nature
that it rather appears as a transposition from the one into
the other, than as the direct co-operation of both. Such is
the frame of mind which has probably drawn its conception of
the external world from Leibniz's theory of monads, and its
conception of the soul from the teaching of psycho-physical
parallelism.
It is obvious that people who favor such a system of thought
will only attach a more or less fortuitous significance to
the relationship between the physical and the spiritual. The
latter, they consider, is intimately bound up with the
former, and is also in need of it, but as far as the life of
the soul proper is concerned, the physical has no
importance; it merely appears to encumber and to degrade
spiritual activity. The soul strives to attain its goal--
that is to say, truth, the moral impulse, God, and the
Divine--by purely spiritual means. Even when such people
know that this endeavor cannot possibly succeed, they still
exert themselves to approach to the purely spiritual at
least as nearly as they can. To them the physical is an
alloy, an innate imperfection, of which they endeavor to rid
themselves. They may perhaps credit it with a limited
external significance, and look upon it as an aid to the
elucidation of the spiritual, as an illustration, or as an
allegory; but they are all the time conscious that they are
making what is actually an inadmissible concession.
Moreover, the physical does not appeal to them as a medium
of vividly expressing their inner life. They scarcely even
feel the need of expressing that life in a tangible manner;
for them the spiritual is self-sufficing, or else it can
express itself in a straightforward moral action and in a
simply uttered word.
People of such a turn of mind will inevitably have great
difficulties to face in the liturgy.2 Somewhat naturally,
they gravitate towards a strictly spiritual form of
devotion, which aims at suppressing the physical or material
element and at shaping its external manifestations in as
plain and homely a manner as possible; it prizes the simple
word as the most spiritual medium of communication.
Facing these, and in contrast with them, are people of a
different mental constitution. For them, the spiritual and
the physical are inextricably jumbled together3; they
incline to amalgamate the two. While the former type of
disposition labors to separate the physical and the
spiritual spheres, the latter endeavors to unite them.
People like this are prone to look upon the soul merely as
the lining of the body, and upon the body as the outside, in
some sort the condensation or materialization, of the spirit
within. They interpret spiritual elements in terms of
physical conditions or movements, and directly perceive
every material action as a spiritual experience. They extend
their conviction of the essential oneness of the soul and
the body beyond the province of the individual personality,
and include external things within its sphere of operation.
As they frequently tend to regard externals as the
manifestation of spiritual elements, they are also capable
of utilizing them as a means of expressing their own
innerness. They see this expressed in various substances, in
clothing, in social formations, and in Nature, while their
inner struggles are reflected even in conditions, desires,
and conflicts which are universal.4
Of the two types of spiritual character, the second at the
first glance would seem to correspond the more closely to
the nature of the liturgy. It is far more susceptible to the
power of expression proper to liturgical action and
materials, and can the more readily apply these external
phenomena to the expression of its own inner life. Yet in
the liturgy it has to face problems and difficulties all its
own.
People who perceive the physical or material and the
spiritual as inextricably mingled find it hard to confine
the manifestations of the individual soul to set forms of
expression, and to adhere strictly to the clearly defined
significance of the formulas, actions and instruments
employed in such expression. They conceive the inner life as
being in a perpetual state of flux. They cannot create
definite and clearly outlined forms of expression because
they are incapable of separating spiritual from physical or
material objects. They find it equally difficult to
distinguish clearly the specific substance behind the given
forms of expression; they will always give it a fresh
interpretation according to varying circumstances.5
In other words, in spite of the close relationship which in
this case exists between the physical and the spiritual such
people lack the power of welding certain spiritual contents
to certain external forms, which together will constitute
either the expression of their inner selves or a receptacle
for an extraneous content. That is to say, they lack one of
the ingredients essential to the creation of symbols. The
other type of people do not succeed any better, because they
fail to realize how vital the relationship is between the
spiritual and the physical. They are perfectly capable of
differentiating and of delimiting the boundaries between the
two, but they do this to such an extent that they lose all
sense of cohesion. The second type possess a sense of
cohesion, and with them the inner content issues directly
into the external form. But they lack discrimination and
objectiveness. Both--the sense of cohesion and the power of
discrimination--are essential to the creation of a symbol.
A symbol may be said to originate when that which is
interior and spiritual finds expression in that which is
exterior and material. But it does not originate when6 a
spiritual element is by general consent coupled with a
material substance, as, for instance, the image of the
scales with the idea of Justice. Rather must the spiritual
element transpose itself into material terms because it is
vital and essential that it should do so. Thus the body is
the natural emblem of the soul, and a spontaneous physical
movement will typify a spiritual event. The symbol proper is
circumscribed; and it may be further distinguished by the
total inability of the form selected as a medium of
expression to represent anything else whatever. It must be
expressed in dear and precise terms and therefore, when it
has fulfilled the usual conditions, must be universally
comprehensible. A genuine symbol is occasioned by the
spontaneous expression of an actual and particular spiritual
condition. But at the same time, like works of art, it must
rise above the purely individual plane. It must not merely
express isolated spiritual elements, but deal with life and
the soul in the abstract.
Consequently when a symbol has been created, it often enjoys
widespread currency and becomes universally comprehensible
and significant. The auspicious collaboration of both the
types of temperament outlined above is essential to the
creation of a symbol, in which the spiritual and the
physical elements must be united in perfect harmony. At the
same time it is the task of the spiritual element to watch
over and determine every stroke of the modeling, to sort and
sift with a sure hand, to measure off and weigh together
delicately and discreetly, in order that the given matter
may be given its corresponding and appropriate form. The
more clearly and completely a spiritual content is cast in
its material mold, the more valuable is the symbol thus
produced, and the more worthy it is of its name, because it
then loses its connection with the solitary incident which
occasioned it and becomes a universal possession. The
greater the depth of life from which it has sprung, and the
greater the degree of clarity and of conviction which has
contributed to its formation, the more true this is in
proportion.
The power of symbol-building was at work, for instance, when
the fundamental rules governing social intercourse were laid
down. From it are derived those forms by which one person
signifies to another interest or reverence, in which are
externally expressed the inward happenings of civil and
political life, and the like. Further--and in this
connection it is specially significant--it is the origin of
those gestures which convey a spiritual meaning; the man who
is moved by emotion will kneel bow, clasp his hands or
impose them, stretch forth his arms, strike his breast, make
an offering of something, and so on. These elementary
gestures are capable of richer development and expansion, or
else of amalgamation. They are the source of the manifold
ritual actions, such as the kiss of peace or the blessing.
Or it may be that certain ideas are expressed in
corresponding movements, thus belief in the mystery of
absolution is shown by the Sign of the Cross. Finally, a
whole series of such movements may be co-ordinated. This
gives rise to religious action by which a richly developed
spiritual element--e.g., a sacrifice--succeeds in attaining
external and symbolic expression. It is when that form of
self-experience which has been described above is extended
to objects which lie without the personal province, that the
material concrete factor enters into the symbol. Material
objects are used to reinforce the expressiveness of the body
and its movements, and at the same time form an extension of
the permanent bodily powers. Thus, for instance, in a
sacrifice the victim is offered, not only by the hands, but
in a vessel or dish. The smooth surface of the dish
emphasizes the expressive motion of the hand; it forms a
wide and open plane, displayed before the Godhead, and
throwing into powerful relief the upward straining line of
the arm. Or again, as it rises, the smoke of the incense
enhances the aspiration expressed by the upturned hands and
gaze of those who are at prayer. The candle, with its
slender, soaring, tapering column tipped with flame? and
consuming itself as it burns, typifies the idea of
sacrifice, which is voluntarily offered in lofty spiritual
serenity.
Both the before-mentioned types of temperament co-operate in
the creation of symbols. The one, with its apprehension of
the affinity between the spiritual and the physical,
provides the material for the primary hypothesis essential
to the creation of the symbol. The other, by its power of
distinction and its objectiveness, brings to the symbol
lucidity and form. They both, however, find in the liturgy
the problems peculiar to their temperament. But because they
have shared together in the creation of the liturgical
symbol, both are capable of overcoming these difficulties as
soon, that is, as they are at least in some way convinced of
the binding value of the liturgy.
