Angels and Archangels: The Worship of
Heaven and Earth
Robert Louis Wilken
In the Vulgate the first verse of Psalm 138
reads: In conspectu angelorum psallam tibi ("In the presence of angels I
will sing to you"). In conspectu angelorum: What a thrilling phrase to
find in the psalms, one to be inscribed on the mind and burned into the heart.
These words disclose a startling truth: When we come before God to offer our
praise and adoration we do so in the company of angels and archangels and the
whole company of heaven. In the liturgy earth joins heaven to glorify God.
Listen to the words of the Te Deum:
Te Deum laudamus; te Dominum confitemur. Te aeternum Patrem,
omnis terra veneratur. Tibi omnes angeli, tibi caeli et
universae potestates; Tibi cherubim et seraphim
incessabili voce proclamant: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus, Deus Sabaoth.
Pleni sunt caeli et terra maiestatis gloriae tuae. (We praise you, O God, we
acknowledge you to be the Lord. You, the Father everlasting, all the earth
does worship. To you all the angels, To you the heavens, and all their powers,
To you the cherubim and seraphim cry out without ceasing: Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of hosts. Full are the heavens and the earth of the majesty of Your
glory.)
In an interjection in one of his writings, St. Gregory the
Great asks this question: "Can any of the faithful doubt that at the hour of the
Eucharistic sacrifice of Jesus Christ the choirs of angels are present, the
heights joined to the depths, earth linked with heaven, the visible united with
the invisible?" 1
Gregory is not a solitary voice. In the third century, Origen said: "I do not
doubt that angels are even present in our assembly;" there is "a double church
present, one of men, the other of angels."2
In Christian writers from every epoch in the church’s history this fact about
Christian worship has been recognized and celebrated. Whether one observes the
wording of the ancient liturgies, studies the writings of the church fathers or
medieval thinkers, opens the pages of the classics of Christian spirituality, or
sings the stirring hymns of early modern Europe ("Serve thee as thy hosts above,
Pray and praise thee without ceasing, Glory in thy perfect love" [Hyfyrdol]),
the church has always known that when the people of God lift up their voices to
worship the Triune God, they join a hymn of praise that was going on before they
opened their mouths and continues after the last echoes of their songs have
given way to silence. It is an exhilarating, humbling, and comforting thought.
The question I would like to pose is this: Does it make any
difference how we worship if we offer our sacrifice "with angels and
archangels"? To begin, let me review, however briefly, some of the texts in the
tradition that speak of the heavenly liturgy and the correspondence between what
we do and what the angels and archangels do.
Door Into Heaven
The evidence is plentiful, but the best place to begin is the
Book of Revelation. At the beginning of chapter four, when he has finished
addressing the angels of the seven churches, St. John says: "After this I
looked, and lo, in heaven an open door!"3
An open door to heaven: How intriguing to find this detail in the final book of
the Bible as John begins his magnificent summing up of the biblical story and
turns our gaze to the heavenly city. The holy Scriptures begin with the creation
of the world and of human beings and end with a door open to heaven. The open
door can be read as a gloss on the words of God in Genesis, "Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness" (1:26). In the early church this verse was taken
to mean that human beings, though stained by sin, are capable of fellowship with
God. In the words of Revelation: "God himself will be with them" (21:3). With
the coming of Christ, the new Adam, the door to heaven was thrown open allowing
us to enter the presence of God. As Christ himself says in the Gospel of John:
"I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and go in and out and
find pasture" (Jn 10:9).
In the Book of Revelation, John does not enter the heavens;
but he is allowed to stand before the open door and peer inside. After
instructing the churches as to how they are to live in this world, John now
raises the minds of his readers to another world. In reading the Book of
Revelation it is easy to become preoccupied with its mysterious visions and
overlook what John saw first. When the door was flung open he saw a throne with
one seated on it and around the throne were seated elders, angelic beings, clad
in white garments with golden crowns upon their heads, and round them were four
living creatures. "And day and night the four living creatures," John continues,
"never cease to sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who
was and is and is to come" (Rv 4:8).
The words used by the heavenly choir are taken from the hymn
of the seraphim recorded in the Book of Isaiah, another vision in which a mere
human was given a glimpse of the celestial worship:
In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting
upon a throne, high and lifted up and his train filled the temple. Above him
stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with
two he covered his feet and with two he flew. And one called to another and
said: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his
glory" (6:1-3).
