Author: Revd Fr Christopher Smith

I knew I was not in America anymore when on the night before Palm Sunday we walked into a bar in Moron de la Frontera. The bar belonged to the Confraternity of Loreto, and the men and their sons were all abuzz, for the next day would begin once again the most famous celebration annual celebration of Holy Week: Semana Santa in Seville. The men were comparing the knots that had developed on the backside of their necks after years of carrying floats called pasos in these celebrations. And the young boys looked up to their fathers and the day that they too would carry in their bodies the sign of the Passion they celebrate in such a sumptuous manner.

Two Americans, Fr Luke Melcher of Louisiana, and I, went to visit our friend Don Pedro, who is Chaplain to the American Air Force Base in Moron as well as pastor of two parishes outside of Seville. This Palm Sunday morning I celebrated the Mass in the parish of Moron for the community there, and after Mass we began the great adventure Semana Santa in Seville.

I had heard of the world-famous celebrations of Holy Week before. I had seen the pictures on the Internet and Youtube videos. But nothing would prepare me for what really is the largest Catholic block party in the world. Of course, before we could begin, we had to have lunch in the one of the chic quarters of cosmopolitan Seville and plan out our day.

Good thing there is a IPhone App for Semana Santa in Seville. But we also had the ABC Newspaper’s several sheet spread timetable to choose which processions we would follow. As we drove into the city, we were listening to the ESPN of Religion, a running commentary on the radio of every moment of every procession. Of course, having as our guide one of the most well-connected young priests in Spain was like having an all-access pass to be up close and personal with this amazing religious event.

In the early afternoon, we were able to work our way to the area around the famous Cathedral with its imposing belltower, the Giralda. To say that it was crowded does not begin to describe it. But on this incredibly hot afternoon, what struck me was how everyone was dressed. Nowhere in all of my travels through the Americas and Europe have I ever seen such a large number of snazzily and preppily dressed people. I don’t know if the indomitable blogger of the Sartorialist has ever been to Semana Santa, but he has no idea what he is missing!

Every procession follows a similar pattern. The first float depicts a mystery during the events of the Passion. The statue compositions rest upon wooden or silver and gold tables and often weigh up to two tons. Beneath them are from 36 to 56 men who carry the float. Each float has an elaborately carved knocker. A precentor uses the knocker to give instructions to the litter-bearers, who are hidden beneath the float by richly embroidered velvet cloths. Water boys occasionally steal under the floats to bring these men something to hydrate them. The famous penitents, in their distinctive robes and hoods, process in full anonymity. Behind the float depicting the mystery of Christ is a band, always playing a hymn in a minor key. Not far behind are more penitents. Many carry silver staffs, crosses, or the Rule of the Confraternity that sponsors that procession, often a book itself encased in silver.

Each procession also has another float with a statue of the Blessed Virgin, under a canopy, often of fine silver filigree work. Each canopy as eight or ten poles, and tassels of precious metal. Around the Blessed Virgin is a forest of candles as well as wax flowers as well as real flowers. The interesting thing about these floats is that everything is in motion. While the candlesticks, poles, and vases are all attached, they are attached in such a way that the entire float moves graciously and there is a peculiar sound of metal in perpetual motion. Acolytes with crucifix and torches are vested in dalmatics of velvet and couched gold embroidery over handmade lace albs, and are accompanied by several thurifers with so many charcoals in their censers I still do not know they did not melt every thurible in Andalucia. Following the Marian float would be another band, playing lively music in a major key.

The music for the procession that the bands use dates mostly from the 19^th century, and not a small portion of it sounds suspiciously Puccini-inspired. Occasionally from a balcony a Spanish VIP with a stentorian voice would intone a saeta, a haunting Arabic-sounding serenade to the Blessed Virgin.

While this is the general procedure for a procession, it is important to understand that at any given time, day or night, for an entire week, there are several elaborate processions going on at the same time. As Our Lord of Victories, triumphant in his resignation to the chalice of suffering was making His way in front of us, behind us He was also marching triumphantly into Jerusalem as two processions skirted opposite ends of the plaza.