The former type, then, must abandon their exaggerated
spirituality, admit the existence of the relationship
between the spiritual and the physical, and freely avail
themselves of the wealth of liturgical symbolism. They must
give up their reserve and the Puritanism which prompts them
to oppose the expression of the spiritual in material terms,
and must instead take the latter as a medium of lively
expression. This will add a new warmth and depth to their
emotional and spiritual experience.
The latter type must endeavor to stem their extravagance of
sensation, and to bind the vague and ephemeral elements into
clear-cut forms. It is of the highest importance that they
should realize that the liturgy is entirely free from any
subjection to matter,7 and that all the natural elements in
the liturgy (cf. what has been previously said concerning
its style) are entirely re-cast as ritual forms. So for
people of this type the symbolizing power of the liturgy
becomes a school of measure and of spiritual restraint.
The people who really live by the liturgy will come to learn
that the bodily movements, the actions, and the material
objects which it employs are all of the highest
significance. It offers great opportunities of expression,
of knowledge, and of spiritual experience; it is
emancipating in its action, and capable of presenting a
truth far more strongly and convincingly than can the mere
word of mouth.
ENDNOTES
1. The more precise discussion of the question belongs to
the domain, is yet but little explored, of typological
psychology.
2. This disposition does not, of course, actually exist in
the extreme form portrayed here any more than does that
which is described later. We are concerned, however, with
giving an account of such conditions in the abstract and not
in detail.
3. It need hardly be said that no intention exists of
discussing in this connection the real relationship of soul
and body. We are concerned with describing the manner in
which this relationship is felt and interiorly experienced.
It is not a question of metaphysics, but merely of
descriptive psychology.
4. Cf., for instance, the feeling of the Romantics for
Nature.
5. Hence the tendency of people like this to forsake the
Church, with her clear and unequivocal formulas, and to turn
to Nature, there to seek an outlet for their vague and
fluctuating emotions and to win from her the stimulus that
suits them.
6. As in allegory.
7. Such as is found in Nature-religions, for instance, which
are directly derived from Nature herself, from the forest,
the sea, etc. The liturgy, on the contrary, is entirely
designed by human hands. It would be extremely interesting
to investigate in a detailed manner the transformation of
natural things, shapes and sounds into ritual objects
through the agency of the liturgy.
5. THE PLAYFULNESS OF THE LITURGY
GRAVE and earnest people, who make the knowledge of truth
their whole aim, see moral problems in everything, and seek
for a definite purpose everywhere, tend to experience a
peculiar difficulty where the liturgy is concerned.1 They
incline to regard it as being to a certain extent aimless,
as superfluous pageantry of a needlessly complicated and
artificial character. They are affronted by the scrupulously
exact instructions which the liturgy gives on correct
procedure, on the right direction in which to turn, on the
pitch of the voice, and so on. What is the use of it all?
The essential part of Holy Mass--the action of Sacrifice and
the divine Banquet--could be so easily consummated. Why,
then, the need for the solemn institution of the priestly
office? The necessary consecration could be so simply
accomplished in so few words, and the sacraments so
straight-forwardly administered--what is the reason of all
the prayers and ceremonies? The liturgy tends to strike
people of this turn of mind as--to use the words which are
really most appropriate--trifling and theatrical.
The question is a serious one. It does not occur to
everyone, but in the people whom it does affect it is a sign
of the mental attitude which concentrates on and pursues
that which is essential. It appears to be principally
connected with the question of purpose.
That which we call purpose is, in the true sense of the
word, the distributive, organizing principle which
subordinates actions or objects to other actions or objects,
so that the one is directed towards the other, and one
exists for the sake of the other. That which is subordinate,
the means, is only significant in so far as it is capable of
serving that which is superior, the end. The purpose does
not infuse a spiritual value into its medium; it uses it as
a passage to something else, a thoroughfare merely; aim and
fulcrum alike reside in the former. From this point of view,
every instrument has to prove in the first place whether,
and in the second to what extent, it is fitted to accomplish
the purpose for which it is employed. This proof will
primarily be headed by the endeavor to eliminate from the
instrument all the non-essential, unimportant, and
superfluous elements. It is a scientific principle that an
end should be attained with the minimum expenditure of
energy, time, and material. A certain restless energy, an
indifference to the cost involved, and accuracy in going to
the point, characterize the corresponding turn of mind.
A disposition like this is, on the whole, both appropriate
and necessary to life, giving it earnestness and fixity of
purpose. It also takes reality into consideration, to the
extent of viewing everything from the standpoint of purpose.
Many pursuits and professions can be shown to have their
origin almost entirely in the idea of purpose. Yet no
phenomenon can be entirely, and many can be, to a minor
degree only, comprehended in this category. Or, to put it
more plainly, that which gives objects and events their
right to existence, and justifies their individuality, is in
many cases not the sole, and in others not even the primary
reason for their usefulness. Are flowers and leaves useful?
Of course; they are the vital organs of plants. Yet because
of this, they are not tied down to any particular form,
color, or smell. Then what, upon the whole, is the use of
the extravagance of shapes, colors and scents, in Nature? To
what purpose the multiplicity of species? Things could be so
much more simple. Nature could be entirely filled with
animate beings, and they could thrive and progress in a far
quicker and more suitable manner. The indiscriminate
application to Nature of the idea of purpose is, however,
open to objection. To go to the root of the matter, what is
the object of this or that plant, and of this or that
animal, existing at all? Is it in order to afford
nourishment to some other plant or animal? Of course not.
Measured merely by the standard of apparent and external
utility, there is a great deal in Nature which is only
partially, and nothing which is wholly and entirely,
intended for a purpose, or, better still, purposeful.
Indeed, considered in this light, a great deal is
purposeless. In a mechanical structure--a machine, say, or a
bridge-everything has a purpose; and the same thing applies
to business enterprises or to the government of a State; yet
even where these phenomena are concerned, the idea of
purpose is not far-reaching enough to give an adequate reply
to the query, whence springs their right to existence?
If we want to do justice to the whole question, we must
shift our angle of vision. The conception of purpose regards
an object's center of gravity as existing outside that
object, seeing it lie instead in the transition to further
movement, i.e., that towards the goal which the object
provides. But every object is to a certain extent, and many
are entirely, self-sufficient and an end in itself--if, that
is, the conception can be applied at all in this extensive
sense. The conception of meaning is more adaptable. Objects
which have no purpose in the strict sense of the term have a
meaning. This meaning is not realized by their extraneous
effect or by the contribution which they make to the
stability or the modification of another object, but their
significance consists in being what they are. Measured by
the strict sense of the word, they are purposeless, but
still full of meaning.
Purpose and meaning are the two aspects of the fact that an
existent principle possesses the motive for, and the right
to, its own essence and existence. An object regarded from
the point of view of purpose is seen to dovetail into an
order of things which comprehends both it and more beyond
it; from the standpoint of meaning, it is seen to be based
upon itself.
Now what is the meaning of that which exists? That it should
exist and should be the image of God the Everlasting. And
what is the meaning of that which is alive? That it should
live, bring forth its essence, and bloom as a natural
manifestation of the living God.
This is true of Nature. It is also true of the life of the
soul. Has science an aim or an object in the real sense of
the word? No. Pragmatism is trying to foist one upon it. It
insists that the aim of science is to better humanity and to
improve it from the moral point of view. Yet this
constitutes a failure to appreciate the independent value of
knowledge. Knowledge has no aim, but it has a meaning, and
one that is rooted in itself--truth. The legislative
activity of Parliament, for instance, has an end in view; it
is intended to bring about a certain agreed result in the
life of the State. Jurisprudence, on the contrary, has no
object; it merely indicates where truth lies in questions of
law. The same thing applies to all real science. According
to its nature, it is either the knowledge of truth or the
service of truth, but nothing else. Has art any aim or
purpose? No, it has not. If it had, we should be obliged to
conclude that art exists in order to provide a living for
artists, or else, as the eighteenth century German thinkers
of the "Aufklarung"--the "age of enlightenment"--considered,
it is intended to offer concrete examples of intelligent
views and to inculcate virtue. This is absolutely untrue.
The work of art has no purpose, but it has a meaning--"ut
sit"--that it should exist, and that it should clothe in
clear and genuine form the essence of things and the inner
life of the human artist. It is merely to be "splendor
veritatis," the glory of truth.
