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The Sermon as a Guide Through
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Of all the areas of Christian formation, the Church Year is the one in which the main themes of the Christian message are most clearly engraved on the souls of the people and in which they are most easily stirred to new life. The faithful live the Church Year every year of their lives. So great is its influence that even those whose faith has long been dead will, from time to time, respond to its appeal. Even civil life is ruled by its rhythm! Unfortunately, not too many really understand the deep meaning and movement of the Church Year. Sermons and devotions do follow it but are often concerned with side-features.
And yet the Church’s year is the "classic" course in religion for everyone, always recurring and enriching souls until they are completely at home in this spiritual world. True, it is not finely woven down to the last detail; it is rather like a picture whose brush work is meant to be seen from a distance, not under a microscope. Again, it is not a history of salvation nor a life of Christ, much less a dogmatic tract. Still the main supports of the whole of theology are there and only need the proper celebration of the feasts and the right kind of sermon that they be brought to light, namely, Christ and His redemption – Christmas and Easter.
Indeed, we can say that the two principal ideas of the Good News are represented by these two great feasts: the Person of Christ comes to the fore in that of Christmas; His work of redemption in the celebration of Easter. Or from a different viewpoint we can say that these feasts, together with their festal cycles, set forth the two groups of statements which the Apostles’ Creed attaches to our profession of faith in Christ: His incarnation by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary; His suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of the Father. The further statements of the Creed about the Holy Spirit, the holy Church and her sacramental powers, as well as her glorious fulfillment, can likewise be found expressed in Easter and summed up in Pentecost. These statements of the Creed are, however, not so much the subjects of special feasts as they are the abiding treasure from which every feast, indeed, all the life of the Church is constantly enriched. Christmas and Easter continue to be the two main supports.
Christmas. No one is going to utter a protest if Christmas is celebrated rather idyllically and sentimentally in the home and among friends, but in the Church, in the pastoral guidance of the assembled community, the real, full keynote of the Christmas theme should sound out strong and clear: et Verbum caro factum est ("and the Word was made flesh"). Christmas is the feast of the Incarnation of the Son of God. We are no longer alone. He is one of us – the One who shows us the way to the Father.
Although a certain dissecting of this mystery has led to a special feast celebrating the actual moment of Christ’s conception in the womb of Mary (March 25) – actually all Marian feasts, as well as those of St. Joseph and St. John the Baptist, are offshoots of the basic theme of Christmas – still the feast of Christmas should not thereby lose out in its significance. Throughout the year every Marian feast and every Marian sermon should be, before all else, a commemoration of the Christmas mystery. Other themes should be built upon it or inserted into it, thus losing nothing in breadth but gaining much in depth.
During the Christmas cycle an opportunity is presented to recall the basis and preliminary stages of salvation history, but especially an occasion to give a vivid picture of the Person of the Savior – His divinity and His humanity. Since Christmas stresses the Person of Our Lord, as well as the greetings and honor we owe Him, it is obvious that His divinity comes more to the fore in this feast than in that of Easter. And thus it is that in the liturgy, especially in that of the Epiphany – the original Eastern celebration of the Incarnation – the note of adoration finds repeated expression.
Sermons during this season should aim, somewhat along the lines of the lesson plans drawn up for catechetics, at deepening the people’s knowledge of the God-Man. One should bear in mind, however, that Christ’s coming among men was not an end in itself, one that merely envisioned adoration on the part of subjects, but that it was rather the beginning of the salvation the God-Man intended to bring. Hence, together with the note of adoration, we also hear that of joy – joy that one of our family is God’s own Son and that nothing will ever again be in a position to sever mankind completely from God. Along with all this should go the awareness that a sermon is most effective when it leads to an understanding of the liturgy and a living out of its message; hence, the sermon should here lead to a joyous response on the part of the faithful to the Church’s prayer of thanksgiving and to newly enkindled, vital faith in Him who has come into the world as the Light of all men.
