A couple of years ago, two of my friends, both Baptist ministers from the United States, were telling me, as we were driving in the car, about some of the problems and challenges they sometimes faced in their church life. They were clearly annoyed by what they regarded as the self-indulgence that they felt some of their fellow church-goers exhibited in relation to the business of choosing a church, and going to church. “These days people go to church for the entertainment value,” they complained. “They look for a church with good music or good preaching, and they go for the performance. They think they’re an audience, and the minister and the choir are the performers. But actually it should be the other way around. We’re not the audience. God is the audience.”
Perhaps my friends expected me to express more sympathy for their concerns, but I think they may have felt a bit surprised that I didn’t immediately express similar indignation. Whilst I too disapprove of self-indulgence in the choosing of churches, I felt uneasy at the idea that God was an “audience”. [1] I tried to explain what I went to church for, and I was met with the baffled silence which I am now used to when trying to speak to some Evangelicals about Catholicism. Perhaps I didn’t explain myself very well. But perhaps I couldn’t have, in the time available on our short car journey. It has, after all, taken me fourteen chapters to build up to this point in this book!
I too was baffled when I attended my first Catholic mass, all
those years ago in central London. But, awful though that experience seemed at
the time, I now know enough that I would feel happy to return to that same
church, with the same lackadaisical congregation and the same crabby priest, to
attend mass. And perhaps you have read enough of this book by now to understand
why. For, as I said in my Introduction, “We have this treasure in earthen
vessels” (2 Cor. 4:7, RSV). What I see
when I go to church often looks unremarkable, even underwhelming, occasionally
even dreadful. But – and I say this not to excuse, but merely to explain –
those are but the signs, the shadows, the copies. They are “held together”, as
only Christ can hold things together (Col. 1:17), with such magnificent divine
realities, that they are, “like treasure hidden in a field” (Matt. 13:44),
worth selling
What do we go to church for?
What do Catholics go to church for? We can best approach this question by first asking, “What did the first Christians go to church for?” Of course, they did not go to church in the way we are used to thinking of it today, for in those days there were no buildings called “churches”. But we know from the Acts of the Apostles that meet together they did, and in quite remarkable circumstances:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship [koinonia], to the breaking of bread and to prayer… They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God. (Acts 2:42,46-47)
On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. (Acts 20:7)
The most remarkable thing is the fact that Christians met on the first day of the week, i.e. on Sunday. [2] These days we are so used to going to church on Sunday that we often hardly think why. But the first Christians were Jews, and as Jews they would have been used to attending the Temple on the Sabbath, i.e. Saturday. The Sabbath was ordained by God as a holy day of rest. It celebrates the seventh day of God’s creation of the world, when God “rested from all… he had done” (Gen. 2:2). And the reason they went was to participate in the Sabbath sacrifices – including, significantly, todah.
But Jesus had now instituted a new todah, translated into Greek as eucharistia. His todah had culminated in His resurrection, which had taken place on the first day of the week. For the Jews, every day begins at sunset. So the first day of the week begins at nightfall on Saturday and ends at nightfall on Sunday. And without doubt Jesus had risen sometime between sunset on Saturday and “dawn on the first day of the week” (Matt. 28:1, cf. Lk. 24:1, Jn. 20:1). The early Christians were clear that Jesus’s resurrection was the firstfruits of the Resurrection (Acts 26:23, Col. 1:18, Rev. 1:5), when all the dead would rise again to divine judgment. So, whilst God’s first Creation had its fulfilment on the seventh day of the week, Jesus’s New Creation had its fulfilment on the following day, the first day of the week.
And so the early Christians met on Sunday – an ordinary working day for them – for “fellowship” and “the breaking of bread” (Acts 2:42) – in Greek, koinonia and eucharistia: communion and Eucharist. Not just to spend friendly spiritual time together and to have a meal – though they undoubtedly did that too – but for the Eucharist: the one event whereby they could, in a “held together” (Col. 1:17), Word-made-flesh way, be “communioned” with Jesus’s once-for-all (Heb. 10:10) Passover todah sacrifice-meal. Whilst Saturday was the day when the Jews made todah at the Temple, the first Eucharist after Jesus’s resurrection had been instituted by Jesus Himself, on the first day of the week, the day He rose, on the road to Emmaus (Lk. 24:30). And so his disciples followed His lead, making the first day of the week the day of the todah of Jesus Christ, the New Temple (Jn. 2:21), the day of the resurrection – the day of Eucharist.
That first-century Christian manual, the Didache, confirms this, instructing:
Assemble on the Lord’s Day, and break bread and offer the Eucharist. [3]
That is why the first Christians “went to church” on Sunday, and that is why Christians ever since have done the same. The original purpose of Sunday is to “offer the Eucharist”.
There is a lovely children’s book by Meriol Trevor called Sun Slower Sun Faster, about a pair of time-travelling English youngsters. In one of their adventures, they find themselves in the Elizabethan era, staying with a Catholic family facing religious persecution and having to celebrate mass in secret. “‘Explain the Mass, please,’” asks the uncomprehending young Cecil. This is the answer she receives:
“The Mass is a mystery,” said
Lady Mary slowly. “That means that the more you look into it the more you can find
in it, and what you find in it is always love, the love of God. When Christ
died for all mankind on the Cross of Calvary all men were not present: they
were far away, some in space and some in time, some dead long since, some not
yet born: and yet the sacrifice was made for all. When He rose again He drew
all men up into the life of God, and yet all men were not there with Him at
that time. So… at the night of His Passion, on the night of His betrayal, He
offered His own flesh and blood to God the Father under the form of bread and wine.
And after His resurrection He gave power to His apostles to present Him in this
way to God and to each other… so that… we poor sinners, separated from Him though
we may seem to be, may be made one Body with Him, and live with His eternal
life, which is the love in the very being of the most blessed Trinity.”
There was silence when she had
spoken. [4]
Silence is indeed probably the best response to such profound mysteries. But that is not an option available to us at present. So – what do Catholics do at church? We enter sacramentally into the Passover sacrifice-meal of Jesus Christ, the eternal heavenly banquet, the wedding feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9). This is not to say that we don’t pray, or preach, or read Scripture, or praise God. We do all those things too, but they are done at the service of, or as by-products of, our main purpose: to make Eucharist, for the Eucharist is our window into the saving sacrifice of Christ. And that wondrous eternal reality is “communioned” with a set of rather modest little signs – many of them the same as those used by the Jews in their Tabernacle in the desert: bread, wine, fire, cloud, oil, water, and of course a whole series of set actions and words. So everything which is done, or said, or used in a Catholic church means something – and not usually just in a purely symbolic way, but often with various layers of sacramental significance.
If we want to understand what is going on in a Catholic church, let us think for a while about what happens at a wedding feast. Why do bride and groom, and their families and community, celebrate a wedding? Not principally because doing so will be of any direct benefit to them – though that may be a side-effect; nor principally because doing so will be of any direct benefit to any else – though that too may be a side-effect. Wedding celebrations do not happen principally in order to bring about teaching, or worship, or listening, or speaking, or social interaction – though they may incidentally do all these things. No, a wedding feast happens because it is the right thing to do. It is a job which it behoves us to do. It is to be done. The point is not for anyone to get anything out of it, but to do it. For human beings, the process is intrinsically valuable. Animals just mate; humans, made in the image of God, are wed, and celebrate this fact in communion with others.