When life lacks the austere guidance of the sense of purpose
it degenerates into pseudo-aestheticism. But when it is
forced into the rigid framework that is the purely
purposeful conception of the world, it droops and perishes.
The two conceptions are interdependent. Purpose is the goal
of all effort, labor and organization, meaning is the
essence of existence, of flourishing, ripening life. Purpose
and meaning, effort and growth, activity and production,
organization and creation--these are the two poles of
existence.
The life of the Universal Church is also organized on these
lines. In the first place, there is the whole tremendous
system of purposes incorporated in the Canon Law, and in the
constitution and government of the Church. Here we find
every means directed to the one end, that of keeping in
motion the great machinery of ecclesiastical government. The
first-mentioned point of view will decide whether adjustment
or modification best serves the collective purpose, and
whether the latter is attained with the least possible
expenditure of time and energy.2 The scheme of labor must be
arranged and controlled by a strictly practical spirit.
The Church, however, has another side. It embraces a sphere
which is in a special sense free from purpose. And that is
the liturgy. The latter certainly comprehends a whole system
of aims and purposes, as well as the instruments to
accomplish them. It is the business of the Sacraments to act
as the channels of certain graces. This mediation, however,
is easily and quickly accomplished when the necessary
conditions are present. The administration of the Sacraments
is an example of a liturgical action which is strictly
confined to the one object. Of course, it can be said of the
liturgy, as of every action and every prayer which it
contains, that it is directed towards the providing of
spiritual instruction. This is perfectly true. But the
liturgy has no thought-out, deliberate, detailed plan of
instruction. In order to sense the difference it is
sufficient to compare a week of the ecclesiastical year with
the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. In the latter every
element is determined by deliberate choice, everything is
directed towards the production of a certain spiritual and
didactic result; each exercise, each prayer, even the way in
which the hours of repose are passed, all aim at the one
thing, the conversion of the will. It is not so with the
liturgy. The fact that the latter has no place in the
Spiritual Exercises is a proof of this.3 The liturgy wishes
to teach, but not by means of an artificial system of aim-
conscious educational influences; it simply creates an
entire spiritual world in which the soul can live according
to the requirements of its nature. The difference resembles
that which exists between a gymnasium, in which every detail
of the apparatus and every exercise aims at a calculated
effect, and the open woods and fields. In the first
everything is consciously directed towards discipline and
development, in the second life is lived with Nature, and
internal growth takes place in her. The liturgy creates a
universe brimming with fruitful spiritual life, and allows
the soul to wander about in it at will and to develop itself
there. The abundance of prayers, ideas, and actions, and the
whole arrangement of the calendar are incomprehensible when
they are measured by the objective standard of strict
suitability for a purpose. The liturgy has no purpose, or,
at least, it cannot be considered from the standpoint of
purpose. It is not a means which is adapted to attain a
certain end--it is an end in itself. This fact is important,
because if we overlook it, we labor to find all kinds of
didactic purposes in the liturgy which may certainly be
stowed away somewhere, but are not actually evident.
When the liturgy is rightly regarded, it cannot be said to
have a purpose, because it does not exist for the sake of
humanity, but for the sake of God. In the liturgy man is no
longer concerned with himself; his gaze is directed towards
God. In it man is not so much intended to edify himself as
to contemplate God's majesty. The liturgy means that the
soul exists in God's presence, originates in Him, lives in a
world of divine realities, truths, mysteries and symbols,
and really lives its true, characteristic and fruitful
life.4
There are two very profound passages in Holy Scripture,
which are quite decisive on the point. One is found in the
description of Ezekiel's vision.5 Let us consider the
flaming Cherubim, who "every one of them went straight
forward, whither the impulse of the Spirit was to go . . .,
and they turned not when they went . . ., ran and returned
like flashes of lightning . . ., went . . . and stood . . .
and were lifted up from the earth . . .. the noise of their
wings was like the noise of many waters . . ., and when they
stood, their wings were let down." How "aimless" they are!
How discouraging for the zealous partisans of reasonable
suitability for a purpose! They are only pure motion,
powerful and splendid, acting according to the direction of
the Spirit, desiring nothing save to express Its inner drift
and Its interior glow and force. They are the living image
of the liturgy.
In the second passage it is Eternal Wisdom which speaks: "I
was with Him, forming all things, and was delighted every
day, playing before Him at all times, playing in the
world...."6
This is conclusive. It is the delight of the Eternal Father
that Wisdom (the Son, the perfect Fullness of Truth) should
pour out Its eternal essence before Him in all Its ineffable
splendor, without any "purpose"--for what purpose should It
have?--but full of decisive meaning, in pure and vocal
happiness; the Son "plays" before the Father.
Such is the life of the highest beings, the angels, who,
without a purpose and as the Spirit stirs them, move before
God, and are a mystic diversion and a living song before
Him.
In the earthly sphere there are two phenomena which tend in
the same direction: the play of the child and the creation
of the artist.
The child, when it plays, does not aim at anything. It has
no purpose. It does not want to do anything but to exercise
its youthful powers, pour forth its life in an aimless
series of movements, words and actions, and by this to
develop and to realize itself more fully; all of which is
purposeless, but full of meaning nevertheless, the
significance lying in the unchecked revelation of this
youthful life in thoughts and words and movements and
actions, in the capture and expression of its nature, and in
the fact of its existence. And because it does not aim at
anything in particular, because it streams unbroken and
spontaneously forth, its utterance will be harmonious, its
form clear and fine; its expression will of itself become
picture and dance, rhyme, melody and song. That is what play
means; it is life, pouring itself forth without an aim,
seizing upon riches from its own abundant store, significant
through the fact of its existence. It will be beautiful,
too, if it is left to itself, and if no futile advice and
pedagogic attempts at enlightenment foist upon it a host of
aims and purposes, thus denaturizing it.
Yet, as life progresses, conflicts ensue, and it appears to
grow ugly and discordant. Man sets before himself what he
wants to do and what he should do, and tries to realize this
in his life. But in the course of these endeavors he learns
that many obstacles stand in his way, and he perceives that
it is very seldom that he can attain his ideal.
It is in a different order, in the imaginary sphere of
representation, that man tries to reconcile the
contradiction between that which he wishes to be and that
which he is. In art he tries to harmonize the ideal and
actuality, that which he ought to be and that which he is,
the soul within and nature without, the body and the soul.
Such are the visions of art. It has no didactic aims, then;
it is not intended to inculcate certain truths and virtues.
A true artist has never had such an end in view. In art, he
desires to do nothing but to overcome the discord to which
we have referred, and to express in the sphere of
representation the higher life of which he stands in need,
and to which in actuality he has only approximately
attained. The artist merely wants to give life to his being
and its longings, to give external form to the inner truth.
And people who contemplate a work of art should not expect
anything of it but that they should be able to linger before
it, moving freely, becoming conscious of their own better
nature, and sensing the fulfillment of their most intimate
longings. But they should not reason and chop logic, or look
for instruction and good advice from it.
The liturgy offers something higher. In it man, with the aid
of grace, is given the opportunity of realizing his
fundamental essence, of really becoming that which
according to his divine destiny he should be and longs to
be, a child of God. In the liturgy he is to go "unto God,
Who giveth joy to his youth."7 All this is, of course, on
the supernatural plane, but at the same time it corresponds
to the same degree to the inner needs of man's nature.
Because the life of the liturgy is higher than that to which
customary reality gives both the opportunity and form of
expression, it adopts suitable forms and methods from that
sphere in which alone they are to be found, that is to say,
from art. It speaks measuredly and melodiously; it employs
formal, rhythmic gestures; it is clothed in colors and
garments foreign to everyday life; it is carried out in
places and at hours which have been co-ordinated and
systematized according to sublimer laws than ours. It is in
the highest sense the life of a child, in which everything
is picture, melody and song.