One of the most edifying things was the comportment of the faithful. Extraordinarily well-dressed young men and women climbed on top of anything that could give them a better view and kept a reverent silence when the floats passed, and the Sign of the Cross was reverently made. In some of the processions, those who processed walk backwards as a sign of reverence to Our LORD and Our Lady.

After several hours of watching processions under the blazing Andalucian sun, we stopped into Starbucks (America, America everywhere) for cold Frapuccinos. By this point, around 9pm, I was ready for a liter of sangria and bed. But the night had just begun.

We went to the Cathedral where the Confraternity that Don Pedro’s family has belonged to since time immemorial, La Estrella (Stella Maris), was beginning its procession. He was avidly looking for his brother, but how do you find your brother when he is dressed in a robe and a hood along with thousands upon thousands of other penitents? But they did find each other, and so Fr Luke and I gazed upon the delightful scene of two brothers, one a priest and the other penitent, chatting in the nave of the Cathedral, one shrouded in anonymity and the other in his clerics, taking part in a ritual that existed centuries before Christopher Columbus, who awaits the Resurrection of the Body in the Cathedral of Seville, ever thought of a voyage of discovery.

We spent several hours in the Cathedral, working our way through the endless files of people in procession. The Archbishop of Seville and his Auxiliary were seated in a makeshift throne room in a side chapel where we were granted a brief but warm audience. But one of the most emotional scenes of the day was when the Archbishop rushed to one of the floats, and went under it and knelt before the men who carried it. With those poor men who had been carrying the float through the streets of Seville for hours he prayed. He asked them to pray with him for vocations to the priesthood, for holy priests to shepherd the flock of Christ. He prayed for World Youth Day, for young people. He begged their prayers and prayed with them. Fortified by the blessing of their shepherd, at the sound of the knocker, the men in unison jumped as high as they could in the air and the procession began once again.

The greatest honour of the day was to accompany this procession through the streets of Seville, rather than being mere spectators. We saw so many tears of gratitude, prayer, and repentance. We saw so many acts of kindness to the penitents and the float-bearers. And what an edifying thing to see among the hooded throngs barefoot children walking through the streets with candles taller than they were, all meditating in their own way on the Passion of Christ.

It was quite the introduction to Holy Week. It is now after 3am. The streets of Seville are still thronged with worshippers, and they are still at it. They are predicting rain this week, but as absolutely exhausted as I am (and I can only imagine those who carried the floats or walked barefoot through the streets in procession), I am praying ad repellendam tempestates. I do not want to miss a minute of this extraordinarily Catholic manifestation of faith.

As one float passed by of Christ silent before the unjust judgment of Pilate, I was moved to pray for the Church, for her priests, for those who have been abused, for those who have been accused falsely, for all of those who do not have a voice. Somehow the prayer that comes from meditation over a scene like that seems so much useful than the angry words, political machinations and ideological battles which ruin our lives in society and the Church.

Something like Semana Santa is not strictly liturgical. It does not correspond to historical-critical interpretations of Scripture. It is impervious to the politically correct mindset of those who would force reforms on the Church hardly consonant with Catholic tradition. It is folkloric, but it is not pagan. It is a massive movement of humanity in dialogue with the power of the narrative of the Passion of Christ. A movement which brings tears to the eyes, which are tears of joy, repentance, fatigue, and wonder.

The world needs Semana Santa. The world needs Semana Santa because in Seville at least, people recognize their own fragility and limitations in a dramatic way. But they recognize even more that there is Victory in the Blood of Jesus, and they call down the power of that Blood upon them and the whole world in prayer, penance and works of mercy. I can hardly think of a better way to live Holy Week than that.

Check out my PicasaWeb Album of Semana Santa pictures I will be updating ALL WEEK LONG!

Many of us have experienced five or six parishes in the same city that often seem like different religions.

