By the promise you made in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ your Son, you bring together in your Spirit from all nations a people to be your own. Keep the Church faithful to its mission. May we be eleven in the world, renew us in Christ, and transform us into your family. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. So, welcome, good morning. Excuse the formality of this desk, but I operate better when I have some protection from you in this kind of thing. Laurence asked me, was this going to be the laid-back style, and I said no, but in this sense I work better when I have a little desk here to surround my materials, but hopefully it won't be too formal. Let me tell you where this came from. I have this liturgy course visioned in three sections, one being on Eucharist, the second being on Liturgy of the Hours, and the third being on the sacraments in general.

[01:03]

I did the whole first one already on the Eucharist with this introductory material. I sent the tapes off to Fr. Romuald. He really liked them, and then listened to the tapes and threw them away, because when you meet him, you'll know. He just loves to throw things away. He thought they were copies, but they were my originals. And Isaiah really liked the introductory material so much, he wanted to keep using it. So we decided, he asked, would I just do this introductory part over again, which gave me a chance to even improve it a little bit. So the beginning of every section will do this introductory part. I have this agreement with the guys for these classes. Those tapes in there last 46 minutes. When that tape goes off, we'll be done. We'll just time it that way. If I'm in mid-sentence, I'll finish the sentence, we'll be over. And after the tape goes off, we'll have time for questions or discussion if you want. If you just want to get right back to work, if you have work to do, you could do so also.

[02:07]

So that's our agreement. The other thing is, I don't like to do too many handouts, I have a paper phobia. So I'll read things to you more, but I do like these big, fat quotes sometimes. So here's your first one, which we'll chomp on all this for a bit in the next couple of days. You don't need it right away, but we will need it probably, we'll get to it in the next couple of minutes. Where we're eventually going to go is we're going to start this section on the Liturgy of the Hours. But this introductory material is just to give us some kind of a common vocabulary. There's so many places of course to jump in when you're talking about the subject of liturgy. For us, we have a very specific focus because our life centers right around it. Especially for this particular five people with background in theology, with background

[03:10]

in religious life, you already have, I think, at least somewhat of a foundation. Certainly I know Michael and David have years and years of study of things, Lawrence and seminary, and both of you with your masters, and you in religious life, David. So what we're going to do then, basically what you're going to get now is my take on things, and maybe refresh your course, and a few things that I tend to think are pretty important, especially for monastic spirituality. Myself being the liturgist and the choir master, you'll see also how, perhaps you'll see how some of this ideology will affect the action. I don't mean to talk down in any way or presume ignorance if I go over things that sound really basic. It's just so we can make sure we have a common vocabulary. I find, too, with liturgy, as in most disciplines, I always like a refresher course. I always enjoy going over the basics again, and these basics are so important also.

[04:11]

Some of the guys were complaining the last time so much that I had to just go and look it up to make sure I wasn't wrong. This is something that's meant to be taught during formation, liturgical formation, not just for monks, but for everybody. I was surprised in some seminaries how little liturgy was taught, and especially before the Council, because liturgy was a discipline of canon law, not even the sacraments. You just learned the proper movements. But there's this quote, right? Of course, the document on sacred liturgy would want to support itself, but here's the quote right here. The study of sacred liturgy is to be ranked among the compulsory and major courses in seminaries and religious houses of study. In theological faculties, it's to rank among the principal courses. It's to be taught under its theological, historical, spiritual, pastoral, and juridical aspects. We won't get into too much of the juridical aspects. In addition, those who teach other subjects, especially dogmatic theology, sacred scripture,

[05:18]

spiritual, pastoral theology, should, through the exigencies of their own discipline, expound the mystery of Christ and the history of salvation that will clearly set forth the connection between their subjects and liturgy, and the unity which underlies all the training. So somehow liturgy becomes the focal point of all these other things, which is the exact point I want to make about ten minutes on. It's interesting. In seminary, every professor you get wants to explain to you why their topic is the most important one. You know, this is the one you're really going to need. The difference between that and liturgy is they're wrong, and I'm right. This really is the most important one. I got the documents to prove it here. Why? And we'll get to that in a second. Also, for this life as monks, what we say often, even in the formation meeting, part of our theory behind formation is, in monastic life, the life itself is the formative thing.

[06:21]

Classes are part of it. Spiritual direction is part of it. But the thing I loved about this life when I first got here is I was living the life immediately. You don't go into training to be a monk. You get here and you start doing it. And Andrew Kolnagy in Incarnation makes this point to me all the time as liturgist, as choir master. He says, this liturgy is probably the main forming thing going on for guys. It's steady. It's always there. You're surrounded by scripture. You're surrounded by patristic readings every morning. It's where the community is assembled four times a day, day in and day out. So you see why it's so important. When people go through, not yourselves all with pretty good education, but when people go through and have no training in liturgy and just get dumped right into the liturgy, it doesn't always work either. They still miss some of the subtleties, don't get quite what's going on. So it's good they have the vocabulary why we're leaving our hands up through the Our Father, why we're doing these psalms instead of those psalms, so on and so forth.

[07:24]

But I'm probably preaching to the choir here. For myself, my own approach when talking about liturgy, I like to talk in the broadest swipe possible. And that's to talk... I'm not an anthropologist. I'm out of my discipline here. But to talk about the anthropological aspect first. And that's when we start talking about ritual, ritual in general. My own favorite teacher in liturgical science used to talk about ritual as our way of making sense out of reality. It's our response to reality. And he used to press this point that before the word, there was the song. And before the song, there was the dance. Like in primitive cultures, perhaps... I hate that word primitive.

[08:25]

I shouldn't even have said it. In cultures, some of the cultures that haven't necessarily been westernized yet, that first expression of reality, that first reaction to reality, that first attempt to try to make sense of reality and to try to communicate to one another, probably took place through the dance. There's this great story I wanted to begin with. There's this... Brezhnekov telling the story of his life. I love this story so much. It fits right into what I'm talking about. He remembers movement for himself as being an outlet for emotion. He's telling the story now in first person. One time I recall is when my mother first took me to visit my grandmother on the Volga River. Volga is a long way up from Latvia, where he lived.

