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Historical
Perspective
An era of liturgical reform often forgotten is
the period from the Council of Trent (1563) to the advent of the Second
Vatican Council (1963). The modern liturgical movement that had its
beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century continued for decades before the
Vatican II Council. This reform movement in our time is over one hundred
and fifty years old. While the early liturgical movement began as a
romantic recovery of past traditions, this renewal has become the impetus
for the Church to engage the world in the modern times as a sign of the
reign of God. It has also led to a renewal of Christian faith and a renewed
interest in unity among Christians.
Liturgy never stands still, no matter how
unchanging the liturgical books may be. However, Vatican Council II was the
force for a renewed, intensive and extensive study of the history of liturgy
and prayer because the Council asked the Church to recover its historical
sources. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (#16, 23) states
that historical study is to be an integrated guide for religious life,
pastoral ministries and therefore liturgical reform. Thus, the Second
Vatican Council did more than change the liturgical books; it restored the
liturgy to the center of the life of the Church as the source and summit of
the Christian life. In doing so, it also sought to return to the assembly
their proper liturgical role as ministers with full, active, and conscious
participation in the Church and her liturgy.
Sacramentality of Each Liturgical Season
For
everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a
time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck
up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break
down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time
to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to
gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from
embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time
to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence,
and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war,
and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 [nrsv].
A historical analysis of liturgical time would yield
interesting facts but the principal issue facing the early church was the
fading from the Church’s consciousness the eschatological emphasis to a
Church that was reconciled to and comfortable in time. Dom Gregory Dix
claims “the pliable idea of anamnesis was there to ease the transition.”
Chauvet writes: “Creation is charged with sacramentality.”[2]
Since all sacramentality meets at the intersection of historic and cosmic,
then all time is sacred. Kenan Osborne develops his sacramental theology
upon Chauvet’s. For Osborne, Jesus as human is primordial sacrament and the
Church is foundational sacrament.[3]
Therefore, each year and every liturgical season must also have a
sacramentality. The Church marks time through a year of grace, which
preserves and hands down the central mysteries of the faith, day after day,
week after week, season after season, and year after year. Each year is
made new in the Spirit, each season is fulfilled in creation, each week
takes on new meaning, each day is the Lord’s day. Thomas J. Talley has
noted that while the Gospels might have been crafted so that they would have
been proclaimed over a period of time, he adds that the period of time
“shaped by those narrative and by the response of Christian life to their
proclamation is the liturgical year.”[4]
While the Second Vatican Council was in session, Thomas Merton published a
book of meditations on the cycle of liturgical feasts entitled Seasons
of Celebration. However, the liturgical year is more than a series of
celebrations; it is catechesis and a pedagogical anamnesis of the paschal
mystery.
A celebration of religious tradition through stories
shared and bread broken is illustrated in the Jewish celebration of
Passover, when the youngest child asks at the beginning of the evening, “Why
is this night different from all the other nights?” The answer eventually
comes from the eldest, “Now we begin to answer. Our history moves from
slavery toward freedom… Our service opens with the rule of evil and advanced
toward the kingdom of God.”[5]
For generations the stories of deliverance from bondage to freedom are kept
alive. Jesus instituted the Eucharist at such a ritual meal. When
Christians gather in Christ’s name to fulfill his injunction to “do this in
remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24b & 11:25b) by giving
thanks, blessing and breaking the bread, sharing the cup. “For as often as
you eat this bread and drink the cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until he
comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). Within the cycle of the liturgical
year the paschal mystery is relived over and over again through the various
seasons of Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time I, Lent, The Triduum, Easter,
Pentecost, and Ordinary Time II. The God of History in the Spirit of Christ
builds up the kingdom through seasons at the intersection of kairos
and chronos.
The fathers of the Second Vatican Council beautifully
captured the essence of the seasons of celebration in which time is
transformed:
"Holy Mother Church believes that it is for her to celebrate the saving
work of her divine Spouse in a sacred commemoration on certain days
throughout the course of the year. Once each week, on the day which she
has called the Lord’s day, she keeps the memory of the Lord’s
resurrection. She also celebrates it once every year, together with his
blessed passion, at Easter, that most solemn of all feasts.