It is part of the ecclesiastical topography of many a mid-sized town in America. Many of the priests in these parishes are extraordinarily gifted, intelligent, and, each in his own way, very Catholic. There is some good natured ribbing between them, and occasionally some tension, but nothing serious. But many of the laity have migrated between these parishes for years, and not a few of them define themselves by the churchmanship of their pastor. The attempts of the clergy to blunt the more acute excesses of their fans and detractors have not been very successful. To some, this may seem like a snapshot of post-Vatican II Catholicism, it shows the creativity and diversity of the Catholic community. For others, it is a manifestation of the decomposition of unity within the American church.

At any rate, it is certainly different than American Catholicism in the 1950s. Then, people defined themselves by what parish they attended because that was the church closest to them. Curates transferred to and fro, and the Pastors remained for decades, fixed as the stars in the sky. In all of them, Low Mass was celebrated every day in Latin and at very few was a High Mass celebrated occasionally, usually with the Curate singing the Requiem from the gallery, because a pious donor upped the Mass stipend by 100%.

It must be said that the current dramatically different situation has been a natural outgrowth of what has happened to American Catholicism in the last forty years. Each parish and priest’s “style” responds to a real or a perceived need in the Church. Some choose one or the other for reverence, preaching, orthodox catechesis, social justice, convenience, good music: a whole constellation of reasons. Before, the clergy and their people would hop from parish to parish once a year for the Forty Hours Devotion. Now, clergy and their people feel more at their ease in a Jewish synagogue, Islamic mosque, or Unitarian meeting than the Catholic church down the street, because it doesn’t feel like home.

To some extent, this situation has come about because those needs are real ones, and no one parish could hope to respond to how people thought those needs should be met. But it also is a direct outgrowth of the whole concept of liturgical style, and how that style often masks (or unmasks) theology. Now, in this town I do not think that any of the priests want this situation to obtain or to continue.

But again, if we are to renew our parishes, not along sectarian lines, but along the way of reform and restoration that is part and parcel of Catholic Tradition, we have to go back to basics.

The concept of the active participation of the faithful is one of the great landmarks of Vatican II’s teaching on the liturgy, and has been enthusiastically welcomed by clergy and faithful alike. What has not been as happily accepted is the same Council’s clear distinction between the baptismal priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood of Holy Orders. In fact, they have often been posited as mutually exclusive. The hierarchical nature of the Church (and, may I say it, the monarchical episcopate and the infallible papacy) have been obscured by a vague sense that Vatican II desired a certain, or a radical, democratization, of the Church’s life.

Some thinkers have posited specific changes of the Liturgical Reform for creating this situation. It is not the scope of this essay to deny or validate that claim. I am sure, however, that there has been a loss of sight of what the liturgy actually is, and in consequence, it has made the liturgy, and the parishes where it is celebrated, susceptible to monopolization by the person of the celebrant or of those who plan the liturgy in a way unprecedented in Catholic history.

It has been repeated that the liturgy has a vertical and a horizontal dimension, and that the two will exist in uneasy tension until the liturgical consummation of all things at the end of the world. The post-conciliar Catholic experience has privileged the concept of community and the meal aspect of the Mass. It may be true that experience of the Mass before the Council did not incarnate those aspects of Catholic life as well as it could have. But it is also important to see that those two aspects can never be separated from two other important aspects: the concept of transcendence and the sacrificial aspect of the Mass.

As soon as the concept of community is inserted into the discussion, the question becomes: Whose community? An authentically Catholic understanding of community comes from Baptism. By Baptism, we become part of the community of faith that is the Church, the Body of Christ, and are part of a hierarchical communion of holy people, places and things. Because of that, we are linked to the community of the universal Church as well as the community of the time and place where we are called to live and witness to the faith. Community has often been interpreted in our time in a narrow way: community is restricted to those with whom I choose to have community. My socio-economic status, political leanings, theological opinions, linguistic limitations all become factors in how I define community, even if I am trying to escape or transcend them all. Community in a ecclesial communion is replaced by community in a self-defining clique. All of a sudden, people are no longer just Catholics. They are liberal/conservative, Latin/English, Tridentine/Novus Ordo, traditional/charismatic. Such a perversion of community can happen where community is interpreted in varying ways.

