The Role Of The Sacred Liturgy In Developing A Catholic Conscience

By FRANCIS CARDINAL ARINZE

Part 2

(Editor’s Note: Francis Cardinal Arinze of Nigeria, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, delivered this lecture at The Church Teaches Forum in Louisville, Ky., July 16, 2016.
(The lecture is reprinted here with permission; all rights reserved. We are presenting it in two parts because of its length. Part 1 appeared in last week’s issue.)

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7. The Sacraments and Conscience Formation:
“Since they commemorate and renew Christ’s paschal mystery, all the sacraments are a source of life for the Church and in the Church’s hands they are means of conversion to God and of reconciliation among people” (John Paul II: ReP, n. 11). Let us now say a word on how each of the seven sacraments helps to form the conscience of the Christian.
Baptism purifies the new Christian from original sin, incorporates him or her in Christ and the Church, and equips the soul with the graces necessary to live the new life in Christ according to the law of Christ.
Confirmation is a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit, an increase and deepening of baptismal grace and a sending of the confirmed to give witness to Christ with greater courage in society.
As a sacrifice, the Holy Eucharist verifies in an eminent way the four acts of religion: adoration, thanksgiving, propitiation, and petition. The Eucharistic celebration, or Holy Mass, begins with a penitential act, goes on to praise God in the Gloria in excelsis Deo, nourishes the congregation on the word of God, and then moves on to offer their gifts of bread and wine to God and to beg Him that they may become the Body and Blood of His Son.
The central moment is reached with the Eucharistic Prayer which summits in the consecration and in the offering. The congregation prays the Lord’s Prayer and is fed with the Body and Blood of their Redeemer. The liturgical assembly is concluded with the blessing by the celebrant and a sending forth of the participants to live what they have prayed, heard, celebrated, and shared. The daily life of the Christian should be permeated, directed, and enlivened by the Eucharistic celebration.
The Votive Masses in the Roman Missal are an indication on how the Eucharistic Sacrifice should influence our daily lives. There are, for example, 19 Votive Masses in honor of God and the Saints, 20 Votive Masses for inner Church events, 17 Votive Masses for civil or societal needs, 12 Votive Masses for other occasions, and 21 various Masses for the dead.
Indeed, as the Second Vatican Council says, “the renewal in the Eucharist of the covenant between the Lord and man draws the faithful into the compelling love of Christ and sets them afire” (SC, n. 10). As a sacrament, the Holy Eucharist nourishes our souls so that, more closely united with Christ, we may better live the call to follow Him.
The Sacrament of Penance is God’s merciful offer of pardon and peace to the sinner who has offended Him after Baptism. When well administered and received, this sacrament sharpens the moral sense and religious conscience and sensitivity to evil as an offense against God and neighbor, convinces of the need for repentance and penance, and encourages the effort to live an authentically Christian life. The conscience is thus being educated.
A person cannot come to true and genuine repentance until he realizes that sin is contrary to the ethical norm written in his inmost being, until he admits that he has had a personal and responsible experience of this contrast, until he can say “I have sinned,” until he admits that sin has introduced a division into his conscience which then pervades his whole being and separates him from God and from his brothers and sisters.
What we call an examination of conscience is an act which must not become an anxious psychological introspection, but “a sincere and calm comparison with the interior moral law, with the evangelical norms proposed by the Church, with Jesus Christ himself, who is our teacher and model of life, and with the heavenly Father, who calls us to goodness and perfection” (ReP, n. 3l § 3).
This sacrament is highly conducive to conscience formation because it urges and helps us to make “an effort to put off the old man and put on the new; an effort to overcome in oneself what is of the flesh in order that what is spiritual may prevail; a continual effort to rise from the things of here below to the things of above, where Christ is” (ReP, n. 4).
That we have to confess our sins to a priest and receive God’s pardon through his ministry helps us to appreciate that sin not only offends God, but also damages the holiness of the Church. Blessed Isaac of Stella puts it this way:
“The Church can forgive nothing without Christ and Christ does not wish to forgive anything without the Church. The Church can forgive nothing except to a penitent, that is to say, to a person whom Christ has touched with his grace: Christ does not wish to consider anything forgiven in a person who despises the Church” (Sermo II in Dominica II post Epiphaniam 1: PL 194, 1729).
The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick strengthens the sick, gives grace and courage to overcome the difficulties of illness and old age, helps the sick to be united with the Passion of Christ, can bring bodily healing if it is God’s will, and prepares the sick for the final journey if the time for that has come. By this sacrament the sick is being formed in the image of Christ, our model.
The Sacrament of Holy Orders configures the recipient to Christ so that He may serve as Christ’s instrument for His Church and preach the word, celebrate the sacred mysteries, and gather the people of God together. In his life he is urged to live what he celebrates and to be a model to other followers of Christ.
The Sacrament of Matrimony sanctifies human love and equips the Christian husband and wife with grace to grow in mutual love, to raise and educate children in the faith and to exhibit in their family a domestic church.
From these considerations, it is clear that the sacraments are very conducive to the formation of a good Christian conscience.
8. Liturgical Seasons and Gestures:
