The Beauty Of Fidelity To The Sacred Liturgy — And Beyond

By JAMES MONTI

Before relating word for word the institution of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper, St. Paul begins by stating, “…I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you” (1 Cor. 11:23). The apostle’s description of the very first Mass and the Lord’s command to celebrate it time and again isn’t simply a dispassionate narration of the event. He is in fact faithfully delivering the words and actions of the very essence of the Mass as he himself faithfully received them, that the will of the Lord for its repeated celebration across the ages might be faithfully carried out. It is a matter of fidelity to the Lord, of fidelity to His Commandments, of fidelity to His Church.
Paul does not see the Mass as a forum for indulging his own “creativity,” his own whims or opinions; it is for him the inviolable property of the Lord and of His Church, which was entrusted to him intact, in its unsullied entirety, and which he in turn delivers and passes down in its unsullied entirety to the bishops and priests who will come after him. Thus from the beginning, fidelity to the words and rubrics of the Mass has been integral to the sacred liturgy.
There is an incomparable beauty about fidelity. It is a matter of “keeping faith”; indeed, the very word “fidelity” stems from the Latin word for faith, “fides,” and its prime synonym in our English tongue is the word “faithfulness.” Fidelity, faithfulness is a subject that recurs throughout the Bible. The central drama of the Old Testament, that of the Covenant between God and the people of Israel, hinges on the issue of fidelity.
While the fidelity of the Israelites to this Covenant wavers over time and all too often fails, the fidelity of God to His people is constant and unswerving: “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” (Deut. 7:9).
Notice here how faithfulness is related to love. All true love is faithful, unfailing, undying, for as the Song of Solomon declares, “. . . love is strong as death. . . . Many waters cannot quench love, / neither can floods drown it” (Song 8:6-7). In his book The Art of Living, co-authored with his wife Alice, Dietrich von Hildebrand explains this with consummate insight:
“For what is love without fidelity?…For the deepest meaning of every love, the inner ‘word’ uttered in love, is the interior orientation toward and giving of oneself to the beloved, a giving that knows no time limit….The deeper a love, the more it is pervaded by fidelity. It is precisely in this faithfulness that we find the specific moral splendor, the chaste beauty of love….Faithfulness is at the heart of every true and deep love” (The Art of Living, Steubenville, OH, Hildebrand Project, 2017, pp. 16-17).
In his recently published work The Power of Truth, Gerhard Cardinal Mueller, addressing the topic of the indissolubility of marriage, says of the fidelity to which a bride and groom irrevocably pledge themselves in the sight of God, “In marital love, two people say consciously and intentionally to one another, ‘Only you — and you forever’” (The Power of Truth: The Challenges to Catholic Doctrine and Morals Today, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2019, p. 77).
The present-day headlong rush toward trying to make the divorced and remarried feel guiltless about their adultery is an affront to the sacrosanct beauty of fidelity:
“What a heinous moral stain marks the traitor who by infidelity pierces the very heart that has confidently opened itself to him, and offers itself unprotected to him. He who is unfaithful in his basic attitudes is a Judas to the world of values” (Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Art of Living, p. 17).
There is in this no denial of the boundless mercy of God to the fallen. But we can only find our way back to God by returning to fidelity, for as Venerable Pope Pius XII has taught, “Acknowledging God by fulfilling His holy will in all His Commandments and, better still, by unifying our will with His will — that, and that alone, is the way to Heaven” (Venerable Pope Pius XII, “Allocution to Lenten Preachers,” February 23, 1944, in The Pope Speaks: The Teachings of Pope Pius XII, ed. Michael Chinigo, New York, Pantheon Books, 1957, p. 225).
What has been said above about fidelity has its particular application to the sacred liturgy. Over the course of time, Holy Mother Church, following in the footsteps of St. Paul, has developed a loving methodology for “keeping faith” in the celebration of what she has received from the Lord. Over time, the Church began to compile books to preserve and faithfully hand down the words and actions of the Mass, the other sacraments, and the Divine Office. These books were put together to preserve faithfully both the letter and the spirit of the liturgy.