The next question becomes: What kind of meal? Each one of us has experienced a wide variety of ways of eating. Formal state banquets, family TV dinners, fast food in a drive-through, fun barbeques, and the parish pot-luck. In each one, who does what, how and what one cooks, and how it is served is important. When the Mass is restricted to a meal, all of these questions take center stage. When this happens against the backdrop of a narrow vision of community, then struggles ensue as to who determines the community and the meal.

The only way to avoid the disunity which comes from privileging community and meal as horizontal aspects of the liturgy is to place them in the context of their vertical correlatives. By transcendence, we realize first and foremost that the Mass is the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ to His Father in the Holy Ghost on the Cross, a sacrifice which is renewed in a very specific ritual form which both manifests and produces the hierarchial communion of the Church. When transcendence is foremost, community becomes the Church produced by the Eucharist, not by the community. By sacrifice, we realize that the fruits of that sacrifice are given under the sacramental veils of bread and wine, and that the ritual re-enactment of the Mass is not principally about re-creating a first-century meal in Palestine, but about connecting heaven and earth.

When community and meal are not balanced by transcendence and sacrifice, a priest, and by extension his parish, loses sight of what it means to be a priest. The cultic (as well as ministerial) liturgical role of the priest, defined by sacrifice and the sacred, is reduced to one aspect of the priestly reality, that of giving human support to people. The Catholic sacramental view of the priesthood is replaced by a Protestant view of ministry, and that in turn by a secular view of humanist employment. When these things are not balanced, a parish begins to see its identity no longer as formed by the reality they celebrate, each one in his own way, but as something they create each one according to his own arbitrary principles.

When this is translated into the liturgy, the priest becomes the presider who acts as a witness to what the community does. What the community does in this case still refers to God, but what is offered to God is a sacrifice of praise, and what is received is the good feeling that comes from the sacrifice of praise. In such an optic, the presence of God is clearly within the community. Any attempt to assert another type of presence, or a cultic transcendent liturgy is vehemently rejected. Yet Catholic teaching, even after Vatican II and the Ordinary Form of the Mass, has never denied that the Mass is a true sacrifice and the priest is a true sacrificial priest. In this optic, the direction, or orientation of the sacrifice, is on the sacrifice itself. Thus, it is on the Altar of Sacrifice, the Sacrifice which is made clear symbolically on the Crucifix joined to the Altar of Sacrifice, and really in the gifts of the Body and Blood of Christ when they are on the Altar of Sacrifice and given in Holy Communion.

The distinctly priestly character of the sacred liturgy does not, however, mean that the lay faithful are reduced to mere spectators of a re-enacted ritual that produces a sacrament which is their only participation in it. While the priest, standing in persona Christi capitis, truly celebrates the sacrifice according to the ritual form the Church has prescribed, the faithful participate in a very real way. They do not participate by way of doing particular actions in accord with how their community has democratically voted them into be done.

Because by Baptism, they are the Body of Christ, the entire Church is transcendentally and mystically present at the Sacrifice because the Body is completely united to the Head. The liturgy, therefore, is a corporate action in which the ministerial priest in his hierarchical and cultic function re-enacts in persona Christi capitis the sacrifice which has made the Body attached to that Head what it is, by its being in union with the Trinity.

This view of the liturgy is hardly clericalist. While a priest is necessary for the Mass, the faithful are by right of their being a royal priesthood just as necessary for the Mass because they are the Body of Christ. It is a nobler function for the laity, because it is not tied to mere human ways of doing. It stems from what the laity are as elevated by grace to unity with the divine. If the laity understand the dignity of their vocation within the liturgy, then they will cease to be preoccupied with the ways in which they can do things to give them a sense of purpose and praise. They will realize that they are the Body of Christ and all of their actions have meaning only insofar as they are in conformity with the Christ of which they are image and likeness.