Catholics go to church for the same reason: to celebrate the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb – His marriage to us, the Bride of Christ (Eph. 5:22-32). That it is a good thing to do is shown by the fact that Scripture tells us that this is what God, and Jesus, and the angels and saints in Heaven spend eternity doing:
Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank. (Ex. 24:9-11)
“I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 8:11)
“I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.” (Lk. 22:29-30)
Then I heard what sounded like a great
multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder,
shouting:
“Hallelujah!
For
our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Let
us rejoice and be glad and give him glory!
For
the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and
his bride has made herself ready.” (Rev. 19:6-7)
And so we, saints too whose destiny lies in Heaven, must spend our time doing what it is right for all the elect of God to do: to praise, to eat and drink with – and of – the Lamb slain for us. We must join in the eternal celebration in Heaven. That is what we go to church for.
The biblical word which sums this up is leitourgia, which derives from roots meaning “the work of the people” or “public duty”. In ancient Greece, this referred to civic duties or public service performed by wealthy citizens. Later it gained a more specifically religious meaning. The Septuagint translators of the Old Testament, [5] and later the writers of the New Testament, [6] used the word to describe the Jerusalem Temple rituals. This word has become “liturgy” in English. Liturgy is what God’s people do. It is our job, our work, our duty – on earth as it is in Heaven (cf. Matt. 6:10). Gregory Dix, the great Anglican historian of liturgy, puts it beautifully, describing the worship of the early Church in these terms:
The Christian came to the eucharist… simply to do something, which he conceived he had an overwhelming personal duty to do, come what might. What brought him to the eucharist week by week, despite all the dangers and inconveniences, was no thrill provoked by the service itself… Nor yet was it a longing for personal communion with God, which he could and did fulfil otherwise… What brought him was an intense belief that in the eucharistic action of the Body of Christ, as in no other way, he himself took a part in that act of sacrificial obedience to the will of God which was consummated on Calvary and which had redeemed the world, including himself. [7]
We too are the redeemed of God. Therefore it is our hope and our destiny one day to partake directly and literally in the Liturgy of Heaven. In the meantime, however, we remember that Christ holds together Heaven and earth, and that therefore, in Him, the manifold glories of Heaven, which the Bible writers struggled to describe, can be sacramentally re-presented to us in words, actions and images. Every liturgy we perform on earth is a “copy and shadow” of that taking place in Heaven:
They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. That is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: “See to it that you make everything according to the pattern [typon] shown you on the mountain” [Ex. 25:40]. But the ministry [leitourgias] Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one. (Heb. 8:5-6)
Thus, our blueprint for earthly liturgy is the Heavenly Liturgy. Just as the Jews, at God’s command, devoted massive effort into making their Tabernacle and Temple resemble God’s Temple in Heaven, we strive to make what we do in church “copy and shadow” what happens in Heaven: what the angels and saints spend their time doing in the presence of God – in order to prepare us, little by little, for the Heavenly Liturgy in which we will one day participate fully. Kallistos Ware explains:
The Holy Liturgy is something that embraces two worlds at once, for both in heaven and on earth the Liturgy is one and the same – one altar, one sacrifice, one presence. In every place of worship, however humble its outward appearance…, the faithful… are taken up into the “heavenly places”…; not merely the local congregation are present, but the Church universal – the saints, the angels, the Mother of God, and Christ himself. [8]
And Evangelical theologian Robert Webber puts it this way:
Worship is a sacred drama through
which we act out the meaning of existence itself, the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ for our salvation. […]
When we sit at table with our
Lord, the church corporately symbolizes the messianic banquet – the celebration
of the new heavens and the new earth. Thus, worship transports the church from
the earthly sphere to the heavens to join in that everlasting worship described
by John (see Rev. 4 and 5). [9]
Liturgy, then, is, like Scripture, an attempt to describe the
indescribable – not just in words, but also in signs. Liturgy comprises many “signs”:
things used, and things done, and things said. We have already spent much time,
in previous chapters, discussing the material signs of the Eucharist, i.e. the things used, such as bread and
wine. But we have not devoted much effort to analysing the other types of sign:
actions and words. I cannot explain all of them in detail here, but let’s look at
a few examples.
Liturgy of the Word
Let us start with words. The words which dominate in any Catholic liturgy are those of Scripture. The first part of most Catholic liturgies is what we call the “Liturgy of the Word”. [10] The most obvious aspect of this type of liturgy is that there are readings from Scripture, and recitation of Psalms, usually followed by a sermon (or “homily”) and prayers – a structure which derives from the ancient Jewish synagogue liturgies which would have been routine for Jesus and His apostles, [11] and which in the Christian context is explicitly attested to as early as c. 150 A.D.:
On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray. [12]
This is of course just what lies on the surface. It is important to emphasise that the Liturgy of the Word is not just “Bible study” time. Studying the Bible is of course crucially important for Christians – but it is not the only way of interacting with Scripture. For we all know that Christ is the Word, and that therefore when we hear the words of Scripture, He comes among us in a special way. He comes to change us:
As the rain
and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return to it without
watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the
sower and bread for the eater,
so is the word that goes out from
my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which
I sent it.
You will go out with joy and be
led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills will burst
into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands. (Is. 55:10-12)
This is one of the “side-effects”, if you like, of attentively hearing the Word of God: it changes us, often in ways we do not fully understand, and sometimes despite our not understanding it. Either way, we can be confident that before Him “the mountains and hills will burst into song” and we will, in some way, “go out with joy and be led forth in peace”.
Remember what we said in Chapter Six about how, if we are serious about wanting to understand God’s Word, we must recognise and embrace its unity? The way the Word of God is presented in the liturgy conduces to this, for we are never presented with a single reading on its own. Taking a single lengthy part of the Bible and studying it or expounding it in depth is definitely a very good thing to do, and there are many kinds of religious meetings which provide the perfect context for this sort of interaction with Scripture. But in the liturgy, our main objective, remember, is not so much study or learning, but celebrating the eternal Wedding Feast. And so we are presented with a feast of Scripture – in several courses! “When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight,” says the prophet Jeremiah (15:16): this is the attitude we need to adopt when feasting on the Word of God. [13]
Each Liturgy of the Word, therefore, usually presents us with a set of typoi, embodied in a series of scriptural extracts – usually: one from the Old Testament; one Psalm, prayed in response to that Old Testament reading; one from one of the New Testament letters; and one from the Gospels. The number of readings may go up or down according to the significance of the day (at Easter, for example, we get seven Old Testament readings, eight Psalms, one Letter and one Gospel – an extra-special feast for the night of Christ’s Passover!) – but they are all chosen to form a unity, and to explore a particular aspect of God’s saving work as expressed throughout salvation history.
Epiphany
To give but one example, let me introduce you to one of my favourite sets of Scripture readings, which are proclaimed each year at the liturgy for the feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the visit of the wise men to the child Jesus, usually celebrated around the twelfth day of Christmas, i.e. c. 6th January. The Gospel reading is of course from the second chapter of Matthew. The story is familiar to us all, but please read Matthew 2:1-12 in your own Bible now. Matthew was a lover of typology, never hesitating to point out the ways in which Jesus is the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies; and so in this passage he deliberately quotes the prophet Micah:
“And you,
Bethlehem, in the land of Judah
you are by
no means least among the rulers of Judah,
for out of
you will come a leader
who will shepherd
my people Israel.” (Matt. 2:6, JB, cf. Mic. 5:2) [14]
By quoting Micah, Matthew reminds us that Bethlehem was the home of Jesse (1 Sam. 16:1), the place where the Messiah will come from (Is. 11:1), and the place David was anointed king (1 Sam. 16:13) – thereby confirming Jesus as the promised Davidic king, as foretold by the prophets (e.g. Is. 9:5, Zech. 9:9).
