Liturgy: What Does It Mean?

by Fr. Christopher Maxwell-Stewart

Liturgy" is a technical sounding word, still unfamiliar to many
ordinary Catholics, although they find it in their missals (ea.
'Liturgy of the Word') and hear it is used with increasing
frequency from the pulpit and in discussions groups. The New
Testament speaks of John the Baptist's father, Zechariah,
fulfilling the time of his priestly "service" in the Temple. St.
Luke uses the Greek word <leitourgeios> to describe this. Our word
"liturgy" therefore means "service", in the sense of serving God
with public and communal worship. We might then be tempted to
think of liturgy simply meaning "ritual" or ceremony -some people
preferring this more formal expression of faith and others a more
spontaneous one. However, whilst liturgy certainly includes ritual
it is something much deeper than mere ritualism or ceremonial, and
it is more than just the communal expression of our personal
feelings of devotion. Liturgy is not just a matter of taste, or
churchmanship. Liturgy is central to Christianity and is an
integral part of our family relationship with God. The signs,
symbols and sacred actions which form our public prayer and
worship spring from the language and events of God's own self-
revelation to us. Our liturgical celebrations arise directly out
of the mystery of salvation in Jesus Christ and are part of the
very means by which we enter into that mystery.

The new Catechism refers variously to the themes of the "Mystery"
of God's eternal plan of love, the "economy" or work of Christ
through the ages, the idea of God's "blessing" on the world
through Christ, the "Paschal Mystery" and the role of the Holy
Spirit in the Church, as paradigms for explaining the idea of
liturgy and sacraments. However the precise relationship between
these elements is not always as clear in the text as it might be.
This is an attempt to clarify things a little.

At the heart of the Eucharistic Liturgy (the Mass) we join in the
song of the angels: "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of power and
might, heaven and earth are full of your glory." This hymn in
praise of the Blessed Trinity helps us to grasp why God created
anything at all. It was an act of glory-to manifest the divine
wisdom and majesty in the order and beauty of creation. We must
not think of this as some sort of showing off, but as a gesture of
total generosity by which God confers a share in His eternal
blessedness on creatures and raises them up to experience His
glorious Life - to bless them. "You fill your creatures with every
blessing and lead all men to the joyful vision of your light."
(Eucharistic Prayer IV) By the same token, if we ask what is the
purpose of our existence, we can answer that we were created to
return that glory to God - to bless His holy Name. This is not an
act of grovelling subservience. Rather, in praising and blessing
God with hearts, minds, and voices and with our whole lives, we
are also blessed with the very blessedness and majesty which we
acclaim. God gathers all creation around Himself like a court
around its King to adore Him, but also o adore Him, but also like
a loving family of which He is the like a loving family of which
He is the Father. When we join in the joyful acclamation of His
majesty we also bask in the sunshine of His love.

So to adore, worship and serve God is never an individualistic
activity. Every creature in its own way and in its own order gives
glory to God by its own existence. But all creation together forms
a single cosmos to the glory of God. This cosmos of creatures was
built up under God's creative plan from the explosion of light at
the beginning of the universe to the vast interlocking variety of
living forms which is nature around us today. This natural world
is full of ritual, colour, signs, sound and song through which
things minister physical life, meaning, control, direction and
even bodily death to each other. The material creatures have no
personal knowledge of God, nor any sense of the purpose of their
existence-they give glory to God simply by being. But creation at
last finds its voice to give free and conscious praise to the
Creator with the creation of Man. We are made in His own image
with souls as well as bodies. We sing praise to God "in the name
of every creature under heaven."

From the very beginning we have sought relationship with the
divine, both within the individual heart and as a family seeking
to live and grow together under a rule of spiritual wisdom. Man is
a religious animal. From the beginning humanity is a structured
family with ministries of mutual life-giving and spiritual loving.
From the outset mankind is a community of praise and service whose
religion is marked by ritual and sign; sacred places, language and
gestures; times and seasons rooted in the cycles of nature;
sacrificial offerings of thanksgiving, sorrow and intercession;
public prayer and canticle; priests, prophets and spiritual
leaders. Of course we find all these things in "paganism", so some
Christians feel that these religious elements ought to have been
expunged from Christianity. But the various forms of what we call
"paganism", whilst containing much error, also witness to the
natural human yearning for God.