[09:28]

We took a train through Moscow and Moscow to Gorky. Plus, then you drive another 70 miles. We took taxi or some car delivered us. It was very early morning when we arrived. Little village and very simple house. And there was my grandmother. And I was in such anticipation because I was like five or so, maybe six. My mother said to me, Mikhail, hug your grandmother. But I was so overwhelmed that I couldn't run to her and hug her. So I just started to jump and jump. Jump like crazy around and around. It was embarrassing, but at the same time actually what I needed to do, mother and grandmother stood and looked until it was over. This seems to me to be a good example of this beginning of ritual. It's spontaneous reaction to reality. We just have this need. Maybe the human being has this need to respond to reality, to prepare for what's

[10:31]

about to happen or to make sense of what just happened or to somehow make sense of the present moment. You could look at that quote I have given you there from Robert Taft. Talking about ritual in a broad scope. I'm going to read it out loud. Ritual itself is simply a set of conventions, an organized pattern of signs and gestures which members of a community use to interpret and enact for themselves, and to express and transmit to others their relation to reality. So ritual is an organized pattern of signs and gestures that transmit and express and enact and interpret relation to reality. Ritual is a way of saying what we as a group are, in the fullest sense of that are, with our past that made us what we are, with our present in which we live what we

[11:36]

are, and the future we hope to be. Here's my favorite line. Ritual then is ideology and experience in action. Ritual is the celebration or interpretation through action of our human experience and how we view it. So there's our broad anthropological scope. Ritual as ideology in action. Ritual as celebration through action. Ritual as interpretation through action. Interpretation and enacting and expressing and transmitting our relation to reality. But then let's specifically move into worship. We don't need the second part of that quote yet. I found this other great, there's a book by Ramamundopanikar who you might think of as a doctor of monasticism and of spirituality and an East-West dialogue

[12:42]

if you're familiar with his writings. We had this great section from him in the reading seminar with Father Bruno and I last semester talking about worship. And he again approaches worship in his books called, excuse me, Worship and Secular Man, Worship and Secular Humanoid. We'll make that inclusive. So he talks about needing an anthropology underneath the theology so that we can give shape and meaning to the content and form of worship. I always like this kind of approach, this anthropological approach, so that before we start talking about lofty and transcendent things, we have some pretty firm grounding in reality, some pretty firm grounding in the human condition, in the natural human condition. Assuming, as I do, that the human person is spiritual by nature, that the spiritual reality of the human person is the natural part of the human person.

[13:42]

So then moving from ritual into worship, what we're talking about is moving from just making sense of reality to making sense of this relation with the transcendent, to making sense of this relation with the other, with this divine being, which we could at this point safely call for ourselves, God. So Panikkar, in this article from this book, Worship and Secular Man, talks about needing an anthropology underneath theology so that we can give content and shape to our study of any kind of worship in general. He outlines the acts of worship according to a very traditional and ancient anthropological pattern. I put on there the English words, worship, devotion, knowledge, and action. You recognize it if I do it the way he did it, which is bhakti, nana, and karma.

[14:56]

That's what I find so fascinating about this. Taking it completely out of the Western Christian context, and he takes it from another ancient philosophical pattern, that of course being the Indian pattern. These are the three major types of yoga. So here we're talking about a real anthropological context because it's something of a universal human condition. It applies to our same worship. So he approaches worship through these ancient ways. Bhakti, devotion, jnana, knowledge, karma, action. I took notes on this, and I'll read them out for you. So he talks about devotion, bhakti. If you ever hear Jack yelling to me across the courtyard, the quad, he always calls me bhakti. It's bhakti because of singing. Bhakti is the first fundamental act of worship to Kanekar. Now we're not still talking about Christian, Judeo-Christian worship. We're talking about worship in general.

[15:57]

Because human beings are feeling and sentient beings, devotion tends to be the first fundamental act of any kind of worship. It somehow fulfills that need to express our urges and our desires to overcome our own limitations and our desires to overcome our shortcomings in one form or another and to give some expression to the reality, to the greater reality than us. Devotion is also love expression. So just as life without love is not human life, so worship without love is not really human worship. Bhakti, devotion, is this movement of love. It includes all forms of praise, thankfulness, adoration. They all fall into this category. Now, of course, here is where we sense the tremendous importance of the arts,

[17:03]

especially music. This is he saying this, not myself. Not arts as sentiment necessarily, but definitely that which is the closest tied up to feeling and to sentiment. Because it's impossible, and we have to remember this in our sober objectivity monastic liturgy sometimes, it's impossible to achieve an integrated involvement of our whole being if we leave aside the sentimental part of ourself. It has to be brought into worship. As a matter of fact, it's the first thing triggered by this need to worship, according to Padekar. And that artistic element is triggered. It's interesting to note, and I think it's pretty safe to say it's a widely acknowledged fact, that in almost all cultures, art is of a sacred origin. In almost all cultures, art is connected with worship.

[18:06]

So somehow that's a fundamental first response of making sense of reality and making sense of transcendent reality through art, through music. And as my professor would say, through dance first. Interesting, it's the thing we have almost lost except for our very staid processions. We've almost lost the dance. And the second, then, fundamental form of worship, according to Padekar, is knowledge, jnana in the Sanskrit word. Because the humanoid is not just a sentimental being, but also an intellectual being. I find this to be an interesting dynamic, this dynamic between devotion and knowledge, which seems to be a tension between feeling and intellect. I don't think they have to be in opposition to each other. But certainly an overreaction of Vatican II has been to go heavily toward the sentiment. Now we have all these screeds being written

[19:14]

about how mass is too bushy and too emotional. Now, perhaps this is just a reaction to what went before when it was too intellectual and too rubrical approach. So the idea is not to overbalance again, but somehow to bring these three aspects together. So we want to know. We human beings want to know. We want to grapple with things and problems. We want to discuss. We want to have dialogue. We want to somehow decipher reality. And we do this by talking, and we do this by studying. So Padekar would also put in this Bible study. But the other thing he puts in this, which I find is interesting, is contemplation. And meditation is this other part of worship, part of this second fundamental act of worship, the way of knowledge, through contemplation and meditation. This implies silence, quiet, and an ontological awareness of all that is,

[20:17]

an awareness of existential reality. Here's a quote directly from that book. I would like to underline here the importance that knowledge has for worship. Too often the impression has been given that worship has almost nothing to do with the claims of the intellect. And thus we relegate not only science, but theology to auxiliary disciplines. But if the dance of the body belongs to the integral act of worship, then the intuition of the intellect is no less an essential part of the human being and must also be assumed by worship. He used a very important word for me there, intuition of the intellect. It's not just rational thinking, but it's triggering off what Aquinas would call this deepest human knowledge, intuition, part of this second fundamental act of worship, knowledge, chinana, intuition.