Before any tinkering with rites and words of the Mass will produce renewal in the Church, clergy and laity must once again rediscover what, or rather who, the Mass really is.

When we lose sight of this, the clergy are sorely tempted to view their work in the vineyard as “their” ministry, and the laity follow. Priests with larger than life personalities and the parishes formed by them see themselves as “us” and others as “them.” A liturgy created and sustained by man, be it the priest or the liturgy committee or a panel of experts, will inevitably cut off those who identify with one particular community and its meal, from the Church and her Sacrifice.

We are now witnessing in our own time gifted and bright clergy who prefer the liturgy and the community they have created to the Sacrifice of the Church and communion with the Church created by that Sacrifice. They feel they have to choose between the Catholic Church and the community they have created. Others have rejected the corrected translation of the English Mass or papal instructions on the liturgy because they do not conform to the narrow community they have invented in their own minds. Priests separate God from His Church, charism from institution, because they cannot reconcile the liturgy of their hopes and dreams with the liturgy of a Church which is not theirs to create, but theirs to serve.

These are all false choices. The restoration of peace in the Church can come only when priests and people abandon the idols of their own making and return to a liturgy which is not about them, but entirely about the worship of God. The only choice a Catholic can ever make is to worship Him in spirit and truth. That has nothing to do with priestly personalities, styles of liturgy, or actions and reactions.

For the last year, I have been doing my doctoral research on the French Jesuit Henri De Lubac (1896-1991). This mild-mannered man who played a heroic part in the resistance to the Nazis in France was catapulted to a dubious fame in 1946 when he published a little book called Surnaturel.

The book was ostensibly little more than an historical survey about the concept of the supernatural in Catholic theology, but behind it was a more ambitious project. De Lubac, together with some other French and German theologians, was convinced that the evil of secularization had arisen in part because of a decadent interpretation of theology that had gripped the Church ever since St Thomas Aquinas. For them, the only way to shake the Church out of its fortress mentality and allow her to engage with the world was by renewing theology to re-establish contact between contemporary thought and the early Fathers of the Church.

When De Lubac charged that the noted commentator Tommaso di Vio, better known as Cajetan (1469-1534), had falsified St Thomas’ teaching on the supernatural, the theologians of the day reacted bitterly. For several years, the debate raged in French theological magazines. De Lubac was removed from his teaching post in Lyon. Then, Pope Blessed John XXIII was elected Pope and convoked the Second Vatican Council. This theologian was asked to be a consultor to the council, and his name was inscribed among the theological glitterati who comprised a school that came to be known as the nouvelle theologie. In the wake of the Council, De Lubac, who had been known before it as a dangerous radical, was just as easily dismissed as a reactionary throwback. De Lubac had always maintained that the answer to the question How is God related to human nature? was crucial, not only for theology, but for every aspect of the Church’s life. Within a decade after the Council, theologians were speaking of the twilight of the supernatural as if it were a theological category which had passed into the land of fairy tales, along with limbo and the doctrine that outside the Church there is no salvation.

De Lubac, to his credit, made some valid criticisms about the theology of the supernatural as had come to be explained in his time. He also rejected in great part the entire neo-scholastic system in which theology had been taught for centuries, but did not foresee that his name would be invoked for every kind of trend from liberation theology to Radical Orthodoxy, whose tenets he hardly would have supported. Yet his critique of the theology of the supernatural was accepted prima facie for generations, as it turns out, rather uncritically.

De Lubac’s rejection of the post-Tridentine Baroque commentatorial tradition was part of a fascinating phenomenon in mid-twentieth century theology. Throughout Catholic academia, there was the growing belief that there was something not quite right with the Council of Trent and what came after it. Theologians looked at the often dry and boring manuals of theology of the time and compared them with the vivacity of Patristic and early Medieval authors, and found the former wanting. These academic accurately foresaw the wind of secularism.