Isaiah lived in the eighth century B.C. and the Book of
Revelation was written toward the end of the first century A.D. Yet what Isaiah
saw and what St. John saw was quite the same. In the historical approach to the
interpretation of the Bible so fashionable in the twentieth century, one would
have assumed, I suppose, that what John wrote he learned from reading the Book
of Isaiah or from current Jewish tradition; but that of course is not what John
said. He said that he had been given a glimpse of a heavenly choir. So there is
another possible interpretation, and it is this: The reason Isaiah and John give
a similar report is that the seraphim had been singing the hymn without
interruption over the eight hundred years that intervened between the time of
Isaiah and John. For John says that the heavenly chorus sang "Holy, holy, holy,"
unceasingly.
The early Christians believed that Isaiah went to his death
because of what he saw and heard.4
Again and again in their comments on the hymn of the seraphim, the church
fathers speak of what Isaiah "heard" or "saw" or what was "handed over to us by
the seraphim."5 So let us allow the
historical critics to pursue their theories about where John got his information
about the "Holy, holy, holy," being sung in heaven and consider the vision
itself. If the accounts in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 are viewed in their own
terms, that is as visions, they give us a precious insight into Christian
worship. Some of the words we use in the liturgy, in this case the words of the
Sanctus, are not human words crafted by mortals. They are words on loan from
angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim and are to be treated with
reverence.
Hymn of the Seraphim
The Sanctus then is a good place to begin a discussion of the
liturgy; for there are few parts of the liturgy more ancient, more precious, and
more fitting than the words of the seraphim.6
Of course most of the words of the liturgy come directly from the Bible, whether
it be the trinitarian invocation, the Kyrie Eleison, the Agnus Dei, or the
opening words of the Gloria in Excelsis. But when biblical phrases or words are
taken over in the liturgy, the source is seldom identified. No mention is made
that the Gloria in excelsis was first sung by the angels at the nativity of
Christ or that the Agnus Dei was spoken by John the Baptizer. In the case of the
Sanctus, however, the original setting is kept intact and becomes part of the
prayer that introduces it.
When we reach the "Holy, holy, holy" in the eucharist, the
liturgy makes us aware that we are joining in the seraphic hymn. We are all
familiar with different versions of the words leading up to the hymn; so let me
cite a prayer from an ancient liturgy, the euchololgy of Serapion of Thmuis:
You are attended by thousands upon thousands, and myriads
upon myriads of angels and archangels, of Thrones and Dominions, of
principalities and powers. Beside you stand the two most worthy Seraphim with
six sings; two to cover their faces, two to cover their feet, two with which
to fly as they proclaim your holiness. With theirs accept also our acclamation
of your holiness as we say: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Sabaoth! Heaven and
earth are filled with your glory. Heaven and earth are filled with your
wonderful glory!" 7
Mother church, it seems, not only wants us to praise God with
the words "Holy, holy, holy"; it also wants us to know that in offering our
words of praise to God we join our acclamations with that of the angels. It is
an essential feature of the eucharist that we bring our praise to God in
conspectu angelorum.
Why is it important to be reminded of the more splendid choir
that sings the Sanctus? Theodore of Mopsuestia puts it most succinctly: "so that
we offer a thanksgiving that is equal to theirs." His comment comes from a
series of homilies given to catechumens preparing for baptism, probably about
390 A.D.8 For Theodore the location
of the Sanctus (in his language, the Trisagion) was a key to the prayer that
followed: the anaphora. The priest, says Theodore,
makes mention before other creatures of the Seraphim who
offer that praise which the blessed Isaiah learned in a divine vision and
committed to writing, and which all of us in the congregation sing in a loud
voice, as if we were also singing that which the invisible natures sing:
"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Sabaoth" the whole heaven and earth are full
of his praises. 9
The prophet, Theodore continues, "saw through revelation that
a great service was being performed, which was high above human nature"10
and that "the spiritual hosts appeared to look with great awe and reverence,
since they were looking downwards and covering their faces completely with their
wings."11 In the liturgy, says
Theodore,
we serve God along with the invisible hosts and we ought to
think of them and offer a thanksgiving that is equal to theirs. Indeed the
economy of our Lord granted us to become immortal and incorruptible and to
serve God with the invisible hosts "when we are caught up in the clouds to
meet our Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord," according to
the saying of the apostle (1 Thess 4:17). Nor are the words of our Lord false,
who says that the children of God are like the angels of God, because they are
children of the resurrection (Lk 20:36). 12
The Sanctus is not simply another liturgical canticle, a
beautiful hymn that comes at the beginning of the great prayer of thanksgiving;
it is a key to the whole. Five salient points occur in Theodore’s commentary on
the Trisagion. First, the words come from the heavenly host and in singing them
we are not alone; second, the heavenly host whose worship is much greater
worship than ours is a model for our own worship; third, liturgy is a service to
the holy and ineffable God. Though the seraphim are heavenly beings they could
not look at God but had to divert their eyes and cover their faces with their
wings; fourth, the liturgy is eschatological. It points to the time when, in
Theodore’s words we will become, "children of the Resurrection," transformed or
divinized. One of the most beloved texts in the early church was First John 3:2:
"Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be,
but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see
him as he is"; fifth, only certain words are appropriate to the worship of God.