One of the many remarkable things about this passage from Matthew is that it is the first time that Jesus is worshipped by the Gentiles. It proclaims Jesus as Saviour not only of Israel, but of the world. He is therefore the fulfilment of all the other Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah who would call all nations to worship of the true God:
In that day the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his place of rest will be glorious. (Is. 11:10)
“It is too small a thing for you
to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I
have kept.
I will also make you a light for
the Gentiles
that you may bring my salvation
to the ends of the earth.” (Is. 49:6)
In 2015 I had the good fortune to be able to spend five days in Bethlehem, staying in a pilgrim house just next door to the Church of the Nativity, which marks the place where it is believed that Jesus was born. Bethlehem is a hilly town, and the place of Jesus’s birth is near the top of a hill, on what must once have been a steep slope. These days, despite the crowded, built-up nature of modern Bethlehem, the steeple of the Church is visible for miles around – most notably from the “shepherds’ fields” where it is claimed the angel appeared to announce the birth of the Saviour (Lk. 2:8-15). Jesus’s birthplace does indeed stand tall on the skyline, a “banner for the peoples”. During my stay in Bethlehem, I spent long periods of time standing quietly in the Church of the Nativity watching the comings and goings of pilgrims. Many were Christians, of all types: Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, all sharing the same space and praying their various liturgies at their allotted times. And there were many Muslims as well, drawn to pray at the place where Mary gave birth to Jesus. It was like watching the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecies in the flesh: all peoples, Israel and beyond, drawn to Bethlehem by the “banner for the peoples” (Is. 11:10).
And so the Old Testament reading for this Epiphany liturgy is Isaiah 60:1-6 – which I suggest you read now in your own Bible. The end of this passage can be read as a prophecy of Christ’s Epiphany:
The riches of the sea will flow
to you;
the wealth of the nations will
come to you;
camels in throngs will cover you,
and dromedaries of Midian and
Ephah;
everyone in Sheba will come,
bringing gold and incense
and singing the praise of the
Lord. (Is. 60:5-6, JB) [15]
Old Testament readings in the liturgy are often followed by what is called a “responsorial psalm”. One of the reasons it is called this is that the psalm read is usually proclaimed in alternation between a single reader and the rest of the congregation. But there is a more profound connotation to this term, and that is that the psalm is prayed in response to the Old Testament reading. [16] And so, at Epiphany, we respond to the reading from Isaiah above by praying part of Psalm 72 – which is dedicated to Solomon, but which can also be read as prophetic of the promised messianic King:
The kings
of Tarshish and the sea coasts
shall pay
him tribute.
The kings
of Sheba and Seba
shall bring
him gifts.
Before him
all kings shall fall prostrate,
all nations
shall serve him. (Ps. 72:10-11, JB) [17]
Apart from an Old Testament reading, a Psalm of response, and a Gospel reading, most liturgies include a reading from a New Testament letter. At Epiphany, this is from Paul, and it serves, as so often Paul’s letters do, as an explanation of the connections between the mysteries of the Old Testament and their fulfilment in Christ:
You have probably heard how I have been entrusted by God with the grace he meant for you, and that it was by a revelation that I was given knowledge of the mystery… This mystery that has now been revealed through the Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets was unknown to any men in past generations; it means that pagans now share the inheritance, that they are parts of the same body, and that the same promise has been made to them, in Christ Jesus, through the gospel. (Eph. 3:2-3,5-6, JB) [18]
Here Paul makes explicit what is implicit in the juxtaposition of the other readings: the kings David and Solomon as typoi of Christ; the prophets Isaiah and Micah as the announcers of the promise of the Messiah in David’s image; and the Christ child visited by the wise men in fulfilment of all these Old Testament patterns, the whole mystery revealed to the “holy apostles and prophets”, explained by Paul, and now opened up to the whole world. This Liturgy of the Word, then, presents us with a rich network of scriptural images, and invites us to meditate upon and consider the connections between them.
There is a final typos which a Liturgy of the Word presents to us: ourselves. Every Liturgy of the Word invites us to see ourselves in that typology. Hearing such a Liturgy invites us to ask ourselves the often uncomfortable question, “Where are we in the history of salvation recounted by Scripture?” In the example given above, we may need to ask ourselves: Do we welcome the King wholeheartedly into our lives? Do we lay before him the “gold and incense” of our lives, or do we hold back the best for ourselves? Are we like the wise men, who dropped everything to seek out Jesus? And, having met Him, do we return home “by a different way” (Matt. 2:12, JB), or do we continue to tread the habitual patterns of our former lives? Or perhaps, are we sometimes more like Herod, seeking to snuff out the new life of Jesus whenever it threatens to destroy our privileges and pleasures (Matt. 2:13-16)? And do we recognise ourselves, as Paul insists we should, as part of the “same body” of that little Christ child? Or do we sometimes think that the wholeness of that body is dispensable? Every Liturgy of the Word, merely by presenting us with the words of Scripture, challenges us with searching questions like this, and invites us to answer them.
But, by the grace of God, not alone, as Pope Benedict XVI explains:
This dialogue with Scripture must have two dimensions: on the one hand, it must be a truly personal dialogue because God speaks with each one of us through Sacred Scripture, and it has a message for each one. We must not read Sacred Scripture as a word of the past but as the Word of God that is also addressed to us, and we must try to understand what it is that the Lord wants to tell us. However, to avoid falling into individualism, we must bear in mind that the Word of God has been given to us precisely in order to build communion and to join forces in the truth on our journey toward God. Thus, although it is always a personal Word, it is also a Word that builds community, that builds the Church. We must therefore read it in communion with the living Church. The privileged place for reading and listening to the Word of God is in the liturgy, in which, celebrating the Word and making Christ’s Body present in the Sacrament, we actualize the Word in our lives and make it present among us. [19]
Benedict reminds us here of some of the differences between merely studying Scripture, and receiving the Word of God in the liturgy. Studying the Bible invites us to apply our intellect to it, to interpret it, to attempt to understand it, to submit it to our analysis. This is, to be sure, a very good thing to do. But in the liturgy we are invited to do something quite different as well: to allow God’s intellect to reveal itself to us, to allow Him to understand us, that we might, together, submit to His action. The liturgy, as Orthodox writer Tony Ugolnik explains,
defies the “individualization” of faith… Liturgy demands company; it is not a private but a communal experience of the gospel. It restores that element of “self-insufficiency” which the “self-conscious” critical mind of modernity is, by definition, denied. [20]
In liturgy, God is the one who acts on us; and it is the grace of His action which permits us to be changed by His Word. When we feast on food, each course we eat becomes part of us, and sustains and changes us from the inside out. Similarly, when we feast on the Word of God, each bit of God’s Word becomes part of us, and can sustain and transform us from within. Sometimes we can be consciously aware of how God’s Word speaks to us; but even if we find ourselves intellectually baffled by it, this does not mean that it has failed. Remember, it “will accomplish” what God desires and “achieve the purpose” (Is. 55:11) for which He sent it!