What they did not see was the whirlwind of the disintegration of a unitary method of Catholic theology. There had always been pluralism in Catholic theology. Every major university had chairs in Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit, Thomistic and nominalist theologies. But the critique men of the Church like De Lubac made of the hegemony of neo-Thomism in their time actually gave a tool for others to replace legitimate theological pluralism with doctrinal disorder and chaos.

In matters liturgical, there was also the growing feeling that what happened to the liturgy at Trent and afterwards was somehow not quite right. Eminent liturgical thinkers like Louis Bouyer decried what they saw to be the theatricality of a baroque liturgy removed from the active participation of the people. They looked backwards to the liturgical experience of the primitive Church as having some kind of normative status even as it was admittedly shrouded in mystery.

Pope Pius XII, who was very much in favour of theological progress and research, did see the dangers with such an approach. His encyclicals, Humani generis and Mediator Dei, sought to put thinkers on the alert that such thinking was really anachronistic, and could actually harbour dangers for the integrity of the faith. The exuberant optimism of the conciliar period, however, confident in its own scientific claims, ignored this warning, and continued to propose that the only way forward, for theology as for liturgy, was to go backwards into a better time and forwards into an even better time. What had to be done was not only challenge, but eliminate, the status quo. In doing so, a new Church could be sung into being which would be more authentically Catholic.

The chief problem with this mindset is not the often sincere intentions for ecclesiastical renewal which accompanied it. This problem is expressed in two postulates. The first, is that there existed in the past some point of reference in which the liturgy, theology and Church life was pure, was what should be. This is incorrect, because the Church is never pure and what should be will only be in Heaven. The second, is that placing such a vision in dialogue with contemporary trends will renew the Church. This is also incorrect, because it assumes that such a dialogue and a renewal is always and everywhere possible.

After the Second Vatican Council, these two errors accompanied critiques of liturgy, theology, and Church life from left, right and center. Catholicism in the latter half of the twentieth century had imbibed the myth that there was out there a perfect way to do theology, make liturgy, and be the Church. If we read the memoirs of Annibale Bugnini and Cardinal Antonelli, both deeply involved in the Liturgical Reform and also divided by it, we can see that these two men in different ways took these postulates to be true, differing only in the details.

The assumption that the liturgy was broken and needed to be fixed, that theology was broken and needed to be fixed, that the Church was broken and needed to be fixed, began well before Vatican II and has continued unabated every since. People’s assumptions of how all of this came to be broken, and what must be done to fix it, have divided Catholics ever since.

The Neo-Thomists who reacted to De Lubac and others associated with the nouvelle theologie often refused to entertain legitimate points of their criticism because it was not expressed in a form they recognized. Likewise, those who felt themselves attacked rejected everything dear to their attackers because they were being attacked. A similar thing is happening with the liturgy. Many self-appointed proponents of what is now known as the Extraordinary Form of the liturgy defend one particular form of liturgy without always engaging concerns about the way in which liturgy is celebrated and intended to be. (One thinks of the rather odd situation of those who defend the 1962 Missal and the 1955 Holy Week Reforms without granting that they were as much the brainchild of Bugnini as the 1970 Missal). Likewise, liturgical revolutionaries have successfully poisoned the minds of many an otherwise faithful Catholic against liturgical forms of previous and current times because they do not conform to standards which they themselves set and which often have little to do with the liturgy at all.

In the past ten years, some younger theologians who were born after the debate over De Lubac’s Surnaturel and for whom the mid-century theological debates are about as personally relevant as those at Nicea I, have begun to ask themselves: What was the fuss all about anyway? In doing so, they have pointed out that De Lubac, even as he rightly pointed out certain aspects of the supernatural problem that had been obfuscated and hoped for a renewal of theology, still created more problems than he solved with his answer. These theologians do not accept De Lubac’s critique as unassailable and are realizing that the wholesale rejection of the Baroque commentatorial tradition was a mistake. They do not seek to return to a pre-St Thomas, pre-Cajetan, or a pre-De Lubac position. They do seek to renew theology by questioning what had become universally accepted, namely that the Baroque theology was bunk.