"Let the priest," he says "make use of the right words in this great service."
The words we use for God must be theoprepes, "befitting God," a key term
in patristic theology. Not any words will do; only certain words are appropriate
for the praise of God.
Eternal Praise of God
What I draw from Theodore’s commentary is this: If we know in
whose company we pray we will keep our worship oriented toward God. The liturgy
is first and foremost service of God. It is the church at prayer with her face
turned toward God, not toward society. The liturgy, as liturgy, is not a
vehicle for social outreach; liturgy is an end, not a means. It is a particular
temptation in our day to make the liturgy an instrument for something else, for
instance, catechesis or evangelism. The liturgy of course teaches and
evangelizes, but it does so in its own distinctive way, as ritual, as liturgy,
by reflecting in its words and actions the liturgy of the angels. That is why
the prayers introducing the Sanctus are so illuminating: If the angels praise
God "without ceasing," what they do is the telos toward which everything
else tends. Singing the Sanctus will not one day give way to something else.
The words, "Holy, holy, holy," then, are an acclamation to
God, not an instrument of communication with other human beings. The language of
Christian worship is doxological, its purpose is the singing of the words
themselves—one reason why the liturgy is filled with "random and ceaseless
recommencements," as Catherine Pickstock has reminded us:
A genuine liturgical reform, would either have to overthrow
our anti-ritual modernity, or, that being impossible, devise a liturgy that
refused to be enculturated in our modern habits of thought and speech. . . .
It would have more actively to challenge us through the shock of a
defamiliarizing language, to live only to worship, and to be in communion only
as recipients of the gift of the body of Christ. 13
Pickstock is only the most recent writer to expose the perils
of an instrumental approach to liturgy, whether in the name of social outreach
or catechesis. The classic statement of this position in modern times is the
essay of Romano Guardini, "Liturgy as Play." In it he wrote:
The liturgy creates a universe brimming with fruitful
spiritual life, and allows the soul to wander about in it at will and to
develop itself there. . . . The liturgy has no purpose, or, at least, it
cannot be considered from the standpoint of purpose. It is not a means which
is adapted to attain a certain end—it is an end in itself. This fact is
important, because if we overlook it, we labor to find all kinds of didactic
purposes in the liturgy. . . . When the liturgy is rightly regarded, it cannot
be said to have a purpose, because it does not exist for the sake of humanity,
but for the sake of God. In the liturgy man is not so much intended to edify
himself as to contemplate God’s majesty.14
Because the angels live in eternal bliss, they praise and
adore God solely because God is God. Their work, said St. Bernard, is "the
praise of God."15 Like the divine
Son, according to the Greek version of the book of Proverbs, who "plays" before
God always (8:31), they exult always in the worship of God. As for us humans,
perhaps the words of a well known hymn best capture our delight in worshipping
God: "him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell."