The problem with paganism is not its use of natural symbols, but
that it uses them to worship nature itself instead of the God who
made it; or that it posits many gods in place of the one
transcendent Creator; or even that it uses religion and ritual to
try to control the forces of nature, manipulate the spiritual
realm, or assert magical power over others. These are abuses and
aberrations arising from the distortions of human consciousness
following from original sin. But the religious instinct of man is
part of our nature as children of God on earth. From the beginning
the one true God has revealed Himself in terms of these same
religious instincts of the human spirit, correcting and purifying
them where necessary. And so God raised up the one true religion
from primitive beginnings, eventually building up the people and
the faith of Israel through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and King
David, through whom He inspired a religion of liturgical worship
which looked forward to and prepared for His own Incarnation as
Messiah.

The religion of Israel was centred on the Temple in Jerusalem.
Here were held the great festivals which enacted and renewed the
covenant between God and his chosen people. Everything about the
temple liturgies celebrated and reinforced this identity as a holy
nation set apart by their stringent laws of ritual purity, and
lifted the minds and hearts of the participants collectively
towards God. But above all this rich religious life of priestly
chant, endless sacrifices, processions, incense, and the turning
circle of feast days through the year, was designed to embody the
hope of the coming of the Messiah, spoken of in the unique Hebrew
tradition of divine prophecy. The Christ would gather a universal
people, bring in a perfect worship, joining the people's praise
with the eternal worship of the angelic choirs, and finally
liberate humanity from the power of sin by engendering inner
purity of mind and heart, instead of mere conformity to ritual
law. He would bring about lasting peace and communion between
heaven and earth.

When Jesus came He went to all the key feast days in the temple
and publicly claimed to be, in person, the fulfilment and real
meaning of the liturgies which were being celebrated. During the
new year festival of lights he said: "I am the Light of the
world", In the middle 0 the feast of the purification of the
temple, when the altar and sanctuary were awash with water, he
cried out: "If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink."
Around the Passover feast of unleavened bread one year he taught:
"I am the Bread of Life." He even proclaimed that His own Body is
the new temple, the holy of holies, where God dwells among men and
we enter into communion with Him.

The Samaritan woman at the well asked where she should go to
worship God and offer sacrifice in accordance with His will. Jesus
told her that until His coming it had been the temple at Jerusalem
(as opposed to Mount Gerzim where her own Samaritan community
still worship to this day), but from now on it would be anywhere
around the world where a new and universal people belonged to Him,
accepted His truth and were filled with His Holy Spirit. This
universal Church and new Covenant would not have a single
geographical centre, but would everywhere have the living,
incarnate presence of God the Son for its centre. He would preside
at all its liturgies. He would be the principle of its worship. He
himself would be its High Priest, its one all sufficient
Sacrifice. The meaning of its celebrations would be the various
aspects of our living, growing and coming to fulfilment in Him.

Jesus Christ is the very heart of our familial relationship with
God. He both brings about heavenly communion in us, and is Himself
the focus and goal of our belonging to God. He is both the author
and the object of all true adoration and praise, all grace and
blessing, all growing in divine life and of all celebration and
thanksgiving. Jesus is not only the fulfilment of the religion of
Israel, as God the Word Incarnate He is the source and summit of
the whole of the liturgy of creation. In him every created thing
and every interlocking law and relationship in the cosmos finds
its true purpose, meaning, and beauty. In Him too all the
religious instincts of humanity find their completion and
correction.

So what must we expect of the religion of the New Covenant-the
religion of the Incarnation-in terms of its public expression ? Of
course it will be Christ-centred in every facet. And it will also
be ecclesial that is communal and familial, shaped within and
enacted by an interlocking hierarchy of ministries - for it is the
worship of the new People of God, who are the Body of Christ
acting in, through and together with Christ their head. It will be
liturgical, drawing in and drawing on all that is human-sign and
symbol, drama, ritual, music and festival. But it must also be
fully divine, acting in His name and power, breathing with His
personality, leading to the contemplation of His presence. That is
why the New Testament Liturgy is no longer just symbolic and
prophetic as in the Old Testament, but is fundamentally
sacramental-the conferring and nourishing of divine life through
what is human. The concept of liturgy refers to the whole fabric
of the Church's public prayer, including, for example, the Divine
Office-so it is not confined to the seven sacraments. But the
sacraments-which are the saving actions of Christ in and through
His Church - are the core of the liturgical life.

Most obviously in the case of the Eucharist, the whole of the
Church's sacramental liturgy is marked by the Passover or
"Paschal" Mystery of our Lord's death and resurrection . This is
the whole character of our belonging to God in Christ. This is the
transformation that is being worked in us though the celebration
of the sacraments. This is the shape and movement inherent in all
liturgical celebration, as indeed in the whole of the spiritual
life. We are enlightened by the Word of God, purified by the grace
of Christ, and brought into union with the Father in the Holy
Spirit - from the joy of revelation, through the sorrow of
redemption, to the glory of the Kingdom.