Liturgical prayer
It is not only in the readings of the Liturgy of the Word that we find ourselves asked to submit to the words of Scripture. For there is a lot of text in Catholic liturgies, and most of it is scriptural, embedded in a series of fixed prayers and responses which form the framework of the liturgy – many of which date at least as far back as the beginning of the third century A.D. [21] Fixed prayers can sometimes be off-putting to Christians who are used to a more extemporaneous or informal style of worship, and so perhaps it might help for me to explain some of the reasons for their use.
First, fixing the text of liturgical prayer makes us stick to Scripture. It forces us all to hear and to speak and to sing the Bible. In everyday life, we can choose the words we wish to speak – and, if you are anything like me, the words we speak are often inane, inconsequential and uninspiring. The words of Scripture, however, lift us up into Christ’s realm. We need this, and liturgy is one way to ensure that we get it. Evangelical-turned-Catholic Thomas Howard explains it beautifully, I think:
The liturgy “imposes” on us the right thing to say; thus helping us along the way to the place where the external rules and the internal responses of our hearts coincide. Such a state of affairs is called sanctity, and it is synonymous with freedom; the righteousness anticipated by the Law, and given to us in Christ, has now become a living reality in the inner man. The liturgy is a tutor in this school. [22]
So much of Catholic liturgy is a tapestry of Scripture, a complex web of biblical truth which surrounds us, comes at us from all angles, and draws us in. Often the more important the moment in the liturgy, the more richly scriptural the text is. My favourite part of the text of the standard Catholic Sunday mass is the sequence of texts which leads up to the climax of the Eucharist, when we receive Holy Communion. After praying the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9-13), this happens:
The peace of the Lord be with you
always. (cf. Lk. 24:36; Jn. 20:21,26;
Phil. 4:7; 2 Thess. 3:16)
And with your spirit. (cf. Gal.
6:18, Phil. 4:22, Phlm. 1:25, 2 Tim. 4:22)
Let us offer each other the sign
of peace. [23]
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world (cf. Jn. 1:29), have mercy on us (Ps. 123:3).
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.
Behold the Lamb of God,
behold him who takes away the
sins of the world. (cf. Jn. 1:29)
Blessed are those called to the
supper of the Lamb. (cf. Rev. 19:9)
Lord, I am not worthy
that you should enter under my roof,
but only say the word
and my soul shall be healed. (cf. Matt.
8:8)
The Body of Christ. (cf. Matt. 26:26, Mk. 14:22, Lk. 22:19, 1
Cor. 11:24)
Amen. (Rev. 5:14, 7:12, 19:4, 22:20) [24]
You can’t get much more biblical than that!
Another reason to use set prayers is that Jesus and His apostles undoubtedly did. Jewish prayer services are full of set prayers, which also weave together bits of Scripture, with a heavy emphasis on the Psalms. As we saw in Chapter Nine, the hymn the apostles sang before departing for Gethsemane was probably the Hallel, a concatenation of several messianic psalms. The familiarity with Scripture bred by frequently reciting the Psalms is something Jesus and his apostles clearly drew upon. Even in His moments of greatest suffering, Jesus could find words with which to pray – and often He did not improvise them, but took them straight from Scripture:
About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” – which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46, cf. Ps. 22:1)
Not only did Jesus use fixed prayers, but He commanded his apostles to do so. The Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9-13) is one such fixed prayer. It is based upon the Amidah – the set prayer which Jesus almost certainly recited three times a day, and which all observant Jews do to this day. When Jesus taught His disciples His new Amidah, He was explicit: “This, then, is how you should pray” (Matt. 6:9). Such a command does not give us much room to manoeuvre: we must obey. And it is apparent that the earliest Christians did so: the first-century Christian manual the Didache quotes the entire text of the Lord’s Prayer, and explicitly tells the reader to pray it three times a day – just as the Jews did the Amidah. [25]
Another reason that set prayers can be beneficial is that they enable the Church to be truly catholic, i.e. universal, in its worship. This fact was brought home to me most forcefully when A. and I attended that liturgy for the feast of the Assumption in Penang, Malaysia, some years ago. Penang is a multi-ethnic state: apart from the Malay people, there are large Christian communities amongst the Chinese, Indians, Eurasians, and Filipinos. And so the liturgy on this occasion included readings and prayers in Chinese, Tamil, English and Tagalog. And even though there are hardly any Christians of the Malay ethnicity, everyone was happy to recite together the Lord's Prayer in Malay – the lingua franca which enables all people in the country to communicate with and understand each other. Done the wrong way, this could have become a Tower of Babel moment. But because we were used to reciting the ancient texts of the liturgy over and over each week, and hearing certain passages of Scripture on particular feast days, when we heard them in Tamil and Chinese and Malay it did not matter whether we knew those languages. We understood what everyone was saying because we knew those texts. And so people of some five different races were able to pray together with one mind and share a great feast of the Word, despite the fact that we did not understand each other's languages. The threat of Babel was foiled, and the promise of Pentecost fulfilled: “Each one heard them speaking in his own language” (Acts 2:6)!
“Vain repetition”
Many Catholic set prayers are full of repetition, or are repeated several times over in certain contexts. The charge is sometimes made that this is “vain repetition” (Matt. 6:7, KJV), because God surely got the message the first time! And if we think that the main purpose of prayer is to inform God of what we think, then, yes, it is surely pointless to repeat ourselves. But prayer is not just us talking to God. It comes in many forms, all of which draw us into God and fill us with God’s presence, so that He can change us from the inside out. Kallistos Ware explains it beautifully:
True prayer is not simply a dialogue between me and God. It is the dialogue within the Trinity – the three-personed perichoresis [“interchange”, “reciprocity”, lit. “round-dance”] of mutual love – into which I as the human subject am caught and taken up. In true prayer at its highest I do not merely talk to God, but I become part of the interpersonal exchange that passes among the divine three. [26]
Prayers are sometimes repetitive, therefore, not because we need to repeat things many times for God to get the message, but because God sometimes needs to repeat things, or needs to make us repeat things, so that we get the message!
This point was brought home to me when A. and I began to pray with our children as they were growing up. Sometimes we would pray the rosary – a particularly repetitive form of Catholic prayer. Far from being boring for our children, they loved the repetitive parts, because they could recognise them and more easily get a handle on them. Whenever we reached the part where we began to repeat that very biblical prayer, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus” (from Lk. 1:28,42), our daughter A.M., probably three years old at the time, would exclaim with glee, “Oh, here comes the funny bit!” As a child, she needed the repetition, and she loved the repetition. We adults often think we are cleverer than we are, and that we don’t need God to repeat Himself to us. But no, God, our Father, knows us, His children, better than we know ourselves. Like three-year old A.M., we need to be humble enough to delight in hearing His Word over and over again.
Years later, I found myself faced with the task of praying for my dying father at his bedside. I am not good at praying at the best of times – and this was the worst of times. And so I did what so many in times of suffering do – and what Jesus did in His suffering (Matt. 27:46, cf. Ps. 22:1) – which is to fall back, in my weakness, on the repetitive prayers of God’s people. First I read 1 Corinthians 15 aloud to my father; he may not have heard me, but that need not be an impediment to the Word of God (see e.g. Is. 55:10-12). And then I recited the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, a lengthy Catholic set prayer imploring God for His mercy – which is, after all, what a dying man, no less than all the rest of us, must depend upon (see e.g. Lk. 18:13-14, Rom. 9:14-16). I certainly did not at that moment have the presence of mind to extemporise prayers for my father; I am grateful both to Scripture and to the traditions of the Church that that did not matter. My father stopped breathing some fifteen minutes later.
