Is There a Specific Litergical Season That How Great Thou Art Is Sung in

The following lecture was given at Mater Ecclesiae Parish in Berlin, New Bailiwick of jersey, on March 25, 2022. This parish is somewhat similar St. Clement's in Ottawa, in the sense that information technology has hosted the traditional Mass more or less uninterruptedly since the fourth dimension of the liturgical reform; information technology is, moreover, that rarest of rare birds, a traditional diocesan parish. The pastor is Fr. Robert Pasley, the chaplain of the CMAA. I am grateful to the parish for supplying the video of the lecture; the complete text is published beneath.

According to Joseph Ratzinger, the last book of the Bible, Revelation or the Apocalypse of St. John, shows along a kind of "archetypal liturgy" to which all our earthly liturgies must bear resemblance:

With its vision of the cosmic liturgy, in the midst of which stands the Lamb who was sacrificed, the Apocalypse has presented the essential contents of the eucharistic sacrament in an impressive form that sets a standard for every local liturgy. From the bespeak of view of the Apocalypse, the essential matter of all eucharistic liturgy is its participation in the heavenly liturgy; it is from thence that it necessarily derives its unity, its catholicity, and its universality.[1]

Pope John Paul Two makes a similar ascertainment about the Canticle in chapter v of Revelation:

The canticle . . . is function of the solemn opening vision of Revelation, which presents a sort of heavenly liturgy to which we also, however pilgrims on earth, associate ourselves during our ecclesial celebrations. The hymn of the Book of Revelation that nosotros meditate today concludes with a terminal acclaim cried out by "myriads of myriads" of angels (see Rev v:11). It refers to the "the Lamb slain," to whom is attributed the same glory every bit to God the Father, every bit "Worthy is the Lamb … to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength" (5:12). It is the moment of pure contemplation, of blithesome praise, of the song of honey to Christ in his paschal mystery. This luminous image of the heavenly glory is anticipated in the Liturgy of the Church. In fact, equally the Canon of the Catholic Church reminds us, the Liturgy is an "action" of the whole Christ (Christus totus). Those who celebrate it hither, alive already in some way, across the signs, in the heavenly liturgy, where the celebration is totally communion and feast. It is in this eternal liturgy that the Spirit and the Church make united states of america participate when we celebrate the mystery of salvation in the sacraments (run across nn. 1136, 1139).[2]

In his book The Lamb'southward Supper, Scott Hahn writes: "I doubtable that God revealed heavenly worship in earthly terms then that humans—who, for the first fourth dimension, were invited to participate in heavenly worship—would know how to do it."[3] The volume of Revelation, Hahn suggests, offered help to the nascent church in discerning which elements of Old Covenant worship should be retained in the New Covenant, inasmuch every bit the new both concludes and includes the onetime.[4] The Church can, and should, accept buildings, ministers, candlesticks, chalices, incense, and vestments, because her worship, being ordered to and derived from Jesus Christ, is the perfection of all that the quondam worship, with these typological symbols, pointed to as yet to be fulfilled. They do non end to be the symbols that we need in gild to perceive and enter into communion with Christ; they acquire a new purpose every bit symbols that betoken to a reality now accomplished, a salvation won on the Cantankerous, a celebrity shared with the faithful who may now enter heaven. Indeed, since our earthly worship is nevertheless imperfect as compared with that of the heavenly kingdom, it is appropriate that we retain symbols that cannot be mistaken for the ultimate reality and nevertheless not only bring information technology to mind but bring usa into living contact with it.

Who is the primal figure of the Book of Revelation? The slain and risen Lamb, the Paschal or Passover Lamb that is given to us in the Holy Eucharist, instituted by Jesus at the concluding meal He celebrated with the disciples before His atoning death. What is the fundamental activity depicted in the book? Worship—either true worship (directed to God and the Lamb) or idolatrous worship (directed to Babylon, the animal, the whore, etc.). And what is the key metaphor? Marriage. We are either united as "ane flesh" with the Lamb, washed clean in His blood and feasting at His tabular array, or we are fornicating with the devil. The two cities are contrasted every bit a whore (the quondam, unfaithful Jerusalem) and a virgin bride (the new Jerusalem, the Church).

The very term apokalypsis means "unveiling." At the time Revelation was written, this term was used to describe, among other things, the unveiling of the virgin bride as role of the wedding festivities. In short, the book of Revelation is well-nigh true worship of the true God, a mystical wedlock with Him; and this is brought almost through the Church building's worship, that is, the sacramental life, peculiarly Baptism and the Eucharist. Apart from this life, there is mistake, folly, despair, horror, and destruction—the history of fallen mankind, which wages war against the Lamb.

