The Worthiness of the Liturgy

From New Elucidations, by Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar:

It is only with fear and trembling that we can approach this theme. What human liturgy could be "worthy" of the object of its veneration, before whom even in heaven all beings fall prostrate, remove their wreaths and crowns and lay them in a gesture of adoration before God's throne: "You alone are worthy, Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power" (Rev 4:11)? This return in heaven of all honor received from creatures to him "who created everything by his will" can only bring a community of sinners on earth spontaneously to its knees, acknowledging, "Lord, I am not worthy."

It would be an odd deception, if the members of this community however naive, assembled to praise and honor God, were to have any other purpose than the act of perfect adoration and self-surrender: for instance, their own edification or some undertaking or other in which they themselves, alongside the Lord who should be receiving their homage, become thematic.

In a purely monotheistic religion, the gesture of prostration is the most perfect expression of the entire person's surrender, even in large gatherings. What Christian can view the crowd in silent adoration in a mosque without being deeply moved? In the religion of the Covenant, listening to God's word, the Torah, has central place: God speaks and man obediently receives, searching with all his heart for the correct response. This may be accompanied by symbolic rites, such as the Passover meal, eaten standing and at the point of departure, the last strengthening nourishment before setting out into the desert to follow God's guidance.

But then, in the trinitarian religion, there is the enormous transformation: the sheep eaten in the family circle gives way to "the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world", "that takes away the sins of the world" and gives his Flesh and Blood as "real food and real drink". One can understand those heretics (even if one likewise understands their being condemned) who recoil from the excess of this divine mystery, imploring the faithful not to demean what is ineffable and fear-inspiring, mindful of the words of Paul: "Anyone who eats the bread or drinks the Lord's cup unworthily will be guilty of the Lord's body and blood. Therefore, let a man examine himself, " lest he "eat and drink judgment" (I Cor 11:27-29). God himself encourages us, even presses us, to "eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood" (Jn 6:53), if we want to attain to eternal life.

We can do this, however, only if we are mindful of the "awesome exchange"' between our guilt, which he bears, and his innocence, which he gives us on the Cross. In receiving him into ourselves, we recall that he has taken us into himself in his Passion and that, as Augustine repeatedly says, we receive the physician who heals us by our having caused his death: "For whenever you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death, until he comes" (I Cor 11: 26). Nevertheless, we are not to approach the Lord's table embarrassed and downcast, for the Lord who wants to come to us calls us his friends for whom he has died: (Jn 15:13). He does not want us to "act like strangers" (as the disciples do at the meal by Lake Tiberias: (Jn 21:12), but to open ourselves to receive the Father's gift.

For in celebrating the liturgy, our gaze is not restricted to Jesus, but is raised to him from whom ultimately the highest of all good gifts comes: to the Father. Nor do we open our hearts and raise our minds heavenward of ourselves, but in the power of the Holy Spirit of the Father and of the Son poured into our hearts. It is solely in view of the entire triune God that the worshipping community is gathered together to celebrate God's generosity and liberality.

God's glory, the majesty of his splendor, comes with its most precious gifts to us who are to "praise the glory of his grace" (Eph 1:6). This last summons constitutes the norm and criterion for planning our liturgical services. It would be ridiculous and blasphemous to want to respond to the glory of God's grace with a counter-glory produced from our own creaturely reserves, in contrast to the heavenly liturgy that is portrayed for us in the Book of Revelation as completely dominated and shaped by God's glory. Whatever form the response of our liturgy takes, it can only be the expression of the most pure and selfless reception possible of the divine majesty of his grace; although reception, far from signifying something passive, is much rather the most active thing of which a creature is capable.

Our first question is: what is excluded from such active reception? Our second is: what form can this reception take? As we shall see, the answers to these questions are not always tidily separable, because forms that may be expressions of pure reception in certain people could become manifestations of self-admiration and worldly gratification in others.

Certainly, everything that distracts the congregation from paying attention to God and his coming and makes it revert to itself must be excluded -- except at the moment of examination of conscience, at the confession of guilt and at the Domine, non sum dignus. Anything solemn and ceremonial that does not direct hearts and minds to the one being solemnized is evil, in proportion to how much the character of the solemnity becomes detached from its object and becomes itself the center.

