When the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued its directives regarding the New Liturgy of Holy Week, it made quite clear that this was a restoration and not an innovation. It was a return to concepts of worship which prevailed in the community for some sixteen hundred years prior to the Protestant Revolt. The same may be said of the new Instructions of September 3, 1958, on lay participation in divine worship.
Since the ninth century, the language of the liturgy has been largely incomprehensible in the West. The same is true in less degree of the Oriental rites. Thus, for several centuries, silence during Holy Mass has been customary for the laity. Habits of long standing are not easily overcome; a long struggle is now at hand to educate and re-educate clergy, religious, and laity to the role of liturgy in Catholic life.
It is unfortunate for catechetics in the recent past that liturgy was ever looked upon as something of a specialty, and liturgists as a group apart. Liturgy cannot be separated from dogma nor dogma from liturgy. A child who grows up unliturgical, grows up to that extent uncatholic. A teacher who does not teach liturgy, does not teach religion, nor does he convey a correct idea of the place the Christian is to take in the Church.
To attain a proper concept of the Church, it may be wise to reach back into the richness of theology. Here we find that the term church has a variety of meanings, but there are two basic usages which we must understand. In fact nothing could be more important for the Catholic's correct position in the present world than an understanding of these two aspects of the Church.
One aspect is very familiar to us, so familiar indeed that for most Catholics it has excluded every other possible understanding of the Church. This is what is sometimes called the Church's hierarchical structure. The Church differs from every other society on earth in that all other societies are formed b the union of their members, while the "form" of the Church is imposed from on high. When He founded the Church, Our Lord gave it its structure and its authority. His powers to teach, to govern, to sanctify, were communicated to the Apostles and to their successors under the direction of Peter. These powers would be exercised in His name to the end of time. This specifically gives form and structure to the Church, which is the means to the end, the end being the salvation of souls. The Church, therefore, is an outward and visible society, and it is hierarchical in nature. The true Christian operates in this framework as set up by Our Lord Jesus Christ, under the authority of men vested with the powers of Christ. In this sense the Church exists before the faithful because it is dependent upon the direct act of God.
"The Church precedes them [the faithful] by that in her which is on the part of God, or by that in her which pre-exists in Jesus Christ. The two ways in which the Church exists in God without yet existing in herself are these: (1) in divine predestination, whence the Church exists in a free and eternal idea and decree, whose actualisation must be unfolded in created time: (2) in Christ, who in becoming man virtually takes on the whole of human nature and contains the whole Church; who as the Anointed of God and in his threefold capacity of king, priest and prophet had in himself all the properties or energies by which the Church was to exist and live; who throughout his life on this earth kept the Church in his thoughts and in his heart, enabling her to exist and to live in him, a little in the same way as the common good of a people lives in the mind of its king or of an army in the mind of its commander. Little by little Jesus actualised his purpose, and the Church accordingly began to exist, no longer only in God or in Christ, but in herself."
The visible aspect of the hierarchical Church is so familiar to us that it needs little further development.
But the Church has another and very important aspect, which is the gathering of the faithful, and in which the Church is "made from below." The Church, seen from this point of view, is the holy people of God (the laos) forming together a corporate society in which the spirit of God is the animating influence. This aspect of the Church made up from her members was the one which was exaggerated out of all focus to the detriment of the hierarchical structure during the Protestant Revolution.
On this point, Father Congar says, "Thus it was that of the Church's two aspects which Catholic tradition requires to be held together -- that in which the Church is an institution that precedes and makes its members, and that in which she is the community made by its members -- the theological treatises practically ignored that one according to which a role of the laity could be a priori conceivable." The same author has already stated the effect which this has had upon worship or liturgy, "Her public worship, to confine ourselves to that example, always remained the institution's own worship, conformed with its rubrics, but in many places at least it ceased to be the worship of men, of living consciousness, of the human community. Whilst Protestantism was making the Church a people without a priesthood and Catholic apologists were replying by establishing the rightfulness of priesthood and institution, the Church in more than one place was ending herself reduced to the state of a priestly system without a Christian people."
We may now rightly return to our original position: that liturgy or worship is an integral part of the Christian life and of Catholic teaching. It springs from this dual aspect of the Church. The form of the worship, the manner in which it is carried out, the power, indeed, to preside over liturgical functions, is hierarchical in nature, coming to us by divine institution. But the movement of the faithful, the living spirit by which they come together to give public worship to God, is a social thing, a thing of communal dimensions. It involves the meeting of the hearts and the minds of the people of God in liturgical action. Priest and people -- the two go together for true liturgical worship in a union so intimate that they cannot be separated. The very discipline of the Church has rejected this over all the ages, requiring the assistance of a representative, at least, of the faithful in order for a priest to say Mass.