It is interesting to annotation that this book has received a title of honor that was subsequently extended to, or rather, recognized in, the unabridged body of Scripture, namely, "revelation"; and information technology is not incidental that not only this volume, called "Revelation," is most true worship of the true God, but all of Scripture is about true worship of the truthful God. Christianity is a religion principally and fundamentally concerned with adoring, loving, and serving the one true God, in which human being'south salvation and the very content of beloved of neighbor consists. Put differently, there is no such thing as an "ethical reduction" or a "philosophical distillation" of Christianity; it is inherently spring up with sacrifice and sacrament, by which we profess our organized religion in God and yield ourselves to Him in love.

Why does Sacred Scripture cease with the Book of Revelation? The reason is as simple equally information technology is profound: Revelation is not merely or even primarily the closure of a written book but the starting time of, or aperture to, something else that is intrinsically greater than Scripture: the living worship of the living Torso of Christ. This is the subtle but poignant response, far ahead of time, to Luther'southward invention of sola scriptura: Revelation ends the Bible considering it depicts and invites united states to the Eucharistic feast of the Lamb, which is where the things that are spoken of in Scripture are actually nowadays, in their fullest intensity. The written signs lead united states of america to the reality signified; the bread of the word leads to the bread of life, the book to the altar. As Hahn writes:

For most of the early Christians it was a given: the Volume of Revelation was incomprehensible apart from the liturgy. … It was merely when I began attending Mass that the many parts of this puzzling book suddenly began to fall into place. Earlier long, I could run into the sense in Revelation's chantry (viii:iii), its robed clergymen (4:iv), candles (one:12), incense (5:8), manna (two:17), chalices (ch. 16), Sunday worship (1:10), the prominence it gives to the Blest Virgin Mary (12:1–six), the "Holy, Holy, Holy" (4:eight), the Gloria (fifteen:3–4), the Sign of the Cantankerous (xiv:1), the Alleluia (nineteen:1, 3, vi), the readings from Scripture (chs. 2–3), and the "Lamb of God" (many, many times). These are not interruptions in the narrative or incidental details; they are the very stuff of the Apocalypse.[5]

In the last pages of the book, we behold the new Jerusalem descending from sky. To where does it descend? Mount Zion, that is, the place where Jesus had eaten His final Passover and instituted the Eucharist, where the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost, where the Christians in AD 70 were spared Roman destruction. "In other words, the new Jerusalem came to world, then every bit now, in the place where Christians celebrated the supper of the Lamb."[6] Liturgy is the anticipated Parousia, the 'already' entering our 'not withal.'

If Joseph Ratzinger, John Paul Ii, and Scott Hahn are all correct in what they are saying near the connectedness between the earthly liturgy and the heavenly, nosotros have a powerful and truly unanswerable argument in favor of the restoration of the sacred, the recovery of signs and symbols in every aspect of the liturgy from compages, furnishings, and decorations to ceremonial and sacred music. It is an statement in favor of the preservation or reestablishment of continuity with traditional Catholic worship, and the overwhelming need to enrich and "celestialize" the often sterile and impoverished vocabulary of modernistic liturgical life. The music we hear, for case, should be awe-inspiring, or at very least, constructive in elevating the heed to divine things, so that we may catch a faint echo of angelic music; the church building should exist an evocation of the heavenly city, the sanctuary a magnificent prototype of the Holy of Holies. The ceremonies, in their solemn and ordered splendor, should draw the heed upwards into the majesty and mystery of God.

If we do not strive to accept and to do these things to the extent that information technology lies within our power, we are not just running away from a tradition stretching back iii,000 years (if we taken into account the Jewish groundwork)—bad enough as that would be. Nosotros are showing that we take not understood, assimilated, and embraced the message of Divine Revelation as such. We are, in a sense, rejecting the root of our religion, which proclaims and actualizes the coming of the kingdom of God in our midst, "that we may receive the King of All, invisibly escorted by ranks of angels,"[seven] and back-trail Him into glory.

What we can and must learn from the Volume of Revelation is the essential vocation of the Church: the glorification of God and the sanctification of souls in time of tribulation. To do this, we first of all demand to consider the fundamental symbolic prototype of worship according to Sacred Scripture and the entire Christian tradition—namely, that God is our cracking King, ruling over all with the sceptre of righteousness; that Jesus Christ is the Male monarch of kings and Lord of lords, the Estimate of the living and the dead; that sky is His throne and earth His footstool;[8] and that, in His holy court, a vast multitude of angels minister unto Him. Nonetheless immediately an objection will arise from the and so-called "progressives": isn't all this regal, monarchical, ladylike imagery—together with the onetime liturgy that relies so heavily upon it—merely a time-leap cultural construct, gear up to exist replaced with a more autonomous or populist convention in our times? Shouldn't each age accept a liturgy that speaks to it from within its predominant sacro-political models?