"In the
course of the year, moreover, she unfolds the whole mystery of Christ from
the incarnation and nativity to the ascension, to Pentecost and the
expectation of the blessed hope of the coming of the Lord.
"Thus recalling the mysteries of the redemption, she opens up to the
faithful the riches of her Lord’s powers and merits, so that these are in
some way made present for all time; the faithful lay hold of them and are
filled with saving grace."
The
Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, #102
 With
this understanding of the sanctification of time in the presence of the now
and not yet of the kingdom, the General Intercessions take on an obligation
to speak to the seasons and the mysteries they are meant to transmit.
Advent is a time of spiritual preparation for Christ’s coming and the joyful
expectation of Christ’s second coming. Christmas through Epiphany
celebrates Christ’s birth and his early manifestations with Epiphany
communicating the mystery of the incarnation. Lent prepares the catechumens
in stages for the celebration of the paschal mystery as it also prepares the
assembly for Easter. Easter, the Paschal Mystery, the heart of Christian
faith is centered in the Sacred Triduum: one celebration spread over three
days, which relives the mystery of Jesus’ saving actions from his last
supper on Holy Thursday through his passion and death to his rising on the
third day, as Lord of all. Easter is an extended celebration of joy and
gratitude arising from the marvelous work God has done in Christ. The fifty
days between Easter and Pentecost is celebrated as one feast, the Great
Sunday, commemorating Christ’s passing through death to glory with the
promise of our own passing over to share in Christ’s new life in God.
Easter is filled with themes and images expressing joy in Christ’s
resurrection and ascension to glory. The entire fifty-day celebration leads
the whole Church into a more intense realization of the great goodness of
God, shown in the risen Christ. Pentecost recalls the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit, as recorded in Acts, upon the disciples as the visible sign of
the reality of God’s gift of the Spirit to all believers. Ordinary Time
includes the Sundays apart from the other seasons and celebrated as the
Lord’s Day in the fullness of the Paschal Mystery.[6]
It unfolds the mystery thought the life and ministry of Christ proclaimed.
Every Sunday is an Easter remembrance and every liturgy is a paschal
event.
There are three solemnities of the Lord that are
celebrated within Ordinary Time: Trinity Sunday, Body and Blood of Christ
(Corpus Christi), and the Sacred Heart. The sacramentality of the
liturgical seasons is celebrated in three sequences: Incarnation, Paschal,
and Sundays. The beginning of the Liturgical year and lectionary are
narratives of the beginning of Jesus’ life and ministry and unfolds
throughout the year to the apex of the passion, death, and resurrection
stories. The year and lectionary further develop the paschal mystery as it
moves toward the end times pointing to the eschaton. Thus the seasons of
celebration and the lectionary are held in tension.
[1] See Dom Gregory Dix’s chapter
on “The Sanctification of Time” in The Shape of the Liturgy
(Westminster: Dacre Press, 1945), Chapter XI, 303-396.
[2]
Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental
Reinterpretation of Christian Existence (Collegeville: The Liturgical
Press, 1995), 551.
[3] Kenan B.
Osborne, Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World (New York:
Paulist Press, 1999), 52.
[4] Thomas J. Talley, The
Origins of the Liturgical Year (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press,
1991), 235.
[5] Herbert
Bronstein, ed., A Passover Haggadah (New York: Grossman Publishers,
1974), 29.
[6] See Joseph M. Champlin’s more
complete discussion of “The Church’s Year of Grace” in Messenger’s of
God’s Word: A Handbook for Lectors (New York: Paulist Press, 1982),
67-86.
The quote from Vatican
Council II Sacrosanctum Concilium is necessary to note in its entirety: “In
order that sound tradition be retained, and yet the way remain open to
legitimate progress, a careful investigation—theological, historical, and
pastoral—should always be made into each part of the liturgy which is to be
revised. Furthermore the general laws governing the structure and meaning
of the liturgy must be studied in conjunction with the experience derived
from recent liturgical reforms and from the indults granted to various
places (#23).”
Courtesy of the
FDLC Web-based Liturgical Catechesis Project (www.fdlc.org/Liturgy_Catechesis.htm)
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