The Paschal Mystery is not confined to Easter alone. It is
recapitulated throughout the whole liturgical year. Creation,
Revelation, the Incarnation, Life, Death, Resurrection and
Ascension of the eternal Word and the sending of the Holy Spirit
at Pentecost, until He appears again and hands all creation back
to the Father as a glorious work, signed, sealed and delivered -
this is the full work of Christ and this is the full dimension of
the Mystery which we name our Passover in Him. The liturgical year
forms one unfolding celebration of this Mystery of our life and
identity in Christ. (Somehow the blocks of "Ordinary Time" which
form a separate and discontinuous cycle in between the Christmas
and Easter/Pentecost Mysteries in our present liturgical year seem
inelegant and unsynthetic in this light.) The full meaning of the
Christian Passover is therefore incorporation into the Trinitarian
Life. In Christ, incarnate, crucified, risen and glorified, we
have been adopted into the Godhead, and we are called to become
"co-sharers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1.4) We are in a
certain real sense already "divinised" by being filled with the
Holy Spirit through the sacramental life. This is also why
everything in our liturgy is marked by the invocation of the name
of the Blessed Trinity.

This sacramental, paschal, Trinitarian liturgy of the Church is
therefore more than mere expressive drama. It is the living out as
well as the acting out of our relationship with Christ to the
Father and of our mutual relationships and vocations to one
another in His Holy Spirit. It is the administering and
celebration throughout time and space of The Great Mystery. And
the word "mystery" for a Catholic does not mean something thin,
distant and ethereal, but rather signifies the Reality of
realities. It is we who are as yet incomplete, not fully "real-
iced". It is precisely in our approaching and being adopted into
the Divine Nature that we are saved from everlasting futility.
Liturgy is our participation already in this earthly and temporal
existence through sacramental signs, in the mysterious life of the
Trinity. The source of power and effectiveness in the sacraments
is the Holy Spirit of God who unites heaven and earth in one
communion of love. The Holy Spirit animating and empowering the
actions of the Church on earth applies through out history the
fruits of Christ's victory already fully experienced by the
blessed in heaven. This is the basis of the liturgical life of the
Church, which is the true New Testament worship in Spirit and in
Truth.

Some Christians of the Reformation have taken this command to
worship "in Spirit and truth" to mean that liturgical and priestly
actions ought to have been left behind now, and only individual,
spontaneous, inspiration is authentic "spiritual" Christian
worship. But this is to misunderstand the nature of the work of
Christ and the sending of the Spirit. The outpouring of the Holy
Spirit from heaven at Pentecost did not somehow bypass the
material, religious and liturgical realm. That would be to bypass
the Incarnation itself, which fulfils creation, rather than
abolishes it, and perfects it by uniting all that is human with
the sacred Humanity of Jesus. Redemption in Christ is not a matter
of escaping from the material order into the purely spiritual.
Rather it means the sanctification and eventual glorification of
humanity by our being incorporated into Christ and filled with the
Spirit. The order of flesh and blood is now the very means of
ministering divine life to the world. So the New Covenant is not
just a personal response to the message of salvation, it is an
objective relationship of grace ministered to us by Christ through
his Body which is the Church. The Church is the sacrament of the
Incarnation - the vehicle of the continuing work of Christ in the
Spirit. The sacramental economy of the New Testament invites,
requires and enables us to respond to God with personal faith and
love, but does not simply consist in the shared enthusiasm of
believers. The primary purpose of the Church's liturgical worship
is not to express our feelings towards God, but to express and
impress the Personality of Christ upon us.

The Spirit makes effective the bond between the Church on earth
and the risen and ascended body of the Lord in heaven. So it is
the Holy Spirit who fills earthly realities with heavenly power in
the sacraments, so that the world of matter is no longer a veil
hiding us from God, but a window opening onto eternity; so that
the flesh is no longer a bar between us and our creator but the
very sign and instrument of our communion with Him. It is the Holy
Spirit who brings about the Holy Eucharist as the true Body and
Blood of Christ so that we may offer the Sacrifice of the New
Covenant for the living and the dead throughout history, and so
that we may all be in full human and divine communion with Him. It
is the Holy Spirit who anoints the humanity of the apostles and
their successors to forgive sins, to guide, rule and sanctify the
Church in the person of Christ. It is the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit in our own bodies and souls through Baptism, Confirmation
and the Blessed Eucharist that makes us the priestly people of God
- the holy nation set apart to sing His praises.

