Mass And Modernity by Fr. Jonathan Robinson

Author:Fr. Jonathan Robinson [Robinson, Fr. Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781586170691
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2010-11-19T06:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

THE LAMB’S HIGH FEAST

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing

Praise to our victorious King,

Who has washed us in the tide

Flowing from his pierced side;

Praise we him, whose love divine

Gives his sacred blood for wine,

Gives his body for the feast,

Christ the victim, Christ the priest.

—Ambrosian hymn, seventh century

The Church at her deepest, truest level is the living presence of Christ working among us, and in us, through his sacraments. Christ came to share in our humanity so that every one of us could become partakers of his divinity. We are presented with this truth every time we go to Mass and the priest says at the offertory: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”1 We may not always sense his presence; there will be times of obscurity and darkness; but in a faithful and serious sacramental life, we know that God is gradually remaking us into the image of his beloved Son. And, just as the Father was well pleased with the Son, so he will be well pleased with us—if we remain in the Son.

In harmony with this understanding of the Church and sacraments, we have already noted2 that Vatican II taught that the liturgy is the summit of all the Church’s activities and the source from which all her power flows and that, in the liturgy, “the work of our redemption is accomplished.”3 The Catechism of the Catholic Church takes up this theme and quotes Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, saying that the liturgy gives to the faithful the power to bring home to themselves and to others “the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church”.4 Liturgy matters, then, because it is vital to the Catholic understanding of what it means to lead a Christian life.5 Liturgy is related to Christian truth, and Christian truth is required for what Plato called “living well”.6 One of the themes of The Mass and Modernity is that to live a good life requires a difficult and ongoing effort to “seek the things that are above” (Col 3:1) and that the worship of the Church is supposed to do just that: to remind us of the things that are above and to help us seek them. But, furthermore, the liturgy is not going to do this unless what actually goes on in church is based on Christian truth and can be seen to be based on Christian truth.

There is an old saying, dating from the Indiculus, attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine, written about 435-442,7 to the effect that what is believed can be seen from the prayer of the Church. Lex orandi, lex credendi; that is, literally, the law of prayer is the law of faith. Sometimes this principle was used to argue that we could base the faith itself on the liturgy of the Church. This is not, however, what the Council of Ephesus said; in

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