Defending the courtliness of the liturgyFr. Anthony Ruff, a Benedictine monk of St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota,[nine] has this to say about the 2d Vatican Quango:

The Council fathers didn't get into all the specifics of the reform of the liturgy. They left most of that to a futurity commission under the pope. The fathers approved a major epitome shift—from liturgy equally Carolingian clerical drama to liturgy as deed of all the people—and and then left open up what the implications of that shift would be. No dubiousness some or many of the fathers didn't yet have in mind all the possible implications of the paradigm shift. Nor did they need to…. [x]

One wonders how many of the fathers of the Council would take said that the traditional liturgy as they knew it was "Carolingian clerical drama" and that they wanted to shift liturgy to an "act of all the people" in such a way that they expected no limitations on how the liturgy would be modified in guild to achieve this nebulous vision. Besides, the unsaid criticism of the Carolingians does not friction match the more circuitous flick that emerges from the historical records nosotros do have, simply progressives never have a guilty conscience rewriting or ignoring history. In some other article, Fr. Ruff states: "For liturgy, the paradigm shift is from Carolingian clericalized sacred drama to an act of the entire community. Just allow the total weight of that shift sink in, including all the possible implications for liturgical do."[11]

Let us consider Fr. Ruff's mention of the Carolingians, namely, the Franks of the early on Middle Ages, whose greatest ruler was Charlemagne, and in whose empire the Roman liturgy mingled with Gallican elements to form the substance of the Tridentine rite in its high medieval maturity. The simple fact is that we know so little about the liturgy of the pre-Carolingian menses that liturgists tin can aspect almost anything they desire, i.e., anything they personally dislike, to the Carolingians, every bit an excuse to say that information technology is not "primitive," and must therefore be expunged. References to the Carolingians and the supposed "purer" worship of their predecessors is to be taken with a Malta-sized grain of salt.

Moreover, if "clericalism" is supposed to be the problem, the Novus Ordo is a thou times more clericalist than the old Mass could always be. "Participation" in the new liturgy is effectively defined by lay usurpation of historically clerical roles, such equally reading the Scriptures and giving out Communion. The clerical nature of these roles is underlined by the fact that it is however illicit for a layman to read the Gospel and for the celebrant tonon distribute Communion. Lay participation in good music, in meditation and prayer, has been compromised past a nearly-universal trend to electrically-amplified showmanship.

It is often said that the classical Latin liturgy is characterized by courtliness or court etiquette, that it is mixed upwardly with (and corrupted by) expressions of Baroque secular politics. In other words, the progressives agree that the traditional Mass—think especially the Pontifical Mass—is an elaborate evidence of deference towards a prince or king, indebted more to secular high culture than to sacred precedent, and detracts from the humility, simplicity, and immediacy of the presence of Christ in the community, the alliance gathered effectually the table. Sounds plausible, doesn't information technology? Simply there are some nagging counterindications that deserve the attending of honest inquirers.

In his work The Treasure of the Church, J. B. Bagshaw argues to the intimate connexion betwixt royalism or royalty and temple liturgy, and how, every bit a result, the image of "the courtroom of the great king" was adapted early on to Christian liturgy and everywhere accepted as a normative framework—something it obviously already is in both the Old and New Testaments. In Bagshaw's words:

The very fabric of the church suggests the presence of God, and the adornment of the altar carries out the aforementioned thought. In principle it is very similar the splendour and ceremonial of the king's court. Information technology is impossible for men to have royalty amongst them, and however not accept some external sign by which the king is pointed out and honoured. The ceremonial has, of grade, differed widely at dissimilar times, simply from the earliest king that ever ruled amongst men downwards to our own time, there has always been a royal display of some kind. Information technology is impossible, in the aforementioned fashion, for men to believe that our Lord is amongst them and not to lavish on Him their about precious treasures, but every bit information technology was impossible for St. Mary Magdalen not to pour out her precious ointment on His anxiety (Jn 12:3).
          The church is His palace, and the altar is His throne. Nosotros take that glorious court of Heaven described to us in Holy Scripture, and try feebly to imitate it on globe. The candles, and the incense, and the flowers—the vestments and the ceremonial of priests—what are they, merely an earthly image of that "great multitude which no man could number … clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands," and of "all the angels who stood near the throne, and the ancients and the iv living creatures, and they fell downward before the throne upon their faces and adored God"? (Rev 7:9–11)

We cannot dismiss this language or imagery, pervasive in Scripture and the Patristic period, as a mere epiphenomenon of aboriginal most Eastern courts and kings, a superficial mood-setting backdrop apace or easily left behind by "emancipated" modernistic minds. For the same conceptual earth extends throughout the Byzantine emperors who reigned for over a one thousand years after Constantine the Great; it embraces medieval courts, Renaissance courts, Baroque courts, and the professedly Catholic governments that existed well into the twentieth century.

