Teologi

Sist søndag presenterte kardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, prefekt for Liturgikongregasjonen, en bok skrevet av Msgr. Guillaume Derville, kalt «La concélébration eucharistique. Du symbole à la réalité».

I sin bokpresentasjon sa kardinalen bl.a. følgende om konselebrasjon:

… “Beauty, then, is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation. These considerations should make us realize the care which is needed, if the liturgical action is to reflect its innate splendour.”

That is to say: the liturgy, and within it the act of concelebration, will be beautiful when it is true and authentic, when its innate splendour is really reflected. It is in this context that we should understand the question posed by the Holy Father regarding concelebrations with a large number of priests: “For my part,” said the Pope, “I have to say, it remains a problem because concrete communion in the celebration is fundamental, and I do not consider that the definitive answer has really been found. I also raised this question during the last Synod but it was not answered. I also had another question asked regarding the concelebration of Mass: why, for example, if a thousand priests concelebrate, do we not yet know whether this structure was desired by the Lord?” …

… The Council did indeed decide to widen the faculty for concelebrating in accordance with two principles: that this form of celebration of the Holy Mass adequately manifests the unity of the priesthood, and that it has been practised up to now in the Church both in the East and in the West. Hence concelebration, as Sacrosanctum Concilium also noted, is one of those rites that it is fitting to restore “according to the primitive rule of the holy Fathers.”

In this sense, it is important to look, however briefly, into the history of concelebration. The historical panorama that Msgr. Derville offers us, even if it is —as he modestly points out— only a brief summary, is sufficient to let us glimpse areas of obscurity, that show the absence of clear data on Eucharistic celebration in the earliest times of the Church. At the same time, and without falling into a ingenuous “archaeologism”, it does provide us with enough information to be able to state that concelebration, in the genuine tradition of the Church, whether eastern or western, is an extraordinary, solemn and public rite, normally presided over by the Bishop or his delegate, surrounded by his presbyterium and by the entire community of the faithful. But the daily concelebrations of priests only, which are practised “privately”, so to speak, in the eastern Churches instead of Masses celebrated individually or “more privato”, do not form part of the Latin liturgical tradition. …

Hele teksten hos Zenit.org – jeg leste det først hos Fr. Ray Blake.

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.

Jeg konkluderer min grundige presentasjon av dr. Haukes foredrag ved the Fota Liturgical Conference – som jeg aller først skrev om her – med hva han sier spesifikt om noe kardinal Ratzinger har skrevet om messens hovedstruktur:

In a short article of 1971, cited by Ratzinger, Jungmann also shows “that, linguistically speaking, Luther’s use of the word ‘Supper’ [Abendmahl] was a complete innovation. After 1 Corinthians 11:20 the designation of Eucharist as ‘meal’ does not occur again until the sixteenth century, apart from direct quotations of 1 Corinthians 11:20 and references to the satisfaction of hunger (in deliberate contrast to the Eucharist).”

The meaning of “Eucharist” also fits with the meaning of rational verbal sacrifice (oblatio rationabilis), which spiritualizes the category of sacrifice and is well suited “to interpret what is special in Jesus’ sacrifice. For what we have here is death transformed into a word of acceptance and self-surrender.” Ratzinger concludes: “This much should be clear at this stage: if the basic structure of the Mass is not the ‘meal’ but eucharistia, there remains a necessary and fruitful difference between the liturgical (structural) and the dogmatic level; but they are not estranged: each seeks and determines the other. … But the meal symbolism is subordinated to a larger whole and integrated into it.”

Fra Dr. Haukes foredrag om messens hovedstruktur (som jeg har nevnt flere ganger, bl.a. her – hele foredraget kan leses her) tar jeg også med noe av det han siterer fra den kjente liturgen Josef Andreas Jungmann. Jungmann er veldig klar på at måltidet aldri var messens hovedpoeng, men heller takksigelsen, eukaristien, frembæringen av offer til Gud:

In 1949 Jungmann published an article dedicated entirely to the “basic structure (Grundgestalt) of the Eucharist. Other writings on this theme followed, especially in 1967, 1970 and 1971. Already in a contribution of 1943 he had shown that in the ancient Jewish banquet, on the occasion of the great feasts, a gesture of offering could be found when the father of the family elevated the chalice. The liturgy of Saint Basil, in the institution narrative, ascribes this gesture to the Last Supper itself, a reference which “very probably” corresponds to the historical reality. “The Lord takes the bread in his holy hands and holds it, showing it as he offers it towards the heavenly Father.” The sacrificial symbolism manifests itself therefore not only in the separation of the holy species, but also in the elevation of the gifts which can be observed already in the offertorium: there the offered gifts “receive that movement towards God … which is ultimately due to the transubstantiated gifts, the body and blood of the Lord.”