Liturgy As Icon
To see more clearly the distinctive character of the liturgy,
let me focus on two points: the correspondence between the liturgy we celebrate
and the heavenly liturgy of the angels, and the language of the liturgy. First,
the liturgy as icon.16 At the
beginning of a sermon on the vision in Isaiah 6, John Chrysostom twice uses the
word "imitate" to designate the relation between the eucharist celebrated by the
church and the sacrifice offered by angels and archangels. When the church sings
the "Holy, holy, holy," he writes,
it imitates the angelic choir. . . . On high the
legions of angels sing a doxology; here below men gather in choirs to
imitate their singing by using the same doxology. In heaven the seraphims
cry out the "thrice holy"; below a large company lifts up the strains of the
same hymn. The powers in heaven and beings on earth join together in
celebrating one liturgy. There is only one thanksgiving, one rejoicing, one
jubilant chorus.17
Later in the same homilies Chrysostom says, when the priest
stands at the altar to
present the spiritual worship, to offer the unbloody
sacrifice, he does not simply invite us to offer this prayer, he first
addresses the cherubim and invokes the seraphim; then he beseeches everyone to
lift up this fearful cry, urging us to raise our minds to heaven by recalling
those with whom we are fellow choir members, as he calls to each one of us and
says: "Sing with the seraphim, stand with the seraphim, with them lift up the
wings of the spirit, with them encircle the royal throne." Why be astonished
that you stand with the seraphim, for what they dared not touch [the burning
coal from the altar], God has allowed you to receive it without fear [the body
and blood of Christ of which the burning coal was a figure]. "One of the
seraphim was sent was sent to me," says Isaiah, "having in his hand a burning
coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar" (Is 6:6). That altar is a
type and model for this one. That one was of fire, this one of spiritual fire.
However, the seraphim dared not touch the coal with his hand but had to use
tongs, you are able to take it in your hand.18
The nucleus of this liturgical theology, of course, goes back
to the Letter to the Hebrews: "Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made
with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the
presence of God on our behalf" (9:24). The key word is "now." What happened once
is now re-presented not only on earth but in heaven. It is, however, instructive
that the correspondence between the earthly liturgy and the heavenly liturgy,
adumbrated in Hebrews, was elaborated in the early church on the basis of the
Sanctus or Trisagion. It was the explicit mention by Isaiah of the seraphim and
the hymn they sing that helped Christian thinkers to discern the intimate link
between the worship we offer and the liturgy of the heavenly beings. The reason
the hymn of the seraphim was given to us, says Cyril of Jerusalem "is that we
might be participants with the hosts of the heavenly world in their hymn of
praise."19 In more sophisticated
language, Maximus the Confessor accents the ultimate joining of earth and heaven
in threefold adoration of the Triune God:
The triple exclamation of holiness which all the faithful
people exclaim in the divine hymn represents the unity and equality with the
incorporeal and intelligent powers that will be manifested in the future. At
that time human nature, in harmony with the powers on high who move eternally
and unceasingly around God, will be taught to sing and to hallow with triple
holiness the single Godhead in three persons.20
The worship of God is the end, that for the sake of which
other things are done. "This is the Catholic faith," begins the Quicumque
vult, "that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity."21
In one of his first talks as pope, John Paul II said that "the pope’s prime duty
to the Church and the world is to pray," a point that is echoed in Cardinal
Ratzinger’s recent book, The Spirit of the Liturgy.22
For this we were created and for this we have been redeemed.
In the Scriptures, "city" is a primary image of the church.
"There is a city whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of
the Most High. God is in the midst of her" (Ps 46). In his great work, The
City of God, Augustine used the metaphor of the city to speak of the church
not only in relation to society but in relation to God. It is, however, often
forgotten that in the Book of Revelation the city for which we hope is a cultic
gathering; its principal activity is the worship of God:
Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as
crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of
the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life
with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves
of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There shall no more be
anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and
his servants shall worship him; they shall see his face, and his name
shall be on their foreheads (22:1-4).
In different words the Letter to the Hebrews makes a similar
point: "You have come to Mt. Zion and to the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering . . . and to
the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of
Abel"(12:22-32). Our present worship can be seen as a kind of apprenticeship for
what is to come. The worship of God is learned in the doing, by using the
angelic language, letting Christ take our thoughts captive and allowing our
affections to be tutored by the gentle breath of the Holy Spirit.
Language of the Angels
Let me turn to the matter of language. The words of the
Sanctus come from the seraphim. In this hymn the language of the liturgy is not
simply modeled on celestial worship, it actually uses the same words as the
heavenly liturgy. Not all the words of the liturgy, however, can make such a
claim. Yet most are taken from the Scriptures. I have already mentioned several
parts of the liturgy drawn directly from the Bible, for instance, the Kyrie
Eleison and the Agnus Dei; but let me illustrate the point by reference to one
of the ancient liturgies of the church, the Liturgy of St. James used at
Jerusalem and other places in Palestine and Syria.