Such is the wonderful fact which the liturgy demonstrates;
it unites art and reality in a supernatural childhood before
God. That which formerly existed in the world of unreality
only, ant was rendered in art as the expression of mature
human life, has here become reality. These forms are the
vital expression of real and frankly supernatural life. But
this has one thing in common with the play of the child and
the life of art--it has no purpose, but it is full of
profound meaning. It is not work, but play. To be at play,
or to fashion a work of art in God's sight--not to create,
but to exist--such is the essence of the liturgy. From this
is derived its sublime mingling of profound earnestness and
divine joyfulness. The fact that the liturgy gives a
thousand strict and careful directions on the quality of the
language, gestures, colors, garments and instruments which
it employs, can only be understood by those who are able to
take art and play seriously. Have you ever noticed how
gravely children draw up the rules of their games, on the
form of the melody, the position of the hands, the meaning
of this stick and that tree? It is for the sake of the silly
people who may not grasp their meaning and who will persist
in seeing the justification of an action or object only in
its obvious purpose. Have you ever read of or even
experienced the deadly earnestness with which the artist-
vassal labors for art, his lord? Of his sufferings on the
score of language? Or of what an overweening mistress form
is? And all this for something that has no aim or purpose!
No, art does not bother about aims. Does anyone honestly
believe that the artist would take upon himself the thousand
anxieties and feverish perplexities incident to creation if
he intended to do nothing with his work but to teach the
spectator a lesson, which he could just as well express in a
couple of facile phrases, or one or two historical examples,
or a few well-taken photographs? The only answer to this can
be an emphatic negative. Being an artist means wrestling
with the expression of the hidden life of man, avowedly in
order that it may be given existence; nothing more. It is
the image of the Divine creation, of which it is said that
it has made things "ut sint."
The liturgy does the same thing. It too, with endless care,
with all the seriousness of the child and the strict
conscientiousness of the great artist, has toiled to express
in a thousand forms the sacred, God-given life of the soul
to no other purpose than that the soul may therein have its
existence and live its life. The liturgy has laid down the
serious rules of the sacred game which the soul plays before
God. And, if we are desirous of touching bottom in this
mystery, it is the Spirit of fire and of holy discipline
"Who has knowledge of the world"8--the Holy Ghost-Who has
ordained the game which the Eternal Wisdom plays before the
Heavenly Father in the Church, Its kingdom on earth. And
"Its delight" is in this way" to be with the children of
men."
Only those who are not scandalized by this understand what
the liturgy means. From the very first every type of
rationalism has turned against it. The practice of the
liturgy means that by the help of grace, under the guidance
of the Church, we grow into living works of art before God,
with no other aim or purpose than that of living and
existing in His sight; it means fulfilling God's Word and
"becoming as little children"; it means foregoing maturity
with all its purposefulness, and confining oneself to play,
as David did when he danced before the Ark. It may, of
course, happen that those extremely clever people, who
merely from being grown-up have lost all spiritual youth and
spontaneity, will misunderstand this and jibe at it. David
probably had to face the derision of Michal.
It is in this very aspect of the liturgy that its didactic
aim is to be found, that of teaching the soul not to see
purposes everywhere, not to be too conscious of the end it
wishes to attain, not to be desirous of being over-clever
and grown-up, but to understand simplicity in life. The soul
must learn to abandon, at least in prayer, the restlessness
of purposeful activity; it must learn to waste time for the
sake of God, and to be prepared for the sacred game with
sayings and thoughts and gestures, without always
immediately asking "why?" and "wherefore?" It must learn not
to be continually yearning to do something, to attack
something, to accomplish something useful, but to play the
divinely ordained game of the liturgy in liberty and beauty
and holy joy before God.
In the end, eternal life will be its fulfillment. Will the
people who do not understand the liturgy be pleased to find
that the heavenly consummation is an eternal song of praise?
Will they not rather associate themselves with those other
industrious people who consider that such an eternity will
be both boring and unprofitable?
ENDNOTES
1. In what follows the writer must beg the reader not to
weigh isolated words and phrases. The matter under
consideration is vague and intangible, and not easy to put
into words. The writer can only be sure of not being
misunderstood if the reader considers the chapter and the
general train of thought as a whole.
2. Even when the Church is considered from its other aspect,
that of a Divine work of art. Yet the former conception is
bound to recur in this connection.
3. The Benedictines give it one, but do so in an obviously
different system of spiritual exercises to that conceived by
St. Ignatius.
4. The fact that the liturgy moralizes so little is
consistent with this conception. In the liturgy the soul
forms itself, not by means of deliberate teaching and the
exercise of virtue, but by the fact that it exists in the
light of eternal Truth, and is naturally and supernaturally
robust.
5. Ezekiel i. 4 et seq., especially 12, 17, 20, 24, and x. 9
et seq.
6. Proverbs viii. 30, 31.
7. Entrance prayer of the Mass.
8. Responsory at Terce, Pentecost.
6. THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE LITURGY
THE liturgy is art, translated into terms of life. Sensitive
people clearly recognize its wealth of expression, its
symmetry of form, and its delicate sense of proportion. As a
result, such people are in danger of appreciating the
Church's worship merely for the sake of its aesthetic value.
It is on the whole understandable that poetic literature
should apprehend the liturgy from its artistic side. It is a
more serious matter when this is so emphatically stressed in
writings which are particularly dedicated to liturgical
worship. It is sufficient for our purpose to recall valuable
works such as Staudenmaier's "Geist des Christentums," or
many of J. K. Huysman's books, "L'Oblat," for instance. The
present writer is anxious that this little work should not
gravitate, however unconsciously, in the same direction. For
this reason, in the chapter which has been begun, the
question will be more closely examined.
It is an incontrovertible proposition that people who
consider a work of art merely from the artistic point of
view do it an injustice. Its significance as a composition
can only be fully estimated when it is viewed in connection
with the whole of life. A work of art is in less danger from
the logician or the moral philosopher pure and simple,
because they stand in no particular relation to it. Deadly
destructive to the work of art, however, is the purely
artistic perception of the aesthete--both work and matter
being taken in the worst and most extreme sense which they
have possessed since, for instance, Oscar Wilde.
Still more does this hold good when it is a question, not of
the representation of a work of art, but of actual people,
and even of that tremendous unity--the "Opus Dei," that is
the liturgy--in which the Creator-Artist, the Holy Ghost,
has garnered and expressed the whole fullness of reality and
of creative art. Aesthetes are everywhere looked upon as
unwelcome guests, as drones and as parasites sponging on
life, but nowhere are they more deserving of anger and
contempt than in the sphere of sacred things. The careworn
man who seeks nothing at Mass but the fulfillment of the
service which he owes to his God; the busy woman, who comes
to be a little lightened of her burden; the many people who,
barren of feeling and perceiving nothing of the beauty and
splendor of word and sound which surrounds them, but merely
seek strength for their daily toil--all these penetrate far
more deeply into the essence of the liturgy than does the
connoisseur who is busy savoring the contrast between the
austere beauty of a Preface and the melodiousness of a
Gradual.
All of which impels us to the fundamental question, what is
the importance of beauty in relation to the entire
liturgical scheme?
First, however, a slight but necessary digression. We have
already seen that the Church's life functions in two
directions. On the one side there exists an active communal
life, a tremendous driving force of systematically directed
activities, which, however, coalesce in the many-membered
but strongly centralized organization. Such a unity alike
presupposes and manifests power. But what is the purpose of
power in the spiritual sphere?
This query deeply concerns every one of us, each according
to his disposition. For the one, it is a question of
satisfying himself as to the truth of the axiom that every
type of society, including the spiritual, needs power if it
is to subsist. The truth of this does not degrade the ideal,
even if it ranks power next in order to doctrine,
exhortation, and organization. This external power must not
of course be allowed to usurp the place of truth and of
justice, nor permitted to influence convictions. Where,
however, a religion is concerned which does not confine
itself to presenting ideals and opinions, but undertakes the
molding and adapting of human entities on behalf of the
Kingdom of God, there power is necessary. It is this which
adapts a truth, or a spiritual or ethical system, to the
needs of actual existence.
But if there are people who find it hard to bear that things
like justice and power should be named in the same breath
with such intimate matters as religious convictions and
spiritual life, there are others who are entirely
differently constituted. Upon such people a tremendous force
like the Catholic Church produces so direct an effect that
they easily forget the real significance of such power. It
is merely a means to an end. It is a tool, used to carve the
Kingdom of God from the raw material of the world; it is the
servant of Divine truth and grace. If an attempt were to be
made to constitute a form of spiritual society without a
powerful discipline, it would inevitably dissolve into
fleeting shadows. But if power, the servant, were to be
promoted to the position of master, the means to that of the
end, the tool to that of the guiding hand, religion would
then be stifled by despotism and its consequence, slavery.