God loves repetitive prayers, which is why there are so many of them in Scripture. Here is an example of one – which is recited frequently in both Jewish and Catholic liturgies:
Give thanks
to the LORD, for he is good.
His love endures for ever.
Give thanks
to the God of gods.
His love endures for ever.
Give thanks
to the Lord of lords:
His love endures for ever.
to him who
alone does great wonders,
His love endures for ever.
who by his
understanding made the heavens,
His love endures for ever.
who spread out
the earth upon the waters,
His love endures for ever.
who made
the great lights –
His love endures for ever.
the sun to
govern the day,
His love endures for ever.
the moon
and stars to govern the night;
His love endures for ever. (Ps. 136:1-9)
Repetitive prayers are particularly popular, of course, in Heaven, where the angels never cease from reciting them. Indeed,
day and night they never stop saying:
“Holy, holy,
holy
is the Lord
God Almighty,
who was, and
is, and is to come.” (Rev. 4:8)
Day and night they never stop saying. Will we accuse the angels – or the psalmist – of “vain repetition”? No, the angels love repetitive set prayers because it is their job to always remind us of the unchanging truths of God. We need to imitate them, rather than the fickleness of modern society.
If truth be told, Evangelicals are also inordinately fond of set prayers too, and often highly repetitive ones. I have never been to an Evangelical service which did not include a lot of enthusiastic singing of hymns and choruses – and a hymn is nothing more than a fixed prayer set to music, often including a great deal of repetition. Is it “vain repetition”? I hope not. A well-written hymn or chorus or set prayer (1) is biblical, (2) makes us say the things which will lift us into God’s presence, and (3) repeats those things which it is very important for us to hear again and again. God’s people, Jews, Catholics and Protestants alike, have always rejoiced in such texts.
Acts and action
The first time I attended a Catholic mass, I was bewildered by all the things they did. Not just the priest, but the whole congregation. They were forever standing up, and sitting down, and kneeling, and bowing, and genuflecting, and making the sign of the cross. I had no idea what the purpose of any of this was – but they all seemed to know what to do. Was it just meaningless routine, or was something more important happening?
Recall for a moment the words I quoted in Chapter Six, from Fr. Francis Martin:
One characteristic of reading Scripture in the Catholic tradition… [is] that it is concentrated on the acts of God rather than on the words of Scripture that bear these acts to us.
In the same article, Fr. Francis continues:
It is for this reason that the home of Scripture, the place where it is most actualized, is found in communal and sacramental worship…
And then he says something very dense but very profound, which is worth reading slowly:
Catholic thinking… is concentrated
upon… the participation of all God’s present saving acts in… Christ’s act of
love on the cross and his permanent state of glory… This is the work of the Holy
Spirit, bringing the mind and spirit of the reader into contact with divine
realities. […]
As Martin Luther said: “The one
who does not understand the realities cannot draw the meaning out of the
words.” [27]
That is a densely packed paragraph. Read it again if you need to. It suggests that, by the Holy Spirit, everything we do in worship of God can be made holy by its participation in the divine reality of Christ’s eternal sacrifice. There’s that communio sanctorum raising its head again! It tells us that in worship we should do things which lift us up to communion with the eternal reality of Christ’s act of saving love. It is the doing – the acting – which allows us to fully “understand the realities” referred to by Scripture. We need to join the wedding feast, not just think about it! Kallistos Ware explains it differently, but equally brilliantly:
What is the unique function of the Church? What is it that it alone does and what no one and nothing else can do? We might answer, “The Church is here to proclaim salvation in Jesus Christ.” That is true, but it is incomplete. We are not here merely to proclaim. Jesus, at the last supper, did not tell his disciples, “Say this.” He told them, “Do this.” … So the basis of the Church is not just words but an action. [28]
And Evangelical Robert Webber hits the nail on the head when he notes that every sign used in the liturgy (e.g. bread, wine etc.)
is an action: it reveals something by putting us into contact with an invisible reality and creates within us a longing for that which cannot be seen. [29]
It may be objected that what really matters in worship is not what we do physically, but what we are thinking – and that the two have nothing to do with each other. After all, a man may stand to attention though his mind be slothful, or kneel though his mind be irreverent! Doesn’t an over-emphasis upon actions distract from the importance of inner attitude? This is an important point to make, and a biblical one:
These
people come near to me with their mouth
and honour
me with their lips,
but their
hearts are far from me.
Their worship
of me
is made up
only of rules taught by men. (Is. 29:13)
You do not delight
in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not
take pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices
of God are a broken spirit;
a broken
and contrite heart. (Ps. 51:16-17; cf.
Ps. 40:6, Hos. 6:6)
However, it is not true that what we do physically and what we think have nothing to do with one another. As we saw in Chapter Ten, the Hebrew word nephesh – “the self, the whole person – was an undissolvable composite of body and spirit.” [30] This is why man was made in the image and likeness of God, and why God breathed His Spirit into the dust of the earth to make him:
Far from being a “part” which joins with the body to form the human being, the soul denotes the entire man, insofar as he is animated by a spirit of life. To speak properly, the soul does not live in the body, but expresses itself through the body. [31]
This is why, of course, all the great men and women of the Bible adopt certain postures for certain types of prayer – and why Christians through the ages have done the same. Let us have a look at some of these.
Posture
The most ancient posture for prayer and the worship of God is standing. Abraham stands before the LORD when pleading for mercy for Sodom (Gen. 18:22). Hannah stands to pray before the LORD at Shiloh (1 Sam. 1:26). Job stands in prayer before God (Job 30:20). After their return from exile, the Israelites stand to confess their sins (Neh. 9:2) and to praise the LORD (Neh. 9:5). Jesus specifically presumes that His disciples will “stand praying” (Mk. 11:25). And in Heaven, the “great multitude… from every nation” stand to praise God (Rev. 7:9-11).
Often, praying is done with arms outstretched and palms open to the heavens. Paul tells “men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer” (1 Tim. 2:8). When the Israelites battle the Amalekites at Rephidim, Moses stands (Ex. 17:9) to pray to God for deliverance; what’s more, “as long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning” (Ex. 17:11)!
There is a more humble variation upon this position: still standing, but with head bowed. In Jesus’s parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, both the Pharisee and the tax collector stand to pray at the Temple – but the tax collector bows his head: “He would not even look up to heaven” (Lk. 18:13).
In the Bible people also pray kneeling. King Solomon kneels to pray at the Temple (2 Chr. 6:13), as does Ezra (Ez. 9:5). The prophet Daniel habitually kneels to pray (Dan. 6:10). Jesus kneels to pray in the garden of Gethsemane (Lk. 22:41). Peter kneels to pray for the dead Tabitha (Acts 9:40). Paul and the Ephesian presbyteroi kneel to pray together (Acts 20:36), as does the entire Christian community on the beach at Tyre (Acts 21:5).