The Missa catechumenorum of the Liturgy of St. James
begins with a Gloria Patri immediately followed by an introductory prayer:
"Lord, my God, do not turn me away because of my many sins. Behold, I have come
to this divine and heavenly mystery. I am not worthy, but looking up at your
goodness, I lift up my voice to you. God be merciful to me a sinner." These
words, "God be merciful to me a sinner," are taken from the prayer of the tax
collector in Luke 18:13 who "would not even lift up his eyes to heaven," and
said, "God be merciful to me a sinner."23
The prayer continues: "I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am not
worthy to present myself before this sacred and spiritual table."24
These are the words the prodigal son intended to speak to his father when he
returned: "Father I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer
worthy to be called your son" (Lk 15:18-19). Then the priest prays that God
would "send the Holy Spirit, the paraclete, to confirm and prepare me for this
service"25 (using words from
Jn14:26), "the paraclete, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name."
Finally the prayer ends with the phrase "equip me for this service," using the
word from Hebrews, "equip you with everything good that you may do his will"
(13:21).
Other words in this prayer are also taken from the
Scriptures: "mystery," "Lord," "only son our Lord Jesus Christ," "sacrifice,"
leitourgia (liturgical service; as in Ex 37:19 and Nm 16:9), "proclaim the
word delivered to me" (Heb 6:3), "blessed," "lifegiving" (Rom 4:17), "from ages
to ages" (Gal 1:5). In the liturgy of St. James there are more than fifty
references to the psalms drawn from more than forty psalms.
In many cases, words from the Bible give just the right word
to the rite and the rite in turn invests the words with the mystery of the
sacrament. In Milan, for example, the words from Song of Songs, "Let him kiss me
with the kisses of his mouth" (1:1), were sung immediately prior to communion.
Ambrose writes:
As you approach the altar and begin to move forward the
angels are watching. They have seen you approaching ... and they ask: "Who is
this who rises so white from the desert?" (Song 7:5) The angels look on with
astonishment. Do you want to know why they are in awe? Listen to the words of
the apostle Peter who said that those things that have been given to us "the
angels long to see"(1 Pet 1:12). Listen also to these words: "What no eye has
seen, nor ear heard God has prepared for those who love him"(1 Cor 2:9). 26
Later in the same work Ambrose writes: "When you approach the
altar the Lord Jesus calls to you, i.e. to your soul or to the Church, ‘Let him
kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.’ ... He kisses me. He sees me cleansed of
all sin, because my transgressions have been washed away."27
At the Easter vigil in Hippo, immediately prior to
baptism, Psalm 42 was sung: "As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my
soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I
come and behold the face of God?"
Lexicon and Grammar
Three points may be made about the language of the liturgy.
The first is that the Bible provides many, if not most, of the actual words used
in the prayers, litanies, and canticles. Of course the words are set in
different contexts, reoriented, applied to different things. But they remain the
words of the Bible and carry the overtones of the Scriptures. Can one ever sound
the word "hyssop" without thinking of Psalm 51: "Wash me with hyssop and I shall
be clean." The Scriptures are a vast field of interrelated words that are open
to comparisons, linkages and exchanges with one another. This linguistic field
with all its overtones is transferred to the liturgy; it is not translated into
another language, and the liturgy shows us how to relate the biblical words to
one another. If the Bible is the lexicon of Christian speech, the liturgy is its
grammar.
Second, liturgical reading of the Bible differs from reading
the Scriptures in the study or in private meditation. In the liturgy, the Bible
is always read in context: on a festival or day of a saint or a particular
Sunday of the year with its own theme (for instance, the Good Shepherd), and in
relation to other readings, (for instance, a passage from Isaiah read in
connection with the account of Christ’s birth in Luke). Further, the readings
are repeated year after year (or according to a fixed cycle). As certain
stories, images, words and expressions ("a humble and contrite heart thou wilt
not despise") are heard again and again they become part of our vocabulary, form
our thinking, and channel our experience.
John Henry Newman discovered that the brevity of lessons in
the Breviary was a distinct advantage over the reading of longer passages common
among those whose devotion consisted in reading "chapters" from the Bible. In
the latter case more Scripture was read, but Newman felt the shorter passages
held one’s attention better. I am particularly struck in the Easter season with
this feature of the brief readings for morning prayer in the Breviary. Phrases
such as "The word is near you" (Rom 10:8), "his life is life for God" (Rom
6:10), "if Christ is in you the body is dead" (Rom 8:10), "in life and death we
are the Lord’s" (Rom 14:9), occur again and again. This repetition of texts
works powerfully on the heart. As they are read again and again the strictly
cognitive element seems to recede and the words penetrate more deeply into the
soul. The Bible becomes less a text to be understood and interpreted than words
to make our own and use to praise, beseech, confess, thank, and adore God.