Somewhat analogous to the position of power in the Church's
active life is that of beauty in relation to her
contemplative side. The Church not only exists for a
purpose, but she is of herself significant, viewed from her
other aspect of art transformed into life--or, better still,
in the process of transformation. For that is what the
Church is in the liturgy.
The preceding chapter endeavored to demonstrate that
artistic self-sufficiency is actually compatible with the
liturgy. Only a sophist could argue that the justification
of a form of life resides exclusively in its manifest
purposes. On the other hand, one must not forget as well
that artistic worth--beauty--is as dangerous to the
susceptible person as is power in the corresponding sphere
of active communal life. The danger inherent in the idea of
power is only to be overcome by those who are clear about
its nature and the method of employing it. Similarly, only
those who force their way into perception of its import can
break free from the illusive spell of beauty.
Apart from this stands the question, whence a spiritual
value derives its currency, whether from itself or from an
extraneous superior value? Associated with it, but entirely
distinct, is the second question, as to the quality of the
relation which exists between one value which is admittedly
based upon itself and other independent values. The first
question endeavors to trace one value back to another, e.g.,
the validity of the administration of justice to justice in
the abstract. The second investigates the existence, between
two values of equal validity, of a determinate order which
may not be inverted.
Truth is of itself a value, because it is truth, justice
because it is justice, and beauty because and in so far as
it is beauty. No one of these qualities can derive its
validity from another, but only from itself.1 The most
profound and true thought does not make a work beautiful,
and the best intentions of the artist avail as little, if
his creation, in addition to a concrete, vivid and robust
form, has not--in a word--beauty. Beauty as such is valid of
itself, entirely independent of truth and other values. An
object or a work of art is beautiful, when its inner essence
and significance find perfect expression in its existence.
This perfection of expression embraces the fact of beauty,
and is its accepted form of currency. Beauty means that the
essence of an object or action has, from the first moment of
its existence and from the innermost depths of its being,
formulated its relation to the universe and to the spiritual
world; that this interior formation, from which has
developed a phenomenon susceptible of expression, has
resolved upon symbolic unity; that everything is said which
should be said, and no more; that the essential form is
attained, and no other; that in it there is nothing that is
lifeless and empty, but everything that is vivid and
animated; that every sound, every word, every surface, shade
and movement, emanates from within, contributes to the
expression of the whole, and is associated with the rest in
a seamless, organic unity. Beauty is the full, clear and
inevitable expression of the inner truth in the external
manifestation. "Pulchritudo est splendor veritatis"--"est
species boni," says ancient philosophy, "beauty is the
splendid perfection which dwells in the revelation of
essential truth and goodness."
Beauty, therefore, is an independent value; it is not truth
and not goodness, nor can it be derived from them. And yet
it stands in the closest relation to these other values. As
we have already remarked, in order that beauty may be made
manifest, something must exist which will reveal itself
externally; there must be an essential truth which compels
utterance, or an event which will out. Pride of place,
therefore, though not of rank or worth, belongs, not to
beauty, but to truth. Although this applies incontestably to
life as a whole, and to the fundamentals of art as well, it
will perhaps be difficult for the artist to accept without
demur.
"Beauty is the splendor of truth," says scholastic
philosophy. To us moderns this sounds somewhat frigid and
superficially dogmatic. But if we remember that this axiom
was held and taught by men who were incomparable
constructive thinkers, who conceived ideas, framed
syllogisms, and established systems, which still tower over
others like vast cathedrals, we shall feel it incumbent upon
us to penetrate more deeply into the meaning of these few
words. Truth does not mean mere lifeless accuracy of
comprehension, but the right and appropriate regulation of
life, a vital spiritual essence; it means the intrinsic
value of existence in all its force and fullness. And beauty
is the triumphant splendor which breaks forth when the
hidden truth is revealed, when the external phenomenon is at
all points the perfect expression of the inner essence.
Perfection of expression, then, not merely superficial and
external, but interior and contemporaneous with every step
in the creation--can the essence of beauty be more
profoundly and at the same time more briefly defined?
Beauty cannot be appreciated unless this fact is borne in
mind, and it is apprehended as the splendor of perfectly
expressed intrinsic truth.
But there is a grave risk, which many people do not escape,
of this order being reversed, and of beauty being placed
before truth, or treated as entirely separate from the
latter, the perfection of form from the content, and the
expression from its substance and meaning. Such is the
danger incurred by the aesthetic conception of the world,
which ultimately degenerates into nerveless aestheticism.
No investigation of the aesthetic mind and ideas can be
undertaken here. But we may premise that its primary
characteristic is a more or less swift withdrawal from
discussion of the reason for a thing's existence to the
manner of it, from the content to the method of
presentation, from the intrinsic value of the object to its
value as a form, from the austerity of truth and the
inflexible demands of morality to the relaxing harmony and
more or less consciously, until everything terminates
finally in a frame of mind which no longer recognizes
intrinsic truth, with its severe "thus and not otherwise,"
nor the moral idea with its unconditional "either--or," but
which seeks for significance in form and expression alone.
That which is objective, whether it is a natural object, a
historical event, a man, a sorrow, a preference, a work, a
legal transaction, knowledge, an idea, is merely viewed as a
fact without significance. It serves as a pretext for
expression, that is all.2 Thus originates the shadowy image
of absolute form, a manner without a matter, a radiance
without heat, a fact without force.3
People who think like this have lost the ability to grasp
the profundity of a work of art, and the standard by which
to measure its greatness. They no longer comprehend it as
being what it is, as a victory and as an avowal. They do not
even do justice to the form which is the exclusive object of
their preoccupation; for form means the expression of a
substance, or the mode of life of an existent being.
Truth is the soul of beauty. People who do not understand
what the one and the other are really worth turn their
joyful play into mere empty trifling. There is something
heroic in every great and genuine creation, in which the
interior essence has won through opposition to its true
expression. A good fight has been fought, in which some
essential substance, conscious of the best elements within
itself, has set aside that which is extraneous to itself,
submitted all disorder and confusion to a strict discipline,
and obeyed the laws of its own nature. A tremendous
ebullition takes place, and an inner substance gives
external testimony to its essence and to the essential
message which it holds. But the aesthete looks upon all this
as pointless trifling.
Nay, more. Aestheticism is profoundly shameless. All true
beauty is modest. This word is not used in a superficial
sense. It has no relation as to the suitability of this or
that for utterance, portrayal, or existence. What it means
is that all expression has been impelled by an interior
urge, justified by immutable standards, and permitted, even
offered existence by the latter. This permission and
obligation, however, only reside in the intrinsic truth of
an entity or a genuine spiritual experience. Expression on
the other hand for the sake of expression, self-elected as
both matter and form, has no longer any value.
We are led yet further afield by these considerations. In
spite of the most genuine impulse, and even when truth not
only emphatically justifies the proceeding, but also
imperatively demands it, all true inwardness still shrinks
from self-revelation, just because it is full of all
goodness. The desire for revelation, however, and the
realization that it is only in articulation that it can
obtain release from the tyranny of silence, compel the
expression of an inwardness; yet it still shrinks from
disclosure, because it fears that by this it will lose its
noblest elements. The fulfillment of all inwardness lies in
the instant when it discloses itself in a form appropriate
to its nature. But it is immediately conscious of a painful
reaction, of a sensation as of having irrevocably lost
something inexpressibly precious.
This applies--or is it too sweeping a statement?--to all
genuine creative art. It is like a blush after the word,
readily enough spoken, but followed by a secret reproach, an
often incomprehensible pain, arising from depths till now
unexplored; it is like the quick compression of the lips
which would give much to recall the hasty avowal. People who
understand this are aware that further depths and modestly
concealed riches still lie beyond that which, surrendering
itself, has taken shape. This generosity, while at the same
time the store remains undiminished, this advance, followed
by withdrawal into resplendent fastnesses, this grappling
with expression, triumphant expansion, and timid, dolorous
contraction, together constitute the tenderest charm of
beauty.
But ail this--the restrained yet youthful fullness of candor
vanishes before the glance, at once disrespectful and
obtuse, of those who seek after articulation for the sake of
articulation, and after beauty for the sake of beauty.