[21:18]

And then the third is a little more nebulous action in Sanskrit terms, karma, karma yoga. If you know, in the way of... In the yogic tradition, these three would be... I'm speaking as a dilettante here. Bhakti yoga would be... Devotion would be songs, poems and songs, dances. Chinana would be meditation. And action, karma, is actually the yoga that we know in the West the most, hatha yoga, you know, the different positions and stuff. But it's also... karma yoga is also action in the world, tilling a garden, sowing, cleaning. This is all karma yoga too. And he calls this action the third fundamental. So not only the internal acts and actions, but also the actual activity of humanity on earth

[22:24]

is somehow part of this third fundamental act of worship. And it's under this category that Panikkar puts sacrifice. To me, this is interesting. In my own brief study of other cultures, you find how often sacrifice is that first act of worship that many of them do, their first relation to reality. The Dravidians, who were the ancestors to the Hindus, sacrificial people. Certainly the Jews, sacrificial people. The Aztecs, certainly sacrificial people. How this comes in. And Panikkar calls this part of the karma yoga in a broader sense, this idea of building the earthly city coalescing with the city of God. Here I'll give you the direct quote. The building of the earthly city coalesces with the building of the city of God when it is realized that the moment of incarnation, which connects the transcendent with the immanent, is in fact continued by any action which reenacts

[23:28]

this fundamental act of human and cosmic existence. That's a little too dense. All of our human activity is somehow brought into and flows out of this first fundamental act of worship. Because, and this is very Christian, human activity is seen as consecratio mundi. Human activity is always seen as us consecrating the world, our consecration of the world. So, worship is not just an aristocratic act, not just an intellectual act, not just an artistic luxury. Although each of those can in some way give force and give inspiration to other things, but worship also includes action. I would recommend a glance through that book. I find it really fascinating. Let's move on one step further, then.

[24:29]

Let's go back to that Taft definition and move into specifically biblical worship and then move into Christian worship. Now, we're moving very quickly, anthropologically. I'm going to read it out loud. Biblical worship is not an attempt to contact the divine. It's not an attempt to mediate to us the power of God's intervention in past saving events. It's the other way around. Biblical worship is a worship of the already saved. We don't need to reach for God to appease God. God has already bent down to us. What I think of right away here is the priesthood. The most ancient concept of priesthood

[25:31]

is this idea of priest as mediator between God and humanity, calling down the power of God, deus ex machina, appeasing God somehow. That may be a broad anthropological base for priesthood, but Christian biblical, specifically biblical worship, and then specifically Christian worship, Christian priesthood is a whole different thing. We are not, according to Taft, trying to mediate God, God's intervention. Christians know we've already been saved. We don't have to reach out for God. God has already bent down to us. We're going to talk about the priesthood of Christ. We only have one priest. All the sacrifices have been done. The reconciliation has been made, has been won. That's what we're all about. We're an Easter people. The reconciliation is already there. We don't have to call God down. God's here. That's the whole point.

[26:33]

We don't have to appease God. God's been appeased. God's not angry. The reconciliation has been won. Our ritual is celebrating that. It's already been done. Our ritual, our worship, is praising and thanking the fact that it's already been done. Our worship is entering into that which has already been accomplished for us, so that we can become part of that salvation, part of that reconciliation, part of that. In Christianity, what all other rituals strain to achieve, has, we believe, already been fulfilled once and for all by Christ. Reconciliation with the Father has been accomplished eternally in the mystery of the Son. The gap is bridged forever through God's initiative. Human beings were trying to do it, and trying to do it, and trying to do it. Well, they don't even have to try anymore. God took the initiative. The bridge has been gapped. So, last paragraph.

[27:37]

So, Christian worship is not how we seek to contact God. It is a celebration of how God has touched us, how God has united us to himself, and is ever-present and ever-dwelling in us. A celebration of how God is ever-present. A celebration of how God is dwelling in us. It's our way of making sense and interpreting that reality, that God is in us, that God has acted through God's own initiative. It's not a reaching out for a distant reality. It's a joyful celebration of a salvation, very important line, that is just as real and active in the celebration as it was in the historical event. Ah, there's biblical worship. A celebration of a salvation that is just as real and active in the celebration as it was in the original historical event. It's a ritual perfected by divine realism.

[28:38]

Ritual in which the symbolic action is not a memorial of the past, but a participation in the eternally present salvific pasch of Christ. I love this definition here. This makes incredible sense when you start thinking about Eucharist, and our whole notion of memorial in Eucharist. It's not reenacting. It's entering into an eternal present, celebrating an eternal present. Then our ritual becomes a making sense of that eternal present. Our ritual becomes our expression of thanks for that, our expression of gratitude. When I fall in love, when I love, I need to express it. It just happens naturally, or I burst. I have to say, I love you. When it's a beautiful day, I have to say, oh gosh, what a great day. When I realize that God has acted in our lives, in my life,

[29:39]

it bursts out of me like Mikhail Brezhnev. I just have to do something. Dance. And my mother and grandmother have to sit there and let me get it over with. Ultimately, that's what it's about. Not trying to call God down, but celebrating the fact that God has already won this for us. Do you ever listen to Paul Harvey? No? Did this joke make any sense to you? Paul Harvey is a radio announcer who goes through, finishes up and he goes, page two. So, page two. Getting a little more specific. Do you know what I'm talking about? Page two. Page two. So, you probably know this already, but let's talk about it anyway. The word liturgy, from the Greek word,

[30:39]

go ahead, what is it, the Greek word? Oh, I thought somebody would know. I thought this would be old news. Liturgia. It's pretty easy. It comes directly from the Greek. But the meaning of that word is important. The original Greek sense of that word always concerned a whole people. It always meant something public, in a sense that it's, let me give you the exact definition that I have. A public work done for the service of others. A liturgy is always a public work done in service for others. Originally, it meant something of a political or a technical nature. And having to do somehow with the welfare of all. I remember as being very young, people explained to me about how, you know, liturgy, like shaving in the morning. And it would be years later I'd realize, no, shaving is not a liturgy. Shaving is a ritual. But shaving doesn't necessarily have

[31:42]

public work done for the service of others. So we're nuancing here a little bit, getting a little more specific. Not just ritual, but liturgy. What this tells me too, again in a broader sense about liturgy, is that when we are together, we ought to be together. That sounds simple enough. How I phrased this I think last time was, there are no hermits at the liturgy. It's always a public work. This is not an act of private devotion that we come together for. So, with this understanding, anything that smacks of private devotionalism at the liturgy is going against the grain of what the liturgy is supposed to be there for. When I hear the argument that I can't sing a communion song because that's my private time with Jesus, I want to weep. Because it's not your private time with Jesus. That's not a private time at liturgy. This is a public time.