Monarchy or princedom, the oldest and arguably the most natural class of political organisation, has been a far more consistent part of the human experience and of the formation of Christian civilization than the autonomous/egalitarian ideology of "self-evident truths" of which nosotros accept persuaded ourselves in modernity. Regardless of whether we think democracy can be made to piece of work or not,[12] republic has no place in the realm of supernatural mysteries: Christianity is purely and entirely monarchical.

Against the backdrop of the Old Testament revelation of God as the (1 and but) great Male monarch over all the globe, and of the people of State of israel as a kingly, priestly people ruled by prophets, judges, and ultimately the Davidic dynasty, we profess that Christ is our King, the Ruler of heaven and world, of all times, past, present, and to come up, of this globe and of the next; that His angels and saints are His royal courtroom; that while He deigns to telephone call u.s.a. His friends and brethren, nosotros know that we never finish to exist His servants. Nosotros long for His courts and tabernacles. The thick "politicism" of the imagery points to the real, sovereign polity of the Roman Catholic Church as a perfect society (societas perfecta) and altogether perfected in the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the neat Male monarch. Our ecclesial cede, the Most Holy Eucharist, is a kingly and high-priestly oblation.

Consequently, the modernistic fixation on democracy, equally if information technology were the best or the only good form of government, not only does not cancel our need for the language of kingship and courtliness, but makes information technology far more than needed than always earlier, in club to impress on our minds the way things really stand in the definitive reality of the kingdom of God. All of our democratic and egalitarian experiments will fall away at the end of time, as the glorious reign of Christ the Rex is revealed to all the nations, and those who have submitted to His gentle yoke will exist raised to eternal life in glorified flesh while those who have rejected Him will wail and gnash their teeth, condemned to everlasting torment. The liturgy should reflect the truth of God—His accented monarchy, His paternal rule, His hierarchical court in the unspeakable splendor of the heavenly Jerusalem—and not the passing truths of our modern provisional political organizations.

In short, to bear the liturgy and so that it appears to be less courtly, less imperial, less hieratic, less splendid, is to make information technology appear to exist that which information technology is not—to make information technology less truthful, less heavenly, less existent. In this fashion information technology deceives the People of God, who are led further away from an run into with the God whom no easily take fashioned, no mind fathomed. It is one of many ironies of our time that, in the new regime inaugurated by the "spirit of Vatican II," the only "courtiers" are those who prance nearly in their vernacular theater in the round, turning a sublime sacrifice into a sorry spectacle from which the angels avert their gaze. If the manner the liturgy is conducted allows people to recollect that the Mass is nearly them; that they are its principal protagonists; that the priests are somewhat like hired public servants who administer, in the name of the community, the business which actually belongs to it, such a liturgy is inculcating a pernicious lie.[13]

The liturgy is not "of the people, past the people, and for the people." It is the saving act of Christ, done by Him showtime and ever, and by the ordained ministers who act in His name and by His say-so; information technology is washed for the glorification of God and only for that reason does it sanctify the people. One can say the liturgy is "for us" in the same mode that i can say we ought to dearest ourselves, namely, past loving God first and foremost, with the sacrificial offering of ourselves in mind and body, which is how nosotros truly love ourselves.

One of the greatest blessings of the traditional Latin liturgy, therefore, is its pure, open, unembarrassed representation of the courtroom of the great Male monarch of sky and world, in all of its prayers, rubrics, and ceremonies, and in the magnificent art forms that emerged from its "courtliness" and reinforce the "drama" of the holy mysteries of our redemption. We find in it an uncompromised and unapologetic expression of the divine monarchy equally it radiates through the panoply of sacred symbols and the ecclesiastical hierarchy endowed with fatherly authorisation. We are wrapped in an temper of spiritual aristocracy, namely, the globe of the saints, who reign with Christ. After all, this liturgy was not produced by a committee of experts, as laws and bills are manufactured in contemporary parliaments or congresses, but emerged slowly over time from innumerable currents of doctrine and devotion introduced past pious monks or bishops and assimilated by God-fearing laity.

The traditional liturgy, in brusk, challenges everything modern human being has come to take for granted, everything he has persuaded himself to believe "self-evident." Information technology throws down the gauntlet to our modernistic assumptions, routines, and expectations. It is an enormous challenge to our collective social hubris and cultural pride. This is why the traditional liturgy is hated and feared past those who embrace modernity as a primary value that gives value to all else; this is why it is passionately loved past those who recognize in information technology a higher, deeper, and better vision of ultimate reality.

The Byzantine witnessWhen we are considering the courtliness of liturgy with its irreducible monarchical and aristocratic elements, we should non forget, moreover, to "breathe with both lungs" of the Church.