Third, the Bible is not only a cornucopia of words, it is
words in an order and with a plot, or to use the current jargon, they are part
of a story. This is evident not only in the readings that punctuate the high
festivals of the liturgical year, but also in the central prayer of the liturgy,
the anaphora. There we find the story of the Bible in nuce in the words
of the liturgy. The prayer invokes God as creator: "You are Holy, ruler of all
things, almighty, awe-ful, good, compassionate, especially showing mercy to your
creation, you who made man from the earth according to your own image and
likeness."28 Then it recalls the
fall into sin; the giving of the law and the sending of the prophets; the
Incarnation; Christ’s life among us, including his passion and the Last Supper
and the blessing of bread and wine. This is followed by the anamnesis that
"remembers" not only Christ’s saving death and resurrection, but also his
"second glorious and fearful coming," liturgical time transposing the order of
historical time. In short, the form of the eucharistic prayer holds before the
faithful the divine economy, the history of salvation, suggesting by a word
here, a phrase there, how the Bible is to be understood in its entirety, from
Genesis to Revelation, from creation to the consummation of all things—all
expressed with words from the Bible.
St. Augustine believed that there was a distinctive Christian
language, what he called "the Church’s way of speaking" (ecclesiastica
loquendi consuetudo). He had in mind a word such as "martyr." In
conventional usage, martyrs would be called "heroes"; but, says Augustine, this
would be contrary to the usage of the church.29
The term "martyr," however, is sanctioned by the Bible and early Christian
speech and has overtones absent from the term "hero," namely the link between
dying and bearing witness. Another term is "savior," salvator in Latin.
Again the word is biblical as in Luke 2:11: natus est vobis hodie Salvator,
qui est Christus Dominus ("Today is born to you a savior who is Christ the
Lord"). In Latin salus meant "health," not "salvation"; but with the
coming of Christ, Christians coined the words salvare ("to save") and
salvator ("savior")—terms that Latin grammarians shunned.
If there is a distinctly Christian language, the question of
translation has to be looked at afresh. As Augustine recognized, certain terms
cannot be translated; they must be kept in the form in which they have been used
in Christian speech. For what Christians believe, how they see the world, the
attitudes and feelings that govern their behavior, are all carried by the
language we use, the ecclesiastica loquendi consuetudo. If translation is
to occur it cannot run only in one direction, finding words or expressions to
express the church’s speech in the language of a particular culture. There must
also be translation of other languages into the idiom of the church.
Liturgical Inculturation
This leads me to the question of inculturation and some
concluding remarks. In a homily on Psalm 138, the verse with which we began, "In
the presence of angels I will sing a psalm to you," John Chrysostom observed
that some ancient versions translate the verse, "with boldness," or "openly I
will sing a psalm to you."30 In his
short essay on the angels published in the 1930s, Erik Peterson, the historian
and theologian, proposed that the phrase be translated, "Publicly I will sing a
psalm to you."31 His point is
suggestive: The Christian liturgy, the cult of the Christians, is a public
ritual. It is not limited to the temple or to the adherents of a religious
association; it extends to the entire cosmos. The church is a social and
political community that takes up space and extends in time. It is a city whose
company includes the angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, but also, as
the Te Deum has it, the "glorious choir of the apostles," the "admirable company
of the prophets," "the white-robed army of martyrs," indeed the "church
throughout the world."32 As a city
its assembly is not the meeting of a club or private association; and when it
comes together, in Peterson’s happy phrase, it offers the "prayer of a city,"
das Gebet einer Polis.33
In its worship the city of God draws its member into a shared
public life marked by its central cultic activity: the eucharist; by other
public rituals, for instance, the Corpus Christi procession or the Palm Sunday
procession; a calendar that sets the rhythm of the community’s life, practices
such as fasting; in its public statement of belief (creed); its order and
hierarchy (bishop, priests, deacons); its religious communities and monasteries;
the shape and appointment of its buildings; the persons depicted in its art and
the words and melodies of its music, and, of course, its language.