Another very ancient posture is prostration. Joshua “fell face down to the ground” (Josh. 5:14) in front of the commander of the LORD’s army. According to Matthew, in the garden of Gethsemane Jesus “fell with his face to the ground and prayed” (Matt. 26:39, cf. Mk. 14:35). In Heaven, the four living creatures, the angels and the twenty-four presbyteroi fall down “on their faces” to worship God (Rev. 7:11, 11:16; cf. 4:10, 5:8, 5:14). And when John sees Christ in his vision on the island of Patmos, he falls “at his feet as though dead” (Rev. 1:17) to worship Him.
The least biblical posture for prayer and worship is sitting. It has no biblical precedent. In Heaven, after all, only God and His twenty-four presbyters sit (Rev. 4:2-4). Everyone else stands, or kneels, or prostrates himself.
Until the Renaissance, Christians hardly ever sat down in church – unless they were disabled or frail – or extremely tired, like Moses at Rephidim (Ex. 17:12). People stood or knelt to pray, or prostrated themselves in penance. This remains the norm in Orthodox churches – which are therefore arguably the most biblical churches around, in this respect at least. Pews only became a standard part of church furniture around the time of the Renaissance – and then only in Western Europe. Pews are of course useful things, and Catholics have made full use of them as much as Protestants. They are particularly useful if the centrepiece of a worship service is listening to a lengthy sermon; and that is of course why they have become very popular in Protestant churches. However, even in Protestant churches, standing and kneeling for prayer, as opposed to sitting, remained a staunchly defended practice until the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1849, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. issued this strongly-worded warning to its flock:
While the posture of standing in public prayer, and that of kneeling in private prayer, are indicated by examples in Scripture, and in the general practice of the ancient Christian church, the posture of sitting in public is nowhere mentioned, and by no usage allowed; but on the contrary, was universally regarded by the early church as heathenish and irreverent, and is still in the customs of modern and western nations an attitude obviously wanting in the due expression of reverence. Therefore, this General Assembly Resolve, that the practice in question be considered grievously improper whenever the infirmities of the worshipper do not render it necessary; and that ministers be required to reprove it with earnest and persevering admonition. [32]
The Presbyterian General Assembly appears to have lost that argument. But its specific instructions are perhaps not as important as its general reasoning:
As the body as well as the soul is
derived from God it is reasonable that it should be employed in his service.
The internal respect, veneration, and homage which we pay him should be shown
by external acts. God not only created the body as well as the soul, but he also
preserves it…
Are we God’s people? If so, our
bodies, as well our souls, have been redeemed from hell. To redeem them Christ
suffered in his body as well as in his soul… “Ye are bought with a price,
therefore glorify God in your body and your spirit which are God’s” [1 Cor.
6:20]…
So long as we remain on earth our
nature is closely allied to sense, and depends very much upon it. A worship,
therefore, which is purely intellectual, is not wholly suited to it. But that
which calls for the employment of the bodily organs and members, as well as our
mental faculties, is well adapted to human nature. The sense is made to assist
the mind, and at the same time to elevate the soul far, very far, above the
sense. By the members and organs of our bodies being called into exercise, when
we worship God, they, so to speak, reflect back upon the soul. [33]
The Catholic Church in the West followed Protestantism in embracing pews, but has clung on – though sometimes tenuously – to the ancient postures for prayer: standing, kneeling, and prostration. In general, we stand to pray, we kneel in adoration, and, occasionally, we prostrate ourselves in penance.
It is not just that sitting to pray is unbiblical, or that it can encourage a failure to worship God with our bodies as well as our minds. It has another effect, of course, and that is that it subliminally changes our attitude to what it is that we go to church for. Sitting is useful when we want to listen to lengthy sermons. But if we spend most of our time in church sitting and listening, then it becomes far too easy to think that we are the audience and the clergy the performers, and that our church buildings are nothing more than meeting-halls or auditoria. But if instead we go to church to do things – to stand in prayer, to kneel in adoration, to prostrate ourselves in penance, as well as to recite multiple set prayers and responses, not to mention to prepare, to serve, and to feast on Christ’s Passover sacrifice-meal – then the idea that we are an audience becomes far less tenable. Mere audiences are never asked to work so hard! No, we have to work hard because, as Robert Webber explains, “everyone is part of the play; there is no audience!” [34] We are doing liturgy – “the people’s work”. Our focus is not the ministers, or the readers, or the cantors; our focus is the Lamb slain for us (Rev. 5:6), and we come to church to celebrate His eternal wedding feast. Sitting and listening is only a small part of that.
The importance of liturgical action is summarised beautifully by Catholic theologian Yves Congar:
The liturgy… communicates the
spirit of Christ… not so much by learned instruction as by realizing the
mystery of Christ concretely, here and now, by celebrating and almost acting
it, returning to it ceaselessly to illuminate it, like the sun, which shines on
a beautiful landscape successively from different viewpoints and with varying
intensity of light. [35]
A text, however rich, always
expresses the limits of its author’s thought and of the means of communication employed…
A definition narrows down reality; and the intellect narrows down the definition.
An action, on the contrary, creates
a synthesis… The merest sign of the cross is an entire profession of faith. [36]
Treasure in earthen vessels
When I attended my first mass all those years ago, it is fair to say that I was not just bewildered, but also dismayed by what I saw. Why did those Catholics at prayer appear so dour, so inward-looking, so unenthusiastic, and so utterly devoid of Christian fellowship? I cannot of course say for certain in their particular case, but I think I may have an idea. When I participate in a liturgy, I am acutely aware of at least two things: First, I am not the most important thing here; Jesus Christ is. Therefore what I do pales in significance to what He does. And He (with the Father and the Holy Spirit) is objectively present here no matter how well I express myself, or any of the people around me express themselves to each other, whether in speech, or song, or action. He is present because he said so: “This is my body” (Matt. 26:26, Mk. 14:22, Lk. 22:19, 1 Cor. 11:24-25). And so nothing I do, or anyone else does around me, is going to improve upon, or detract from, the reality and fullness of His presence. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels” for a particular purpose, which is “to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.” (2 Cor. 4:7, RSV, my emphasis).