A Crown Jewel

Earlier this year, the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris digitized and made publicly available on their digital texts website Gallica a sixteenth-century missal of Portugal in its rare books collection that I had long desired to study, the beautiful 1558 Missale Bracarense of the Diocese of Braga. Braga is one of several dioceses that received permission from Pope St. Pius V (+1572) to retain their own distinctive liturgical rites following the otherwise universal promulgation of the Missale Romanum of 1570, and thus the 1558 missal of Braga remained in continual use for over four centuries.
Sadly, at present, the celebration of the sacred liturgy according to the Rite of Braga is quite rare, but one of its crown jewels, its unique Good Friday Eucharistic procession currently known as the “Theophoric procession,” is still faithfully celebrated each year at the cathedral of Braga.
The 1558 missal of Braga contains highly detailed rubrics for the reverent celebration of Holy Mass that ably demonstrate the beauty of fidelity to the letter and spirit of the sacred liturgy, particularly with regard to the faithful recitation of the words “handed down” by the missal:
“The celebrant should diligently observe, that wherever in the sacred Canon there is placed the sign of the Cross of red color, in those same places he should make the benediction. And let him beware, lest he add, or change, or remove, or omit anything in the sacred Canon, other than what has been ordered in the missal; and thus he should read attentively (not from memory but to the letter) that, if it be possible, the heart and soul may be predisposed to such holy words and mysteries” (Missale iuxta usum & ordinem almae Bracarensis ecclesiae Hispaniarum primatis, Lyons, France, Pierre Fradin, 1558, digitized text, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, 2019, fol. 121r).
Similarly, in describing the consecration, the missal directs:
“And with his middle forearms placed upon the altar, his head bowed, he [the celebrant] should speak the words of consecration for the Host distinctly, privately and reverently, and likewise for all, if there are several hosts to be consecrated; and holding them in this manner, he should say, ‘For this is my Body,’ so clearly, that the celebrant himself should hear. And he should say it, not from memory, but he should read it in the book, or in the tablet, which he should have before him. In this manner nevertheless he should neither disjoin the individual words nor take a breath on each, as if each word were an individual prayer. There is no need either to make here and there [the sign of] the cross with the head, or breathe upon the Host, or kiss it or the hand, or strike the breast, or anything beyond saying the Canon.
“But the words of consecration having been said, the celebrant, holding the Host between the thumbs and the index fingers over the altar (with the remaining fingers of the hands extended and held together two by two, and the rest of the Hosts, if there are several to be consecrated, remaining on the altar stone), having genuflected [on both knees], and saying nothing, he should reverently adore the Body of Christ. Then he should raise himself, and elevate the Host on high, not hastily, nor extremely slowly, but with moderate gravity, thus that it may be totally visible to those staying behind, and be adored by all; and then he should devoutly and humbly put It down upon the corporal.
“He should not, however, disjoin the thumbs and index fingers until after Communion, except when he has to touch or handle the consecrated Host, as shall be said below. But having genuflected [on both knees] afterward all the way to the ground, he should worship the Host Itself” (Missale, 1558, fol. 4r).
Toward the beginning of the missal, there is a “Table…for the Instruction of Priests” that the missal attributes to St. Bonaventure (+1274), a text found in other late medieval and Renaissance printed missals known as the “Speculum Sacerdotum” (“Mirror of Priests”). It is a summation of what it means for a priest to be faithful to the liturgical tradition that has been delivered into his consecrated hands:
“In the Canon his diligence should be great in the signs, that he may make them humbly; greater in the words, that he may say them truly, greatest in the intention, that he may intend to consecrate with a firm faith.
“In the consecration he should have diligence for confecting the Body of Christ, reverence for touching the Body of Christ, devotion for taking the Body of Christ.
“In touching the Body of Christ his reverence should be great by reason of the continence of the very excellent body of Christ, greater by reason of the continence of the yet more excellent soul of Christ, greatest by reason of the continence of the most very excellent divinity of Christ.
“What he intends to do in consecrating: to worship God by latria; to remember the death and charity of Christ; to assist the entire Church; and to free souls from Purgatory” (Missale, 1558, sig. +10v).

Love And Fidelity

Commenting on the importance of fidelity in the sacred liturgy, Pope St. John Paul II declared:
“I consider it my duty, therefore to appeal urgently that the liturgical norms for the celebration of the Eucharist be observed with great fidelity….Liturgy is never anyone’s private property….Priests who faithfully celebrate Mass according to the liturgical norms, and communities which conform to those norms, quietly but eloquently demonstrate their love for the Church” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, encyclical letter, April 17, 2003, chapter 5, n. 52 — Vatican website translation — ©Libreria Editrice Vaticana).
In the sacred liturgy as in all else, fidelity is a matter of love.