The “thanksgiving” is at the same time an “offering-up” which shows itself in the early Middle Ages in the elevation of the chalice before the consecration. Since the 12th century, the elevation is first of all an invitation to adore and to salute the Lord, but it must be taken into account that it originally contained a sacrificial symbolism. “It is also not enough to say that the sacrifice becomes present under the structure of the meal; for even in this case, the Mass would not be the visible sacrifice of which the Council of Trent … and the whole Tradition speaks.”

In his article on the “basic structure of the Mass,” Jungmann stresses “that in all liturgies, without exception, the basic structure of the celebration is formed as a thanksgiving to God, and indeed as a thanksgiving from which the offering springs: we give thanks to you and so we offer to you.” “Everything that expresses the giving, the movement of the gifts towards God” belongs to the exterior gestures which manifest this idea. … In this sense, the whole rite between the Liturgy of the Word and the Communion is clearly referred, also as structure (Gestalt), not merely to the togetherness of a common table, but to the movement towards God which begins in the preparatory part of the Mass and comes to rest in the Communion rite.” This “ritual expression is not the fruit of a late and secondary development, but was impressed already in the primitive Church in the institution of Jesus.”

The great historical study of Jungmann on the Roman Mass, Missarum solemnia, is also important for our topic. Here he presents the earliest names of the Holy Mass. “On the basis of the liturgical texts themselves, Jungmann shows that, even in the most ancient forms, the eucharistia – the prayer of anamnesis in the shape of a thanksgiving – is more prominent than the meal aspect. According to Jungmann, the basic structure, at least from the end of the first century, is not the meal but the eucharistia; even in Ignatius of Antioch this is the term given to the whole action.”

… After the reference to the biblical concepts of “breaking bread” and the “Lord’s banquet,” Jungmann mentions first of all the importance of the title “Eucharist” already in the early post-biblical sources. Immediately after it, however, he reports a whole series of concepts that revolve around the notion of “sacrifice.” We should also mention here the early testimonies of the Didache and of the First Letter of Clement (even if Jungmann himself does not report these sources in his overview). The Didache, a writing from ancient Syria, indicates the Eucharist as “sacrifice” (‘tusia’) and sees in it the fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi about the pure offering which must be practiced at any place and at any time (Mal 1:11). Also extremely important is the reference of the First Letter of Clement, in which Pope Clement I in the year 96 addresses the Corinthians. He is dealing with the reinstitution of the presbyters-bishops who had been driven away from their ministry without any valid motive. Their ministry has an apostolic origin. The central task of the presbyters-bishops is the “offering of the gifts” (prosenegkóntas tà dôra).89 After the concept of sacrifice, Jungmann mentions still other names of the Mass, such as “the Holy,” “service (liturgy),” “assembly,” and “Mass.”

Shawn Tribe presiserer stadig hva han mente med innlegget (som jeg nevnte her) om messen som offer. Han skriver i en kommentar til sitt eget innlegg:

Just to keep things in focus, as I’ve noted above, being «Mass-centered» is not really the issue I’ve tried to speak to, but rather how the Mass is being understood. One could give primary focus to the Mass and still fall into the issue I am presenting.
…

Han skriver også noe som jeg har tenkt mange ganger, og gjerne selv kunne ha formulert akkurat som han selv gjør det:

I’ve known people who speak so (use the term «Sacrifice of the Mass») but yet still have a view of the Mass which still sees it as -essentially- about encountering Christ in the Blessed Sacrament through adoration at the moment of consecration and receipt of Holy Communion. I think in those instances it is a case of traditional language having been adopted, but without necessarily a full comprehension of the theological underpinnings and meaning of those terms.

This is why I say that I believe the Trinitarian dimension needs to be expounded upon, as does a
typological consideration between the Old and New Testament. These will help to give those theological underpinnings and help us to understand the Mass in the light of the big picture of salvation history and the heavenly liturgy.

Shawn Tribe skrev på NLM-bloggen i går et interessant innlegg om messen – se her. Der tar han opp viktige poenger fra starten av den liturgiske bevegelsen, som tradisjonalister gjerne glemmer. De arbeidet for at betydningen av det hellige messeofferet skulle gjøres så tydelig som mulig, og at andre fromhetsøvelser ikke skulle få stå i veien for Kirkens viktigste liturgi på noen måte.