Second, I and the people I see around me are not the only people here. Kallistos Ware tells this lovely story about the first time he ever attended an Orthodox liturgy:
My first impression then was the church is empty. Then I realized it wasn’t entirely empty. Close to the walls, there were a few people (not very many—elderly for the most part) and icons with lamps burning in front of them. Across the east end was an icon screen with many candles in front of it. Somewhere out of sight, a choir was singing. It was, in fact, the normal Saturday evening Vigil service that the Russians celebrate. From behind the icon screen, a deacon came out and intoned a litany. Then, I had an entirely contrary impression from what I had felt initially. With overwhelming conviction I felt: The church is not empty. It is full, full of invisible worshipers. We – this small, visible congregation – are being taken up into an action far greater than ourselves. There is no division, I felt, between earth and heaven. [37]
The earthly liturgy is but the visible end of the eternal heavenly Liturgy, the wedding feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19). [38] That eternal Liturgy is unsurpassable in its glory, for it is celebrated by the “assembly of the holy ones” (Ps. 89:5), the communio sanctorum: the saints, the twenty-four presbyters, the four “living creatures”, the tens of thousands of angels (Rev. 4-7), the “woman clothed with the sun” (Rev. 12:1) – indeed, “every creature in heaven” (Rev. 5:13); and at its centre is “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). Such a liturgy cannot be ruined even by the most desultory or sloppy church service. And any expression of fellowship we in this little church may or may not make is as nothing compared to the communion of the holy which is given to us by grace, by Christ, through our participation in His eternal Body, which stretches beyond our senses into Heaven itself. That great Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer explains:
It has been deplored that communion services in the big towns suffer from the participants not knowing one another; the idea of brotherly fellowship is said to lose some of its force and the services some of their personal warmth. On the other hand we must ask: is not just such a congregation as this an overpowering sermon on the significance and reality, transcending all human community, of the communion of saints? Is not the profession of the church and of brotherly love at its most unequivocal precisely when there are such complete safeguards against its being confused in any way with any kind of human fellow-feeling? Does not this kind of communion, in which Jew remains Jew, Greek Greek, worker worker and capitalist capitalist, and yet all are the Body of Christ, much better preserve the reality of the sanctorum communio than one in which the hard fact of human differences is veiled in deceptive mildness? [39]
Catholic theologian Sean Innerst echoes Bonhoeffer beautifully, when he tells us that liturgy
transcends mere camaraderie, mere
community… Were every person at a given liturgy a stranger to the others, utterly
incapable of communicating with any person by barrier of language…, all those
present would still be bound together in an utterly mysterious way by the
common activity… to which they have been called by God… In fact, it is at just
such events that one is struck by the joyous fact that all our fevered efforts
at forming community are as nothing before the mysterious power that makes us not
merely friends but brothers and sisters in Christ when we worship together.
[...]
What we long for and call “community”
is actually the communion that comes with the grace… whereby God unites us to
His Mystical Body. If we are not worshipping, but only straining for community,
we have neither communion nor even mere community. [40]
Such are some of the thoughts which pass through my mind as I “go through the motions” in church. Small wonder, perhaps, that sometimes I fail to express myself outwardly as well as I should. I say this not as an excuse for my haphazardly substandard performance as a Christian, nor for the substandard performance of other Catholics and Catholic communities. We – I – certainly should do better; but my performance, and the performance of the people I see around me, and our performance together, are perhaps not the most important thing.
The sign of the cross
I could spend many pages enumerating and explaining all the many aspects of action, posture, images, equipment and church design which appertain to Catholic liturgies. But there is neither time nor space for all that here. For now, suffice it to say that they derive from Scripture, or from ancient Jewish practices which Jesus and His apostles would all have been familiar with, and probably very fond of. [41] But let me take Yves Congar’s cue (above) and finish this chapter with one of the most profound symbols of the Christian faith ever made – one which is ubiquitous in all the ancient churches, and which dates back to the earliest days of our faith: the sign of the cross. Tertullian (c. 155-240 A.D.) attests to it as the Christian action par excellence:
At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign. [42]
The sign of the cross is best seen as a concentrated expression of the Christian faith, in action rather than in words. It represents a proclamation of a whole knot of fundamental tenets of our faith – to say all of which in words would take a very long time, and would demand a great deal of eloquence from us. Making the sign is a brief way to remind us of, and to proclaim to others, the truth that Christ died on the cross to save us from our sins, and that “we preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23). It reminds us that we too must take up our cross to follow Christ (Matt. 16:24, Mk. 8:34, Lk. 9:23), and it symbolises our willingness to do so. To make the sign of the cross is a way for us to say publicly that we believe in Jesus Christ, and accept all that entails.
If the sign of the cross is a testimony to our Christian faith, then it is also a sign of our salvation. In the waning years of the Kingdom of Judah, the prophet Ezekiel predicted destruction for the people of Jerusalem, but salvation for a righteous remnant whose foreheads would be marked with a “sign” (Ezek. 9:4-6). The Hebrew word used here for “sign” is taw, which is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet – in Ezekiel’s time shaped like a cross. [43] Ezekiel’s taw prophecy finds its fulfilment in the book of Revelation, where the remnant of Israel, the “servants of our God”, receive a seal on their foreheads (Rev. 7:3-8, 9:4) which signifies God’s name (Rev. 14:1) and which likewise marks them out as saved. Both Old and New Testaments, therefore, suggest that to be physically signed with the cross is not just a symbol: a sign of faith, it is therefore also a pledge of God’s protection. The Roman presbyter Hippolytus (170-235 A.D.) called the sign of the cross
the Sign of the Passion, displayed
and made manifest against the devil, provided that you do it with faith, not to
be seen by men, but by presenting it with skill like a shield.
Because the Adversary, when he
sees the strength of the heart and when he sees the inner man which is animated
by the Word show, formed on the exterior, the interior image of the Word, he is
made to flee by the Spirit which is in you. This is symbolized by the Paschal lamb
which was sacrificed, the blood of which Moses sprinkled on the threshold, and smeared
on the doorposts. He told us of the faith which is now in us, which was given
to us through the perfect Lamb.
By sealing the forehead and eyes with
the hand, we turn aside the one who is seeking to destroy us. [44]
On another level, the sign of the cross is a profound theological treatise on the nature of God. Sometimes accompanied by an invocation of “the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”, it reminds us that God is three in one. It therefore reminds us that “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him” (1 Jn. 4:16). It reminds us that we were baptised – “born of water and the Spirit” (Jn. 3:5) – “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). For some, the shape of the sign of the cross reminds us of Christ’s descent from Heaven, and His rejoining of Heaven and earth (Col. 1:15-20). Some people, particularly in the Eastern churches, making a point of separating their fingers into three plus two, to remind them of the three persons of God and the two natures of Christ. And so the sign of the cross – like the liturgy as a whole – is an induction, through symbolic actions, into the very life of the Trinity, and so into our true destiny as men and women made in the image and likeness of God. Kallistos Ware again:
God is
self-giving, sharing, solidarity, reciprocity, response: such also is the human
person.
God is not
self-love but shared love: such also is the human person.
God is
coinherence, perichoresis, the round
dance of love: such also is the human person. […]
Every form of community has as
its vocation to become a living icon of the Trinity. This is true above all of
the church, which is par excellence an image of the Trinity… God the Trinity is
a mystery of unity-in-diversity; so also, more fully than any other community,
is the church. In the Trinity the three persons constitute one God, yet each
remains personally distinct; so likewise within the church a multitude of human
persons is united in one. [45]
Amen.
SCRIPTURAL SUMMARY of Chapter Fifteen
We have this treasure
in earthen vessels.
Matt. 13:44, 2 Cor. 4:7
What do we go to church
for?
Gen. 2:2; Ex. 24:9-11, 25:40; Matt. 8:11, 28:1; Lk. 22:29-30,
24:1-35; Jn. 2:21, 20:1;
Acts 2:42-47, 20:7, 26:23; Eph. 5:22-32, Col. 1:17-18;
Heb. 8:5-6, 10:10; Rev. 1:5, 19:6-7
Liturgy of the Word
Is. 55:10-12, Jer. 15:16
the typology of Epiphany
1 Sam. 16:1-13, Ps. 72; Is. 9:6-7, 11:1-10, 49:1-7, 60:1-6;
Mic. 5:2, Zech. 9:9-10, Matt. 2:1-12,
Lk. 2:8-15, Eph. 3:2-6
liturgical prayer
Ps. 22:1, 136; Matt. 6:7-13, 27:46; Lk. 1:28, 1:42; Acts
2:6, Rev. 4:8
acts and action
Ps. 40:6, 51:16-17; Is. 29:13, Hos. 6:6, 1 Cor. 6:20
standing
Gen. 18:22, Ex. 17:9-11, 1 Sam.