[32:42]

We have moments of silence. We have moments of shared meditation. This is not my time to say my rosary. This is not my time to do adoration, necessarily, in that sense. It's always a public moment. When I receive the Eucharist, my emphasis is still on we, us here doing this. Even my silent meditation is with my sisters and my brothers. Why? Because we're always sanctified as a church. Liturgical language is always we language. It's never I language. It's always we, we. And I want to point out, I'll jump real quick in there again and say it, this doesn't exclude periods of silence. It doesn't exclude periods of reflection. As a matter of fact, the documents themselves call specifically for these different moments of silence, these different moments of meditation, which aren't observed quite enough

[33:43]

in popular religiosity, I'm afraid. We just don't trust people with quiet often enough. But even that, and that's a whole other topic, but even that quiet somehow is a communal quiet, is a corporate, like when we're gathered around the Blessed Sacrament at the end of the evening. There's something beautiful about that energy of people together doing that silence. Liturgy is always we language. This next little section, and before we get into it, well, we're going to get into the Latin here as badly as it is translated. It's kind of a focus on Aidan Kavanaugh. He's a monk of St. Meinrad, and he's probably one of the best known liturgists around at a certain level, not necessarily a popular liturgist, but he's the professor of the liturgics at the Yale University School of Divinity. I absorbed a lot of his stuff because I studied at St. Meinrad for one year, and when you're there,

[34:44]

it's in the cracks of the place. It just kind of seeps in your pores, and a lot of little pithy comments you'd hear from monks about liturgy, and you realize later on they're writing Aidan Kavanaugh's books. His book called The Elements of Right, which I'll probably bring around and offer you some of his pithiness. Anyway, when I got out of Aidan Kavanaugh a lot, reading him, is this whole idea of the connection between belief and worship. This is our next movement now. So this ties in closely, I think, with this whole idea of the anthropological foundation of worship and making sense of reality. So we sometimes distinguish between primary and secondary theology. Does that sound familiar to you? Aidan Kavanaugh teaches that liturgy is primary theology,

[35:47]

meaning liturgy, for example, is a place where theology is created. You could even think of Scripture, in a sense, as a child of the liturgy. Scripture is created out of liturgy, out of ritual, because, especially in the New Testament, Scripture can be seen as a record of hymns and proclamations, a record of stories and exhortations and homilies. Mark, for example, speculation is it might have been written specifically for use at the baptismal liturgy on the Easter vigil. This whole thing was read to lead into catechumens being baptized. Certainly, the epistles are chock-full of Pauline doxologies, chock-full of hymns. Many of the canticles we sing in vespers

[36:48]

come right out of the epistles. So think of even Scripture as a child of liturgy. So liturgy, this Christian worship being primary theology, this hummus, this ground where theology is being created. Remember that orthodoxy – I had a little argument with somebody about this last time – doesn't mean primarily right belief. It means right praise, doxa, like doxology. Orthodoxy means right praise. Otherwise it would be orthopistis or orthodidaskalia. That would be right belief or right teaching. So liturgy is where theology is in a sense created. And Aidan Kavanaugh would go so far to say, he says, on liturgical theology, you can't even talk about, you shouldn't even necessarily talk about

[37:49]

a theology of the liturgy, but you can talk about liturgical theology, theology that comes out of being a liturgical people. It reminds me of the Eastern concept of theologian, how a theologian is not necessarily one who studies about God, but one who experiences God and then the knowledge comes out of that experience. So you could say that about us too, liturgical theology, not theology about liturgy, but liturgy actually giving us our theology. Which leads me to the first of my little Latin phrases there. Lex orandi, lex credendi. This is a chompy translation. It would be something like the law of prayer is the law of belief. And this is one of these parallel constructions though that goes back and forth. I heard one rather conservative commentator describe this as how you pray

[38:52]

is how you believe. Or you could say it the other way around. How you believe is how you pray. They go together. It just really works either way. But certainly how we pray shapes how we believe. And if you want to teach somebody about God, teach them how to pray. Foster an encounter with God. And this could be very ideological. For example, all the changes following the Second Vatican Council. Just look at one instance. The changes around the reception of communion. From kneeling, hands folded, eyes closed, putting out the tongue behind a rail, to standing, eyes open, hands out like this. What a whole different encounter with God is going on there. So first of all you're doing, by encouraging this, you're encouraging a different encounter with God. And the recipient of that encounter is going to understand something different

[39:53]

about God from that. And that encounter is going to then affect the rest of worship, the rest of the way that person is going to pray. Go the other way around. What if the encounter is different at first? Maybe some people, you see them in our chapel sometimes, their encounter with God is different and so they come and even here, kneel down, fold their hands, put their tongue out. They want to receive that way. Because their encounter with God is something different. And that's how they want to react to it, by kneeling down. Now, I'm trying to do this as completely non-judgmental. But there's lexa rondi, lex credendi. How you pray is going to affect how you believe. How you believe is going to affect how you pray. Things too, like I'm saying presider instead of celebrant. Even using a word like con-celebration drives me crazy. The priests are not con-celebrating.

[40:55]

We're all con-celebrating. But those little words! How you believe is how you pray. How you pray is how you're going to believe. So, how we shape our liturgy is how we're expressing what we believe about God. But it's also forming how we believe about God. Those little actions that we do day in and day out form how we believe. And how we believe then forms how we pray. Why we need to be very careful, I think, even about little things. Another interesting note I'd like to throw in there about the law of prayer and the law of belief. You know that word canon, we refer to Eucharistic prayer one as the canon, the Eucharistic canon. That word is used, I can only think of three times in ecclesiology. The canon of scripture,

[41:56]

canon law, and canon, the Eucharistic canon. That is how closely those things are guarded. So the church takes this very seriously, lex errandi, lex credendi. They're not about to let one word change. This is such a sacred deposit, such a sacred trust. We can talk forever about is the church too heavy-handed, is the church too liberal? That's not my point. My point is just to say the law of prayer and the law of belief right around each other. Why do you think Rome is making such a big deal about inclusive language, about not even horizontal inclusive language? Certainly vertical inclusive language. Why? Because lex errandi, lex credendi. You start chipping away at how people pray, you're going to start chipping away at how they believe in God. Which is just exactly what the progressive element is saying too. Let's chip away at how people pray so we can give them

[42:57]

a more well-rounded experience of what God is like. So, it's on both sides. This is a very important underlying fundamental concept. Interesting too, as I mentioned before, of priests being taught liturgy in canon law class. So there's this very sacred deposit that was guarded very carefully as a canon, this law of prayer, because it shapes how people believe. It's only been recently now that... I have to... I can't remember the exact thing. It's recently that the... There's a different... A change has happened in the curia over the congregation for sacraments. I forget what it is, but anyway, it's being more heavily guarded at this point too. Then, I think we still have time for this. Let's look at the paper one more time then. Let's look at that on the second page. No, forget it.