Easter. If Christmas is the foundation, Easter is the glorious super-structure of the Church’s year. The three days from Good Friday to Easter Sunday form the core of this cycle of feasts, the three days on which the work of redemption was accomplished and brought to the glorious triumph of the Savior. On either side of this ancient Paschal triduum one found a special celebration: one phase leading up to it (first presented as a number of days to compassionate Christ in His sufferings, then appearing as a period of joint penance between the whole people and "the order of penitents," and finally fashioned as a sort of yearly popular mission, characterized by works of penance and daily divine worship, as we see today in our lenten Masses). Another phase followed upon it, stamped with a festive character that was designed to fix deeply in the soul the thought that we are truly redeemed, as the ordinary Easter commemoration reminds us today: Crucifixus surrexit a mortuis et redemit nos ("The Crucified One has risen from the dead and redeemed us"), and that all men are called to share in the divine life of the victorious Christ: Dicite in nationibus quis Dominus regnavit a ligno ("Tell it among the nations that the Lord has reigned from His cross").
It is interesting to note that, while the start of the precelebration for the Paschal triduum has not been moved back since the time of Gregory the Great (when the beginning of Lent was moved back four days, namely, to Ash Wednesday to allow for forty fast days), the post-celebration has encountered extensions down to our own time. Thus an octave was added to the feast of Pentecost. On the Thursday following that octave, the Holy Thursday theme was singled out from the over-all Easter theme in order that the Mystery of the Altar might be celebrated with greater festive joy – and this throughout an octave. The Good Friday theme was likewise singled out from the over-all Easter theme in order that on the first Friday after the preceding festivity it too might be celebrated with a feast and octave, only this time with greater stress on its inner aspect, that is, on its psychological depths.
This phenomenon is connected with the fact that the central theme of the Easter cycle itself – the victorious Redemption – has lost something of its soul-stirring impact, as can be seen from a glance at today’s Easter sermons which generally have an apologetical orientation or from the fact that a full octave of a wholly different kind could be inserted, in conjunction with the feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph, in the middle of the Easter season.1 It is the natural result of a certain reshaping of the ideas of the feast of Easter and of the leading concepts concerning our understanding of the work of redemption. In our eyes the accomplishment of the Redemption is expressed with greater theological accuracy in terms of the meritorious sufferings of Christ which reached their culmination with His last breath on the cross, whereas the Easter liturgy is based on the old, more figurative presentation of the heroic struggle through which our Savior vanquished death and won life by His resurrection.
This figure of a painful struggle is still most useful and profitable from the standpoint of popular instruction – and this for reasons other than the understanding it affords of the Easter liturgy. To some extent at least it even helps us bring the negative aspect of redemption into sharper focus: mortem nostram moriendo destruxit ("by dying he has destroyed our death"). Whatever be the need of deepening this thought theologically, considering the difficulties encountered at times in presenting the idea of vicarious satisfaction to certain classes of people (see Anton Koch, "Christentum und Proletariat," Stimmen der Zeit, 124 [1933, I], 372), we shall experience no problem in conceiving and depicting Christ’s sufferings as a struggle with sin and the devil – heroic sufferings, freely accepted – brought on by men who were truly the instruments of sin and the devil.
But even more striking is this picture of struggle and victory when we come to present the positive side of the drama of redemption: vitam resurgendo reparavit ("by rising He has restored life"). By it we shall make most clear that the fruit of the Redemption does not merely consist in the atonement of our sins but that it also involves the winning of life – for Christ and for ourselves. For if Christ’s sufferings were a struggle, and a struggle in which He could not go down to defeat, and if this struggle was undertaken for us, then certainly He has won a glorious victory for us: entrance into a Kingdom such as truly befits the Son of God. He had to suffer and thus enter into His glory, but He has also gone on before us to His Father and to Our Father, to His God and our God that all of us might have life.
These thoughts, which have been incorporated into the Easter liturgy and even today form its core, should not lie fallow. The negative aspect of the Redemption – the atonement of our sins by Christ – is familiar to every Catholic. But, sad to say, the positive aspect, the fact that through Christ the way has been prepared for a new life, a divine life, is in no way an altogether common possession of the average Catholic. It is right here that we meet up with the presentation of the doctrine of grace which, under the dissecting of the content of faith, has suffered the most from its separation from the mystery of Christ.
