Eucharistic Catechesis and Celebration
At the beginning of Lent Pope Benedict meets with the clergy of Rome and enters into “dialogue” with them. I had been waiting for the Vatican website to provide an English translation, but, happily, John Allen has come through first (and before Lent ends!). Here is part of an exchange with a young associate pastor about liturgy:
[I]t’s always important that sacramental catechesis be an existential catechesis. Naturally, alongside accepting and learning ever more the mysterious aspect – where words and reasoning ends – it is also totally realistic, because it carries me to God and God to me. It also leads me to the other, because the other receives the same Christ like me. If there’s the same Christ in him and in me, then we two are no longer separate individuals. This is where the doctrine of the Body of Christ is born, because we are all incorporated into it if we receive well the Eucharist in the same Christ. Hence our neighbor is truly a neighbor: we are not two separate ‘I’s’, but we are united in the same ‘I’ of Christ. In other words, the Eucharistic and sacramental catechesis must really arrive at the life of our existence, it must be an education in opening myself to the voice of God, in allowing myself to be opened so that the original sin of egoism can be broken and my existence can be opened up in its depths, so that I can become truly a just person. In this sense, it seems to me that we must all learn the liturgy ever better, not as an exotic thing, but as the heart of our being Christian, which does not open itself easily to someone who is distant, but which, on the other hand, is also an opening to others and to the world. We must all work together to celebrate the Eucharist ever more deeply: not only as a rite, but as an existential process that touches me intimately, more than anything else, and that changes me, transforms me. In transforming me, it also initiates the transformation of the world that the Lord wants, and for which he wants to make us instruments.
My question to the Pope would be this: Your holiness, thank you for your beautiful thoughts, but if the point of the Eucharist is the existential experience of the here and now of the Lord’s presence, why do you also emphasize looking East? And why face away from the congregation which the liturgy seeks to unite? Why seek the Elsewhere?
The Holy Father’s words caused me to regret rather bitterly that our Eucharistic habits and participation are so lax. How can the Eucharist do its work in us if we do not take our seat at the table, and partake of the banquet?
Someone over on Vox Nova has said . . .
And in a subsequent message of clarification added . . .
I thought of it when I read the above because it seemed so abstract and philosophical to me, and yet the origin of the Eucharistic celebration was a meal, and that is how it continued to be celebrated for some time. If you are receiving communion in the presence of total strangers, or among a group of faces you see only once a week, it is as impersonal as withdrawing cash from an ATM.
The pope says, “We must all work together to celebrate the Eucharist ever more deeply: not only as a rite, but as an existential process that touches me intimately, more than anything else, and that changes me, transforms me. In transforming me, it also initiates the transformation of the world that the Lord wants, and for which he wants to make us instruments.” Maybe some idea of community is implied there, but is it the kind that actually requires you to interact with people on a truly personal level, not just on the same level as one interacts with an audience at the theater? (A really great performance at the theater, in my experience, will set strangers in the audience to talking with one another during the intermission or after the show. I am not quite sure this can happen with a mass.)
Hi, David, I would suggest that the person on Vox Nova is not wrong that we should belong to a local community, but the bonds of communion extend beyond the local community. Hence if I go to Bangladesh or Scotland, I don’t know a soul in church, and yet spiritually I am one with them. This is part of the mystery of the church – that these local instances of spiritual community are united to one another in Christ who is head of the church.
Jim,
It seems to me if you regularly do something as part of a local community that you truly know on a personal basis, when you go to Scotland or Bangladesh and do the same thing among strangers, the connection you have with these strangers would be more tangible.
Of course, one of the things that they always used to tell us in Catholic school was, “If you go anywhere in the world, the (Latin) mass will be the same!” But that’s another topic.
That description of the Eucharist sounds a lot like making love, at its best.
No question the Eucharist is quintessentially the Sacrament of love of neighbor. That necessitates community as in communion. Hence the name. Yet community remains elusive. An overwhelming number of parishes form the “community” around the school. But it seems more like a fabricated one. Grades 1-8 makes a marvelous procession. Would they come if it were voluntary?
Real community remains elusive and there are so few who know how to build it. Parish and community are synonomous. How do you build it and who has? Outside of RCIA and Religious Education.
Much to ponder here… What strikes me most is my memories of many years of travel around the US and also the world. While I can see the issue of the anonymous “ATM withdrawl” brought up by David Nickol, I can also see how the “I” of the Body of Christ impacted my life and my faith.
Most of the time, especially when at small liturgies, I felt welcomed as a stranger to the table, with great love. One instance really springs to mind… The day after Operation Desert Storm began in 1991. I was on a business trip and found an early morning mass to attend before seeing my client. Clearly I was not in this community, yet people quietly approached me before mass and invited me to sit with them. The entire experience was profound as we truly re-membered the Body of Christ.
I also recall being at mass in a large city about a year later and watching a priest deny a young woman communion. He may have had his reasons but the way in which he did it was heartbreaking to most people in the large crowd and many tears were shed that day.
He may have been right to deny her but it felt like nails in the cross to be a part of it.