The modern understanding of the importance of the laity in the Church has had tremendous and most beneficent effect upon the whole life of the Church. This understanding stems again from the second aspect of the Church as formed from below. It has penetrated most of the activities of the Church by now and the laity are once more beginning to realize and appreciate their patrimony. Perhaps the last stronghold, which has still not entirely yielded to the presence of the laity, is that of the liturgical function. There is no doubt that great strides, indeed gigantic strides, have been taken in this direction, but the very fact that only the ordained minister of God can preside at the liturgical function has given the whole field a sort of "priest only" atmosphere. It is proving an herculean task to shake the laity out of their apathy especially in worship. It is still with a sense of shock that the congregation finds itself called upon to participate in any active way in divine worship.
Almost the whole hope of total reform lies with the school. We do not mean by this that the school can do it alone, but unless we can produce a new generation of children used to the concept of participation, understanding (if not in theory at least in practical terms) the place of the laity in the Church and the need of participation in worship, then the best efforts of our bishops and parish priests will be only partially successful. There is no doubt that what most militates against the true development of public worship at the moment is a psychological block on the part of the people themselves. So long have they been excluded from participation in the services that they find it extremely difficult to join in. A new generation, then, is required but the difficulty is that many teachers and pastors are of the older generation, and, because of innumerable problems, hesitate to act vigorously in inaugurating active participation in liturgical worship. Nevertheless, it is their duty to be among the first to overcome obstacles, to examine the theology of the Church and the directives of the hierarchy, and to enter wholeheartedly into the development of the proper expression of the worship of the people of God.
Parents are not exempted in the matter of preparing themselves and their children to take active part in divine worship. What is required, really, is a sincere desire on the part of the parents to participate in the worship of the Church. An elementary distinction between liturgical and non-liturgical services or action is not beyond the ken of the average Catholic. If the parent lends himself to the instructions of the pastor, tries to join in some active participation at Mass, shows the proper attitude toward the liturgical aspects of the sacraments, manifests an awareness of the temporal and sanctoral cycles, already much is being accomplished. A liturgical home is the breeding ground of truly liturgically-minded Catholic children.
Liturgy is not an essential feature of Christian worship. Liturgy is Christian worship. It is the cult of the Church, the public offering of homage and thanksgiving that is officially made to Almighty God. "It is the whole public worship of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, Head and members" says Pius XII in Mediator Dei. Secondly, it is the means appointed by God to unite us to Himself: through our living the liturgy the Church incorporates us personally into Christ and makes us grow in that union with Him. Seen in this light the liturgy is no longer an extra branch of teaching but rather a vast living structure into which all the elements of a school religious instruction course will fit with a marvelous cohesion.
For those who teach, the question becomes less that of introducing more lessons, than that of presenting one's subject-matter in a certain light. It is false pedagogy to argue that catechism classes are one thing and divine worship another. Christian doctrine is studied that it may be believed. Belief springs from the willing assent of the whole mind and finds its logical expression in worship. The rule of prayer follows the rule of belief. Any attempt to keep the two in separate compartments can only lead to catastrophe. Thus we may fully speak not only of biblical but of liturgical catechesis.
If the biblical narrative offers us content by which to proceed from concrete to abstract realities in teaching religion, then in this same pedagogical sense the liturgy excels as a catechetical medium. The Mass, the sacred vessels, the vestments, the fixtures in the Church, the solemnity of the gestures, the singing of responses, the lighted candles; these form living catechism lessons familiarizing children, through the use of their senses, with the mystery of faith.
Just as the biblical narrative must always be a vital means of uniting children with the contemporary Christ living in His Church here and now, so must the liturgy be a means of union with the living Christ. There is a close relationship between the scriptural narrative and the liturgy which we must incorporate into our religious teaching. In each, Christ reaches from the past into the present; the Christ to whom the Bible narratives lead is He who now continues to perfect His work in us. Through our personal union with Him we receive a share in His divine life and are enabled to cooperate in His redemptive mission as "other Christs." This is accomplished especially in the Mass and in the sacraments.