Those who aspire to a life of beauty must, in the first
place, strive to be truthful and good. If a life is true it
will automatically become beautiful, just as light shines
forth when flame is kindled. But if they seek after beauty
in the first place, it will fare with them as it fared with
Hedda Gabler, and in the end everything will become
nauseating and loathsome.
In the same way--however strange it may sound--the creative
artist must not seek after beauty in the abstract, not, that
is, if he understands that beauty is something more than a
certain grace of external form and a pleasing and elegant
effect. He must, on the contrary, with all his strength
endeavor to become true and just in himself, to apprehend
truth and to live in and by it, and in this way fully
realize both the internal and external world. And then the
artist, as the enemy of all vanity and showiness, must
express truth as it should be expressed, without the
alteration of a single stroke or trait. It follows that his
work, if he is an artist at all, will, and not only will,
but must be beautiful. If, however, he tries to avoid the
toilsome path of truth, and to distill form from form, that
which he represents is merely empty illusion.
People who have not enjoyed--repulsive word, which puts
beauty on a par with a titbit, and originates from the
worthless conception which we have just now censured-human
perfection or the beauty of a work of art, but desire closer
familiarity with it, must take the inner essence for their
starting-point. They will be well advised to ignore
expression and harmony of form at first, but to endeavor to
penetrate instead to the inner truth of the vital essence.
Viewed from this standpoint, the whole process by which the
matter transposes itself into its form becomes apparent, and
the spectators witness a miraculous flowering. This means
that they are familiar with beauty, although perhaps they
may not consciously recognize it for what it is, but are
merely aware of a sentiment of perfect satisfaction at the
visible and adequate fulfillment of an object or of an
existence.
Beauty eludes those who pursue it for its own sake, and
their life and work are ruined because they have sinned
against the fundamental order of values. If a man, however,
desires to live for truth alone, to be truthful in himself
and to speak the truth, and if he keeps his soul open,
beauty--in the shape of richness, purity, and vitality of
form--will come to meet him, unsought and unexpected.
What profound penetration and insight was shown by Plato,
the master of aesthetics, in his warnings against the
dangers of excessive worship of beauty! We need a new
artist-seer to convince the young people of our day, who
bend the knee in idolatrous homage before art and beauty,
what must be the fruit of such perversion of the highest
spiritual laws.
We must now refer what has already been propounded to the
liturgy. There is a danger that in the liturgical sphere as
well aestheticism may spread; that the liturgy will first be
the subject of general eulogy, then gradually its various
treasures will be estimated at their aesthetic value, until
finally the sacred beauty of the House of God comes to
provide a delicate morsel for the connoisseur. Until, that
is, the "house of prayer" becomes once more, in a different
way, a "den of thieves." But for the sake of Him who dwells
there and for that of our own souls, this must not be
tolerated.
The Church has not built up the "Opus Dei" for the pleasure
of forming beautiful symbols, choice language, and graceful,
stately gestures, but she has done it--in so far as it is
not completely devoted to the worship of God--for the sake
of our desperate spiritual need. It is to give expression to
the events of the Christian's inner life: the assimilation,
through the Holy Ghost, of the life of the creature to the
life of God in Christ; the actual and genuine rebirth of the
creature into a new existence; the development and
nourishment of this life, its stretching forth from God in
the Blessed Sacrament and the means of grace, towards God in
prayer and sacrifice; and all this in the continual mystic
renewal of Christ's life in the course of the ecclesiastical
year. The fulfillment of all these processes by the set
forms of language, gesture, and instruments, their
revelation, teaching, accomplishment and acceptance by the
faithful, together constitute the liturgy. We see, then,
that it is primarily concerned with reality, with the
approach of a real creature to a real God, and with the
profoundly real and serious matter of redemption. There is
here no question of creating beauty, but of finding
salvation for sin-stricken humanity. Here truth is at stake,
and the fate of the soul, and real--yes, ultimately the only
real--life. All this it is which must be revealed,
expressed, sought after, found, and imparted by every
possible means and method; and when this is accomplished,
lo! it is turned into beauty.4
This is not a matter for amazement, since the principle here
at work is the principle of truth and of mastery over form.
The interior element has been expressed clearly and
truthfully, the whole superabundance of life has found its
utterance, and the fathomless profundities have been plainly
mapped out. It is only to be expected that a gleam of the
utmost splendor should shine forth at such a manifestation
of truth.
For us, however, the liturgy must chiefly be regarded from
the standpoint of salvation. We should steadfastly endeavor
to convince ourselves of its truth and its importance in our
lives. When we recite the prayers and psalms of the liturgy,
we are to praise God, nothing more. When we assist at Holy
Mass, we must know that we are close to the fount of all
grace. When we are present at an ordination, the
significance of the proceedings must lie for us in the fact
that the grace of God has taken possession of a fragment of
human life. We are not concerned here with the question of
powerfully symbolic gestures, as if we were in a spiritual
theater, but we have to see that our real souls should
approach a little nearer to the real God, for the sake of
all our most personal, profoundly serious affairs.
For it is only thus that perception of liturgical beauty
will be vouchsafed to us. It is only when we participate in
liturgical action with the earnestness begotten of deep
personal interest that we become aware why, and in what
perfection, this vital essence is revealed. It is only when
we premise the truth of the liturgy that our eyes are opened
to its beauty.
The degree of perception varies, according to our aesthetic
sensitiveness. Perhaps it will merely be a pleasant feeling
of which we are not even particularly conscious, of the
profound appropriateness of both language and actions for
the expression of spiritual realities, a sensation of quiet
spontaneity, a consciousness that everything is right and
exactly as it should be. Then perhaps an offertory suddenly
flashes in upon us, so that it gleams before us like a
jewel. Or bit by bit the whole sweep of the Mass is
revealed, just as from out the vanishing mist the peaks and
summits and slopes of a mountain chain stand out in relief,
shining and clear, so that we imagine we are looking at them
for the first time. Or it may be that in the midst of prayer
the soul will be pervaded by that gentle, blithe gladness
which rises into sheer rapture. Or else the book will sink
from our hands, while, penetrated with awe, we taste the
meaning of utter and blissful tranquillity, conscious that
the final and eternal verities which satisfy all longing
have here found their perfect expression.
But these moments are fleeting, and we must be content to
accept them as they come or are sent.
On the whole, however, and as far as everyday life is
concerned, this precept holds good, "Seek first the kingdom
of God and His justice, and all else shall be added to you"-
-all else, even the glorious experience of beauty.
ENDNOTES
1. We are not concerned here with the question if and how
all forms of validity ultimately go back to an ultimately
valid Absolute, i.e., to God.
2. Oscar Wilde's "Intentions" are quite clear on this point.
3. The writer has been reproached with treating the subject
too simply in this exposition. He has deliberately shortened
it for the sake of the fundamental idea, and has neglected
many of its ramifications which should actually have been
discussed. Yet after careful testing he finds no reason for
altering his method of procedure. In a profounder sense,
that which he here says is nevertheless justified.
4. The Abbot of Marialaach rightly remarks in this
connection, "I stress the point that the liturgy has
developed into a work of art, it was not deliberately formed
as such by the Church. The liturgy bore within itself so
much of the seed of beauty that it was of itself bound to
flower ultimately. But the internal principle which
controlled the form of that flowering was the essence of
Christianity." (Herwegen, "Das Kunstprinzip der Liturgie,"
p. 18, Paderborn, 1916.)
7. THE PRIMACY OF THE LOGOS OVER THE ETHOS
THE liturgy exhibits one peculiarity which strikes as very
odd those natures in particular which are generously endowed
with moral energy and earnestness--and that is its singular
attitude towards the moral order.
People of the type instanced above chiefly regret one thing
in the liturgy, that its moral system has few direct
relations with everyday life. It does not offer any easily
transposable motives, or ideas realizable at first hand, for
the benefit of our daily conflicts and struggles. A certain
isolation, a certain remoteness from actual life
characterize it; it is celebrated in the somewhat
sequestered sphere of spiritual things. A contrast exists
between the study, the factory, and the laboratory of to-
day, between the arena of public and social life and the
Holy Places of solemn, divine worship, between the intensely
practical tendency of our time, which is opposed to life by
its wholly material force and acrid harshness, and the
lofty, measured domain of liturgical conceptions and
determination, with its clearness and elevation of form.