[43:59]

I didn't give you that one. See, I'm already trying to save paper here. Here's the law. Here's the saying from Aidan Kavanaugh that I was trying to get at with this lex credenti. We're going to skip that because I'm not sure of the translation. But here's how he says it. The church assembled for worship commits, when it worships, an act of believing, an act of faith in the one who both summons the church and enables its worship. The church assembled for worship commits, when it worships, commits an act of believing, commits an act of faith, an act of faith in the one who both summons the church and enables its worship. Another way of saying this, I think, is from that beautiful, famous line

[45:00]

from Sacra Sanctum Concilium, by the way, which was the first document of Vatican II that was issued. So there's right along with it lex irrandi, lex credenti. You want to get this rejornamento really happening, this is how to do it. First reform and reshape the liturgy. And of course it set the whole tone. When we ask people about Vatican II, if they're not very well educated, even if they are, sometimes the first thing they think, oh yeah, that's when mass stopped being in Latin. So what was going on there? Lex irrandi, lex credenti. It was an act of believing, an act of faith. And the way Sacra Sanctum Concilium says it in this very famous line, the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the church is directed, and also the fount from which her power flows. So everything is centered around this act of worship. How we believe affects how we worship. How we worship affects how we believe.

[46:02]

The source and summit I like a lot. There's a diagram I like to use. I'm going to pick this book. What do I have to pick up next time? Doesn't work very well, does it? Got to have a circle in there. It's too masculine. Source. Because there's two fundamental acts we talk about through all of these documents. The sanctification of the church, the worship of God. Through our worship, we are sanctified. Through our ritual, through our liturgy, we are sanctified and God is worshipped. We are sanctified by worshipping God. God is worshipped by us being sanctified. Because liturgy is both source and summit. So it's this movement of from us to God, from God to us. And I put up here thanks and praise.

[47:08]

Summit. Source. Worship. Sanctification. And I have that circle around it just to point that it's nothing static. This is how we talk. This is how the documents always lay it out. This is actually a summary of what we've been talking about so far. Exerandi, lex credendi, source and summit. So there's two movements here. From God to us. God as source of our sanctification. But interesting, the church is sanctified. Not we as individuals. We just don't talk that way. Of course we as individuals are. But liturgical language is we language. I remember one professor saying, remember when Christ appeared to St. Paul.

[48:14]

So begin with a prayer. From the sacramentary. This is from the masses of prayers for various needs and intentions. Prayer for the church. God our Father, may your church always be your holy people. United as you are one with the Son and the Holy Spirit. May your church be for all the world a sign of your unity and holiness as it grows to perfection in your love. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, our one God forever and ever. Amen. Amen. So welcome, class two. Just a quick recap of what we did last week.

[49:19]

Catch up. So I started with some broad swipes about ritual, just to kind of give us an anthropological base. That thing from Taft on rituals first that I find very important, understanding this idea that ritual is ideology and experience and action. And also, that's his definition. My own idea, the way I like to say it is ritual as somehow making sense out of reality. Somehow reacting to reality through the dance, through music, through word. And then we talked about biblical worship. Getting a little more focused. Again, this point that I find very important. It's not our worship in the biblical sense. It's not our way of trying to call God down to us. Not trying to appease God. Our worship is a celebration of the fact that God has already come to us.

[50:20]

Specifically in Christian worship, that this reconciliation, this mediation has been brought about by Christ the priest already. And we enter into that priesthood and celebrate that fact. And also this idea that we inherit from the Hebrews that this salvation is just as real and active in the remembering of it. It's just as real in the ritual celebration as it was in the historical event. We're not reenacting it. We're entering into that ever-present reality of salvation and worshiping it. And we participate in that eternally present. I love phrases like that. Eternally present. Then I talked a little bit about specifically what's liturgy, why shaving is not a liturgy. It may be a ritual, but it's not a liturgy.

[51:21]

Because liturgy is always a public work. It always involves others. And then I talked a bit about Kavanaugh, especially talking about the connection between belief and worship. How liturgy is primary theology. It's a place where theology is created. It's committing an act of believing. And Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, which I find is this constant refrain in my life when I think about liturgy. Ritual is the ideology in action. How we pray is how we believe. How we believe is how we're going to pray. And so the church is very cautious about putting structures on how we pray because it's going to shape how we believe. It's a forming thing. We'll talk about that a little bit more. It's not a teaching moment necessarily. We don't talk about it as didaskalia. But liturgy is a formating thing. So the way the kind of celebrations we foster,

[52:22]

we are fostering encounters with God for each other in that way. And what I just started on, since we ended last time, and this will begin again, is these two direct acts involved that are spoken of in the documents. Sanctification of the church and worship of God. And I put those two things together with that famous line from Sacra Sanctum Cuncilium. The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the church is directed. It is also the fount from which all her power flows. I could just think about that over and over and over again. In some ways, I want to disagree with it. Because I don't feel like that's really where all my activities are directed. But what that tells me is I better start thinking like the church then. Somehow, all of our activity is directed toward liturgy.

[53:25]

All of our activity is directed toward that act of worship. Everything we do, our cooking, even our private time, our walking in the woods, our sleeping, everything we do is directed toward liturgy in the broadest sense, is directed toward worship. And it's also the summit of our activity. It's the highlight of our activity. And then it also becomes the summit from which all her power flows, the documents say. Now, our documents are always presuming Eucharist at the center of that. And there'll be debates on and on, back and forth, is Eucharist really the key monastic liturgy, yada, yada, yada. I don't want to even go into that polemic. The idea is our documents, our basic theology, assumes that. Eucharist right there at the center, all those focused toward Eucharist.