Liturgy is experiencing something similar. A younger generation, which does not have the baggage of the experience of Vatican II, are questioning the fundamental assumption that the Tridentine liturgy was bunk and the liturgical reform was good. They do not seek to return to a pre-Trent, or pre-Vatican II position. They do seek to recover a celebration of the liturgy in which there need not be temporally chauvinistic dividing lines.

So what does this mean for the future of the liturgy? There will continue to be those who argue that there will be renewal in the Church only when we go back (or forward) to a certain liturgical text, or time period, or modus celebrandi. The temporal chauvinist is always tempted by time: to be progressive or conservative, to go backwards or to go forwards. But there are also those within the Church who argue that in the Church’s life, whether it be at the Altar in the liturgy or in Classroom in theology, there is no time, there is no progress or regress, backwards or forwards. There is only the extent to which our prayer and our work are in fidelity to Christ and the timeless Revelation of His Truth for us. Authentic Catholicism is not within the realm of how we get theology, liturgy, or the Church right. Authentic Catholicism is right because it is encounter with the fullness of Truth celebrated in Beauty.

In this optic, the most important question is not to decide for ourselves how to worship: what words to say in what language (hieratic or everday English, Latin or vernacular), what rite to celebrate (Tridentine or Byzantine or Amchurch), or what music to accompany the narrative of our lives of faith (chant, Lifeteen or Viennese orchestral masses). When we realize that Catholic worship is the self-oblation of Christ to His Father through the Holy Spirit for the Redemption of the world, the fruits of which we receive in Holy Communion and which constitute the Church herself, and give her a theological and evangelical mission, then those questions will work themselves out.

We are right to challenge the liturgical and theological status quo. But we are wrong to do so if we think that by doing so, we can foist upon the Church our own pet project vision of how things should be. We should always challenge ourselves as to how we enter into the Mystery of Salvation, of how our celebration of the Paschal Mystery is not bound to criticism, but to Glory.

I study at an Opus Dei university, so I hear a lot about how work sanctifies our daily life, one of the principal teachings of St Josemaria Escrivà. Because Jesus, the Word Made Flesh, labored alongside St Joseph in the carpenter’s workshop in Nazareth, work has been redeemed. The ordinary tasks on daily life can now be an opening to the extraordinary action of God, if we just let it. The skeptic in me, however, is reminded of the fact that work is a four-letter word. It was a punishment for original sin. Toil, that other four-letter word, is an inescapable quality of work in this valley of tears. So shouldn’t we try to escape it as much as possible, and thereby anticipate our re-entry into the Garden of Paradise where there was no work and no toil?

One of my professors here at Navarre is convinced that Spain has been so backwards for so long, not because of a lack of resources or talent, but because of a cultural propensity going back for centuries that viewed work as beneath the dignity of man. As for me, I try to avoid work as much as possible, and as I write my 300th page of my thesis for the faculty here, I am beginning to think that this very Castilian and very not Opus Dei idea of work as getting in the way of life is not a bad idea at all.

I am struck by the fact that we have made the liturgy into work. From one point of view, this makes sense. After all, liturgy comes from the Greek word leitourgeia, which described the work done on behalf of the people by pagan priests in offering rites as part of civic ceremonies. And with all of the bother of decapitating animals and disemboweling them and reading their entrails, it seems that liturgy has been a lot of work since even before Christ changed the meaning of sacrifice and rite forever.

But we still see liturgy as work. If there is one thing everyone along the liturgical spectrum is doing nowadays, it is working at the liturgy. It is a lot like the welder who puts together lots of various pieces by heat and light, and then sends those welded pieces off to a faceless assembly line where technological efficiency makes them into the things which make our lives more comfortable.