The Byzantine Divine Liturgy is positively bursting with courtly imagery and gestures, every bit befits its long sojourn in Constantinople. The Byzantines have retained many of these features because they did non succumb to the minimalism, utilitarianism, and democratic thinking that accept poisoned the springs of Western social life and fabricated of united states of america men with hollow chests. Byzantine liturgy has notwithstanding kinds of "ladylike" rituals that the Roman Rite has, such as the kissing of the celebrant's hands, the bowing towards persons, icons, and other objects, the candles, and the incense, rituals that had their origin in the veneration surrounding the emperor.[14] Nor should we be surprised: both the Byzantine courtroom and the Carolingian court saw themselves as continuations of the Roman Empire, now consecrated in its new role as supreme governor of the Christian world, for the celebrity of God and the empire of Christ. It was completely natural to the clergy and true-blue to adopt for their divine worship customs that accompanied the earthly ruler; indeed, in then doing, they restored the proper immovable and incorruptible object of veneration, bestowing on the ruler the privilege of beingness an earthly icon of the divine Male monarch. What began on earth was raised to heaven and seated there at the right paw of the Father; thence information technology descended to the human throne as a mantle of authorization and responsibility.

All four of the Cherubic hymns refer to Christ equally King:

• The i for daily use sings: "We, who mystically stand for the Cherubim, and chant the thrice-holy hymn to the Life-giving Trinity, at present set aside all cares of life that nosotros may receive the Male monarch of all, Who comes invisibly escorted past Celestial Hosts."
• At the Liturgy of the Presanctified is chanted: "Now the powers of heaven do serve invisibly with us. Lo, the King of Glory enters. O, the mystical sacrifice is upborne, fulfilled. Let us draw nigh in faith and honey, and go communicants of life eternal."
• On Holy Thursday: "Of Thy mystical Supper, Lord, let me partake, O Son of God, for of Thy mysteries I will not speak to Thy enemies nor osculation Thee like Judas, but like the thief on the cross I will confess Thee: In Thy Kingdom, Lord, remember me."
• On Holy Sat: "Let all mortal flesh keep silent, and stand with fear and trembling, ponder nil of earth; for the Male monarch of kings and Lord of lords cometh forth to be sacrificed and given as food to the believers; and there get before Him the choirs of Angels, with every dominion and power, the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim, covering their faces, and crying out the hymn..."[xv]

Thus the Byzantine rite'due south four chants for the Slap-up Entrance refer to the coming of the King, including His post-resurrection life as king of the universe. This, of course, is nothing other than a consistent application of the imagery of kingship with which the Book of Revelation is rife:

And the 7th angel sounded the trumpet: and at that place were groovy voices in heaven, saying: The kingdom of this world is go our Lord's and his Christ's, and he shall reign for ever and ever. Amen. And the four and twenty ancients, who sit down on their seats in the sight of God, roughshod on their faces and adored God... (Rev xi:15–16)

Now is come conservancy, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: because the accuser of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God twenty-four hours and night. (Rev 12:10)

And singing the anthem of Moses, the servant of God, and the canticle of the Lamb, saying: Cracking and wonderful are thy works, O Lord God Almighty; just and truthful are thy ways, O King of ages. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and magnify thy name? For thou only art holy: for all nations shall come, and shall adore in thy sight, because thy judgments are manifest. (Rev 15:three–4)

These shall fight with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, because he is Lord of lords, and Male monarch of kings, and they that are with him are called, and elect, and faithful. (Rev 17:14)

It was once mutual to say, and one still hears information technology said once in a while, that the Mass is a mystical representation of the life of Christ, that it makes His life present to us in all of its mysteries, every bit if recombining the spectrum into pure white light and then that all the colors are virtually there in a single moment. Since this is truthful, we must say that all phases of the life of Our Lord are nowadays and active, including the 2,000 years of His Mystical Trunk over which He reigns as the glorified King and Son of God (in the Davidic and more than Davidic sense). In fact, while the Mass is the sacramental renewal of the in one case-for-all sacrifice of Calvary, we know at the same time that it is the offering of the risen Lord in His majestic dignity, power, and beauty. Thus, however much we rightly emphasize the Passion, the Mass should be for the states a tangible (i.due east., sacramental) meet with our glorious King. The traditional Roman rite, especially in its sung and solemn forms, has exactly this character, in company with all the Eastern rites.

It is currently, for some odd reason, fashionable to adore the colorful extravagance of the Byzantine liturgy while contemptuously dismissing anything in the Latin tradition suggestive of the same. People admire gigantic gold vessels and rich vestments in the Eastward while settling for unsightly cups and drab drapes in the Due west; they catch their breaths at an impressive iconostasis, while shaking their heads at chantry rails and other signs of separation betwixt the nave and the sanctuary; they extol the marvelous poetry of the kontakion or troparion sung to a haunting traditional tune, while leaving their ain incomparable Gregorian repertoire out in the cold.