[54:27]

So I'm going to give you that. My lovely diagram here again, which has no sense to it whatsoever. But I put it this way. Summit. Source. And I just make this praise and thanks. Worship. Sanctification. And then I want to discuss the fact that this is a dynamic thing. It doesn't stay anywhere. Eventually we will stay just in that heavenly mode of praise and thanks. But we worship, and it's the summit of our activity. It's for us, all of our being, all of our activity, all of our doing, to turn itself into worship, into praise and thanks.

[55:32]

And from that, we are sanctified. And it's the source of all our power. It's the source of all the power of the Church, is that praise and that thanks that we offer as the highlight of our activities. So the Church talks about sanctification and worship, sanctification and worship, and you can find it over and over and over again. From us to God, sanctification. And this is the important thing. I ended with this last time. We are sanctified as a Church. Liturgical language is always we language. And the story I was telling you at the end of last class, when St. Paul is struck blind on the road, Jesus says, why are you persecuting me? And the image that I got from that, from a professor I had, was Paul was persecuting Christians, many Christians, and Jesus said, why are you persecuting me? The Church is that body.

[56:33]

We always have to remember that. And so these two things, worship and sanctification, are never separated from each other. Our goal is to worship, and it is our worship that sanctified us. But we would not be able to worship if the Holy Spirit had not been planted into our hearts. So we need to go back to that also. This idea that this act of believing that we're committing is an act of believing in that One who calls us and enables that worship. Now here we're bumping into this notion of our priesthood being a sharing in the priesthood of Christ, a participation in the priesthood of Christ. The Spirit of Christ has been planted in us, and it's that Spirit that prays in us and allows us to share in that praise, that eternal priesthood.

[57:36]

Back to our idea that we're not calling God down upon us. The calling has already happened. The mediation has already won. The connection's there. We're entering into it by our worship. What I want to look at, then, is this definition from... I have two extra copies if you don't have one. From the Constitutional and Sacred Liturgy, this very famous paragraph. Look at the... One, two, three. The third paragraph. The liturgy, then, is rightly seen as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. It involves the presentation of human sanctification under the guise of signs perceptible by the senses and its accomplishment in ways appropriate to each individual. In it, full public worship is performed

[58:42]

by the mystical body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the head and members. Let's keep reading. From this, it follows that every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the High Priest above his body, which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others. No other action of the Church could equal its efficacy by the same title, to the same degree. So the sacred... The liturgy is an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus. Our celebration of that is our way of realizing our priesthood, our sharing in that priesthood of Christ. This was so emphasized to me by my ecclesiology professor, who is a big student of Yves Congar. The whole ecology of us recognizing our priesthood, not talking about ordained priesthood,

[59:42]

not talking about ministerial priesthood, but our priesthood. The big sign for that comes to me when we realize this chrism which is poured over the priest's hands is used three times. Baptism, confirmation, and priesthood. So the ordained priesthood, the sacramental priesthood, is an outcome of that first priesthood, which we all share in. We are each priests in that sense. Not ministerial priest, not ordained priest. We are priests sharing in that one priesthood of Christ. When we gather to do liturgy, we are doing so as priests. We are a priestly people. We are all priests sharing in that priesthood of Jesus Christ. Our worship then is an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ and is an exercise of our priesthood as priestly people.

[60:46]

The mediation between God and humanity has been won by Jesus, and we enter into that mediation. Then we become the priests of creation by our act of worship. I find this very exciting. This whole notion at St. Paul of all creation is groaning while we await the redemption of our bodies. We are the priests of creation. There's one line from, I'm not sure what document of John Paul, an encyclical talking about humankind as the priests of creation. And our act of worship is our giving voice to all of creation, to those groans and sighs of creation that can't form themselves into words. We form those into words. We are the priests entering into that one priesthood of Christ. I'm pounding and pounding and pounding on that. The sacred liturgy then is consequently the public worship

[61:47]

which our Redeemer as head of the church renders to the Father Jesus is rendering to the Father, as well as the worship which the community of the faithful renders to its founder. Jesus to the Father, us to Jesus, and through, with, and in Jesus to the Father. And I've lost a page. Here it is. In short, this is part of the definition I didn't give you on your sheet there. The worship rendered by the mystical body of Christ in the entirety of his heavenly members. I want to look... I didn't bring my... Did anybody happen to bring the scriptures with them?

[62:48]

Let me just... Can I pause this tape for a second? For our studio audience. This fundamental stance of the creature toward the Creator in Pauline literature is what I want to talk about just for a moment. I want to get these exact words so you can hear this. This Ephesians canticle which we pray every Friday night at Vespers. Paul's fundamental stance is that we exist specifically to give praise to God's glory. And in this Ephesians canticle he says it three times. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You know the one I'm talking about. Verse six. To the praise of his glorious grace. Verse 12. So that we who were first to set our hope in Christ might live for the praise of his glory.

[63:51]

Verse 14. This is the pledge of our inheritance toward the redemption as God's own people. To the praise of his glory. It's a Pauline theme. We exist specifically to give praise. The other part of that definition, that same paragraph that I like so much, which is where we move into Cipriano Bagaggini, is right in the middle there. The liturgy is then rightly seen as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. It involves the representation of human sanctification under the guise of signs perceptible by the senses and its accomplishments in ways appropriate to each of these senses. Father Bagaggini especially likes to point out that this definition is emphasizing the importance of sign in the liturgy. So much to such an extent that this idea that the liturgy is a structure,

[64:56]

a system of signs perceptible to the senses, even appears to be a central fact, a central point of the liturgy. That idea that signs perceptible to the senses. And the signs are not only referred to worship, but the signs are also referred to sanctification. So the signs are important for both movements, sanctification and worship together. From God to us, from us to God. So not only does God sanctify us through signs, not only do we worship God through signs, God in turn sanctifies us through these same signs. And he loves to, in this great tome, The Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, Father Bagaggini develops this notion of signs and sensible signs. I just like reading the chapter headings. Chapter 2, The Liturgy as a Complexus of Sensible Signs.

