Jn 6:51-58
Liturgy is the invisible made visible. Almost everything else we do has a practical purpose (even if sometimes a senseless one). It is true, we do many things just for pleasure or for fun; then that is their meaning.
But when we celebrate the Liturgy we are doing actions that have no mundane meaning or purpose whatever. A mundane purpose would distract from the real meaning of what we are doing. There is a purity about this that nothing should obscure.
It is very easy to slide into a kind of practicality that defeats the real purpose of Liturgy, which is to make the invisible visible. In place of "Let us offer one another a sign of peace," I heard a priest say, "Let us offer one another some small sign of happiness." What could that possibly mean, and why come to church to do it? It is done much more effectively in a pub. We are sometimes happy and sometimes not; it hardly matters any more than the weather.
Even outside the liturgical context peace means much more than happiness. But in the liturgical context it is the peace of Christ we offer one another, not our own. It is, he said, "a peace the world cannot give." When I offer my neighbour a sign of peace at Mass I am acknowledging that every possible practical engagement between us stands in the shade of this tremendous peace that the world cannot give.
No one would come to church to collect a morsel of bread, if that was all there was to it. The only reason we go is that Jesus said, "Take and eat…this is my body; do this in memory of me." All the other things we do, said Johann Tauler in the 14th century, can be so many paths to God, but in the Liturgy we are united with God in Christ, "with no intermediary." "There is no difference between it and God," he said. "In this gift he gives himself to us directly and not in any figurative way; he is united, simply and purely, with us. This is a feast indeed; there is nothing to compare with it." We have to come to know this, he said, "by experience, by living… not by reasoning about it."
It is indeed a special experience to do or say something in Liturgy with full awareness that the only reason I am doing it is that God is God, and Christ is Christ, fully present, fully given to us.
This you might call the vertical axis. Immediately there follows the horizontal, because Liturgy is not an escape or an alternative to our daily life. But it begins from the vertical, not from the other. It is like the way we make the Sign of the Cross: we make the vertical axis first.
Liturgy is the invisible made visible. Almost everything else we do has a practical purpose (even if sometimes a senseless one). It is true, we do many things just for pleasure or for fun; then that is their meaning.
But when we celebrate the Liturgy we are doing actions that have no mundane meaning or purpose whatever. A mundane purpose would distract from the real meaning of what we are doing. There is a purity about this that nothing should obscure.
It is very easy to slide into a kind of practicality that defeats the real purpose of Liturgy, which is to make the invisible visible. In place of "Let us offer one another a sign of peace," I heard a priest say, "Let us offer one another some small sign of happiness." What could that possibly mean, and why come to church to do it? It is done much more effectively in a pub. We are sometimes happy and sometimes not; it hardly matters any more than the weather.
Even outside the liturgical context peace means much more than happiness. But in the liturgical context it is the peace of Christ we offer one another, not our own. It is, he said, "a peace the world cannot give." When I offer my neighbour a sign of peace at Mass I am acknowledging that every possible practical engagement between us stands in the shade of this tremendous peace that the world cannot give.
No one would come to church to collect a morsel of bread, if that was all there was to it. The only reason we go is that Jesus said, "Take and eat…this is my body; do this in memory of me." All the other things we do, said Johann Tauler in the 14th century, can be so many paths to God, but in the Liturgy we are united with God in Christ, "with no intermediary." "There is no difference between it and God," he said. "In this gift he gives himself to us directly and not in any figurative way; he is united, simply and purely, with us. This is a feast indeed; there is nothing to compare with it." We have to come to know this, he said, "by experience, by living… not by reasoning about it."
It is indeed a special experience to do or say something in Liturgy with full awareness that the only reason I am doing it is that God is God, and Christ is Christ, fully present, fully given to us.
This you might call the vertical axis. Immediately there follows the horizontal, because Liturgy is not an escape or an alternative to our daily life. But it begins from the vertical, not from the other. It is like the way we make the Sign of the Cross: we make the vertical axis first.
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