I doubt whatever of you here today are affected with this peculiar double standard, but its ubiquitous presence in the halls of academia and ability suggests that we are dealing with a psychological disorder, a kind of self-loathing that compels some people to strip themselves of the treasures of "the other" and to force themselves into a plainness that is almost a punishment or an echo chamber of 1's own emptiness. We can betoken to the beauty elsewhere, similar a tourist passing through the halls of Versailles, equally long every bit we deprive ourselves of it here and now, and suffer our democratic fate, which we deserve good and hard.

This is where the rejection of Christ'southward kingship will lead, and has already led. His royalty will either be fully embodied in and expressed through our primary, fundamental, and culminating public, political, and civic action, namely, the sacred liturgy, which volition form the reference point and stable footing of Christian society; or His royalty will be rejected and replaced with the tyranny of man over human, the tyranny of style or ideology: "We have no king but Caesar." In this sense, the anti-royalism or anti-courtliness of the reformed liturgy is an expression of Christological heresy and a step along the path of apostasy.

Implications for the fine artsGiven a concentrated understanding of the royalism or regality of the sacred liturgy in which God our King is adored in His holy court, what are the implications for the fine arts that are unavoidably called upon to help us in offering this formal, solemn, public activity? I say "unavoidably," because, apart from emergency situations such every bit a surreptitious Mass in a concentration military camp, the ministers must exist attired somehow, the altar must be of some shape and style, the church must be of this or that blueprint, the words must take one or another annals, the music must take a tune and a rhythm, etc. Simply equally physical beings, as rational animals who communicate through the senses, our activities of worship are utterly leap up with artifacts, so much and then that, as we have seen, the Book of Revelation does non even brand the endeavour to avert them in depicting sky but, if anything, pushes their use to an extreme of symbolic and gestural linguistic communication. Our worship is inherently artistic, and the merely relevant business organisation is whether the art will be good or bad, well-suited or poorly suited to the reality, washed masterfully or done shabbily.

In a book on the modern composer Arvo Pärt, I read this inspiring passage:

Under Archbishop Laud (1589–1645) there was a strong move towards greater formalism dignity in the church building. As the business firm of God information technology was to be fitted out appropriately with the finest of man artistry, and its functions were to exist conducted in a spirit of deepest reverence. The liturgy, the music, the sacred vessels, the very fabric of the building, all were to serve and make manifest the beauty of holiness. This phrase, which we find invoked fourth dimension and over again . . . derives from Psalm 96: "O sing unto the Lord a new song… O worship the Lord in the dazzler of holiness."[sixteen]

Laud was Anglican, of course, simply his devout attitude was no different from that of Catholics.[17] Practise nosotros non need "greater ceremonial dignity in the church"? Why are the processions at the beginning of most Masses so slapdash, coincidental, and quick, almost as if people are embarrassed to be engaged in divine worship? Why are in that location then few processions outside of church building? We could certainly employ "a spirit of deepest reverence" in conducting our services. Less of the informal greetings, smiles, and handshakes—more of the reverential fear of the Lord that brings united states to our knees in homage to the great King, begging for His mercy. We need music, vessels, and architecture that "make manifest the dazzler of holiness." In particular, we have all heard music that seems neither beautiful nor holy; its mawkish sentimentality, circus-like tunes, predictably syncopated rhythms, and simpering lyrics are an appalling combination from which beauty must hide her fair head while holiness flees to the mountains to bemoan her virginity.

Only why must we seek to do such laudable things? For one simple reason: because God, the greatest and all-time, deserves the greatest and all-time from u.s.: date magnificentiam Deo nostro, "give ye magnificence to our God" (Dt 32:3). Deo optimo maximo. And there is a corollary: nosotros human beings, created in His image and likeness, need to be able to offer "the finest of human artistry" to Him, lifting up our minds and hearts by ways of it. If only we knew ourselves, we would see that we have a longing to give the best of ourselves to Him, not what is mediocre, humdrum, worldly, or 2-faced. Does not an artist who takes pride in his work wish to give his very best to a patron? Do not lovers with pure intentions long to give the best of themselves to one another? God has given us the power and the calling to reach out to His transcendent holiness with works of beauty that deport us forth with them, by the realm of the profane into the sanctuary of divinity. As St. Thomas says, we worship God not to give Him something He does non already accept, simply to bring ourselves closer to Him by yielding what we owe Him. In this manner we draw nearer to His goodness and abound in likeness to Him.

