By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone addressed the Sacra Liturgia Conference 2015 with a profound but also practical message on moral teaching and sacramental theology, drawing a connection for his audience — lay and religious, young and old — between nature and grace in the economy of salvation which functions through the covenant model.
Anyone who attends Holy Mass more or less weekly already knows well through sheer repeated exposure about the marital or covenantal language which permeates the Old Testament. Very few understand, however, that, as Archbishop Cordileone made clear, we cannot teach the faith in a culture which denies or redefines marriage because this human covenant between one man and one woman made sacramental in Christ is presumed in our salvific relationship with the Father in Christ.
A look at Communion, the high point of the Church’s central public act, is sufficient to make clear the ineradicable importance of human marriage for God’s espousal of man through salvation in Christ. The wholesome Catholic perspective that creation is good in itself as taught in the Book of Genesis was a thread which wound its way through the conference presentations, for God’s handiwork is a key to the beauty of liturgy which continues to attract man and woman to their divine source.
Man and woman encounter the beauty of the Creator in each other as they are drawn to share the marital embrace. They are thus the icon for the relational consummation of God with man in faith and liturgy.
Archbishop Cordileone repeated that in the mystery of the Incarnation “the invisible becomes visible through the physical.” He called us to see that in both man and woman as complementary beings God’s fullness of being is expressed. Anyone can see that man and woman are made to fit each other.
The archbishop stressed that spreading “gender ideology” is indicative of the secular movement that militates against God. This has nowhere more of an effect on sacramental theology than it does on marriage where the complementarity of mother and father is for the benefit of the child.
Gender ideology also corrupts the liturgical sense because God has chosen marriage as the principal sign of His relationship with us in marriage where the two become one, God and man in Christ, one in complementarity without losing identity.
The dimension made possible for us in Christ through grace feeds into the concept of “divinization” in sacramental life as taught by the fathers where St. Irenaeus says, “God became man, that men might become gods.” Although qualification is obviously needed in order to prevent the imbalance of heresy, this aphorism makes the point powerfully.
That God “made them male and female” sets the pattern for the economy of salvation nuptial imagery found throughout the Scriptures, salvation history. The archbishop noted that for this reason even a book of love poems that does not even mention God found its way into the canon as the Song of Songs. It is of biblical faith that man can enter into a relationship with God in such wise that the two become one without either losing their identity.
The Lord’s words at Cana, “my hour is not yet come,” refers to the cross and God’s consummation of His relationship with His people. The new and eternal covenant made possible by the self-offering of Christ is taken up in Christian liturgy. Benedict XVI noted in his writing that the definitive destruction of the Temple coincided with the moment in which Christian worship and with it the Eucharist were established as the one perfect sacrifice of Christ.
This is seen in symbol through the sanctuary hidden by a canopy in paleo-Christian churches: the veil has a nuptial meaning. Just as a canopy and curtains represent the bridal chamber where husband and wife “unveil” themselves in order to consummate their love as one flesh, so the Christian practice of hanging a curtain from the baldacchino continued this idea.
The veil conceals, therefore, what is most sacred, what is necessary for expression of the most intimate aspect of relationship between man and woman. Just as the veil of clothing has to be removed for the marriage to be consummated, hence the temple curtain torn in two at the moment of Jesus’ death points to Him as the new locus of meeting between God and man.
What was veiled in Christ as God’s intimate inner life is now revealed by the lance in His side and the nails in His hands and feet to allow nuptial communion of Christ and the Church.
Communion is the mystical nuptial union, for it is Christ who is received, both the sacrifice offered, the One who offers and the Fruit of sacrifice. This is why Christ cries out “Consummatum Est,” it has been consummated, before He sleeps the sleep death on the cross. When the priest or deacon draws back the tabernacle veil before Communion, that signals this intimate union with Christ made possible because the faithful receive Christ Himself in Communion.
Archbishop Cordileone’s scholarly, compelling, and practical talk was a beautiful expression of a bishop’s care for his people as he tends to their faith, feeding the sheep entrusted to him by the Lord.
May this esteemed archbishop of San Francisco be blessed even as he so abundantly blesses all of us.
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(Follow me on Facebook at Reverendo Padre-Kevin Michael Cusick and on Twitter @MCITLFrAphorism. I blog occasionally at APriestLife.blogspot.com and mcitl.blogspot.com. You can email me at mcitl.blogspot.com@gmail.com.)
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