From this it follows that we cannot directly translate into
action that which the liturgy offers us. There will always
be a constant need, then, for methods of devotion which have
their origin in a close connection with modern life, and for
the popular devotions by which the Church meets the special
demands and requirements of actual existence, and which,
since they directly affect the soul, are immediately
productive of practical results.1 The liturgy, on the
contrary, is primarily occupied in forming the fundamental
Christian temper. By it man is to be induced to determine
correctly his essential relation to God, and to put himself
right in regard to reverence for God, love and faith,
atonement and the desire for sacrifice. As a result of this
spiritual disposition, it follows that when action is
required of him he will do what is right.
The question, however, goes yet deeper. What is the position
of the liturgy generally to the moral order? What is the
quality of the relation in it of the will to knowledge, as
of the value of truth to the value of goodness? Or, to put
it in two words, what is the relation in it of the Logos to
the Ethos? It will be necessary to go back somewhat in order
to find the answer.
It is safe to affirm that the Middle Ages, in philosophy at
least, answered the question as to the relation between
these two fundamental principles by decisively ranking
knowledge before will and the activity attendant upon the
functioning of the latter. They gave the Logos precedence
over the Ethos. That is proved by the way in which certain
frequently discussed questions are answered,2 and by the
absolute priority which was assigned to the contemplative
life over the active3; this stands out as the fundamental
attitude of the Middle Ages, which took the Hereafter as the
constant and exclusive goal of all earthly striving.
Modern times brought about a great change. The great
objective institutions of the Middle Ages--class solidarity,
the municipalities, the Empire--broke up. The power of the
Church was no longer, as formerly, absolute and temporal. In
every direction individualism became more strongly
pronounced and independent. This development was chiefly
responsible for the growth of scientific criticism, and in a
special manner the criticism of knowledge itself. The
inquiry into the essence of knowledge, which formally
followed a constructive method, now assumes, as a result of
the profound spiritual changes which have taken place, its
characteristic critical form. Knowledge itself becomes
questionable, and as a result the center of gravity and the
fulcrum of the spiritual life gradually shifts from
knowledge to the will. The actions of the independent
individual become increasingly important. In this way active
life forces its way before the contemplative, the will
before knowledge.
Even in science, which after all is essentially dependent
upon knowledge, a peculiar significance is assigned to the
will. In place of the former penetration of guaranteed
truth, of tranquil assimilation and discussion, there now
develops a restless investigation of obscure, questionable
truth. Instead of explanation and assimilation, education
tends increasingly towards independent investigation. The
entire scientific sphere exhibits an enterprising and
aggressive tendency. It develops into a powerful, restlessly
productive, laboring community.
This importance of the will has been scientifically
formulated in the most conclusive manner by Kant. He
recognized, side by side with the order of perception, of
the world of things, in which the understanding alone is
competent, the order of practicality, of freedom, in which
the will functions. Arising out of the postulations of the
will he admits the growth of a third order, the order of
faith, as opposed to knowledge, the world of God and the
soul. While the understanding is of itself incapable of
asserting anything on these latter matters, because it is
unable to verify them by the senses, it receives belief in
their reality, and thus the final shaping of its conception
of the world, from the postulations of the will which cannot
exist and function without these highest data from which to
proceed. This established the "primacy of the will." The
will, together with the scale of moral values peculiar to
it, has taken precedence of knowledge with its corresponding
scale of values; the Ethos has obtained the primacy over the
Logos.
The ice having been broken, there now follows the entire
course of philosophic development which sets, in the place
of the pure will logically conceived by Kant, the
psychological will, constituting the latter the unique rule
of life--a development due to Fichte, Schopenhauer, and von
Hartmann--until it finds its clearest expression in
Nietzsche. He proclaims the "will to power." For him, truth
is that which makes life sound and noble, leading humanity
further towards the goal of the "Superman."
Such is the origin of pragmatism, by which truth is no
longer viewed as an independent value in the case of a
conception of the universe or in spiritual matters, but as
the expression of the fact that a principle or a system
benefits life and actual affairs, and elevates the character
and stability of the will.4 Truth is fundamentally, if not
entirely--though here we overstep the field marked out for
our consideration--a moral, though hardly a vital fact.
This predominance of the will and of the idea of its value
gives the present day its peculiar character. It is the
reason for its restless pressing forward, the stringent
limiting of its hours of labor, the precipitancy of its
enjoyment; hence, too, the worship of success, of strength,
of action; hence the striving after power, and generally the
exaggerated opinion of the value of time, and the compulsion
to exhaust oneself by activity till the end. This is the
reason, too, why spiritual organizations such as the old
contemplative orders, which formerly were automatically
accepted by spiritual life everywhere and which were the
darlings of the orthodox world, are not infrequently
misunderstood even by Catholics, and have to be defended by
their friends against the reproach of idle trifling. And if
it is true that this attitude of mind has already become
firmly established in Europe, whose culture is rooted in the
distant past, it is doubly true where the New World is
concerned. There it comes to light unconcealed and
unalloyed. The practical will is everywhere the decisive
factor, and the Ethos has complete precedence over the
Logos, the active side of life over the contemplative.
What is the position of Catholicism in relation to this
development? It must be premised that the best elements of
every period and of every type of mind can and will find
their fulfillment in this Religion, which is truly capable
of being all things to all men. So it has been possible to
adapt the tremendous development of power during the last
five centuries in Catholic life, and to summon ever fresh
aspects from its inexhaustible store. A long investigation
would be needed if we were to point out how many highly
valuable personalities, tendencies, activities and views
have been called forth from Catholic life as a result of
this responsiveness to the needs of all ages. But it must be
pointed out that an extensive, biased, and lasting
predominance of the will over knowledge is profoundly at
variance with the Catholic spirit.
Protestantism presents, in its various forms, ranging from
the strong tendency to the extreme of free speculation, the
more or less Christian version of this spirit, and Kant has
rightly been called its philosopher. It is a spirit which
has step by step abandoned objective religious truth, and
has increasingly tended to make conviction a matter of
personal judgment, feeling, and experience. In this way
truth has fallen from the objective plane to the level of a
relative and fluctuating value. As a result, the will has
been obliged to assume the leadership. When the believer no
longer possesses any fundamental principles, but only an
experience of faith as it affects him personally, the one
solid and recognizable fact is no longer a body of dogma
which can be handed on in tradition, but the right action as
a proof of the right spirit. In this connection there can be
no talk of spiritual metaphysics in the real sense of the
word. And when knowledge has nothing ultimately to seek in
the Above, the roots of the will and of feeling are in their
turn loosened from their adherence to knowledge. The
relation with the super-temporal and eternal order is
thereby broken. The believer no longer stands in eternity,
but in time, and eternity is merely connected with time
through the medium of conviction, but not in a direct
manner. Religion becomes increasingly turned towards the
world, and cheerfully secular. It develops more and more
into a consecration of temporal human existence in its
various aspects, into a sanctification of earthly activity,
of vocational labor, of communal and family life, and so on.
Everyone, however, who has debated these matters at any
considerable length clearly perceives the unwholesomeness of
such a conception of spiritual life, and the flagrance of
its contradiction of all fundamental spiritual principles.
It is untrue, and therefore contrary to Nature in the
deepest sense of the word. Here is the real source of the
terrible misery of our day. It has perverted the sacred
order of Nature. It was Goethe who really shook the latter
when he made the doubting Faust write, not "In the beginning
was the Word," but "In the beginning was the Deed."
While life's center of gravity was shifting from the Logos
to the Ethos, life itself was growing increasingly
unrestrained. Man's will was required to be responsible for
him. Only one Will can do this, and that is creative in the
absolute sense of the word, i.e., it is the Divine Will.5
Man, then, was endowed with a quality which presumes that he
is God. And since he is not, he develops a spiritual cramp,
a kind of weak fit of violence, which takes effect often in
a tragic, and sometimes (in the case of lesser minds) even a
ludicrous manner. This presumption is guilty of having put
modern man into the position of a blind person groping his
way in the dark, because the fundamental force upon which it
has based life--the will-is blind. The will can function and
produce, but cannot see. From this is derived the
restlessness which nowhere finds tranquillity. Nothing is
left, nothing stands firm, everything alters, life is in
continual flux; it is a constant struggle, search, and
wandering.