This explanation will always hold truthful for all human being beings at all times. Just we can say something more than specifically Catholic. The "preferential option for the beautiful" rests on the truth that the Body and Blood of Jesus, really present, are offered in cede in this edifice, on this chantry, enacted by these rituals, sung in this music. The elements of the liturgy are not indifferent placeholders, like paper money or coins that accept value just because someone arbitrarily declares them to be valuable. Rather, every bit gold is precious by nature and as the male monarch'southward image is honorable due to his office, liturgical signs represent Christ to the optics and ears of organized religion, and offer Him to the loving heart. Whatsoever we do to the to the lowest degree of His symbols and ceremonies, prayers and chants, that nosotros do unto Him. This is not then much a fearful vision of the danger of making mistakes as it is a joyful awareness of the many ways, little and great, in which we may pay Him homage and adore Him. The traditional liturgy reminds usa in countless ways that we are dealing with the Lord of life and decease, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who is, who was, and who is to come—and (to infringe a phrase from another Anglican) He "is non a tame panthera leo."

This is why it matters, crucially, what nosotros are doing, what we are endeavoring to do, when nosotros worship God in public prayer. If we have got the incorrect idea well-nigh information technology, we may do that which is seriously unfitting, unworthy, and displeasing to the Lord, whom it is our great privilege to serve and to please. If nosotros follow the lead of the Church'south Tradition and the requirements or counsels of the Magisterium of the ages, we can be certain of giving glory to God and aiding, over time, the sanctification of His people.

The holy Curé of Ars, St. John Vianney, starved himself on potatoes only spared no expense for the embellishment of the sanctuary. He knew, like Archbishop Laud, and like faithful Christians of every historic period, what came first and what came 2nd. The same was true of St. Francis of Assisi, stride the falsification of his legacy by hippies who bow before Nature rather than adoring the Blest Sacrament. Indeed, Franciscan churches are some of the most beautiful in Europe, magnificently decorated—even those that were congenital in periods when the friars themselves were clay-poor beggars who scarcely knew where their adjacent meal was coming from, though they trusted that the Lord would provide. They knew what came first; they knew that when information technology is God who is to be honored, the work must call forth everything in us, everything great and glorious we can muster, for His sake. This is why the Catholics of old never congenital cheap churches, if they could help it, and, at to the lowest degree on special occasions if not more than often, brought together the best musical forces they could observe, to provide the near glorious music.

St. Thomas Aquinas provides the essential rationale for the Church building'southward longstanding practice of supplying rich vestments, first-class vessels, glorious architecture, elaborate ritual, decorous music, and so forth for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Divine Office. Hither'due south what he writes:

The chief purpose of the whole external worship is that man may give worship to God. Now man'due south tendency is to reverence less those things which are mutual, and indistinct from other things; whereas he admires and reveres those things which are distinct from others in some point of excellence. Hence besides information technology is customary among men for kings and princes, who ought to exist reverenced by their subjects, to be clothed in more than precious garments, and to possess vaster and more beautiful abodes. And for this reason it was necessary that special times, a special abode, special vessels, and special ministers be appointed for the divine worship, so that thereby the soul of man might be brought to greater reverence for God.[18]

If nosotros had a proper religious formation, the trite songs infesting Cosmic hymnals would evaporate and our churches would be filled with music of true artistic merit. We would insist that it happen; nosotros would brand information technology happen through personal sacrifices; we would absorb its fruits with gratitude as these heavenly harmonies penetrated and shaped our souls. The same would exist true of the churches we build: their lofty compages would captivate all who enter and move them to worship the Lord of hosts. In his final encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, John Paul Ii offered theological support for this exultant and sacrificial attitude:

Like the woman who anointed Jesus in Bethany, the Church has feared no "extravagance," devoting the best of her resources to expressing her wonder and adoration before the unsurpassable gift of the Eucharist. No less than the get-go disciples charged with preparing the "large upper room," she has felt the need, downwardly the centuries and in her encounters with different cultures, to celebrate the Eucharist in a setting worthy of so great a mystery. … The faith of the Church building in the mystery of the Eucharist has establish historical expression not but in the demand for an interior disposition of devotion, only also in outward forms meant to evoke and emphasize the grandeur of the event being historic.[nineteen]

That the liturgy should be done with splendor and solemnity, in environment equally magnificent as can be, evoking the transcendence, holiness, and glory of the Lord, is not a "debatable question" simply a plain given as far as Catholic tradition is concerned. This is why the Church has always striven for and sponsored the finest of human artistry—and why the poor have ever contributed to the building of churches of which they and their descendents are the rightfully proud beneficiaries. Such an unequivocal dedication to the sacred liturgy does non, of course, cancel out the demand for personal prayer, works of charity outside the church doors, or energetic efforts of evangelization. But neither can these things ever supercede the liturgy, which serves every bit their final end, from which they derive their meaning. Most simply, this is what we owe to God, and He comes first. "Glorify the Lord generously, and practise not stint the starting time fruits of your hands" (Sir 35:8).