På den tid (1920-30) hadde man ikke begynt å tenke (feilaktig) på messen som først og fremst et måltidsfellesskap, men også gode ting som eukaristisk tilbedelse og privatandakter kunne komme i veien for messeofferet. I vår tid og i vårt land er selve konsekrasjonen vektlagt ganske mye, og det er ikke noe galt i det, men mange ser ut til å legge liten vekt på at Kristus så i messen bærer seg selv frem som et lyteløst offer for Faderen. Slik skriver Shawn Tribe:

… today, those of us who are working toward some sort of genuine revival and restoration of the liturgical life in the Latin rite are accustomed to think critically of the liturgical over-emphases of the progressivist school of liturgical thought – the over-emphasis of the meal aspect over the sacrificial, the horizontal over the vertical and so on – but many may not be as conscious as they should be of the presence other over-emphases, seemingly «traditional», coming from what we might call the more pietistic and devotionalist mindset; over-emphases which are indeed still manifest today and which, in their own way, also come at the expense of the sacrificial aspect of the Mass.

So of what do I speak? One has only to look at some of the journals and books of the earlier 20th century Liturgical Movement to see this particular over-emphasis described in the context of their own time:

«The Mass came to be less and less appreciated as the sacrifice of Christ. Instead, the adoration of the Eucharist was greatly developed, and thereby the spiritual energies of the faithful were in the course of centuries turned away from the sacrifice itself.

We must try to keep in mind that, during the Mass and in particular at the consecration, the primary and essential thing is the offering of the sacrifice; the adoration of the Species is entirely secondary. We should strive to impress ourselves and those committed to our care with a deep understanding and appreciation of the sacrificial action. The Mass is not a “devotion,” it is not the adoration of the Eucharist: it is the sacrifice offered by Christ, and in this offering we are actually participating since it is also our sacrifice. We come to Mass, not so much to adore Christ in His divinity as to offer the body and blood of the divine Lamb to our heavenly Father.»

This quotation is from Fr. Pius Parsch (as quoted in the July 1938 issue of Orate Fratres), who admittedly was not without his own excesses, but he is certainly on point here both in his identification of a problem and in his understanding of the sacred liturgy. …

Debatten etter dette innlegget dreier seg etter min mening litt for mye om eukartistisk tilbedelse; den er vel ikke i særlig grad problemet, selv om det er sant at den aldri må komme i veien for messens hellige sonings- og tilbedelsesoffer. Innleggets forfatter skriver derfor også i en kommentar:

The primary point of focus however is simply this: if one’s view of the Mass is such that it is understood as purely or even primarily an act of Eucharistic adoration of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, then this is a very incomplete understanding of and approach to the Mass which needs to be addressed. It is a reductionism. Not the only one of course, but it is one and various problems spring from it. We should take recognize it and seek to foster a fuller understanding of the full nature of the Mass.

Dr. Hauke nevner at kardinal Ratzinger uttaler seg (i boka «Feast of Faith», s 35-36) om forsøket på å skille mellom messens ytre og indre, i måltidsstrukturen og offerinnholdet. han har ingen tro på et slikt skille:

As Ratzinger observes: The explication according to which the structure of meal and the content of sacrifice were juxtaposed “could not provide a satisfactory answer in the long term. Particularly if the structure is not merely a ceremonial form, but at its core an indispensable manifestation of its essential content, it makes no sense absolutely to separate the one from the other. The lack of clarity which has prevailed in this area, even during the Council, regarding the relation between the dogmatic and liturgical levels, must be regarded as the central problem of the liturgical reform. Failure to deal with it has resulted in a great many of the individual problems which have since preoccupied us.”

Dr. Hauke skriver videre (i et foredrag som jeg bl.a. nevnte her) at Guardini møtte motstand ang. sitt syn på ‘måltidet’ som messens struktur, bl.a. fra Jungmann. Guardi modererte seg så litt, men ikke mye – og den siste setningen i sitatet under overrasker meg; at Guardini var en av dem som aller mest arbeidet for at messen skulle feires «versus populum».