Now we have arrived at the ambiguity, of which we shall cite more detailed examples: that in praising God a person directs back to himself what is reserved for God alone--the praise of his glory--so that a part of its lustre redounds to himself. It often happens (and the danger seems to be even greater nowadays than in former times) that a liturgical assembly measures the success of a celebration by the degree of its own edification I the extent to which the participants "take part" and are "moved" by it, instead of letting itself be moved by God and his gifts and letting him "take over."

There are congregations that, perhaps unconsciously, celebrate themselves rather than God; and this is equally true of traditional and of progressive groups liturgies in long-established parishes as well as the freely formed services so popular among young people. This means that the criterion of the "vitality" of a liturgical service also remains highly ambiguous; it is always a question of whether it effects a vital opening and conversion of hearts or the private enjoyment of one's own vitality.

Naturally, this ambiguity comes to light in an especially acute way in the homily or sermon, which ought to have only one aim: to direct everyone's attention (including that of the homilist) to the mystery being celebrated in its inexhaustibly manifold aspects, and not to allow any of the divine luster to redound in the process to the speaker and what he is saying.

The problem becomes compounded when the correct thought is expressed that the joy of man who is redeemed and blessed beyond measure mingles with the seriousness of the "sacred exchange" which we celebrate. How both Cross and Resurrection can be experienced together in Christian life is a profound enigma, and the explanations of it are by no means unequivocal. There exists a simultaneity: deep, hidden, perhaps hardly perceptible joy in the midst of a sorrow that can completely engross a person; there is also an alteration of phases in Christian life, like the way in which changes of weather or seasons succeed one another.

In a parish communal liturgy, a reverential awareness of the gravity of the mystery together with joy over it must be expressed in a manner appropriate to the objectivity of the mystery being celebrated, though it is true that human joy can find different modes of expression n different peoples or even in people of different ages.

Once again the ambiguity comes into play: expressions of joy that are genuine praise of God, are intended as such and can be understood as such by others belong to the sphere of appropriate expressions of liturgical prayer; on the contrary, whatever verges on subjective ecstasy does not. (It is easy to distinguish the subtle symbolism, restrained to the last detail, of oriental cultic dances from those that serve to enrapture both dancer and spectators.)

Authentic Christian joy can be expressed in the way a congregation sings in unison, the way a priest says the prayers of the canon or the orations, the way a deacon delivers the sacred texts; and the Christian heart of the people can immediately distinguish this authenticity from everything that is outwardly contrived and theoretical and perhaps inwardly bored. Let no one think that giving primacy to objectivity dispenses the subject from making his contribution. This will have been best made when everyone senses that the subject is totally at the service of the mystery.

An element lacking in good taste has crept into the liturgy since the (falsely interpreted) Council, namely, the joviality and familiarity of the celebrant with the congregation. People come, however, for prayer and not for a cozy encounter. Oddly enough, because of this misinterpretation, one gets the impression that the post-conciliar liturgy has become more clerical than it was in the days when the priest functioned as mere servant of the mystery being celebrated. Before and after the liturgy, personal contact is entirely in place, but during the celebration everyone's attention should be directed to the one Lord.

The tendency of a congregation to celebrate itself instead of God will increase, imperceptibly but unfailingly, if its faith in the reality of the eucharistic event wanes. When an almost rudimentary Church, gathered to await her Lord and to let herself be filled by him, considers herself from the outset as a church to which nothing essential can be added, the eucharistic celebration will degenerate into mere symbolism and the congregation will be celebrating nothing but its own piety which existed already and feels corroborated by the community's repeated gathering.

When this happens, pharisaism is imminent. Conversely, when those assembled feel in their inmost hearts their urgent need of the Lord's coming among and in them if they are to grow together into a true Church in which each member is imbued with the Church's sentiments, then what happens objectively will arouse a corresponding subjective response.

The worthiness of the liturgy increases in proportion to the participants' awareness of their own unworthiness. It is impossible, then, to manipulate or technically produce this worthiness: if the Christian attitude of (the majority of) the congregation and of the priest is genuine, the celebration is "worthy."

Here, however, we can observe a curious phenomenon--and this brings us, without perceptible transition, to the second point. There are objectively worthy "forms" of liturgical prayer, which of course could have evolved only in eras of authentic subjective attitudes of prayer: for example, our venerable canons, collects and other Mass prayers, which through centuries of subjective prayer have acquired a new dimension of dignity. And now there are some who think that to let themselves be sustained by these forms, to entrust themselves to centuries of other men's prayers, would guarantee them in advance the correct subjective attitude. But they deceive themselves in this regard.