If "learning to do by doing" has great educational merit in classroom procedure, it has even greater power in liturgical training. The child who is taught to live the liturgy comes to live the life of Christ, for the liturgy not only teaches us about Christ, it gives what it teaches -- Christ Himself. Religious living is, in the anal analysis, the ultimate aim of catechetical training. It is in the liturgy that this living is realized, for in the liturgy Christ continues to live His life in the Church, His Mystical Body.
Not only are the principal truths of faith reviewed for us from year to year in the liturgy, but the liturgy directs us to respond to the mysteries of faith in prayer and to assimilate them through taking active part in them. The religious experience offered by the liturgy surpasses by far all other techniques of assimilative exercises in our pedagogy. "This is a great mystery --I mean in reference to Christ and to the Church" (Eph. 5:32).
Concentrating as the liturgy does upon the Person and work of Christ, our catechetical methods must follow suit. Thus the biblical narrative which we use in developing a lesson ought, in the early grades surely, to follow the course of the Liturgical Year. The highlights of our biblical catechism, Christmas and Easter, should be deepened by our celebrating these feasts with the children, deepening their liturgical experience by e ping them to draw living grace from these two great cycles of the year. The story of Christmas and all that precedes and follows it, as well as Easter with its preparation and its concluding feasts, must be more than biblical narratives -- they must be living, resent, religious values. Biblical-narrative catechesis must precede liturgical celebration, obviously. But we must not stop with the history. We must realize that both in the Scripture and in the liturgy, God gives Himself. The liturgical celebration is complementary to the biblical-narrative catechesis that precedes, and makes that catechesis concrete.
The formation of a Christian is impossible if, in our training, we do not above all promote the growth of true faith. This requires our seeing that faith is an act of the intellect and of the will.
Faith is an intellectual virtue. It is an adherence of the mind to the Good News proclaimed in the Church. The principal object of this adherence is Jesus Christ our Savior. But the growth of faith in Christ must lead to a commitment of the whole person to Christ and arouse interest and love for His Church. Thus the growth of faith includes hope and charity as well.' Furthermore, one must be fully convinced of truths of faith centering in Christ. In the late upper grades this proof must be developed for the child to help him better and more fully to commit himself to Christ. These proofs will center upon God, Christ, and the Church and, as far as the created intellect can go, will lead him to the conclusion that faith is most reasonable.
Faith is an act of the will: the act of one who opens his heart to welcome God calling him. It is in fact a lifelong gift of self to God. It is a friendly reply to an invitation to life from a person, to the Person of Christ. Like all that is alive and vital, faith develops by practice. The act of faith must be an act of adherence to Christ, the center of the child's faith, as well as an affirmation of things to be believed.
The liturgy remains the most powerful agency of Christian formation, for it contains the treasury of a knowledge that is for life. What it contains is for the development of both intellect and will.
1. Of Intellect: First of all, the entire teaching of the Church, all that is proposed for our belief, is here systematically presented as the principal events of the history of salvation are renewed and reviewed over and over. "Liturgy is dogma prayed," says Fr. Jungmann.
2. Of Will: In the liturgy we approach the truths of faith in a prayerful way. We learn to practice the theological virtues and not only to define them. We partake of divine life through the sacraments, and not only list and analyze them. The liturgy is meant to give life to our knowledge. The child may forget many details of his catechism lessons, but the liturgy lived and formed as a habit of life will review the principal truths of faith for him throughout his lifetime, bringing him what it teaches: the God-life shared through Jesus Christ.
Just as the very first living of the faith is found in our attitude toward God Himself, so the very erst movement of the Christian soul is one of awe, reverence, and adoration for its Maker. It is also true that, as St. John says "If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar. For how can he who does not love his brother, whom he sees, love God, whom he does not see?" (1 John 4:20). Love of neighbor is the external manifestation of an internal love for God. Still it remains that the first movement of the Christian soul is toward God. Pure adoration of God is a thrilling experience and well it was written that "man is never greater than when he is on his knees." Worship is a need of our nature as well as of our supernature.
Nor is individual worship the beginning or the end of this expression of our attitude toward the Almighty. We have an unquenchable urge to worship together, to worship with our brethren, to worship in the manner which God Himself set forth. Religious people everywhere know the need of worship and the fulfillment which comes with it, but the Catholic with the true sense of the Church has an infinitely oner appreciation of the fullness of worship. The only perfect worship of God can be that which He Himself has dered and prepared. This is the movement of His whole people, praying with a single mind and a single spirit, with the divine powers of Christ operating in their midst, through their ordained clergy.