It is also like the lab researcher who breaks compounds down into the most minute particles to see what it is all made of and see how those particles can be out together differently to make other things. It is truly like the advertising mavericks of Mad Men who brainstorm ways to dupe the masses into buying a product that will make them rich.

Everyone is working at the liturgy. The traditionalists: busy restoring the Mass of the Ages to every altar of the world. ICEL: busy preparing a translation that had a shelf-life shorter than a Facebook status. Vox Clara: busy preparing a translation that its adversaries predict will bring about the end of ecumenical councils and the action of the Holy Ghost/Spirit/She Who Is and Must Be Obeyed. Clowns: busying preparing their noses for their next gig in an Austrian Cathedral. People: building Christ our Light in Oakland and people building the chapel for Thomas Aquinas College in Ojai. Canons regular: restoring the sacred and Jesuits lost in Holy Week. Everyone is busy at the liturgy.

I am so busy I am exhausted. I say a twenty minute Mass in a hospital chapel every day and toil over the Liturgy of the Minutes, and I am practically exercised by my patrimony. Why am I so tired, then, when I spend so little actual time reading/praying/proclaiming/celebrating/being Liturgy? Because I spend the rest of my time picking apart why our translations are so bad, why the liturgical reform happened and why it has been so difficult, how I can amass a sacristy to rival the Lateran Basilica’s, plotting the hire of a CMAA musician to make Westminster Cathedral look like chump change, worrying over how to explain to the Liturgy Committee that I can’t wash women’s hands/feets/bad hair coloring job next Maundy Thursday. Like a lot of people, I am tired of working at the liturgy.

How different is the attitude of the children all over the world who open their presents on Christmas morning. Gifts all around them, brought by an invisible but familiar figure, and warmth and love all around. The children rip apart the wrapping paper and play with the wrapping paper for hours. Then they notice that there is a box, and they are fascinated by the containers.

Finally, they get to the actual present, and they realize that the whole experience has been a gift that keeps on giving: so many levels and so much playing to do before Mom and Dad call us to go to Mass because they didn’t go to the Vigil Mass like every other family in the parish who hasn’t been to church since the Easter Bunny went though the house with silent furry feet.

The liturgy is much like that. The central core is not the work we do (unless you are a blood thirsty pagan or a social activist), but the Sacrifice of Calvary. At first glance, it may seem like blasphemy to liken the august Sacrament of the Altar to play. But Our LORD in his wisdom knows our weakness, and so He cloaks the Terrible and Awesome Event of the Passion in the soft garments of sign and symbol, Word and Sacrament.

We are irresistibly attracted to the wrapping in which the Gift is found: the delight to the senses that the ceremonies of the Church produces. And then we gaze and rip into the container for that Gift: the words, the music, the gestures, the art, the architecture. We revel in them. It is as if we play Hide and Seek with the Baby Jesus among the boxes and bows and debris of signs and symbols and rites and ceremonies. He reveals even as He conceals. And our response is one of wonder and awe, but also of joy and perfect gladness. So by the time we get to the Gift, we are ready for it. And it is marvelous in our eyes, because it is what we have always wanted. Not the Gift, the Giver.

When we work too hard at the liturgy, when we think the liturgy depends on our work to tie the bow right or wrap up the box in a certain way, we miss the Gift and the Giver. The Gift and the Giver: the Eucharist received in Holy Communion and the Christ who offers Himself up to the Father in the unity of the Spirit for the salvation of the world. Only when we let ourselves be carried away like children at play with awe and wonder for the gift of the liturgy, can we then work at our daily tasks, and even at the necessary tasks to make the liturgy happen, without being exhausted. The dried blood caked on our baptismal robes from the useless toil of our human working at the liturgy is replaced by the fresh springs of the Precious Blood of Christ renewing the Church through the divine working through the liturgy to help us play with God as His friends. And that, my dear friends, is how we truly sanctify our world.