The celebration of Easter offers an excellent opportunity to put this presentation of the doctrine of grace back in the proper light. Why did Christ rise again? Undoubtedly to offer a firm foundation for our faith, but certainly not for this alone. We should also see shining forth in His glorified body that new life which He has won for us, that life into which He has already entered as the first-born among many brethren. For grace is nothing else than an initial participation in His glory – or, to speak with greater theological precision, it is the divine sonship which has been communicated to us through the merits of the Redeemer and also according to the pattern of the Savior into whom we are to be conformed. Not only should we recall that grace comes from Christ; we should also keep this exemplarity of Christ’s grace before our eyes since the idea of our membership in the Body of Christ is most intimately bound up with it. Though grace can be defined without this relationship to Christ as its type, we shall explain it more easily, more directly and more vitally by taking this relationship as our starting point.
Easter – the feast itself and the season that follows – offers any number of opportunities in this regard. First of all, the life of the Savior is set vividly before us, a life free of all suffering and danger, a life that diffuses peace and joy all about it. Not only does Pentecost, with its sending of the Holy Spirit and the first flowering of the Church, tell us most clearly that this happiness is open to all men, but Easter itself, as the liturgy indicates, proclaims the same message. For Easter is a baptismal feast, the occasion for the Baptism of adults, as it remains even today according to Canon Law (c. 772). On Holy Saturday and throughout the Easter octave, Baptism is the basic theme of the liturgy: new life, a new creation, a new people of God, entrance into the promised land, a resurrection with the Risen One. And this is not merely in the sense of a new upsurge in the conduct of one’s moral life, as so many well-intentioned preachers interpret this idea, but especially in the sense of a new establishing of our being upon the being of the glorified Christ – an insertion into that community-of-life with Him which is spoken of in the parable of the vine and branches.
In a special way, however, the liturgy of Holy Saturday symbolizes most strikingly this participation in the life of the Risen Christ in the ceremony of the lumen Christi, the light that symbolizes Christ. Occasioned by the nocturnal character of the feast, the light ceremony was early developed into an eloquent symbol of the light of the Resurrection. The entire church lay dark. Just as Christ went forth from His rock-hewn tomb, so a spark was struck from stone. The light was brought into the Church so that, from it, the Paschal candle might be lit – yet another symbol of the glorified body of Christ bearing the five wounds. Amid the joyous melodies of the Exultet, the fire began to spread out until at the start of the High Mass all the lamps and all the candles in the church were lit from this new light. The baptismal water was also filled with this new light as the Paschal candle was plunged into it, so that in Baptism it might communicate light – the light that is Christ. One could not express more clearly, even for children, the basic thought of the Easter cycle, namely, that all grace proceeds from Christ and that grace is a sharing in His glorified life. Unfortunately today the unpropitious hour of the celebration (Holy Saturday morning) is a hindrance to full participation. Certainly it is no audacity to express the wish that the mater omnium vigiliarum ("the mother of all vigils") may restore this ancient vigil to us.2
From this viewpoint we are able to appreciate why the Easter mystery was celebrated throughout fifty days and why every Sunday presented a renewal of Easter. It was most important that the figure of the glorified Savior be deeply fixed in the hearts of the faithful. What was dominant in the religious life of the Church was not the suffering but the resurrection of the Savior. This was the center of gravity toward which she always tended. For glorification is the condition in which Christ has remained since His resurrection, in which our thoughts meet Him if we seek Him not as He once was but as He is and will ever be. With this realization we conclude the Orations throughout the year with a glance at the glorified Christ: qui tecum vivit et regnat ("who lives and reigns with Thee").
No harm will come of it, we might add, if our well-disposed faithful should gradually acquire from this insight an attitude of joyous confidence which would banish any depressing anxiety about sin. Nor will any damage be done if they grow in the awareness that the Christian who, in humility, constantly draws on the sacramental sources of the Church’s life need not doubt about the grace and love of God.
