Man and woman were created as rational liturgists of the material world and placed at the apex of the systolic action in order to translate the praise of mute matter into speech and symbol. I am interested in rediscovering an understanding of this cosmological priesthood by seeing Christ’s priesthood as the eschatological recapitulation of Adam and Eve’s dignity. The fall was the forfeiture of our liturgical career. The economy of God, climaxing in Christ’s paschal mystery, was the means to restore it. . . . Liturgical theology is derivative from the liturgists’ encounter with God. Liturgical theology materializes upon the encounter with the Holy One, not upon the secondary analysis at the desk. God shapes the community in liturgical encounter, and the community makes theological adjustment to this encounter, which settles into ritual form. Only then can the analyst begin dusting the ritual for God’s fingerprints. . . . As Schmemann puts it: It meant an action by which a group of people become something corporately which they had not been as a mere collection of individuals — a whole greater than the sum of its parts. It meant also a function or “ministry” of a man or of a group on behalf of and in the interest of the whole community. Thus the leitourgia of ancient Israel was the corporate work of a chosen few to prepare the world for the coming of the Messiah…. Thus the Church itself is a leitourgia, a ministry, a calling to act in this world after the fashion of Christ, to bear testimony to him and His kingdom. Liturgy was an act of largesse; it required magnanimity; it was not a domestic act for one’s kith and kin, but a public act for the community in which one dwelled. That means there is something wrong with thinking liturgy is the work of the clergy on behalf of the laity (clericalism), or with thinking that liturgy is not valid unless everyone has a share in the work of the ministerial priesthood (laicism). In fact, liturgy is the work of Christ on behalf of the vital interests of the clan to which he belongs: the family of Adam and Eve. Christ is the premier liturgist, head of a body animated by the Holy Spirit, and so it is Christ’s work that the Church performs — which is to say the thick liturgy done by the Church must always and only be Christ’s liturgy, never its own. The sacramental power of baptism creates the people of God (laos) and commissions them to perform Christ’s work (ergon). That’s where liturgists come from: They are regenerated. Christ is the firstborn of many little liturgists who perpetuate a Christic, kenotic, salutary, sacerdotal, prophetic, and royal work. The liturgy is therefore our product and not our work at all. It is why the presiding celebrant is said to be an alter Christus. Romano Guardini saw the difference between the Eucharistic memorial and other types of memorial in the fact that Jesus did not say, “On a certain day of the year you are to come together and share a meal in friendship….” Such an act would issue from the humanly possible, Guardini says, and only the event it was celebrating would be divine. Christ spoke differently. His “do these things” implies “things I have just done”; yet what He did surpasses human possibility. It is an act of God springing as incomprehensibly from His love and omnipotence as the acts of Creation or the Incarnation. And such an act He entrusts to men! He does not say: “Pray God to do thus,” but simply “do.” Thus he places in human hands an act which can be fulfilled only by the divine … God determined, proclaimed, and instituted; man is to execute the act. When he does so, God makes of it something of which He alone is capable.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:23:28 +0000