The center of all true Christian worship is Our Lord's sacrificial death upon the cross. By this not only did God redeem the world, but He gave to us the perfect offering which we return to Him as the fulfillment of all the movements of adoration, of reparation, of thanksgiving, and of petition that have stirred in the hearts of men since the beginning of time, and which will ever be found there throughout all eternity. This sacrificial death of Christ is made truly present upon our altars in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the total worship of the total Church. From it stem all the other aspects of what is called liturgical worship, the official worship of the Church, the people of God led by their clergy. This is when the Church in all its fullness pays homage to its God who has created and redeemed it, and in which He is reflected.
Thus the liturgy remains always a corporate thing, even when it is performed by an individual -- as by a priest reading the Divine Once. But the sense of belonging, of social action, is absolutely essential to the movement of the liturgy, and this is what must be inculcated in the minds of children. The simple prayer of children is beautiful and heartwarming, but in the Christian dispensation, the action of the individual, however ennobling, is not sufficient.
This does not mean that it is not essential to teach the true spirit of prayer to children. The liturgy is not a sort of magic formula. We do not achieve our end simply by going through the motions. What Father Roguet says about the need for active participation in and personal contribution to the sacraments, is true of every liturgical action: "It must be understood that this doctrine [of efficacy ex opere operato] does not imply grace is produced automatically by the mere fact that the sacrament is correctly administered. All that the sacramental rite (sacramentum tantum) produces infallibly is the intermediary reality which theologians call res et sacramentum; in three of the sacraments this is the 'character,' and in the other four something analogous. That this 'res et sacramentum' should be produced infallibly is a consequence of the general organization of the sacramental system, and the economy of salvation in the Church. The whole structure of the Church is built up around this fixed hierarchy of sacramental characters, for the benefit of all. For the res et sacramentum to produce the ultimate effect of the sacrament, which is grace (res tantum), the person receiving the sacrament, must co-operate freely. Now this free co-operation is itself the effect of a gratuitous grace from our Lord, so much so that no sacrament ever forces, if one may so express it, our Lord's hand. If Christ acts in each sacrament it is in accordance with the free movements of actual grace by which he has prepared the recipient to respond to the appeal of the sacrament. Finally we must add, to define the full extent of this liberty, that Christ also grants his grace apart from any sacraments. He justifies without Baptism, but by a baptismal grace, the man of goodwill who has never heard the Gospel preached; he nourishes, without the Eucharist but by a eucharistic grace, the just man who hungers for God but is unable to approach the altar."
As we have tried to point out, there is no hiatus between any part of the teaching of religion and the liturgical spirit. In order to participate properly in the liturgy, the child must in fact be taught to pray properly. The coming together of the faithful does not diminish the responsibility of the individual; it enlarges it and produces a greater effect than the sum of all the individual contributions, adding something which must be understood by the children.
They must be led to realize that there is more to assistance at Mass than the individual prayers of those who are there. In this way they will develop a sense for what is right and fitting almost without being told. It is not difficult for someone who realizes the importance of the communal aspect of the Mass to come to the immediate conclusion that therefore what the faithful must do is participate in the actual sacrifice. Other devotions like the rosary, the Stations of the Cross, popular hymns of a non-Eucharistic nature, and so forth, are immediately perceived as being out of place at Mass. It is literally true that it is not necessary to teach children what is improper during the assistance at Mass. If they are led positively to understand what they are doing, they will perceive this for themselves. Teachers who make worship an integral part of their formation of the young Christian point out that without anything being said by the teacher, the children promptly inquire as to why some people insist on saying the beads during the Mass, or why pious hymns are sung in honor of this or that saint, or even why some people insist on receiving Holy Communion at a moment at which it is quite obviously not a part of this sacrificial drama.
There are excellent books giving suggestions on how liturgy should be taught in the schools.' We are satisfied to describe the necessity of complete integration of the liturgy with the program. As a further point in this integration we would like to remind the reader of what has been said about the kerygmatic approach.
The essence of the kerygma is the twofold action between God and man. We have pointed out that the erst movement in this action is that in which God gives to man His message and His dispensation of salvation. The second movement is man's response to this. Both of these are essential to the fu1fillment of God's purpose. Without God's help and His positive action in our regard, we would have been lost. Without our response we are also lost because God will not have slavish service, but that of His loving children.
This response of man to the call of God and to His redemptive action has also been defined and regularized by God Himself. He has shown us the way to make it beautiful and, above all, effective. It is through His Church that He wishes to be honored, worshiped, and loved. Therefore, the true Christian is one who directs his action of response to God through the Church. This is why we keep repeating that the liturgy is not a separate subject but an essential part of the Christian teaching. It is the guidance of this movement of the soul toward God in union with our fellow men.