Catholicism opposes this attitude with all its strength. The
Church forgives everything more readily than an attack on
truth. She knows that if a man falls, but leaves truth
unimpaired, he will find his way back again. But if he
attacks the vital principle, then the sacred order of life
is demolished. Moreover, the Church has constantly viewed
with the deepest distrust every ethical conception of truth
and of dogma. Any attempt to base the truth of a dogma
merely on its practical value is essentially unCatholic.6
The Church represents truth--dogma--as an absolute fact,
based upon itself, independent of all confirmation from the
moral or even from the practical sphere. Truth is truth
because it is truth. The attitude of the will to it, and its
action towards it, is of itself a matter of indifference to
truth. The will is not required to prove truth, nor is the
latter obliged to give an account of itself to the will, but
the will has to acknowledge itself as perfectly incompetent
before truth. It does not create the latter, but it finds
it. The will has to admit that it is blind and needs the
light, the leadership, and the organizing formative power of
truth. It must admit as a fundamental principle the primacy
of knowledge over the will, of the Logos over the Ethos.7
This "primacy" has been misunderstood. It is not a question
of a priority of value or of merit. Nor is there any
suggestion that knowledge is more important than action in
human life. Still less does a desire exist to direct people
as to the advisability of setting about their affairs with
prayer or with action. The one is just as valuable and
meritorious as the other. It is partly a question of
disposition; the tone of a man's life will accentuate either
knowledge or action; and the one type of disposition is
worth as much as the other. The "Primacy" is far rather a
matter of culture--philosophy, and indeed it consists of the
question as to which value in the whole of culture and of
human life the leadership will be assigned, and which
therefore will determine the decisive tendency; it is a
precedence of order, therefore, of leadership, not of merit,
significance, or even of frequency.
But if we concern ourselves further with the question, the
idea occurs that the conception of the Primacy of the Logos
over the Ethos could not be the final one. Perhaps it should
be put thus: in life as a whole, precedence does not belong
to action, but to existence. What ultimately matters is not
activity, but development. The roots of and the perfection
of everything lie, not in time, but in eternity. Finally,
not the moral, but the metaphysical conception of the world
is binding, not the worth-judgment, but the import-judgment,
not struggle, but worship.
These trains of thought, however, trespass beyond the limits
of this little book. The further question--if a final
precedence must not be allotted to love seems to be linked
with a different chain of thought. Its solution perhaps lies
within the possibilities we have already discussed. When one
knows, for instance, that for a time truth is the decisive
standard, it is still not quite established whether truth
insists upon love or upon frigid majesty; the Ethos can be
an obligation of the law, as with Kant, or the obligation of
creative love. And even face to face with existence it is
still an open question whether this obligation is a final
rigid inevitability, or if it is love transcending all
measure, in which the impossible itself becomes possible, to
which hope can appeal against all hope. That is what is
meant by the question whether love is not the greatest of
these. Indeed, it is.
Nothing less than this was announced by the "good tidings."
In this sense, too, as far as the primacy of truth--but
"truth in love"--is concerned, the present question is to be
resolved.
As soon as this is done the foundation of spiritual health
is established. For the soul needs absolutely firm ground on
which to stand. It needs a support by which it can raise
itself, a sure external point beyond itself, and that can
only be supplied by truth. The knowledge of pure truth is
the fundamental factor of spiritual emancipation. "The truth
shall make you free."8 The soul needs that spiritual
relaxation in which the convulsions of the will are stilled,
the restlessness of struggle quietened, and the shrieking of
desire silenced; and that is fundamentally and primarily the
act of intention by which thought perceives truth, and the
spirit is silent before its splendid majesty.
In dogma, the fact of absolute truth, inflexible and
eternal, entirely independent of a basis of practicality, we
possess something which is inexpressibly great. When the
soul becomes aware of it, it is overcome by a sensation as
of having touched the mystic guarantee of universal sanity;
it perceives dogma as the guardian of all existence,
actually and really the rock upon which the universe rests.
"In the beginning was the Word"--the Logos....
For this reason the basis of all genuine and healthy life is
a contemplative one. No matter how great the energy of the
volition and action and striving may be, it must rest on the
tranquil contemplation of eternal, unchangeable truth. This
attitude is rooted in eternity. It is peaceful, it has that
interior restraint which is a victory over life.
It is not in a hurry, but has time. It can afford to wait
and to develop.
This spiritual attitude is really Catholic. And if it is
also a fact, as some maintain, that Catholicism is in many
aspects, as compared with the other denominations,
"backward," by all means let it be. Catholicism could not
join in the furious pursuit of the unchained will, torn from
its fixed and eternal order. But it has in exchange
preserved something that is irreplaceably precious, for
which, if it were to recognize it, the non-Catholic
spiritual world would willingly exchange all that it has;
and this is the primacy of the Logos over the Ethos, and by
this, harmony with the established and immutable laws of all
existence.
Although as yet the liturgy has not been specifically
mentioned, everything which has been said applies to it. In
the liturgy the Logos has been assigned its fitting
precedence over the will.9 Hence the wonderful power of
relaxation proper to the liturgy, and its deep
reposefulness. Hence its apparent consummation entirely in
the contemplation, adoration and glorification of Divine
Truth. This is also the explanation of the fact that the
liturgy is apparently so little disturbed by the petty
troubles and needs of everyday life. It also accounts for
the comparative rareness of its attempts at direct teaching
and direct inculcation of virtue. The liturgy has something
in itself reminiscent of the stars, of their eternally fixed
and even course, of their inflexible order, of their
profound silence, and of the infinite space in which they
are poised. It is only in appearance, however, that the
liturgy is so detached and untroubled by the actions and
strivings and moral position of men. For in reality it knows
that those who live by it will be true and spiritually
sound, and at peace to the depths of their being; and that
when they leave its sacred confines to enter life they will
be men of courage.
ENDNOTES
1. Both in this connection and in countless others we find
demonstrated the absolute necessity of the extra-liturgical
forms of spiritual exercise, the Rosary, the Stations of the
Cross, popular devotions, meditation, etc. There could be no
greater mistake than the attempt to build up liturgical life
on an exclusively liturgical model. And it is equally
mistaken merely to tolerate the other forms, because the
"lower classes" need them, while setting the liturgy as the
only possible pattern and guide before struggling humanity.
Both are necessary. The one complements the other. Pride of
place, however, belongs of course to the liturgy, because it
is the official prayer of the Church.
(Cf. my book, "Der Kreuzweg unseres Hernn und Heilandes,"
Introduction, Mainz, 1921)
2. Cf. the discussions on the significance of theology as to
whether it is a "pure" science or one with an aim, that of
bettering humanity; upon the essence of eternal happiness,
whether it ultimately consists in the contemplation of God
or in the love of Him; on the dependence of the will upon
knowledge, and so on.
3. It is significant that it was not until the seventeenth
century, and then in the face of universal opposition, that
active Orders for women were founded. The history of the
Order of the Visitation is especially instructive in this
connection.
4. This tendency has also influenced Catholic thought. A
great deal of modernistic thought endeavors to make
theological truth--dogma-dependent upon Christian life and
to estimate its importance not as a standard of truth, but
as a value in life.
5. Yet even here reason affirms that God is not merely an
Absolute Will but, at the same time, truth and goodness.
Revelation seals this, as it does every form of spiritual
perception, by showing us that in the Blessed Trinity the
"first thing" is the begetting of the Son through the
recognition of the Father, and the "second" (according to
thought, of course, not according to time) is the breathing
forth of the Holy Ghost through the love of Both.
6. Here nothing is said, of course, against the endeavor to
exhibit the value of dogma in the abstract, and that of the
single dogmatic truth for life. On the contrary, this can
never be done forcibly enough.
7. This is said of knowledge, not of comprehension of the
primacy of knowledge over the practical, of the
contemplative over the active life in the way understood by
the Middle Ages, even if it lacks the latter's cultural-
historical characteristics. On the other hand, it is
impossible for us to free ourselves sufficiently from the
domination of pure comprehension, as it has endured for half
a century.
8. John viii. 32.
9. Because it reposes upon existence, upon the essential,
and even upon existence in love, as I hope to be able to
demonstrate upon a future