The <Catechism> refers frequently to the first chapter of St.
Paul's letter to the Ephesians to draw together these many
interlocking themes which help us understand the nature of
liturgy. That we are blessed by God in Christ, chosen to live
through love in His presence, and that we bless His name in
return, offering perfect praise through the same Lord who unites
all things in heaven and on earth, who has made peace between us
by the blood of His cross, and who fills us with the Spirit of
holiness and raises us to divine communion: this is the Mystery of
the Father's eternal purpose in Christ. The Holy Spirit now
administers the economy or working out of that purpose through the
ages in the Church. This is what is both celebrated and brought
about in the liturgies of the Church, which are themselves the
foretaste of things to come. The book of Revelation shows us that
heaven itself is a "liturgy" - the whole Cosmos of angels and men
united in Christ as a great consort of praise and perfect
adoration, only no longer through sacramental signs, but finally
face to face.

We may now understand a little more why the "language" of signs
that we use in our earthly liturgies is not an arbitrary one, not
ours to play with and re-invent as we will most particularly when
it comes to the sacraments themselves. It is true there is a
certain level at which liturgy interacts with culture. There is
room for variation and richness as different aspects of human self
expression are drawn into the work of Christ, thus refining and
sanctifying the surrounding culture. There is also need for
liturgical development through history which, like development in
matters of doctrine, must be organic- not arbitrary change-and
which should grow out of an ever deepening appreciation of the
Mystery of Christ, eliciting a more complete and fulfilling
contemplation of the creative and saving work of God.

The language and symbolism of the liturgy is not monophonic or
monotonous in mood. It is at times the language of the joyful
mysteries, incorporating all the beauty and simplicity of nature,
expressions of uncomplicated love and joyous devotion, as well as
the grandeur of human artistry in image and song. The liturgy is
also marked throughout by the sign of the cross. The liturgical
celebration of the sacraments administers the healing grace of our
crucified Lord to a wounded people -people still sorrowing for sin
and yearning for deeper purification, still in need of repentance
and atonement, still seeking the consolation and of Christ
overflowing to them from the cross. The centrality of the crucifix
in our liturgy prevents it from becoming a cosy, self
congratulatory gathering of the like-minded which simply
contemplates itself and is implicitly open only to the respectable
and the comfortable. Nonetheless liturgy is also a great rejoicing
and celebration in the victory of Christ. Images of glory, hymns
of praise, expressions of the power of grace, sincere and humble
thanksgiving offered from lives redeemed and re-ordered again by
Christ, are all found in the celebrations of the Church and can be
enhanced by music, vestments, gestures and settings. The liturgy
is too the foretaste of heaven where the saints and angels gaze on
Him and are suffused with blessedness, which is why the liturgy
refers frequently to this great cloud of witnesses who form the
heavenly court. It is natural then that our liturgy also contains
the language of silence, deep moments of contemplative prayer,
loving adoration and awe.

There is a certain room in all this for pastoral flexibility and
local tradition too - always aimed at greater reverence, clearer
faith and more authentic love, and always within the discipline of
the Church. It should not be the stamping of a single human
personality, either priestly or that of a semi-professional lay
minister, over the communal worship, nor the importing of the
transient and the trendy simply for its own sake, or for instant
mass appeal at the expense of truly raising the mind and heart to
God. For there is a more fundamental level at which the language
of the liturgy, even as a human language of signs, does not depend
on any particular culture or historical period. It arises from a
level of symbolic consciousness which is primal and therefore
universal. In the liturgy we find much of this symbolism rooted in
the history of divine revelation, which is simply to say that God
knows best how to speak to us in the deepest language of our own
psyches. But it also means that the basic outlines and elements of
the liturgy acquire a certain sacral authority from the tradition
of God's Word itself. In fact the liturgical life of the Church is
one continuous development from the religious life of Israel, and
from more ancient traditions than that, which is why the liturgy
is where the words of Scripture come alive most fully as the
living application and celebration of divine teaching and prophecy
fulfilled. The liturgy is where the whole living tradition of
God's word, including the creed and the catechism, finds its real
meaning and purpose.

Not that liturgical celebration constitutes the whole life of the
Church. It is preceded by preaching the gospel, conversion of
heart and teaching the faith. In turn it nourishes and strengthens
our faith so that we can go out to the world and carry on the
mission of Christ in our daily lives, putting the commandments
into action, deepening in a personal spiritual life and growing in
charity for one another. But liturgy is the fulcrum, or centre
point of the Christian life. As the embodiment and enactment of
our identity as God's People; as a living encounter with Christ
our Head and the high point of our communion together in Him, the
liturgy is the source and summit of our life in Christ in this
world.

This article was taken from the July 1996 issue of "Faith
Magazine", published by The Faith-Keyway Trust, 16a off Coniston
Way REIGATE Surrey RH2 OLN, Phone 01737-770016, email
[email protected].

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