Ann,
I know you were not addressing me :-), but a few thoughts.
The mystery of the eucharist is inexhaustible, but I think it important to hold in tension the both/and of meal and sacrifice: it is Christ’s sacrifice which makes this unique meal possible.
The union with christ and one another is both around the altar of sacrifice and the table of the supper. How to give adequate symbolic expression to this?
As you know, the altar in St. Peter’s is positioned so that the celebrant faces East and the congregation. In the Sistine Chapel, on the feast of the Lord’s Baptism the Pope has celebrated using the traditional altar. It seems to me that in both cases the unity of the body of Christ is given expression, though in diverse ways.
The altar at the Church of the Sacred Heart where I celebrate is likewise positioned so that the celebrant is facing East and the congregation. When we renewed the Church about five years ago, we brought the altar closer to the congregation and suspended over it a large crucifix. Thus the assembly can have their eyes focused either on the altar or the crucifix as the Spirit moves them.
I have posted in the past of celebrating in our lower church with a group of students in which, at their request, we all faced “ad orientem.” Afterward they said that the “existential experience” this enabled was a great sense of self-offering through Christ to the Father.
If I may make two further points… Benedict, as appears in the quote I gave, and much more in detail elsewhere, places great emphasis on the “ars celebrandi:” the prayerful, reverential worship of the community. Here silence has a crucial role.
Lastly, a historical point/question. As I’ve shared before, one of my favorite churches in Rome is San Clemente whose present form is for the most part 12th century. The altar is positioned facing East, and therefore the celebrant faces the congregation. But, I have read (and here I would welcome support or correction from those historically informed) that during the eucharistic prayer, the congregation turned and faced East — thus with their backs to the celebrant! As the Italians say: “se non è vero, è ben trovato.”
Buona domenica a tutti.
For a different “take” on this communion piece, see http://www.bilgrimage.blogspot.com
Worth pondering.
Fr, Imbelli –
Thank you for your reply. I agree with most of it, especially that Catholicism is a both/and religion, or should be, anyway. However, I think that we cannot always have both/and simultaneously. Some choices must be made. Further, as Sartre put it, every choice involves a sacrifice. Sometimes I think the Pope’s generalizations about the best liturgical forms bump up against each other because some tensions cannot be resolved. So it’s a good thing that he celebrates Mass in different churches with different layouts.
The first thing I read by him was a little book on the liturgy. I picked it up at a bookstore and was immediately hooked — but on reading it I thought that he was also a bit irrational on the need for all churches to face east and for the priest to face away from the congregation. (It’s not a new book.) Sure, church layout is often a very, very valuable symbol, but sometimes choices have to be made as to the dominant symbolization of a given church. And priests just can’t face both ways at once.
His insistence on reverence at Mass is a greatly needed message, and for me reverence includes some silence in the face of the mystery that is God. Our silence says, “We are dumbstruck with awe” as nothing else can, and it also allows for intimate personal moments that are appropriate at somet points in the Mass. (I know there are those who disagree with this, but what the ho.) So there is room for different forms of the liturgy at different times and places. But Mass is never an ordinary meal. The Host is not an ordinary host. He is both our God and our brother.
So I”m not against all both/ands, but how to incorporate seeming (only seeming) opposites? That’s where the variations of some of the different parts of the Mass are needed. We’re temporal-spatial creatures and we have to say different things at different times and in different places with different elements of the liturgy. Yes, that congregation that turned east together is a striking example of such variety.
I can sympathize with those who want all forms of the Mass to be the same. It is comforting to find similar Masses at different times and places. But I don’t think the Lord intends any sort of absolute oneness in the liturgy because that would require not saying all that the Mass is capable of saying
Benedict writes as quoted above. “In other words, the Eucharistic and sacramental catechesis must really arrive at the life of our existence, it must be an education in opening myself to the voice of God, in allowing myself to be opened so that the original sin of egoism can be broken and my existence can be opened up in its depths, so that I can become truly a just person.”
I love the quote “original sin of egoism.” The great Bernard Haring, condemned by the last three popes, used to say that love in general is a continuous thing manifested in all our actions. Same I would say of humility. Yet Rome shows itself in splendor all the time. As if the Crucifixion was an afterthought, the way it is placed in the corner of Vatican celebrations. Like the pictures of the pope today always regaled more than any contemporary leader. Great message. This is holiness Roman style.
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/qKwJjWIlUkD/Pope+Receives+Diplomatic+Corps+Accredited/9VVW0lTwplA/Pope+Benedict+XVI
From John Allen’s column on the dialogue ( http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/benedict-perfects-qa-format )
‘Benedict’s cool is also on display. Towards the end, an older priest becomes highly-horsed about the post-Vatican II tendency to downplay forms of devotion such as First Fridays and Marian apparitions. Benedict calmly swats the question away, saying that while these are “beautiful things” that have grown up over the centuries, and they shouldn’t be disrespected, “everyone can more or less understand what’s less important than something else.”’ (Question No 8)
But I am not sure everyone has the same understanding of “what’s less important than something else.”. Hence all the controversies.