… at a 1943 symposium at Vienna, he was confronted with the view of Jungmann that the Mass in the primitive Church contains “not only the essence, but also already the expressive shape [Gestaltausdruck] of the sacrifice,” Guardini stressed the hypothetical character of his own exposition and remarked: “it cannot by any means be a question of us changing anything on our own initiative. I proposed only to consider whether it is not correct and possible to make more prominent, besides the aspect of sacrifice, also the other aspects present in the entirety of the Holy Mass, such as the meal and the commemoration, so as to gain a more balanced picture.” Already in 1942 Guardini had published a letter in which he conceded “that it is probably not possible to accept only one form [Gestalt] and that, at certain points, the form of the sacrifice enters into the form of the meal.” “In this way, Guardini admitted that the essence of the Eucharist as acrifice finds expression also in its exterior structure.”

Guardini’s concern to accentuate the “meal” as “structure” or “basic form” of the Holy Mass was influenced by the liturgical movement at the beginning of the 20th century. At the end of the 19th century, the faithful had received Holy Communion only a few times a year. Pope Pius X, however, encouraged the faithful to communicate more frequently, inviting even children. In order to emphasize the active participation (participatio actuosa) of the faithful in the liturgy, the common communion became the focus of attention.

Guardini’s proposal went further, however, inasmuch as it described the Eucharistic banquet, Holy Communion, as the basic structure of the entire Eucharistic mystery. This approach would also influence Church architecture: the sacred space was structured in a way to accentuate the aspect of the meal, especially by facing the celebration toward the people. Guardini was one of the first and most influential supporters of the Mass celebrated “versus populum”. …

I foredraget til Prof. Manfred Hauke: “The “Basic Structure“ (Grundgestalt) of the Eucharistic Celebration According to Joseph Ratzinger” – som kan leses her – var det først og fremst noen tanker av Romano Guardini som for meg forklarer hvordan vi er kommet dit vi er i dag; at messen knapt forstås som et offer båret fram for Gud mer. Legg merke til hvordan kadinal Ratzinger vurderer dette spørsmålet (uthevet av meg).

The discussion of our topic, in its stricter sense, begins in 1939 with some meditations of Romano Guardini, … The core of the discussion revolves around the idea that, according to Guardini, the “structure” (or “form, figure, shape”, in German Gestalt) and its “content” (Gehalt) are entirely different things: the Holy Mass, in its “structure”, is a meal, but its “content” is a sacrifice. This divergence between liturgical structure and dogmatic content, according to Ratzinger, “must be regarded as the central problem of the liturgical reform. Failure to deal with it has resulted in a great many of the individual problems which have since preoccupied us.” …

… The starting point of our discussion is the appearance of a devotional book by Guardini in 1939, entitled Meditations before Mass (Besinnung vor der Feier der heiligen Messe). This work goes back to a series of short meditations held by Guardini for young people from 1930 to 1932 at Castle Rothenfels in Bavaria. According to Guardini, every “authentic liturgical action … contains a basic structure [Grundgestalt] which supports it and which gives to it its specific life.” The sacraments, especially, “are no mere apportionments of divine gifts, but life events, constructed according to the essence of man, whose soul expresses itself in the body, and whose body is formed by the soul. ‘Form’ [‘Gestalt’] is the manner in which the human essence is alive. … Therefore one of the most important tasks of liturgical education is to reveal as clearly and as vigorously as possible the interior structure of the divine events. So what is the basic structure of the Mass? It is that of the meal.”

In support of this thesis, Guardini refers especially to the Last Supper, and then continues: “The supporting structure of the Mass is the meal. The sacrifice does not emerge as structure, but remains behind the whole. In this way, it is not pushed back. Already in the history of religion, every cultic meal, or even ultimately every meal, depends on it. … The animal that should serve for food must be immolated, properly speaking, before the altar, because blood and life belong to God … From the altar, from the hands of the Lord, man then receives the immolated victim and uses it as nourishment.” Applied to the Mass, this means: “Its structure is the meal; behind it – not as structure, but as reality, as fountain, as condition – is the sacrifice.”

Guardini forstod selv ganske snart at hans tanker ble misforstått av mange, og gjorde forandringer i senere utgaver av skriftet:

In the fourth edition of 1947, Guardini omits his expositions on the “structure” of the Holy Mass. He explains this omission in his preface, writing: “the chapter ‘The Form of Commemoration, the Meal’ … had to be omitted because it gave rise to certain misunderstandings. … The reflections of the chapter dealt with … a pure problem of form [Formproblem]. They were not, however, understood in this way, but they were implicated in the old controversy in which the Catholic doctrine says that the Mass is ‘a true and proper sacrifice’ … The reflections of the mentioned chapter did not concern, not even in a minimal way, this controversy. …

På tross av dette inneholdt senere utgaver likevel det Guardini selv hadde tatt bort.