The Liturgy and the Human Body

The liturgy is a source of surprise and even confusion for those whose whole mentality is idealistic: far from being pure mental prayer, the liturgy is expressed orally and takes shape in bodily postures and gestures; these moreover are not left to the spontaneous invention of the individual but are determined by constant laws. The reason for this characteristic of the liturgy is that revelation teaches us not to separate body and soul but to recognize the unity of the human composite as God created it and is now saving it. Dom Capelle remarks:

“The material and the spiritual are not juxtaposed in the human person but are made one, and the union is not a binding of two distinct entities but the intrinsic correlation of two components of one and the same being; the union is in the proper sense a unity, and a substantial unity at that. This is why a purely spiritual worship would not only be inhuman and have to be rejected, but is even impossible.”

The body, which is destined for a glorious resurrection, has in the present life already become a temple of the Holy Spirit through baptism; it is fed by the Eucharist, and Tertullian made the point as early as the beginning of the second century that the sacraments are performed on the body in order to sanctify the soul. Furthermore, there is no real thought or feeling that is not spontaneously embodied in a posture or gesture; conversely, a posture, gesture, or action involve the whole person to such an extent that it expresses, intensifies, or even gives rise to an interior attitude; on this point modern psychology and pedagogy provide striking confirmation of theological tradition. Finally, these signs are required by the communal nature of liturgy: unanimity of hearts finds expression at least as much in bodily postures as in singing, or at least is expressed more easily by means of them. Moreover, the language of words, especially the words of the celebrant, is made more intelligible by gestures. Christ used gestures to perform miracles that he could have worked simply by words.

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The Church at Prayer, Volume I: Principles of the Liturgy (page 179). Edited by A. G. Mortimort.

Class: Introduction to the Sacraments and Worship

Healing with Truth

For the apostles, who were commissioned to find out the wanderers, and to be for sight to those who saw not, and medicine to the weak, certainly did not address them in accordance with their opinion at the time, but according to revealed truth. For no persons of any kind would act properly, if they should advise blind men, just about to fall over a precipice, to continue their most dangerous path, as if it were the right one, and as if they might go on in safety. Or what medical man, anxious to heal a sickperson, would prescribe in accordance with the patient's whims, and not according to the requisite medicine? But that the Lord came as the physician of the sick, He does Himself declare saying, “They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32). How then shall the sick be strengthened, or how shall sinners come to repentance? Is it by persevering in the very same courses? Or, on the contrary, is it by undergoing a great change and reversal of their former mode of living, by which they have brought upon themselves no slight amount of sickness, and many sins? But ignorance, the mother of all these, is driven out by knowledge. Wherefore the Lord used to impart knowledge to His disciples, by which also it was His practice to heal those who were suffering, and to keep back sinners from sin. He therefore did not address them in accordance with their pristine notions, nor did He reply to them in harmony with the opinion of His questioners, but according to the doctrine leading to salvation, without hypocrisy or respect of person.

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Irenaeus: Against Heresies (Book III, Chapter 5)

Class: History of the Christian Tradition I

The Eucharistic Liturgy

The Eucharistic liturgy is the efficacious sign of the reality, both divine and human, that makes up the Church. For, through communion in the Body and Blood of the Lord who makes them part of his redemptive sacrifice, distinct individuals—separated and even opposed by all the seeds of division that they carry within themselves by reason of their sinful condition, but washed in the redemptive bath of baptism and brought into the kingdom that the Lord inaugurated in his resurrection—become a single being, a multiform but cohesive and solidly articulated organism. In this organism a single vital sap, a single flow of life from him who is at once head and fullness (or fulfillment), a single lifegiving breath (the Spirit) that works differently in the different members, make it possible for the whole to grow harmoniously, through the ministry of all, to the full stature of the perfect Human Being—a climax reached on the day where there will no longer be aught but a single Christ presenting himself to the Father at the term of a passage now completely accomplished.

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From The Church at Prayer, Volume I: Principles of the Liturgy (page 243). Edited by A. G. Mortimort.

Class: Introduction to the Sacraments and Worship

The Forgiveness of Sins

The Church is incapable of forgiving any sin without Christ, and Christ is unwilling to forgive any sin without the Church. The Church cannot forgive the sin of one who has not repented, who has not been touched by Christ; Christ will not forgive the sin of one who despises the Church. What God has joined together, man must not separate. This is a great mystery, but I understand it as referring to Christ and the Church.

Do not destroy the whole Christ by separating head from body, for Christ is not complete without the Church, nor is the Church complete without Christ. The whole and complete Christ is head and body. This is why he said: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the Son of Man whose is in heaven. He is the only man who can forgive sin.

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From a sermon by blessed Isaac of Stella, abbot

The Office of Readings: Friday, 23rd Week in Ordinary Time

The Liturgy as Synergy between the Trinity and the Church

Each person of the Most Holy Trinity pours himself out upon the Church in a kenosis of self-giving. The Church, in her celebration of the liturgy, responds in kind; by blessing the Father, by clinging to Christ as the Bride clings to her Bridegroom and as the Body is joined to its Head, and by cooperating with the Holy Spirit in a joint activity of preparation, remembrance, transfiguration and communion. Because we are flesh and blood, God in his mercy has so ordered the economy of our salvation that this divine communion with him should take place not in the realm of subjective fancy, but in the objective celebration of the divine mysteries. In the liturgy, the “Yes” of God to man encounters the “Yes” of man to God: the divine initiative meets Marian consent:

This kind of “Yes” on the part of the Virgin allowed the incarnation of the Word to take place; it was likewise from the consent of the humanity of Jesus that the divinizing light of the transfiguration sprang, and it is the same consent by the Church that allows the liturgy to be celebrated and lived (Corbon: The Wellspring of Worship, p. 74).

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From “The Holy Spirit and the Church in the Liturgy” by Cassian Folsom

Class: Introduction to the Sacraments and Worship