What is a liturgy for?

I answer this question cognisant of my lack of education on the matter. Do correct me!

Liturgies are a good source of division between Christians, and this is natural. The old formula lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivandi, is perfectly true; we will only live and believe what we sincerely pray. In a world where individualism is rife, we are presented with a multitude of liturgies that we are expected to follow. Each liturgy has the purpose to present us with a passage to God Most High in a way that is meaningful i.e. didactic, unifying, humbling and transcendent.

We have to expect a liturgy to teach us about God because that is the One Whom we are aiming to meet at the culmination of the Mass. We cannot meet Whom we do not know, and while we cannot know Him entirely, we can be brought to know Him better. We should be equipped by the liturgy with all that we need to prepare ourselves for the Truth Inerrant.

We have to expect a liturgy to be unifying. The words of St Paul “though we are many, we are one body because we all share in one bread” demonstrate the purpose of the Mass in the light of St John xvii. We come to Mass to become one with God and to be united in Him. Thus, although we may be individuals and indeed created to be individuals, we need to submit ourselves to the liturgy in order to say and mean that, in the words of Olivier Clément, we are all “one human being in the multiplicity of persons”. We bring to Mass with us the complex welter of emotions and memories of our daily experience in the World. We bring with us the imperfections and limitations of our selves. While we seek unity, the potential obstacles to this unity are precisely our persons altered by the disparity of engaging with life which we have to reconcile when we come home to God in the Mass. True unity is something that can only be achieved by God, which is why a liturgy should be one that can be prayed despite who we are. The contents of our hearts and minds must be brought to bear on the task in hand – the worship and adoration (a wonderful word effectively meaning a divine kiss) of the One Who Is.

We have to expect a liturgy to be humbling. The point is that we come to God as we are, as imperfect folk. A liturgy should be something with which we can become familiar so that we can expect to be guided into recognising not only our shortcomings in the Kyrie but also the indelible dignity of love that we have been created to possess in that are permitted to offer Christ as Sacrifice to God through Christ the High Priest upon Christ the Altar. We have to be honest and real with ourselves in our relationship with God. He does not pretend with us, and that’s one of the many reasons that He has instituted the Mass so that we encounter God as He really is in the Consecrated Host. We do not understand that reality, but we understand that He is real. Likewise we have to understand ourselves as being real, not the strange beings that we create in our heads –humility is the key to that and liturgies must force us to realise our true position in the Universe.

We have to expect a liturgy to be transcendent, after all God is infinitely transcendental. (He certainly does not satisfy a polynomial equation – maths joke.) Not for nothing is the word Sacrament translated from mysterium. If a liturgy tries to explain what is going on in simple terms then it cannot be a liturgy. Part of our humiliation in the eyes of God is that we be confronted with the fact that something is happening that cannot be understood. There must be something in the liturgy that will make our minds boggle and wrestle, that will disturb our souls, that will bring a tremor to our knees as we try –and fail – to comprehend the truth that we are in the Presence of God Almighty. In the Western Mass Christ deigns to descend to us, in the East we are lifted up to Christ. The direction of movement we cannot understand for it is beyond the paucity of our dimensions, but nonetheless it happens.

The Liturgy must also transcend history, for we are all part of an Eternal Church where Time is meaningless because God has made it meaningless for us. Now has no meaning different from Then at Mass. We are presented with a different unity, one that spans the ages. As we offer the pax to the brethren whom we can touch, so must we offer our pax to the ones whom we cannot, those before us and those after us. As Christ Himself says, “the first shall be last, and the last first” thus rendering temporal positions and comparisons meaningless in the context of our Humanity.

In the Church of England, it’s easy to worship in a parish in which the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, and Collect for Purity, are habitually replaced with words that have been chosen to make the meaning of the Mass clear to the congregation. The language is basic and uncomplicated - but it does not inspire, it removes the necessity to engage the brain, it prevents people coming up to receive God with furrowed brow as they struggle with what this reality means for them. When the congregation speaks, it is to utter words of submission to love – “have mercy,” “glory!” “I believe,” “cleanse me.” A congregation responds to the love of God, not to utter a magic spell by going through the motions, a liturgy should not inspire automated responses.

However, that’s what we do – automated responses, wandering minds, grudges borne, selfishnesses acted on. I said below that our Masses are all imperfectly presented, but that they are all perfected. Indeed the perfection comes when all the millions of Masses that have ever happened are seen in the context of a single Mass which has taken place in the ages and outside all ages in the Mass in Heaven. For there the Perfect is always present.

I wait with interest for the expected motu proprio of the Holy Father on the Latin Mass will appear, for it seeks to present the Holy See with a better contact with those who are temporally before us. There is very little as humbling as the realisation that one is saying exactly the same words as millions who have gone before, and presenting oneself with them to God Who feeds us with the same food – Our Saviour, Jesus Christ. May the Church never lose this Truth.