For them the dignity of the form--a perhaps wonderfully polished, aesthetic dignity--predominates over the perennially new, nonobjectifiable dignity of the divine event. The awareness of inherent glory gave inspiration to works of incomparable earthly beauty in the great tradition of the Church. But these works become suitable for today's liturgy only if, in and beyond their beauty, those who take part are not merely moved to aesthetic sentiments but are able to encounter that glory of God to which the Creator wanted to lead such works.

Among these works we can name not only Gregorian chant, the work of Palestrina and his contemporaries, and a good part of the old German (chiefly Protestant) church hymns, but also Bach's High Mass, Haydn's Masses, Mozart's Litanies and--a high point of musically expressed faith -- the uncompleted Credo of his Mass in C Minor and the Kyrie of Schubert's Mass in E Major. If the singers of such works really pray them, the music can transmit something of the true original inspiration to listeners whose sensory apparatus is attuned not only to the beautiful but to the holy and the divinely glorious.

Those who hear only the beautiful and are moved only by that can have a quasi-religious experience, like the many who listen to Saint Matthew's Passion on Good Friday but they are deceived regarding the true meaning of what they are hearing.

Whether "beautiful" liturgy (which, in order to be beautiful, certainly does not need Latin, which cannot be understood by most people) is beautiful only for certain generations, while succeeding generations are no longer able to appreciate its beauty, can remain an open question. "What is beautiful must also die," and embalming does not help it. But on no account may it be replaced by anything ugly or vulgar, trivial or empty; the best alternative would be something plain that need not be inferior in dignity to those earthly grandeurs that are no longer intelligible.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit" if only they admit their poverty and do not try to camouflage it. If a generation is not able to provide any authentic religious images for the Church, it should not claim that bare walls more effectively concentrate the spirit on what is essential. If we have become small people, we should not try to reduce the mystery we are celebrating to our own size. And if we have to a great extent lost our sense of dignity, our profession of faith should nevertheless have helped us to retain enough sense of God's majesty that, on encountering it, we will still feel our distance from it greater eras may have felt it more strongly--and behave properly toward God.

Lay people will frequently be able to do this more directly than the pastor and his assistant, who become confused by the many cheap pastoral aids; in such cases it is the laity's duty to protest against unworthy accretions and to insist on their legitimate desires for authenticity in the liturgy. But let no one too hastily claim to play the role of arbiter elegantiarum in the Church. The real arbiter of the dignity of the liturgy is the "simple heart", the "single eye."

The Christian knows something more: that the assembly of God's people is never a mere mass-meeting, but the gathering together of individuals who by their call to follow Christ and their baptism in Jesus' death are "called together" to solitude with God--"strangers in this world" -- and to commonality in the sharing of the one bread and the one cup. Both aspects of Christian existence are indispensable and must always be able to find articulation.

Liturgy is the act, not of an anonymous "Church," but of a group of persons, whose relationship to Christ makes them persons qualitatively. This must be taken into consideration in planning the liturgy. The pre-conciliar liturgy was often the random coming together of individuals in one place, with each one absorbed in his own devotions; since the Council, it is still oftener the assembling of those who let themselves be carried along on the waves of a purely social event and largely forego personal prayer, or perhaps are forced to forego it on account of the uninterrupted talking of the celebrant and singing of the crowd. And they do so regretfully, because amid the stress of daily life and the noise of city blocks people can find neither a place nor time for personal prayer.

Nowadays the liturgy must take this into account, not only for pedagogical reasons but also and above all for theological ones. Continual prayer and singing ought to leave room for individual recollection: before the collect (whose name indicates that it is a summary of the personal petitions of the individuals), after the homily, after Communion. And the celebrant should give meaningful suggestions as to how one can use the time of silence, so that it will not turn out to be a mere waiting for things to move again.

By his earnestness and readiness to pray, each person shares the responsibility for bringing about a worthy liturgy. Texts from the first centuries of Christianity clearly witness to this. The unique quality of a Christian assembly for celebrating the Eucharist is a guarantee that it is possible to thank the eternal Father for showing the world and each individual in it, by means of the gift of his Son, how much he "is love."

• Biography of Hans Urs von Balthasar
• All Ignatius Press books by Hans Urs von Balthasar
• Excerpts from the writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar
• Ignatius Insight Articles about Hans Urs von Balthasar
• Pope Benedict XVI Praises Hans Urs von Balthasar (Oct. 2005)