The “Power Of Stillness” In The Sacred Liturgy
By JAMES MONTI
In his 2007 apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of what he so aptly called the “ars celebrandi, the art of proper celebration” (n. 38). As a sort of a corollary to this superb concept, I would propose that there is also an “ars servandi,” an “art of serving” in the sacred liturgy exercised by those who in various capacities assist at the altar, whether as assisting clergy or as altar boys.
At the church where on Sunday afternoons I attend the Traditional Latin Mass, there is an utterly amazing team of altar boys young and old who have truly mastered the “ars servandi.” For quite a few years now, this team has had an excellent methodology of passing on to incoming pint-sized “rookies” the special skills and discipline it takes to serve with reverence, attentiveness, and pinpoint precision. Their deportment communicates a message that what is transpiring at the altar is unutterably sacred, so sacred and awesome that it ought to stun us, as it were, into a state of rapt attention.
Stillness could be described as a visual silence. And hence, like the “power of silence” of which His Eminence Robert Cardinal Sarah speaks so well, one can say that there is likewise the “power of stillness.” In the sacred liturgy there are moments of purposeful stillness, when activity and motion cease in order to communicate a message about the sacred.
One or more of those assisting in the sanctuary stop and stand at attention, totally still, as, for example, during the singing of the Gloria. There are moments also when the celebrant himself remains totally still, as for example, during the singing of the Gradual, the celebrant sitting with his hands resting upon his lap, his face gazing forward without looking about at anyone or anything. In drama too, whether it be a play, an opera, or a movie, stillness is highly evocative, with the motionless stand or stare of an actor serving to express unspoken thoughts.
In his Manual of Sacred Ceremonies, Msgr. Pio Martinucci, who served as a papal master of ceremonies under Pope Blessed Pius IX (+1878), admonishes priests assisting “in choir” during Mass (i.e., attending the Mass but not celebrating or serving in any particular liturgical role) that they are to maintain a reverent stillness unmarred by any distracting behavior:
“The office of the clergy in choir is the silence of abiding. To observe modesty and to direct one’s soul to God, to abstain from any action which could indicate levity or irreverence; namely, he should neither read letters or journals, nor babble, nor laugh, nor pass snuff from one to another, nor turn the eyes to and fro, particularly not toward the people, nor sit with his legs crossed, nor slouch in the choir stalls, nor do any similar such things; seeing that if the clerical order ought to exhibit its seriousness and piety in every action whatsoever, especially in public places, as the Council of Trent commands, how much more unseemly would it be to degrade oneself in choir, to be wanting in the service of God?” (Manuale Sacrarum Caeremoniarum, Rome, Luigi Cecchini, 1879, book 1, chapter 2, n. 12, p. 10).
We have all experienced the “power of stillness” in military ceremonies, when soldiers stand at attention, and most especially when they serve as a silent honor guard for the dead. A few years ago, I attended the burial of an Army veteran at a veterans’ cemetery. All of us in the funeral cortege had arrived at the cemetery ahead of the priest, who had been delayed back at the church after having celebrated the veteran’s funeral Mass.
The Army had provided one honor guard for the burial ceremony, and when we arrived, he took up his stance of standing at attention at the gravesite as we awaited the priest.
Unbeknownst to us, the priest had lost his way to the cemetery. In his efforts to find and catch up with the funeral cortege, he accidentally began to follow the cortege from a different funeral. At the cemetery, the minutes dragged on as we waited amid the intense heat of a hot summer day. The wait stretched out to nearly half an hour.
Through it all, the honor guard remained utterly motionless. He, like us, must have been wondering what had happened to the priest to cause such an unexpected and seemingly interminable delay. Yet he totally kept his composure, showing no signs of impatience as he kept his honorific posture. The priest did at last make it to the cemetery, and the honor guard was able to fulfill his functions for the burial, including the playing of Taps. But this episode left a lasting impression upon me as a testament to the power of stillness as an expression of reverence, and the discipline it takes to achieve it.
