Pastoral Letter on Liturgy – Part III
To break open the Word of God is to break open the
eternal Wisdom of the Lord, the word of the One who is
Truth itself and who wishes for all people to come to know
the truth (Jn 8:32; 2 Ti 2:25). The homily exists not for the sake of our personal narrative, or for the sake of "story telling", but to speak about GOD'S word, about eternal truths that touch the hearts of all people of all times and circumstances, a word which, while encountered in the drama of our own experience, is interpreted within the living and ancient tradition of the Church. There is little need for one's private point of view when delivering the revealed message of God to his People, for it is rather in the docility of faith and in the sure light of Church tradition that the Holy Spirit provides words more eloquent than our limited schemes (Ex 4:10-11; Ro 8:26-27).
The Church has long used the arts as a means to lift believers' minds and hearts to God. The liturgical life of every parish has need of well-trained musicians who are familiar with the Liturgy. Parish communities must take responsibility for nurturing and training (if necessary) of musicians. This may include financial assistance for keyboard lessons, encouragement to attend liturgical music workshops and perhaps compensation for the service they offer the community. In a parish that has always relied on volunteer musicians, this will require some shift in conventional thinking. Typically, musicians who serve in music ministry have invested heavily in their training. We need to acknowledge this and also help them to continue to grow and develop their talents as liturgical musicians.
Full time music ministers too, deserve a just wage and recognition that their contribution to the parish's central activity (liturgy) is important. The music we use in the Liturgy needs to be carefully evaluated as well. It needs to capture the imagination and uplift hearts and mind to God. The Eucharistic liturgy is sung – through it the community of faith lifts its hearts, minds and voices in a song of praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The local chapter of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians has done much good work in the on-going formation of liturgical musicians.
Raising our hearts and minds to God is the very essence of worship. It is a question of the INTERIOR order of the hidden affections, convictions, desires and thoughts, for this is where the "spiritual life" occurs. But, as a natural and inexpressibly intimate unity of spirit and physical body, all of this necessarily shines forth in our bodies by which the WHOLE HUMAN PERSON, body and soul, is drawn into the act of rendering praise and thanksgiving to our Creator and Redeemer. Such an integral response on the part of the rational creature is the indispensable condition for a mature "liturgical spirituality," binding " in the imitation of Christ " all things together in a common and single adoration. Music in the liturgy not only signifies community and expresses it, but strengthens and nourishes it as well. Like every liturgical act, singing has its origin in a theological reality (at once fully human and overflowing with God's presence) of which it is the visible sign and which it also serves as a living illustration. Liturgical experience and doctrinal intelligence are mutually penetrating, the worship illuminating human minds, the theological dogma giving rise to ritual celebration. As with all words and gestures, however, song must be motivated by and descend from the higher faculties or there is no prayer at all. The essence of prayer is the raising of our hearts and minds to God, that is to say our inner selves, intellect and will. Singing will urge this movement of lifting our souls to God. The musical style should be appropriate to the mystery. Though it is true that the emotions join in giving praise and rightly come together in the worship of the total person, they enter into the picture as a consequence of a higher level of adoration. If the liturgical atmosphere does not first of all nourish the mind, the mustering of emotions will only be a distraction, an effective detour from the liturgy. The musical style should not be predominantly characterized by sentimental or popular over-tones, but must embrace the challenge of finding avenues for stirring the deepest levels of our souls. By no means does this imply that liturgical activity has to be an intellectual exercise. It encompasses the entire person, body (voice), mind (intellect), and heart (will).
To those who prepare the environment for worship, who take care of the altar linens and clean the building, who decorate for the special seasons: you too have an important role. As you prepare seasonal environment (i.e., Lent or Easter), ask yourself how this decoration invites people into Communion with the Christ who has redeemed us. The environment of the Liturgy must be arranged so that it captures the imagination, that it invites people to actively participate. If our environment, our church decoration has a sameness to it, or is artificial, it does not capture the imagination with images of the Christ: Christ crucified, Christ dead and (Christ) risen.
How do we capture the imagination with cogent illustrations of the Catholic faith, images capable of bringing into focus the meaning of this man Jesus for each and every one of us? We can only do so by supplying the necessary mortar by which the pieces fit together into a coherent and incontestable whole. We proclaim Christ crucified, Christ dead and risen. Where, however, does that fit into getting on with my life? What does it have to do with being Catholic? And just what does any of this ritual stuff have to do with Jesus? The only way to make Jesus Christ truly come to life so as to become life for others is in witnessing to and proclaiming the TOTALITY of our Christian beliefs. The INDIVISIBILITY of the Christian revelation and of Catholic worship has to be displayed. This can be done by emphasizing the INTERRELATEDNESS of all of the fundamental aspects of the Catholic worship: human beings depending upon and coming be-fore God in order to be saved. For Christ to make any practical sense, for him to become adorable, needed and beloved, we need to begin with our own sense of need as sinners. From there, and without ever losing sight of this fact, we can begin to encounter the God who gathers all things back into himself. This is just one crucial example of responding to the liturgico-pedagogical task before us by means of the "ANALOGY OF FAITH", whereby one doctrine illuminates the sense and rightness of another. Similarly, our liturgical signs and words are mutually illuminating: understanding the holy water at the entry way, for example, transforms my under-standing of being gathered together as a baptized community. Yet if I fail to understand one of these signs, my understanding of the others is proportionately deprived, and so I regress upon a downward slope. For this reason, it is of utmost importance that we re-appropriate a sensitivity for reading the signs and symbols of the liturgy. We need to place them in evidence, first of all, and then to place them in relation to one another so that they can accomplish their primary task: announcing the irreducible and persuasively harmonious mystery of the Father's providential plan of salvation in his Incarnate Son.
