By JAMES MONTI
Holy Week leaves in its wake a vivid series of impressions upon the soul that linger well into the Easter season. Among the most powerful and enduring of these impressions is a deepened and refined sense of the majesty of God.
Perhaps we experienced this particularly during the procession of Palm Sunday, representing Christ’s advance upon Jerusalem as the King of Glory who demands entry not only into the earthly Jerusalem for His coming Passion but also into Sheol, the abode of the dead, where by His cross He will set its prisoners free, and into the Heavenly Jerusalem, where He will lead those redeemed by His Precious Blood.
Or perhaps we sensed it most on Holy Thursday night when our eyes fell upon the Blessed Sacrament amid clouds of incense, enveloped and concealed within the folds of the richly embroidered humeral veil with which the priest was carrying it at a slow, stately pace in the procession to the Repository.
Perhaps the majesty of God rang most tellingly in our ears when on Good Friday, as we drew near the crucifix to venerate it with a kiss, the choir sang those amazing words of the ancient Greek and Latin Troparion that serve as a refrain in the Improperia, the Reproaches, “Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One: have mercy on us,” mankind’s reply to that haunting question with which Christ Crucified confronts us in this timeless chant of Holy Week, “My people, what have I done to you, or in what have I saddened you? Answer me.”
Then again, did we not feel it during the Easter Vigil, at the sight of the Paschal candle, that consummate symbol of the risen and triumphant Christ, standing tall and crowned with fiery light amid a darkened church, while the deacon sang of it as the pillar of fire dispelling the darkness of the night?
So what do we mean when we speak of the “majesty” of God? It is about His holiness, His transcendence, His omnipotence, and His omniscience, and it is a recognition of His supremacy over everything in creation. It is a matter of understanding where God is “coming from,” and it is only by understanding this that we will ever understand truly who we are, frail little creatures in utter need of Him.
This is a huge part of what we are talking about when we speak of “restoring the sacred” in our liturgy. It is about spiritually, mentally, visually, and audibly “enthroning” God again in the manner of our worship, in how we speak of God and think of Him, in how we depict Him in sacred art and how we sing of Him, and where we place His sacramental Presence in our churches. In some cases this will require a paradigm shift from how God has been perceived of late, away from a pedestrian mentality about God.
There has been a misconception, especially over the last few decades, that the Incarnation has essentially put an end to the majesty of God, that “the fear of the Lord” is simply a thing of the past and God is now “just one of us” and nothing more. There was even an ugly pop song that hammered this message into young peoples’ brains with a refrain touting the idea.
But the realities of the natural world tell a very different story. The coming of the Christ has not put an end to the grandeur of the mountains, the roar of ocean waves, the vast night sky studded with distant stars, or the awesome shadow and rumbling murmurs of an approaching thunderstorm. How is it even conceivable to think that God would surround us with things that instill in us a sense of awe and yet expect us to remain unawed by His very presence?
Yes, God did become “one of us” by becoming man, but He did not stop being God. And our Lord has told us in no uncertain terms that when He comes again, He won’t be coming in a manger or on the back of a donkey as He did at His first coming. That was then; this is now. He has ascended to Heaven in glory, He is in glory now, and He will come again in glory.
One of the many blessings of the revised English translation of the Roman Missal promulgated in 2011 has been the restoration of the word “majesty” to our liturgical vocabulary. The Church never intended to delete from her worship this perception of God. Old Testament affirmations of God’s majesty, far from being obsolete, have always been enshrined in the recitation of the Divine Office.
Thus for centuries the Church has employed in the morning office of Good Friday the words of wonder voiced by the Prophet Habakkuk in contemplating the works of God: “God came from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens . . . rays flashed from his hand. . . . The sun and moon stood still in their habitation at the light of thine arrows as they sped, at the flash of thy glittering spear” (Hab. 3:3-4, 11).
The Psalms that serve as the very fabric of the Divine Office speak of the Red Sea fleeing at the sight of the Israelites being led out of Egypt by God (Psalm 114:1-3, 5) and of the earth trembling before Him who is enthroned upon the cherubim (Psalm 99:1); the very ends of the earth are transfixed with awe at the sight of His marvels (Psalm 65:8).
The majesty of God has also been expressed in liturgical art. The “sunburst monstrance,” a monstrance design that arose around the year 1500 and has since became almost universal, proclaims the majesty of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament by surrounding the Host with golden rays. In some cases, mingled with these “sunbeams” are zigzag shafts clearly suggesting lightning bolts.
The art of crafting awe-inspiring monstrances reached its zenith in the Baroque Era. In 1697 the goldsmith Ferdinand Sigmund Amende completed a monstrance for Austria’s Salzburg Cathedral that is renowned for the 1,792 diamonds and 405 rubies with which it is studded. Another monstrance of this era, the 1663 “Great Monstrance” of Einsiedeln, Switzerland, is adorned with 1,737 jewels and 1,174 pearls. The use of multi-poled canopies, carried over the Blessed Sacrament in eucharistic processions since the Middle Ages, has likewise served as a powerful visual manifestation of the divine majesty of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist.
In the writings of the Spanish Carmelite mystic St. Teresa of Avila (+1582) we find Christ referred to time and again as “His Majesty.” The great Spanish prelate St. Juan de Ribera (+1611), who similarly refers to our Lord as “His Divine Majesty,” observes that those reciting the Divine Office in church need to bear in mind that “they are in the presence of our Lord God, speaking with His supreme and infinite Majesty” (Constitutions, Corpus Christi College, Valencia, chapter 1).
In the course of giving directions for an Easter Sunday eucharistic procession, a 1789 Spanish liturgical book of the Mercedarian Order refers to the Blessed Sacrament as “His Sacramental Majesty.”
Of course the concept of the majesty of God is essentially an affirmation of His Kingship. And the New Testament is filled with expressions of Christ’s Kingship. Our Lord refers to the new order He has established not simply as a “community” but rather as “the Kingdom of God.” In parables and even in His description of the Last Judgment He identifies Himself as a king. During His Passion He not only professes His Kingship before Pilate (John 18:36-37) but at the decisive moment when Caiaphas asks Him whether He is the Son of God He confronts and challenges His persecutors with the majestic image of His coming on the clouds in glory (Matt. 26:63-64).
King Of Kings
In the Book of Revelation He is given that royal title that the music of George Frideric Handel has made unforgettable: “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 20:16). It is also in this final book of the Bible that we find every creature in the universe acclaiming their enthroned Creator with the salutation, “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever!” (Rev. 5:13).
On a retreat I attended years ago, the priest told of a California scientist, a nonbeliever, who once remarked to a Catholic friend that if he believed what we do about the Holy Eucharist he would be crawling on his knees down the aisle to approach the Blessed Sacrament.
Such a comment is a reminder that sometimes we need to stand back and pause to consider the full implications of what we believe, and act accordingly. Recognizing the majesty of God will bring us at least a little closer to offering Him truly fitting worship.
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