Stillness conveys a sense of mystery. The proverbial “calm before a storm” is a real phenomenon in nature. And it does lend an air of mystery to what is to follow. The calm in the eye of a hurricane or typhoon imparts a breathless awe to the harrowing experience of a direct encounter with one of the most powerful physical forces on Earth. Yet incomparably more significant is the incident of Our Lord Himself calming a storm by His divine command:
“And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. . . . And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?’” (Mark 4:39, 41).
Perhaps at this the apostles recalled Psalm 46:
“The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; / he utters his voice, the earth melts . . . / ‘Be still, and know that I am God’” (Psalm 46:6, 10).
The King Is Asleep
There is also the stillness of the Sabbath rest, which followed from the “stillness” of God on the seventh day of creation: “And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it” (Gen. 2:2-3). This “stillness” of God following the work of creation in turn foreshadowed the “stillness” of Our Lord in the Tomb on Holy Saturday following the completion of His work of redemption on the cross.
The projection of this “stillness” into the sacred liturgy is intimated in an anonymous fourth-century homily for Holy Saturday: “Something strange is happening — there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. . . . because the King is asleep” (The Liturgy of the Hours: According to the Roman Rite: II: Lenten Season, Easter Season, ICEL, New York, Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1976, p. 496 – ©ICEL).
This liturgical stillness in commemoration of the death of Christ is expressed most especially by the cessation of the celebration of Mass on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, but in other ways as well, including the total stillness of all church bells. In medieval England this dimension of the Easter Triduum gave it a distinctive name:
“Between His passion and His resurrection He lay in the sepulcher and was still, and for that cause the three days before Easter are called ‘still-days’” (twelfth-century English homily, quoted in Fr. Herbert Thurston, SJ, Lent and Holy Week: Chapters on Catholic Observance and Ritual, London, Longmans, Green, 1904, p. 282, footnote).
In the Traditional Latin liturgy, the office of subdeacon at a solemn high Mass affords multiple occasions for manifesting the “power of stillness.” In his book of ceremonies for cardinals and bishops, the papal master of ceremonies Paride de Grassis (+1528) directs that while holding the Gospel book for the deacon, the subdeacon should remain “totally motionless, as though he were a lectern of marble” (De Caeremoniis Cardinalium & Episcoporum in eorum diaecesibus, Rome, 1580, book 1, chapter 6, fol. 10v). An even more demanding act of perfect stillness comes for the subdeacon at the Offertory, as specified in the 1600 first edition of the Caeremoniale Episcoporum (“Ceremonial of Bishops”):
“After the oblation of the host and the wine have been completed, he [the subdeacon] receives from the hand of the deacon the paten, which the aforesaid [deacon] covers with the extremity of the veil, with the master of ceremonies assisting, and [the subdeacon] holds it elevated all the way until the end of the Our Father, standing however in the usual and appropriate place, and he does not move himself, except when at the elevation of the Most Holy Sacrament he kneels, which having been elevated, he rises at once” (Latin text in Achille Maria Triacca and Manlio Sodi, editors, Caeremoniale Episcoporum: Editio Princeps (1600), facsimile edition, MLCT 4, Vatican City, © Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000, book 1, chapter 10, p. 53, new pagination).
At a solemn high Requiem Mass, the subdeacon, by his stillness during the concluding absolution rite, serves as a silent witness to the Church’s reverence for the faithful departed and the seriousness of a man’s death and judgment before the throne of God:
“. . . bringing the cross to the coffin, he proceeds after the thurifer midway between the candle-bearers, and arriving at the foot of the coffin facing the altar, he remains ever immobile, until at the end the verse Requiescat in pace [“May they rest in peace”] should be sung by the cantors” (Bartolomeo Corsetti, Novissima ac compendiosa Praxis Sacrorum Rituum ac Caeremoniarum quae in Missis solemnibus aliisque Ecclesiasticis Functionibus servari solent, Brussels, Francis Vivien, 1656, tract 1, part 1, chapter 2, n. 24, p. 57).
The ultimate model of standing motionless in the presence of the great sacrifice of Calvary is that of our Lady herself: “But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” (John 19:25). The power of stillness in the sacred liturgy is yet another testament that “active participation” in the sacred liturgy transcends any definition that confines it to merely physical activity during the Mass. For as the English poet John Milton said so well, “They also serve who only stand and wait” (On His Blindness, verse 14).