[65:57]

And then chapter 3 moves on, The Liturgy as a Complexus of Efficacious Sensible Signs. And then chapter 4 moves on, The Liturgy as a Complexus of Sensible Efficacious Signs of the Church's Sanctification and Worship. Takes that one thing and it becomes this real central point in the whole study of liturgy. I gave you there then a paragraph from him on Theological Dimensions, which I was saying is not even a description, it's a homily. But he likes to call this more a description than a definition. I'd like to pick this apart a little bit. The Liturgy is the complexus of sensible signs of things sacred, spiritual, and invisible, instituted by Christ or by the Church. Signs which are efficacious, each in their own way, of that which they signify. By which signs God, the Father by appropriation,

[66:59]

through Christ the head and priest, and in the presence of the Holy Spirit, sanctifies the Church, and the Church as a body in the presence of the Holy Spirit, uniting herself to Christ, head and priest, through him renders her worship to God. So you see, there's everything we're talking about in one paragraph. But let's pick through it one more time. The Liturgy is a complexus of sensible signs. Now what does sensible mean here? It doesn't mean rational, but sensible things you can touch and smell. It's a very incarnational definition. Receptible. Signs of things that are sacred, things that are spiritual, invisible. Now this is going to be important in a couple paragraphs from now. Instituted by Christ or by the Church. This is part of our definition of what's liturgy and what's not liturgy. We talk about liturgy as being things that are specifically, we figure, instituted by Christ, instituted by the Church. And if they're not one of those two things, they're not specifically Roman Catholic liturgy.

[68:01]

Signs which are efficacious. This is coming up right now too. Efficacious meaning what? That they affect what they signify, each in their own way. By which signs, and then here's our two things. Through Christ and the presence of the Spirit, God sanctifies the Church, and the Church as a body renders worship to God. So let's talk about efficacious for a minute and the difference between sign and symbol. You could read lots of philosophical definitions about the difference between sign and symbol. For me it comes down to, the way I can understand it is through a stop sign. A symbol points to something. A symbol stands for something or suggests something else by reason of its relationship to something else. A symbol is a visible representation of something invisible.

[69:07]

A sign is a symbol. A sign is always a symbol, but a sign is a symbol plus. A sign is a symbol and something more. Somehow a sign carries in it or contains in it the reality toward which it's pointing. So, a stop sign is not really a sign, because a stop sign doesn't stop you. A brick wall might be a stop sign, because it carries, or it could say dead end. It carries with it somehow the reality of signifying. So, when we say where there's smoke there's fire. Well, to me a smoke at that point is not a symbol, it's actually a sign because it's carrying somehow the reality that it's pointing toward. You see what I'm saying? To me that's the easiest way to understand it. So, that's why we get the word efficacious. Sign is a symbol that has the power to produce a desired effect. It's efficacious.

[70:11]

It effects what it's pointing toward. Of course, our most important signs then are our sacraments. We say about the sacraments that they are efficacious. So, the Eucharist doesn't just point toward the body of Christ. It's a sign because it contains the body of Christ. The Eucharist, especially because it's not just presence, but we also consider it person. It's the most powerful sign. Baptism doesn't just point toward initiation. It's not just a symbol of having been initiated. Actually, the initiation is effected by baptism. That's how we teach that. Reconciliation is not just a symbol of forgiveness. It's a sign that's efficacious because we are forgiven through the sacrament of reconciliation. We are indeed forgiven.

[71:14]

That sign carries within it the reality. Marriage. I'm just going down the list here. Marriage doesn't just point toward something. Marriage actually is the embodiment, the effect of that unity. That's why it's a sacrament. And the same for holy orders. When we talk about baptism, confirmation, and holy orders, we're talking about that nebulous notion of ontological change. That's how much we believe it's an efficacious sign. Ontologically, the person receiving that sacrament is changed. That's how efficacious. Now we can see from time to time, Michael probably has some thoughts on this, but sometimes religious have talked about vows being raised to the level of an official sacrament in the church. You probably had some debates about that. And you can kind of understand why. But we also use that word sacrament in a much broader sense.

[72:14]

So even our documents talk about the church as sacrament. It's a sign containing the reality of what it is. And so my vows were sacrament in that sense. They weren't just empty words. They contained the reality of what they were. It was a real sign. We talk about the liturgy of the hours as sacramental. It's not one of these seven sacraments, but it is sacramental. It contains the reality. It's an official sign of the church. It's an official liturgy of the church. So, sign as instrumental, sensible thing which makes present something else whose place it takes. Sign revealing the things signified, but at the same time, through the mystery of faith, a sign also hides what it signifies. That's where the eyes of faith come from. I just flashed into my mind Little Bear,

[73:24]

our friend from the Esalen tribe. He was here at Eucharist, and during the consecration, tears were just flowing down his face. I asked him later, what was that all about? He had seen the Epiclesis over the bread, and he just knew that the power of God was being called down on his bread, and he just knew that this bread was no longer bread. He understood that. That sign there wasn't hiding anything from him. He already had the eyes of faith. Our Buddhist friends feel very much that way, too. They know something powerful is going on during the consecration, during the Eucharistic prayer. They see that. They have those eyes. Those things are not necessarily hidden from them. But it's funny how many Catholics, how many Christians those things are hidden from. So those eyes of faith come from what? From some kind of belief in supernatural reality,

[74:25]

from some kind of belief in spiritual reality. So, for someone who does not grasp its value, the sign acts as a screen. The sign hides the reality. Maybe protects the reality. I heard somebody say it that way once. But for someone who does grasp the value, it acts as a bridge. It acts as an informant. The sign does. So, when we say signs are efficacious, we mean they carry within them the power. They cause, through the power of God, some kind of metamorphosis. So, back to Fr. Vagagini. The liturgy is the complexest of sensible, efficacious signs of the Church's sanctification and of her worship. What else are the signs in liturgy, though,

[75:30]

besides the real obvious ones? To make it really incarnational, I think we have to add in there speech as a sign, gestures, movements, attitudes, elements, objects, art, music, persons. These all are signs of the Church's sanctification. They also become signs because it's through – we're very incarnational – it's through physical things that we worship. Oils, water, wine, bread. It's through all these signs that we worship and it's through all these signs that God sanctifies us. I have a clear memory of going to an evangelical wedding once. I went to school with this guy. He was talking about another Reformed tradition and saying, oh yeah, but they're still a little too close to being a liturgical church, as if that was a bad thing.