The liturgical seasons are a help to the formation of conscience. The Church has wisely ordered the celebration of the mysteries of Christ during the year of 12 months into such major seasons as Advent, Christmastide, Lent, Paschal Time, and Ordinary Time.
In Advent there is preparation for the coming of Christ and a reminder of the end of the world which will come someday.
In Christmastide, joy in the nativity of Christ calls for faith and an ordering of life in harmony with it.
Lent stresses repentance, penance and union with the Passion of our Savior.
Eastertide calls on Christians to live their new life in Christ and to raise their minds to Heaven where Jesus is at the right hand of the Father.
The 34 weeks of Ordinary Time throughout the year are filled with the presentation of various dimensions of the call to follow Christ, since the Christian life is a demanding call to conversion. A Christian who faithfully goes along with the Church all through the liturgical year is being educated in the required Christian conscience.
The sacred liturgy effects much conscience formation also through gestures. Taking seriously the fact that the human being is a composite of body and soul, liturgical law in the Latin Rite provides for gestures such as the following. Kneeling is a sign of humility, repentance, and fasting. St. Basil says that to kneel “is to show by our action that sin has cast us to the ground” (Traite’ de Saint Esprit 27, quoted in Martimort: The Church at Prayer, volume I, Collegeville, 1986, p. 181).
Bowing is done out of respect for the sacred names of Jesus and Mary, or by a person who requests a blessing.
Prostration is prescribed for those who are to receive a consecration, like at priestly ordination or at a final religious profession ceremony during the Litany of the Saints.
Striking the breast is a gesture of repentance and humility.
Sprinkling with holy water is a reminder of the paschal mystery and of our Baptism. The holy water font at the entrance of churches is a similar reminder, inviting the faithful to sign themselves as they enter the house of God.
9. The Liturgical Celebration of the Saints Educates Conscience:
By the liturgical celebration of the memorial of the Saints, the Church proposes these holy men and women to the faithful as models on how to follow Christ and live the Christian ideal. Example is more powerful than precepts. Let us name some beatified or canonized holy people according to the following classifications.
The martyrs are those who sacrificed their lives in defense of the faith. Examples are Saints Stephen, Lawrence, Perpetua and Felicitas, Cyprian, the Ten Martyrs of Korea and those of Japan, John Fisher and Thomas More, Charles Lwanga and the other 21 Martyrs of Uganda, Maria Goretti, Maximilian Maria Kolbe, and Blessed Clementine Anuarite and Isidore Bakanja of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The conscience of these martyrs was so well formed that they did not hesitate to make the supreme sacrifice of their lives for Christ and His Gospel.
The Church celebrates monastics and other consecrated religious and virgins such as Saints Antony of Egypt, Benedict, Scholastica, Bernard, Francis of Assisi, Clare, Ignatius of Loyola, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Blessed Cyprian Michael Tansi. These saints show us how to be radically dedicated to the following of Christ.
Among pastors we can mention Saints Athanasius, Augustine, Cyril, Methodius, Patrick, Charles Borromeo, Philip Neri, Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, John Mary Vianney, and, in our times, Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. They were model instruments of Christ in the carrying out of the priestly office.
Model spouses were, for example, Saint Monica the mother of St. Augustine, St. Louis of France, St. Elizabeth of Portugal, St. Margaret of Scotland and, in our times, St. Gianna Beretta Molla who died after childbirth because she refused to abort her baby, and especially husband and wife Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi who were beatified in 2001 and Louis and Marie-Zélie Martin, parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who were canonized last year.
It is necessary to underline the powerful message of the canonization of husband and wife in the same ceremony.
As St. John Paul II put it: “There is a need to foster the recognition of the heroic virtues of men and women who have lived their Christian vocation in marriage. Precisely because we are convinced of the abundant fruits of holiness in the married state, we need to find the most appropriate means for discerning them and proposing them to the whole Church as a model and encouragement for other Christian spouses” (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, n. 37).
Among saints who demonstrated extraordinary love for their neighbor, we can mention St. Martin who clothed the poor, St. Camillus de Lellis who looked after the sick, St. John Bosco who picked up and educated street children, St. Katharine Drexel who served the poor and oppressed especially African American and Native American people, and Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta who founded a congregation for the service of the poorest of the poor, and whose canonization is expected in September this year. [Mother Teresa was canonized on September 4 — editor.]
The sacred liturgy, in presenting these saints for our veneration, thereby educates our consciences in the various ways of living the Christian vocation. It is instructive that the Roman Missal, apart from the texts for Mass for the memorial day of each of these saints, also provides in the section for the Common of the Saints: 8 Masses for Martyrs, 7 for Pastors, 4 for Religious, and one each for those who practiced works of mercy, for educators, and for holy women.
Your Excellencies, dear brothers in the priesthood, consecrated women and men, and distinguished Christian ladies and gentlemen, there is not a doubt that the sacred liturgy plays a powerful role in developing our Catholic conscience.
Let us pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of our Savior, to obtain for us the grace to respond with open hearts and constant will to this appeal.

+ Francis Cardinal Arinze
16 July, 2016