One of the most significant features of the transformation of
the Roman world in the fourth and fifth centuries was that Christianity occupied
and then reoriented the public space. The classical city with its agora and
temples and theaters disappeared and a new city plan emerged with a church
located at the center. With the Christianization of space came the sacralization
of time as the church’s calendar marked the days for rest and fasting and
feasting. In time cemeteries were moved inside the city, shrines to the saints
became a familiar feature of the landscape, communal memory was enriched by the
stories of the saints, and the church’s life and history engendered a new past.
In short, the church began to lay the foundations for its own distinctive
culture.
Over the last several hundred years, however, the church has
gradually given up this public face, relinquishing the public space to other
rituals, to other calendars, to other kinds of buildings, retreating step by
step into its own private world. The archbishop of Chicago, Francis Cardinal
George, depicts the situation in this way when he writes that privatization is
most evident
in the creation of rival calendars to shape the rhythm of
public life. National feasts and ceremonies replaced the liturgical calendar
of the church, whose feasts become private observances. The end of the modern
era, however, is signaled by the inability of the secular calendar to call
people out of their private concerns into the rhythm of a shared public life.
National holidays have become primarily occasions for private recreation. Time
itself becomes a field to be personally scheduled, a function of private
purposes. 34
Other examples include allowing Sunday to be taken over by
the same activities we do all week (for instance, shopping), and transferring
mid-week festivals such as Ascension to Sunday. Think how different Easter would
appear if we still had the European custom of Easter Monday, pasquetta,
as it is called in Italy. Even though it is not a holy day, but a day for
picnicking, it hallows Easter by giving it more space in the public imagination.
Ecclesial Culture
Unfortunately, modern notions of inculturation have lent
support to the church’s diminishing role in society. Proponents of inculturation
understand "culture" to be a term that applies to peoples and nations, not to
the church. In this view, the church is the bearer of a message and its task is
to communicate the good news in the language and patterns of thought of the
various cultures in which the church finds itself. Here, for example, is how one
thinker understands inculturation:
From the standpoint of the evangelizer, inculturation is
the effort to inject Christ’s message into a given socio-cultural milieu to
grow in accordance with its own values, so long as they can be reconciled with
the Gospel message. Inculturation seeks to naturalize the church in every
country, region and social sector, while fully respecting the native genius
and character of each human collectivity. 35
As to how inculturation applies to liturgy, Anscar Chupungco,
a leading liturgical scholar, puts it this way: "Liturgy must not impose on
culture a meaning or bearing that is intrinsically alien to its nature."36
Although I have spoken almost entirely about liturgy and
little about inculturation, it should be obvious that the view of liturgy I have
set forth moves in quite a different direction. For if the liturgy is the
worship of the Christian polis, with its own language, rituals, calendar,
practices, architecture and music, the church is much more than a message to be
translated. As David Yeago states so clearly, the church is "a culture in its
own right and is not simply a function of the cultures of the nations among
which it dwells." It is a "public reality . . . the civic assembly of the
eschatological city."37 Its most
characteristic activity is the worship of the Triune God in the eucharist. The
task then is to inculturate the faithful into this culture, not the other way
around.
How is this to be done? Again let me quote Cardinal George:
"The faith creates culture by being simply, boldly and unapologetically itself.
At the heart of the Church is the sacred liturgy. . . . The liturgy on earth is
. . . an iconic display of the heavenly liturgy of the angels and saints, that
community gathered together around the throne of God and united in praise."38
Just as the church must always say, "let God be God," and "let the church be the
church," it must also say, "let the liturgy be the liturgy." In the celebration
of the eucharist the church is most fully, most authentically, and most
convincingly the City of God reflecting the heavenly city to which it is joined.
Another City
The greatest gift the church can give our society is a
glimpse, however fleeting, of another city. But we can only do that if our
worship is self-consciously, confidently, and unmistakably oriented to God. If
someone wanders in off the street as we pray, he should sense that there is
present a double church, as Origen put it: the one that is seen and the other
that is unseen. Indeed if the visitor does not feel uncomfortable, out of place
and out of step, something is terribly wrong. The visitor should experience a
little vertigo, because something is going on that is beyond his ken. Yet one
would hope, as he listens to our faint voices and feeble songs, that he would
also hear, if only as an echo in the distance, the thunderous sound of the
heavenly host singing, "Holy, holy, holy."
_______________________
Notes:
1 Gregory the Great, Dialogues 4.60. Unless otherwise
indicated, translations in this essay are my own.
