By DON FIER
The mysteries which the faithful profess in the Creed — in particular the Paschal Mystery by which Christ redeemed the world — are proclaimed and celebrated by the Church in the liturgy. As we saw last week, the word “liturgy” literally means a public service by and for the people. In contemporary usage, it refers to the official public worship of the Church as distinguished from private devotion.
In his Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, notes that it is used to describe “the special title of the Eucharist and the administration of the sacraments with the annexed use of sacramentals” (p. 322). It also includes the Liturgy of the Hours, the official prayer of the Church that is offered at various times during the day to mark and sanctify its hours.
From a theological perspective, the liturgy “is the exercise now on earth of Christ’s priestly office, as distinct from his role as teacher and ruler of his people. Christ performs this priestly office as Head of his Mystical Body, so that Head and members together offer the sacred liturgy. Its function, therefore, is twofold: to give honor and praise to God, which is worship, and to obtain blessings for the human race, which is sanctification” (ibid.).
“Through the liturgy,” the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “Christ continues the work of our redemption in, with, and through his Church” (n. 219).
“In the liturgy of the Church,” teaches the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), “God the Father is blessed and adored as the source of all the blessings of creation and salvation with which he has blessed us in his Son, in order to give us the Spirit of filial adoption” (n. 1110).
As such, as described in the first article in this section of the Catechism, the liturgy is the work of the Holy Trinity. The liturgy has the Father as its wellspring and goal (CCC, nn. 1077-1083), it is the work of the glorified Christ [the Son] still operative in the Church (CCC, nn. 1084-1090), and it is through the Holy Spirit that Christ’s Paschal Mystery is recalled, rendered present, and made efficacious in the liturgy of the Church (CCC, nn. 1091-1109) (cf. Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, pp. 81-82).
This section of the Catechism is prefaced with a reminder that “the Church was made manifest to the world on the day of Pentecost by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit” (CCC, n. 1076). The foreshadowing of the Church took place from the beginning with creation. Moreover, it was prepared for in a remarkable way throughout the history of the people of Israel and by means of the Old Covenant (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 2).
However, it was from Pentecost onward that the Church “has never failed to come together to celebrate the paschal mystery: reading those things ‘which were in all the scriptures concerning him’ (Luke 24:27), celebrating the eucharist in which ‘the victory and triumph of his death are again made present’ (Council of Trent, Session XIII [Decree on the Eucharist], chapter 5), and at the same time giving thanks ‘to God for his unspeakable gift’ (2 Cor. 9:15) in Christ Jesus, ‘in praise of his glory’ (Eph. 1:12), through the power of the Holy Spirit” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 6).
How is the Father the source of the liturgy? Sacred Scripture gives a beautiful answer: “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).
Just as God the Father is the source of all creation, He is the source of the liturgy. “The blessings of the liturgy are the words and gifts of God the Father to us,” affirms Fr. Hardon. “We give Him our blessing as our Creator by responding to His grace” (The Faith, p. 103).
Thus, “blessing expresses . . . an encounter between God and man. In blessing, God’s gift and man’s acceptance of it are united in dialogue with each other” (CCC, n. 2626). On the part of man, “blessing means adoration and surrender to his Creator in thanksgiving” (CCC, n. 1078).
As expressed by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn in volume 2 of Living the Catechism of the Catholic Church: The Sacraments (LC-S), “The liturgy is first and foremost . . . ‘the work of God’ for men. Our divine worship will always be a response to God’s gifts” (p. 13).
There is a double movement with respect to the Father — a “descending” movement from the Father and an “ascending” movement returning to the Father — in everything that happens in the liturgy:
“Our prayer ascends in the Holy Spirit through Christ to the Father — we bless him for having blessed us; it implores the grace of the Holy Spirit that descends through Christ from the Father — he blesses us” (CCC, n. 2627).
“From the beginning until the end of time,” says the Catechism, “the whole of God’s work is a blessing” (CCC, n. 1079). It goes on to affirm that this can be seen in Sacred Scripture starting with the liturgical poem in the initial creation narrative in the Book of Genesis (Gen. 1:1-2:4a) all the way through to the eternal liturgy of the heavenly Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation.
As Cardinal Schönborn notes, “Both meanings of ‘blessing’ are expressed in the call of Abraham” (LC-S, p. 13). God says to Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you . . . and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves” (Gen. 12:2-3). Abraham, who was blessed by God, becomes a blessing to others. “Through his life and prayer he ‘gives back’ to God his blessing by way of gratitude” (LC-S, p. 14).
“With Abraham,” says the Catechism, “the divine blessing entered into human history which was moving toward death, to redirect it toward life, toward its source. By the faith of ‘the father of all believers,’ who embraced the blessing, the history of salvation is inaugurated” (CCC, n. 1080).
Such responsive blessings are evident throughout the Old Testament. In an important resource on the liturgy entitled Sacred Liturgy: The Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church (edited by the French monk Dom Alcuin Reid), Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, archbishop of Sri Lanka, states:
“God’s very action in the calling into existence of the people of Israel, their growth as a nation, especially through the role of the patriarchs, their liberation from slavery and eventual settling down and owning of the land have all been seen as something that God Himself had determined and which all has a liturgical orientation” (p. 22).
Throughout the pages of the Old Testament, then, “the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, interwoven in the liturgy of the Chosen People, recall these divine blessings and at the same time respond to them with blessings of praise and thanksgiving” (CCC, n. 1081).
As expressed succinctly by Fr. Hardon, “The Christian liturgy preserves the record of these blessings and responds to them with faith and love” (The Faith, p. 103).
A Sacrifice Of Thanksgiving
The Catechism goes on to say that in the Church’s liturgy, “the divine blessing is fully revealed and communicated. The Father is acknowledged and adored as the source and the end of all the blessings of creation and salvation” (CCC, n. 1082).
For in the fullness of time, the Father sent His Son, the Incarnate Word, to suffer, die, and rise for our salvation; it is through the Son that the Father fills us with His blessings. Furthermore, it is then through the Son that the Father “pours into our hearts the Gift that contains all gifts, the Holy Spirit” (ibid.).
The dual dimension of the Christian liturgy, the “descending” and “ascending” movements to and from the Father, is thus evident. In Christian liturgy, our response to the unfathomable spiritual blessings, for the “inexpressible gift” (2 Cor. 9:15) that the Father bestows on us, is to be one of faith and love.
We experience this above all in the Eucharist, which is “a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Father, a blessing by which the Church expresses her gratitude to God for all his benefits, for all that he has accomplished through creation, redemption, and sanctification” (CCC, n. 1310).
In closing its seven-paragraph exposition on the Father as the source and goal of the liturgy, the Catechism beautifully encapsulates the overall purpose and ultimate end for which the liturgy exists:
“Until the consummation of God’s plan, the Church never ceases to present to the Father the offering of his own gifts and to beg him to send the Holy Spirit upon that offering, upon herself, upon the faithful, and upon the whole world, so that through communion in the death and resurrection of Christ the Priest, and by the power of the Spirit, these divine blessings will bring forth the fruits of life ‘to the praise of his glorious grace’ (Eph. 1:6)” (CCC, n. 1084).
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(Don Fier serves on the board of directors for The Catholic Servant, a Minneapolis-based monthly publication. He and his wife are the parents of seven children. Fier is a 2009 graduate of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology. He is doing research for writing a definitive biography of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ.)
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