1:26, Neh. 9:2-5, Job 30:20, Mk. 11:25, Lk. 18:13, 1 Tim. 2:8,
Rev. 7:9-11
kneeling
2 Chr. 6:13, Ez. 9:5, Dan. 6:10,
Lk. 22:41; Acts 9:40, 20:36, 21:5
prostration
Josh. 5:14, Matt.
26:39, Mk. 14:35; Rev. 1:17, 4:10, 5:8, 5:14, 7:11, 11:16
sitting
Ex. 17:12, Rev. 4:2-4
the sign of the cross
Ezek. 9:4-6; Matt. 16:24, 28:19; Mk. 8:34, Lk. 9:23, 1 Cor.
1:23, Col. 1:15-20; Rev. 7:3-8, 9:4, 14:1
[1] This idea is often
attributed to the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, but I think his actual words
are more nuanced: see Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, ch. 12: “What Then Must I Do? The Listener’s Role in a Devotional Address”, on
www.religion-online.org
[2] See also Jn. 20:19,26;
1 Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10
[3] The Didache 14, in Early
Christian Writings, ed. Maxwell Staniforth (Penguin, London, 1988)
[4] Meriol Trevor, Sun Slower Sun Faster (Bethlehem,
Bathgate, 1955), pp. 120-121
[5] e.g. Jo. 1:9, 2:17
[6] e.g. Lk. 1:23, Heb. 8:6
[7] Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (Dacre,
Westminster, 1943), p. 153
[8] Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (Penguin, London,
1964), p. 270
[9] Robert E. Webber, Worship Old and New (Zondervan, Grand
Rapids, 1982), pp. 18 & 95
[10] The Liturgy of the
Word is often, though not necessarily, followed by the Liturgy of the Eucharist
– just as on the journey to Emmaus (Lk. 24:13-32). See also Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin LXVII, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Phillip
Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org
[11] For more on this, see Robert E. Webber, Worship Old and New (Zondervan, Grand
Rapids, 1982), pp. 45-56; and Gregory Dix, The
Shape of the Liturgy (Dacre, Westminster, 1943), pp. 36-47.
[12] Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin LXVII, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Phillip
Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org
[13] gratias the late Fr. Alan Fudge
[14] from The Sunday Missal (Collins, London,
2011), p. 238
[15] from The Sunday Missal (Collins, London, 2011),
pp. 236-237
[16] Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (Ignatius, San
Francisco, 2000), p. 81
[17] from The Sunday Missal (Collins, London,
2011), p. 237 (N.B. The numbering of the Psalms can vary between different
Bible translations.)
[18] from The Sunday Missal (Collins, London,
2011), p. 237
[19] Pope Benedict XVI, Church Fathers: From Clement of Rome to
Augustine (Ignatius, San Francisco, 2008), p.137
[20] Anthony Ugolnik, The Illuminating Icon (Eerdmans, Grand
Rapids, 1989), p. 157
[21] For examples, see e.g. Hippolytus of Rome, The Apostolic Tradition, trans. Kevin P.
Edgecomb, on www.bombaxo; and Didascalia
Apostolorum, trans. R. Hugh Connelly, on www.earlychristianwritings.com
[22] Thomas Howard, Evangelical Is Not Enough (Ignatius, San
Francisco, 1984), pp. 121-122
[23] In the early Church,
and in some Christian communities to this day, this is a kiss of peace: see Rom. 16:16, 1 Cor. 16:20, 2 Cor. 13:12, 1 Thess.
5:26, 1 Pet. 5:14. See also Justin Martyr, The
First Apology of Justin LXV, in Ante-Nicene
Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org.
When I visited a Syrian Orthodox church in Bethlehem, they interlinked the
fingers of both hands with each other, and then touched their hands to their
face – almost literally the biblical “holy kiss”.
[24] from The Sunday Missal (Collins, London, 2011),
pp. 85-89
[25] The Didache 8, in Early Christian
Writings, ed. Maxwell Staniforth (Penguin, 1988)
[26] Kallistos Ware, “The
Trinity: Heart of Our Life”, in Reclaiming
the Great Tradition: Evangelicals, Catholics & Orthodox in Dialogue,
ed. James S. Cutsinger (InterVarsity, Downers Grove, 1997), p. 144
[27] Francis Martin, “Reading
Scripture in the Catholic Tradition”, in Your
Word is Truth, ed. Charles Colson & Richard John Neuhaus (Eerdmans,
Grand Rapids, 2002), p. 154-155
[28] Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, “What Can Evangelicals
and Orthodox Learn From One Another?” (North Park Univ., Chicago, 2011), on www.ancientfaith.com
[29] Robert E. Webber, Worship Old and New (Zondervan, Grand
Rapids, 1982), p. 113
[30] Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes (SPCK,
London, 2008), p. 298
[31] “Soul”, in Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed.
Xavier Léon-Dufour (The Word Among Us, Ijamsville, 1988)
[32] quoted in Isaac Todd,
The Posture in Prayer, or God to be
Worshipped with the Body as Well as the Mind (Presbyterian Board of Publication,
Philadelphia, 1851), on www.covenanter.org
[33] Isaac Todd, The Posture in Prayer, or God to be
Worshipped with the Body as Well as the Mind (Presbyterian Board of
Publication, Philadelphia, 1851), on www.covenanter.org
[34] Robert E. Webber, Worship Old and New (Zondervan, Grand
Rapids, 1982), p. 107
[35] Yves Congar, The Meaning of Tradition, trans. A. N.
Woodrow (Ignatius, San Francisco, 2004), pp. 142-143
[36] Yves Congar, The Meaning of Tradition, trans. A. N.
Woodrow (Ignatius, San Francisco, 2004), pp. 136-137
[37] Kallistos Ware, “What Can Evangelicals and Orthodox
Learn From One Another?” (North Park Univ., Chicago, 2011), on www.ancientfaith.com
[38] In the Eastern
churches, the congregation is described as those “who mystically represent the cherubim
and sing the Thrice-holy Hymn [Is. 6:1-3]”. [The Divine Liturgy: An Anthology for Worship, ed. Peter Galadza
(Sheptytsky Institute, Ottawa, 2013), p. 421]
[39] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Communion of Saints (Harper &
Row, New York, 1963), p. 170
[40] Sean Innerst, “The Family
That Learns Together, Yearns Together: The Liturgy as Family Pedagogy”, in Catholic for a Reason: Scripture and the Mystery
of the Family of God, ed. Scott Hahn & Leon J. Suprenant Jr. (Emmaus
Road, Steubenville, 1998), pp. 149-150
[41] For more on this see
Scott Hahn, The Lamb’s Supper (Doubleday,
New York, 1999)
[42] Tertullian, The Chaplet, or De Corona III, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. Phillip
Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org
[43] See “Paleo-Hebrew
alphabet”, on en.wikipedia.org
[44] Hippolytus of Rome, The Apostolic Tradition 42, trans. Kevin
P. Edgecomb, on www.bombaxo
[45] Kallistos Ware, “The
Trinity: Heart of Our Life”, in Reclaiming
the Great Tradition: Evangelicals, Catholics & Orthodox in Dialogue,
ed. James S. Cutsinger (InterVarsity, Downers Grove, 1997), pp. 141 & 143
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