2 Origen, Homily on Luke 23.8. Maximus the Confessor states:
We have been taught "to frequent God’s holy church and not to abandon the holy
synaxis celebrated there, because the holy angels are present and take note each
time people enter and present themselves to God and make supplications for them"
(Mystagogia 24 [PG 91, 701d-704a]; translation from George C. Berthold, ed.,
Maximus the Confessor [New York: Paulist Press, 1985], 206; rev.).
3 All biblical citations in this essay are from the Revised
Standard Version.
4 The vision of Isaiah was troubling to ancient Jewish and
Christian commentators. For Isaiah claimed to see God. Yet God had told Moses,
"no man shall see me and live" (Ex 33:22). In First Timothy it was said that
that God "dwells in unapproachable light" and "no one has ever seen or can see"
the living God (6:16). John the Evangelist had written: "No one has ever seen
God" (Jn 1:18). Even in the magnificent vision of Ezekiel, the great prophet had
only seen "the likeness of the glory of God" (1:28). So disturbing was the
vision of Isaiah that he was said to have been martyred by King Manassah, sawed
in half—a tradition that appears in a seldom noticed phrase in the Letter to the
Hebrews: Some were "stoned" and others were "sawn in two"(11:37). According to
this tradition, Isaiah’s vision returned as he was being martyred by being sawn
in half. As he was dying "he was so absorbed in the vision of God, that he did
not see what was being done to him even though his eyes were open" (Martyrdom
and Ascension of Isaiah 5; translation from The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha,
ed. James H. Charlesworth [Garden City: Doubleday, 1985], 163-164.)
5 See Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses 5.6 (SC
126, 154); Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer and the
Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, ed. Alphonse Mingana, Woodbrooke
Studies 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), 100.
6 On the Sanctus in early Christian worship, see Bryan D.
Spinks, The Sanctus in the Eucharistic Prayer (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991).
7 Text in Georg Wobbermin, Altchristliche liturgische
Stuecke aus der Kirche Aegyptens nebst einem dogmatischen Brief des Bischofs
Serapion von Thmuis. Texte und Untersuchungen 2, 3b (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs,
1898]), 5. Translation from Lucien Deiss, Early Sources of the Liturgy
(New York: Alba House: 1963), 114-115.
8Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Lord’s
Prayer and the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, ed. Mingana,
100-101.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical
Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 172,176.
14 Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy (New
York: Crossroad/Herder and Herder, 1998), 66-67.
15 Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon 7.6 On the Song of Songs.
16 On the correspondence between the earthly and heavenly
liturgy and its implication for ecclesiology, see in particular Erik Peterson,
The Angels and the Liturgy (New York: Herder and Herder,1964).
17 John Chrysostom, Homily 1.1 on Uzziah (In illud,
vidi Dominum), (SC 277, 44-46).
18 Ibid, 6.3, 216.
19 Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses 5.6.
20 Maximus the Confessor, Mystagogy 19 (PG 91, 696bc;
translation from Maximus the Confessor, ed. Berthold, 202, rev.)
21 The Quicunque vult, sometimes known as the
Athanasian Creed. Text and translation in J.N.D. Kelly, The Athanasian Creed
(New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 17.
22 Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000). See in particular 16 and 63.
23 La Liturgie de Saint Jacques. Édition Critique du
Texte Grec avec Traduction Latine, ed. B.-Ch. Mercier. Patrologia Orientalis
26.2. no. 126. (Paris, Turnhout, 1974), 160.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ambrose of Milan, De mysteriis 4.5.
27 Ibid., De mysteriis 5.5-6.
28 La Liturgie de Saint Jacques, ed. Mercier, 200.
29 Augustine, The City of God 10.21.
30 John Chrysostom, Exposition in Ps.137 (PG 55, col. 407c).
31 Peterson, The Angels and the Liturgy, 39-40.
32 See Augustine, Sermon 341.9 (PL 39, col. 1500).
33 Peterson, The Angels and the Liturgy, 40.
34 Francis Cardinal George, "Catholic Christianity and the
Millennium: Frontiers of the Mind in the Twenty-first Century." Unpublished
lecture delivered at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., September
1999.
35 Hervé Carrier, Evangelizing the Culture of Modernity
(New York: Orbis, 1993), 67.
36 Anscar Chupungco, "A Definition of Liturgical
Inculturation," Ecclesia Orans 5 (1988), 19.
37 David Yeago, "Messiah’s People: The Culture of the Church
in the Midst of the Nations," Pro Ecclesia 6 (Spring 1997), 150.
38 George, "Catholic Christians and the Millennium."
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