november 2011

I går presenterte jeg innledning til tredje hoveddel av boka «The Mass and Modernity», og Fr. Jonathan Robinson fortsetter med å liste opp de neste fem og avsluttende kapitlene:

But what are we going to learn from the present liturgical wilderness and from the forces that have created it? Modernity has left little room for a Catholicism that revolves around the transcendence of God the Father, of the particularity of the revelation of God the Son, and the community as, in itself, a sort of eighth sacrament of the abiding presence of God the Holy Spirit working among us. As a result of these attitudes, the liturgy has been badly damaged, but that is not to say it has been destroyed. The Church has taken a wrong turning in her efforts to reach the world we live in, but the effort itself is in line with the Church’s mission to bring the mercy of Christ to a fallen, poor, and broken world. The various influences that have helped to distort the liturgy also have within them the themes for a genuine renewal of the sacramental life. ….

In the first chapter of this part, I discuss the meaning of the Paschal Mystery, that is, the mystery of Christ’s passion and death, his Resurrection and Ascension. The mystery really is of central importance and in practice has been much invoked by thinkers in today’s Church. Unhappily, the expression has come to be used in such an extended way that all too often one or other of its aspects is emphasized to the detriment of the mystery itself, the most egregious example of this is to identify the mystery with the Resurrection in a way that obscures its essential relationship to the passion and death as well as to the Ascension of am Lord.

In the second chapter I maintain that a renewed awareness of the transcendence of God will go a long way toward reestablishing that awe, beauty, and reverence which should characterize Catholic worship. At the same time, I also show that a heightened awareness of the otherness of God will come about only with a deeper grasp of the particular, historical character of Christ’s life and teaching.

In the third chapter I point out that there must be an altogether more serious and lucid penetration of the supernatural aspect of the Christian community. There is no word that has been more abused in the years since Vatican H, yet there are few words more important for an understanding of the liturgy. Awe and reverence have to manifest themselves; they have to be put into act; and this is done through the liturgy of the Church, the Church that is, in St. Paul’s teaching, the Body of Christ.

In the fourth chapter, I discuss the importance of the Old Rite of Mass for a renewed liturgy. The Tridentine Mass, or whatever it should be called, at least pointed toward God even when it was badly celebrated. This is not to say that the solution to our troubles is a wholesale return to this way of celebrating, but we must at least try to see what it possessed and what the Novus Ordo (the new rite of the Mass approved by Pope Paul VI) in practice puts in its place. What the Old Rite possessed was a clear lesson in the transcendence of God; while the way the Novus Ordo is often celebrated puts the community in the place of this reference to God.

In the fifth chapter I put forward some practical suggestions that, I think, would go a long way toward reestablishing the liturgy as the worship of God, a worship that is offered by the Mystical Body of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. These suggestions we probably little more than a «wish list», but they are seriously meant. On the other hand, while I think the liturgy should support or firm up the teaching of the Church,» it cannot by itself repair the present situation. Nevertheless, a restored liturgy would be a powerful force in a genuine renewal of the Church.

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing, Praise to our victorious King,
Who hath washed us in the tide, Flowing from his pierced side;
Praise we Him, whose love divine, Gives His sacred blood for wine,
Gives His body for the feast, Christ the Victim, Christ the Priest.

Slik starter tredje hoveddel av boka «The Mass and Modernity» som jeg nevnte for noen dager siden, og fortsettelsen er slik:

The Church at her deepest, truest level is the living presence of Christ working among us, and in us, through his sacraments. Christ came to share in our humanity so that every one of us could become partakers of his divinity. We are presented with this truth every time we go to Mass and the priest says at the offertory: «By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our Immunity.»‘ We may not always sense his presence; there will be times of obscurity and darkness; but in a faithful and serious sacramental life, we know that God is gradually remaking us into the image of his beloved Son. And, just as the Father was well pleased with the Son, so he will be well pleased with us – if we remain in the Son.

In harmony with this understanding of the Church and sacraments, we have already noted that Vatican II taught that the liturgy is the summit of all the Church’s activities and the source from which all her power flows and that, in the liturgy, «the work of our redemption is accomplished.» The Catechism of the Catholic Church takes up this theme and quotes Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, saying that the liturgy gives to the faithful the power to bring home to themselves and to others «the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church». ….

… Liturgy matters, then, because one of its main purposes is to point the worshipper toward the truth; to remind him that he must go beyond himself and his community to the God who is, who was, and who is to come. The liturgy should teach and help the worshipper to experience in a deep way that is more than verbal that his need for goodness, for truth, for beauty, and for love we grounded in the reality of God.

But the seeds of a genuine renewal «fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them» (Mt 13:7). The modem world has been increasingly dominated by the theory and the practice of secularism. And then, too, the flavor of postmodernism is everywhere. ….

There are different strands that have contributed to this condition. Many of these strands that we have dealt with, such as the Enlightenment with its concern for justice, human rights, and due process, or again, the «rise of modem science», with its applications in health and technology, or the Romantic Movement with its historical, communitarian, and imaginative concerns, have persuasive and desirable elements, and I have been at pains to underline this side of the matter. Nonetheless, the overall thrust that carries them is hostile to the Christian revelation. The efforts of various sorts of Christians to accommodate the gospel in order to make it acceptable to the world has proved to be, not surprisingly, destructive of the Christian message. …

I fortsettelsen ser Fr. Jonathan Robinson på hva dette har medført (av skader) på liturgifornyelsen på 60-tallet.