Beauty is not an extra or an add-on, a luxury or an indulgence, but an essential and inherentdimension of truth itself, an attribute of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His liturgy. If nosotros abandon our pursuit of excellence in this domain, we will lose our faith, our ability to transform the world for God's sake, even our sanity. Ugliness, similar ignorance, fault, and sin, is a privation and a impecuniousness, with a peculiarde-evangelizing force, while dazzler, like truth and goodness, converts united states, perfects us, and elevates us to God. Moreover, without supernatural religion, which orders everything in life to our final destiny in God, art itself tin can go a pernicious and soul-destroying forcefulness, equally we accept seen in modern times with so-called "mod art" and pop culture. Christianity is not simply the art of salvation, it is the salvation of fine art.

Our Lord said to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque: "I will reign through my Heart." But what do we find independent in that Center of sinless mankind, pure love, and everlasting deity? The Litany of the Sacred Center tells us that the Centre of Jesus is maiestatis infinitae, of space Majesty—the Majesty of the One who is king et centrum omnium cordium, King and center of all hearts. It is the templum Dei sanctum, tabernaculum Altissimi, domus Dei et porta caeli: the holy temple of God, the tabernacle of the Virtually High, the house of God and the gate of heaven. In like fashion, the sacred liturgy of our Catholic tradition is a holy temple in which nosotros adore the divine Rex, a tabernacle of the Real Presence, a dwelling-place of God with man, a portal swinging open to the sublime and blissful worship of God in the courts of heaven. And only equally the Heart of Jesus is omni laude dignissimum, fons vitae et sanctitatis, deliciae Sanctorum omnium—well-nigh worthy of all praise, the fountain of life and holiness, the delight of all the saints—and so besides is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that Our Lord gave to us in His immense wisdom and honey; for through it we give Him, and the Begetter, and the Holy Ghost, perfect praise, and from information technology we receive the breadstuff of angels, our food of pilgrimage and our consolation in this valley of tears—a delight for the saints who have gone before us, as it is for u.s. today, and every bit it will be for our descendents.

NOTES

[i] Joseph Ratzinger, Pilgrim Fellowship of Religion: The Church as Communion, ed. Stephan Otto Horn and Vinzenz Pfnür (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 110–11.

[2] John Paul II, General Audition, Nov three, 2004.

[3] Scott Hahn, The Lamb'due south Supper: The Mass equally Heaven on Earth (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 122.

[iv] In Mt v:17–18, "Do non remember that I am come up to destroy the police force, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the police force, till all be fulfilled," the Greek verb for "fulfill" means both to bring something to completion and to bring information technology to an end. The perfection of the Law both embodies all that is adept in it and surpasses it with unexpected fullness.

[5] Hahn, The Lamb's Supper, 66–67.

[vi] Ibid., 102.

[7] From the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

[8] Cf. Is 66:ane, Acts seven:49, Mt 5:35.

[9] In this respect, more akin to the modern Jesuits than the classical Benedictines. See Chapter v.

[10] "Cardinal Sarah on Mass Not Facing the People," published at PrayTell, May 26, 2016.

[11] "The Worst Reasons for Ad Orientem," published at PrayTell, August 18, 2016.

[12] Its track record so far is vastly junior to that of monarchy and aristocracy, if we look to the standard of beatified or canonized rulers and the preservation of the Faith in societies.

[13] Ratzinger saw all this very clearly. In his address "The Ecclesiology of the Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium" (Fifty'Osservatore Romano, English ed., 19 September 2001), he noted that the phrase "the People of God" quickly gave rise to a primal and dangerous misconception of the nature of the Church, in a Marxist or democratic vein. He saw, likewise, the liturgical implications of this politicized ecclesiology; see especially the essay "Paradigm of the World and of Homo Beings."

[fourteen] "The liturgy had taken over from the courtroom formalism of the pagan emperors the symbolic language for the presence of the supreme sovereign: candles, which preceded the emperor, and the thurible. Whenever candles and incense announced in the liturgy, they betoken a new culmination of the divine presence" (Martin Mosebach, Foreword to P. Kwasniewski, Noble Dazzler, Transcendent Holiness [Kettering, OH: Angelico Printing, 2017], xxii).

[15] The Byzantines currently use the concluding of these just on Holy Saturday, simply it was the daily utilise Cherubic hymn for the Liturgy of St James, which is currently undergoing something of a revival among the liturgically outré. The traditional Old Church Slavonic version is incredibly impressive.

[16] Paul Hillier and Tõnu Tormis, On Pärt (Copenhagen: Edition Samfundet, 2005), 61.

[17] Need I mention the sincere hope of many Roman Catholics that the Anglican Ordinariates, by modeling that Laudian attitude and arroyo, will become a force of renewal for the rest of u.s.?

[18] Summa theologiae I-II, q. 102, a. four.

[19] Accent in original.

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