Therefore, in the curriculum of the teaching of religion, a deep sense of the Church is the first essential for a true liturgical spirit. The knowledge of the Redemption itself, particularly as applied to the sacrifice of the Mass, a wholehearted understanding of this Holy Sacrifice, an appreciation of the work of the sacraments, all of these things are of the essence. Moreover, they are truly liturgical. It remains only to direct this understanding through its proper channels of action.
It may be of some help to set out the basic elements in this liturgical integration of the program. We have already indicated that all of doctrine has liturgical aspects. It is intimately connected with the relationship between God and man, and therefore the second movement of the kerygmatic approach draws its inspiration from the erst, in which we study what God has done for us. This is the reason why we in turn must do things for God. However, it might be said that the doctrines which lend themselves the most closely to liturgical participation are: the Church, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the priesthood, and the sacraments. It is difficult even to make these distinctions because they are all facets of the same things. The encyclical Mediator Dei states: "The Church at the bidding of Her Founder continued the priestly office of Jesus Christ, especially in the liturgy."
Once the children are thoroughly acquainted with the full implication of these doctrines and their relationship to corporate worship, the rest is again a question of logical conclusion. They need to be taught about the temporal and sanctoral cycles of the Church, most of all in relation to the question of how these work out in practice. Children are amazingly liturgical by nature, and children love drama and stories. The temporal cycle of the Church is nothing more or less than the story of salvation, and therefore lends itself to all forms of dramatization. Besides, what children are not conscious of Christmas and Easter, to say nothing of Advent and Lent?
It is quite easy to build upon children's already established notions to make them completely liturgical-minded. To do so, it is important that they adjust their concepts to the true liturgical importance of these feasts. It is always a surprise to a child to realize that Easter and Pentecost hold a higher place in the liturgy of the Church than the feast of Christmas. However, when it is explained to them that the Church gives greater prominence to Easter and Pentecost for a very sound reason, then immediately a great lesson has been learned. When the teacher adds to these concepts the most important one -- that these are not anniversaries in the same way as we have birthdays or reminders of great battles fought or victories won, but living events going on in the Church as they went on originally in the life of Our Lord -- the entire groundwork for a life of conscious liturgical-mindedness has been laid.
Next to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass nothing is a more fertile source of liturgical-mindedness than the sacraments. The sacraments are the fulfillment and the illustration of the Incarnation itself.' Since man is at the same time both spirit and body, God chose to take a human form to appear in our mesh, in order that He might visibly show the Redemption and carry it out in the nature of man himself. We have already said that the true worship of God has its center in the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross. We join together with Our Lord now in the worship of the Father.
The sacraments are like the Church itself. They are an invisible reality made visible through concrete and material objects. "For us the most spiritual realities can take on consistency only by being wrapped in material forms that make it possible for us to distinguish and take hold of them. And if God is Spirit, he has been made Flesh; he has willed that his Son, his eternal and unmaterial Word, should come and dwell among us to redeem us by allowing his four limbs to be nailed in a very material way to a wooden Cross and in allowing his blood to be truly and painfully shed, the human blood that he received from a woman of our human race; and all this in order to save souls such as ourselves."
The continuation of this is in the sacraments. Here, God again operates through the concrete and through the symbolic. For children this, of course, is the true pedagogic approach in any case. Some teachers say that they have no flair for dramatics in their classroom. It is not difficult to dramatize the sacraments. For example, simply to conduct a baptismal service from beginning to end, with explanation of all of the meaning of the various gestures and actions of the priest, is the highest form of drama. In regard to symbols, the teacher should not be content to interest the child only in the symbolism of water. The whole ceremony of Baptism is one series of the most beautiful symbolic actions.
The same could be said of practically all of the sacraments, although not all are so rich in symbolic expression. Each is a perfect lesson in the concrete realization of interior grace. It is all of mankind sanctified and made holy even in his material nature. From such a study of the sacraments comes the realization of the true meaning of the liturgy, the meeting of heaven and earth.
"The liturgy appears to us," says Cyprian Vagaggini, O.S.B., "as a wonderful mirror in which is reflected and summed up the whole complexus of the relations between God and men.
It is the projection in the present of the whole history of salvation, past, present and future. It is the summary of the whole mystery of Christ and of the Church, and the place where, by Christ's mediation, God keeps descending among men and men keep rising to God."