The Universal Outlook of the Liturgy
In Sacred Signs, Romano Guardini rather beautifully writes, “The more we think about these long-familiar things the clearer does their meaning grow. Things we have done thousands of times, if we will only look into them more deeply, will disclose to us their beauty. If we listen, they will speak” (22). Before reading about the Christian liturgy, I had never properly considered it before. In fact, I didn’t recognize the full importance of it. I was focused on the reservation and the confinement of the worship, skimming the surface without diving more deeply. Oddly enough, I went hiking today, and on the way down as I was reflecting on the liturgy, I realized it was quite like the uphill climb I had just done. The liturgy is the confinement of the trail, the difficulty of the path, the challenge to the mind, the focus on each step, the subtle beauty that pushes you to look upwards. Yet it is this very trail that leads you to the glorious summit, to the presence of God. Through the liturgy, “the individual yields place to the universal,” the particulars of the path become the entire trail that leads to God (Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy 44). This idea of broadening the particular to the universal is reflected in the way in which the liturgy broadens the characteristics of beauty — symbolic, playful, and festive — into something more universal, into a way of looking that aligns us with God.
This alignment towards God begins with the “new way of looking” mentioned in the lecture regarding Cyril of Jerusalem. His writing on the liturgy focuses on the pure intentionality that must be behind each act, a kind of serious playfulness that can be observed in the renunciation of Satan, the stripping of the clothes, the anointing with oil, and each act of worship. Romano Guardini deepens this image of serious playfulness through his description of a child’s play: “It is life, pouring itself forth without an aim, seizing upon riches from its own abundant source, significant through the fact of its existence” (68). This is the liturgy. It is life pouring out through contemplation and its reservation. It is life pouring out as an expression of God. The playfulness of the liturgy has all the joy of a child with a core of contemplation, allowing this playfulness to lead us towards truth.
Frequently, images are the route used to direct one to truth, so symbols in the liturgy become a way of redirecting the vision. This is particularly true of Gertrude the Great of Helfta, who describes her visions of God. In one particularly memorable moment, Gertrude describes herself as a small plant that is renewed by Christ: “Her most loving Jesus seemed to draw her toward himself by the breath of love of his pierced heart, and to wash her in the water flowing from it, and then to sprinkle her with the life-giving blood of his heart. With this action she began to revive, and from the smallest cinder she was invigorated and grew into a green tree” (176). The symbol in the liturgy can be used in several ways to redirect vision. The first is in the way in which Gertrude does above in relating an event that inspires emotion in the reader, forcing him or her to consider the depth of the relationship with God. The second use of the symbol is when someone experiences the fullness of the symbol themselves. This is demonstrated by Cyril when he writes how the actions in each sacrament must be physically done in order to be used as a leap into the spiritual. The symbol is necessary to a greater understanding because the material world must be used. The liturgy captures both the emotional and physical side of the symbolic, permitting the members of the community to come closer to God together.
Community is essential to the festive element of the liturgy for it is only together that we are able to use the liturgy to connect with God. Guardini describes this community, or “body of the faithful,” as extending beyond time and space, for it is not merely those in physical proximity with you but all those united in Christ through the Church (36). This gives far more weight to the liturgy because it becomes a unifying entity among all those who worship God. In one of Gertrude the Great’s moments with God, she hears God say, “You could join most suitably in praising me through the Alleluia in union with the praise of the inhabitants of heaven who perpetually join in praise through that same word in heaven” (147). The liturgy connects the living with all those who are faithful through this festivity. Festivity in the liturgy must have an additional component then, which both Gertrude and Guardini emphasize, for it is no longer a “question of creating beauty, but of finding salvation for sin-stricken humanity” (Guardini 83). Once again, the liturgy redirects to a more fundamental, greater view than before with this emphasis on salvation.
My initial encounter with the liturgy was limited precisely because I failed to see that its reservation and difficulty gave it beauty. I forgot that it is in the challenge of a trail that we can encounter something greater. Each author speaks of their encounters with God and describes how we might go about encountering Him ourselves through the liturgy. This more universal outlook is, of course, far more difficult, but it is comforting to know that the liturgy provides us symbols to access the spiritual, the ability to contemplate with joy, and a community that will walk alongside us, at whatever point of the path we might be at, in order to reach the summit.
