I wrote the article below my preliminary comments for our diocesan newspaper, "The Southern Cross" sometime in 2002 as the new General Instruction of the Roman Missal was about to be published and implement. I can't believe how clairvoyant I am or maybe I'm not! But read my comments first and then my 2003 or it might have been 2002 article which is italicized below!
It seems to me when I read more progressive liturgists that they continue to push fundamentalistic literalism in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. For example, the Eucharistic Prayer should be prayed by the priest facing the congregation as though the congregation represents the 12 apostles at the Last Supper, so the priest acting as Christ establishes eye contact with the congregation and gestures towards them when consecrating the bread and wine.
These same progressive liturgists are also preoccupied by the type and amount of bread and wine the congregation receives. They believe the most important liturgical act is the "action" of eating and drinking. Sadly though, you never heard them saying that in fact the most important liturgical action is being present for the reenactment in an unbloody way of the one Sacrifice of Calvary on our altars and then the ratification of this participation by RECEIVING, our Crucified, Risen, and Glorified Lord. And most importantly, when for all those centuries Catholics were receiving our Lord by merely receiving the consecrated Host, they were fully participating in the symbol of eating and drinking the Body and Blood of Christ who is One and not divided. It is here that progressive liturgists have sidetracked the communicant and the Church focusing more on the "meal" aspect of Holy Communion to the detriment of what it truly is and the symbolism of a meal truly secondary!
Even the progressive retired Cardinal Godfried Danneels has stated that "The Eucharist, for example, is a meal but a cultic and sacrificial meal not intended to satisfy our physical hunger."
This leads to the prejudice so many progressive liturgists have toward intinction for Holy Communion and for kneeling to receive. They insist that the "more perfect" sign of "eating and drinking" is to actually eat and drink the Bread and Wine and that intinction minimalises that. Never mind that a small piece of bread, whether homemade or of the traditional round wafer and a tiny sip of wine is also minimalistic!
What is important is receiving our Lord and one receives Him most completely and perfectly no matter how small the particle of "Bread" or tiny the the drop of Wine! We receive our Lord "MOST PERFECTLY" in Holy Communion than in any other way that one can receive our Lord NO MATTER HOW TINY THE PARTICLE OR HOW MINUTE THE PRECIOUS DROP OF CONSECRATED WINE OR IF THE COMMUNICANT RECEIVES SUCH A TINY PORTION OF EITHER HE OR SHE IS RECEIVING OUR LORD NO MATTER WHAT IN THE MOST PERFECT WAY POSSIBLE, BAR NONE!
AND NOW, FINALLY, FOR MY CLAIRVOYANT 2002 SOUTHERN CROSS ARTICLE!
The 1970’s was a time of excited experimentation in the Catholic Church. The liturgy was not immune from this experimentation. In one seminary, the old high altar was stripped in a “liturgical ceremony” and its accoutrements were whisked out of the chapel in a wheelbarrow. Then a table-like structure placed in front of the “defrocked” old high altar was set and the Eucharistic meal was served.
At this same seminary there were different recipes for the bread that would be used at Mass. One recipe had so much honey in it that it tasted more like a honey bun than like bread. It was sweet and chewy. One seminarian remarked sarcastically if not sacrilegiously that this new bread once consecrated was “chewy Jesus!”
Liturgists of this era wanted the signs and symbols of all the sacraments especially the Holy Eucharist, to speak of the reality they signified. Bread had to be like bread. Water had to get the assembly wet. Those to be baptized needed to be immersed not just dampened. Oil needed to be fragrant and lavishly poured upon the anointed. The “table” of the Word of God, on an equal footing with the table of the Eucharist, had to look like a table with its own candles which would be extinguished as the table of the Holy Eucharist was set. Elaborate ceremonies to vest the table of the Eucharist and to light the candle or two upon it were devised including liturgical dancers who would poof the tablecloth upon the table.
While well intentioned, this preoccupation with the signs and symbols of the Mass became the object of piety rather than to the One these were suppose to direct us, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Lucy E. Carroll points out how this trend is even reflected in contemporary Catholic music at the time of Holy Communion. “Contemporary hymns lead us to believe that Christ becomes bread, rather than the reverse; that the bread is only a symbol of Christ, or, worse, of something else entirely; that it is our body and our blood; that this is a meal only; or that this is a call to social activism. The word sacrifice, Real Presence, and even Body and Blood of Christ are strangely absent.”
Fortunately the new General Instruction of the Roman Missal is calling Catholic parishes throughout the world back to basics in the celebration of the Mass. The time of experimentation that has led to a decline in the belief of the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist is hopefully ended.
No longer may a priest-presider, liturgical committee or some liturgical theologian mandate or promote changes in the Sacred Liturgy, which in fact they never should have done in the first place. The Liturgy of the Latin Rite belongs to the Church of the Latin Rite, not to any single priest, congregation or theologian. Doing the Mass by the book will hopefully become the hallmark of the Catholic Mass in the 21st century.
But most importantly, the ultimate faith reality of the Holy Mass as the means par excellence of entering into the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross as well as the foretaste of the eternal wedding banquet of the Lamb in heaven will be made abundantly clear and manifest. For it is not bread that we share and eat, but the Body of Christ we receive; it is not wine that we drink, but the blood of Christ we receive poured out for us.
Anything that detracts us from Jesus Christ and His real presence, body, blood, soul and divinity cannot be found in the Church’s General Instruction. Following this General Instruction will be a great blessing for Catholics through out the world. It will lead us to a renewal of belief in the real presence of Jesus Christ. The sacramental signs of this divine reality will take a back seat to the Reality they become.
3 comments:
One is reminded of the Anglican oenophile who took a sip from the chalice and pronounced: "Jesus, slightly corked".
I was on one of those fun "ecumenical" panels once that was held at a college. There was a Catholic Priest on the panel with whom a Baptist woman in the audience was arguing vigorously about the Real Presence. She became exasperated with the Priest's calm and insistent explanations of the Eucharist, finally blurting out, "Fr., you mean that you believe that bread is truly Jesus Christ?" The Priest responded with great dignity, "My dear woman, it is easier to believe it is Jesus than it is to believe it is bread." The laughter broke the place up.
atedtiiGene, you no doubt recall that Hilaire Belloc, dining with a Jesuit and a well-known agnostic was asked the question "how can you, as an intelligent man, believe that bread and wine becomes the Body and Blood of Christ?" Belloc replied "I would believe it would become an elephant if the Church told me so".
The Jesuit was profoundly shocked.
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