[76:31]

I was maybe 30, but it was the first time I had heard that concept, as if it was a bad thing to be a liturgical church. And I went to this guy's wedding. It was in some kind of a room in an industrial complex with some cheap lights and a little bit of awful music. I felt ugly folding chairs, cheap pulpits, plastic flowers, the whole thing. This was a good thing because it wasn't a liturgical tradition. Ah, I'll take the liturgical tradition. But the farther and farther away you get from Roman Catholicism, within the Christianity I find, and I don't mean this to be a prejudice, this is just a fact from what I've seen, the farther and farther away you get from Roman Catholicism and Orthodox and Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, yada yada, the more and more you see less and less things around,

[77:34]

less and less vestments, less and less candles, less and less incense, less and less... Why? Less and less oil, less and less actions, and just focus completely on somebody preaching and some hymn singing going on. Why? It seems to me there's less and less belief that the body is good, that there's less and less belief that the earth is good, that all these things are good and that God sanctifies us through these things and that we worship through these things. I love being Roman Catholic because we love this stuff. We love the sounds and the sights and the smells and the colors, all those things we think are good and God sanctifies us through them, we worship through them, and they are to be trusted. As Fr. Vagagini says, our liturgy is this complexness of sensible things that signify the spiritual

[78:36]

and the invisible. Now this part gets a little loftier. I'm going to write it on the board so you can... I didn't put this all in your handout. There are four... This is right from Fr. Vagagini. Four dimensions of the liturgical sign. One, commemorative. Demonstrative. Three, obligating. Four, prophetic. I like this a lot. And I'm going to mark it that way. So if all of our liturgical signs,

[79:43]

we could say, have four dimensions to them. Now you could say they have six, you could say they have eight, you could say they have one. But this is the way Fr. Vagagini explains it. And I like this a lot. Because it also carries in this notion of time. First of all, every liturgical sign is commemorative. It remembers Christ's saving action. Just as in Hebrew, liturgy is commemorative of the salvific activity of God, the Lord, the Holy One of Israel. So we've already talked about that. And in that commemoration, by commemorating, that salvation is just as real and active as it was in the historical event. Secondly, though, every liturgical sign has this dimension as well. That it demonstrates the present visible sacred realities. Demonstrative of the present visible sacred realities.

[80:49]

As I just said, by commemorating, we don't just mean remembering something in the past. In our remembering, the saving reality is somehow present. Again, Christ is forever our High Priest. Christ is forever and all eternity offering praise to the Father and the Holy Spirit in this eternal now. So when we are participating in these liturgical signs, we are entering into a liturgy that's always going on. We are entering into a worship that's always going on. And so, with all the choirs of angels in heaven, we sing this unending hymn of praise. It's a present reality. The second aspect of the present, which points to the future, the third dimension of the liturgical sign. It's a moral sign obligating. It's a moral sign that obligates. This goes back to Aidan Kavanaugh, which I quoted to you.

[81:50]

This idea of us committing an act of believing. Wasn't that Aidan Kavanaugh? It's... Yeah, it probably was. Committing an act of believing. Oh, here it is right here. Commits, when it worships, an act of believing, an act of faith in the one. So when we worship, we're committing an act of believing. And that act of believing obligates us to a way of life. Obligates us to a system of believing. When we say amen, we are somehow committing ourselves to this way of life, to this Christian way of life, to be followers of Christ. And therefore, no one should, ought, receive these sacraments loosely, because they're an act of commitment. Having received them, we are now obliged to live a certain way.

[82:55]

Our participation is an aspect of ourselves as bride of Christ. So in a sense, every time we take part in a liturgical sign, in a liturgy, we are renewing our marriage vows. We're renewing our marriage as bride of Christ. Every time we participate in this liturgy in the church. And then fourth, this fourth dimension of the liturgical sign, every liturgical sign somehow is also portending, is also prophetic of a heavenly glory. So not only the past and the present, but even the future is contained in our liturgical celebrations. While we pray, we are waiting, one of my favorite lines in the liturgy, in joyful hope. We're waiting in joyful hope for the coming of the fullness of time, for the coming of our Savior. This is most explicit for me during that embolism between the Our Father and the doxology.

[83:58]

The words around thy kingdom come, thy will be done. And then we wait in joyful hope for the kingdom is yours. Now, Joseph, I've heard to speak more eloquently than anyone on this notion of already and not yet. And I like that very much. I think of that quite often also at the Our Father. The kingdom of God is already here and it's not yet here. There's both of those aspects to it. There's this wonderful tension. Somehow that's what Advent is all about too. And these liturgical signs are prophetic of that not yet, not yet completed, but also prophetic of that, of us waiting in joyful hope for that completion. Hope meaning we believe it's going to happen, not hope meaning we wish it will happen someday. We use the word hope wrong all the time. We always think hope means I wish something will happen, but I'm not sure. Hope means I'm sure it's going to happen.

[84:58]

Hope means I hope. I know it's going to happen. I'm counting on it to happen. So, at Eucharist, someone once described this moment of the Our Father. I know it's kind of folksy, but I used to love to look out in the parish and see people holding hands during the Our Father and raising their hands at the doxology. It was the most beautiful and moving sight to me. I think week after week after week. It was like this one moment of realized eschatology. It was an already, the not yet. I know it was not yet, but there was an already moment about it, of that unity. So some of this portending and prophetic nature of the liturgical sign, some of this dimension, is about the fact that, for example, in this sign of peace, I don't just wish you the sign of peace because I'm at peace with you. I wish you the sign of peace because I want to be at peace with you.

[86:01]

We come together to eat from one body, not just because we are one body, but because we want to be one body. There's some of that also, because those sacraments are meant to effect what they symbolize. So I've heard the argument that, oh, you shouldn't even go to Eucharist if you're carrying anger in your heart. You shouldn't be celebrating Eucharist if you're not united. Well, I don't think that works. Eucharist is what unites us. It's one of the reasons we do it, is so we can effect this unity. That has interesting implications for inner communion, too, doesn't it? There are some who would argue that in order for Anglicans and Catholics to be united, maybe they should just start being united, just start doing it together, and let that effect. A whole other topic. Now, what's tied up there for me, then, is I see the past, the present, and the future. The past, it's commemorative. The present, it's demonstrative of present reality,

[87:04]

and it's obligating me in this present moment to living a certain way of life, and then prophetic in the future. Where this is all tied up for me, again, is right there at the center of the Eucharist, right there at the center of the Eucharistic Liturgy, with the memorial acclamation. There's where it's all summed up. There's three verbs there. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. I don't think people realize that that one in the middle is in present tense. Not Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. So there's the three realities present all the time. It's interesting how all the memorial acclamations have the dying and the assertive, the rising and restoring our life. Lord Jesus, come in glory, always pointing them toward that future glory as well. So, now this next division,

[88:14]

we'll see how far we get into this. I wouldn't mind if we sort of... Actually, I'd like to stop there, because that's a nice break, and then the next class could be the last one. How would that be? Then we can go into the section on the Liturgy of Prayers. I think that's enough for that section. Do you want to chew that up a little bit? Disagree? Oh, should I turn the tape off so you can speak freely? What did you say?

[88:45]

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