At the same time the liturgy admonishes us emphatically that we should not lose sight of our own conduct because of the joy of the redeemed, nor of the opus operantis (the proper disposition) because of the opus operatum (the efficacy of the sacramental rite). Not without set purpose, then, do we find St. Paul’s exhortation to run the good race and to avoid the sinful conduct of God’s Chosen People in the desert (1 Cor. 9:24; 10:5) set before us in the Epistle of Septuagesima Sunday, just as we start our preparation for Easter. When we call to mind the severity of the ancient forty-day fast, we can appreciate how realistically the liturgy’s "running the race" was understood. Even if penance of this kind is variously conditioned by the circumstances of the times in which we live, we do see, however, how one would falsify the liturgy were he to separate it from a courageous asceticism. Only by the cross and privation can we approach the true joys of Easter.
Once the full import of the Easter message has been understood in this way, our instructions on grace need cause us no great concern, since the all-important reality upon which grace-life depends has now been grasped. Now we can turn to more precise concepts, to conciliation with other knowledge, to the refutation of false opinions, but particularly to a more concrete realization of the large picture whose beauty has thus far been seen from a distance. This last will be the concern of catechetical instruction. But the sermon, too, will find many opportunities, especially during the Easter season, to add a word of clarification on particular points. However, of greater importance than well-defined outlines and clear-cut concepts on particular points of the doctrine on grace is and ever remains the inspiring understanding of the sublime heights to which God has exalted not only the God-Man, but every child of man who unites himself to Christ.
The presentation of the Easter mystery along these lines offers another singular benefit: a true understanding of the nature of the Church. Canon law and ecclesiastical administration must, obviously, keep to the fore the broader concept of the Church as a visible society and deal with those on her periphery, with those who do little more than bear the seal of their Baptism. These withered branches belong to the Church, it is true, but the nature of the tree will only be understood where we see the flow of vital sap. A high esteem of the Church and a proud consciousness of her will not grow among the faithful until they have grasped this deeper nature of the Church. Easter offers opportunities to this end. For Easter not only shows us how grace flows from Christ to the individual, it also points out how the Church came forth from the side of the New Adam as He expired on the cross, how the Church is assembled about the Risen Christ, how she was animated by the Holy Spirit. Out of this must grow the awareness of the intimate bond between the Church and grace which we discover in early Christianity. The Church as a juridical body might be understood (were there ever such a need), even were we to prescind from the fact that its founder lives on. He possessed all power when He founded it; He carried out the will of the Father; hence the Church must stand as God’s work. But the Church as a holy organism, animated by Christ, possessing His life as the branches bear the life of the vine, such a Church presupposes the continuing life of the dispenser of life, such a Church presupposes the glorified Christ. One cannot think of the Body without the living Head, who unites Himself to it to form an organism, a living unity.
If important ideas such as Christ, redemption, grace, Church, are vitally realized by pastor and flock through this kind of celebration of the main feasts of the Church’s year, it stands to reason that these thoughts will live on throughout the year. Participation at Sunday and week-day Masses will be enhanced by an awareness of many different overtones or undertones; the great mysteries of Christian faith will emerge from ancient liturgical forms and formulas and begin to exert a powerful influence on the thought and aspirations of the faithful; the Sunday gospels will throw new light on the developmental processes and fortunes of the Kingdom of God – the Church; the words of the Master as they are heard in divine worship become the living word of the living Christ, spoken to us today. From this viewpoint, too, the moral sermon should now take on a true Christian stamp. Just as St. Paul saw the practice of virtue only in Christo, so today’s sermon will no longer be satisfied with mere warnings and demands but will illumine these with the light that comes from that full meaning which they have in the new economy established by Christ
1 Translator’s Note It is not without significance that three of the octaves referred to above have recently been suppressed, namely, those of Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart and the Patronage of St. Joseph; the last mentioned feast has likewise been suppressed and that of St. Joseph the Worker, May 1, created in its stead.
2 Translator’s Note This fervent wish of 1936 has now been happily and gratefully fulfilled.