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Cisfeacians of fbe SfRicf ObseRoanceVolu me , Na mbe12 1 I JalcY 1968

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Contents

Editorial Armand Veilleux 3

The Consilium and Liturgical Reform Annibal Bugnini 5

The Lost Language of Symbolism Chrysostom Castel 7

Liturgy : Sign and Symbol Samuel H.

Miller 12 Towards a Renewal

of the Monastic Office Gabriel

Bertoniere 18 Weel<ly Psalm

Distribution of Mount St. Bernard Fr. Nicholas 21

The Integration of Lauds and Mass Patrick Brown 24

A Question of Due Autonomy? Basil Pennington 27

Celebration of the Sacrament of Penance Renewed St. Joseph's Abbey 29

The Blessing of the Weekly Servers and Reader St. Joseph's Abbey 33

Letter to the Editor Eoin de Bhaldraithe 34

Advent "Lucernarium" - Ecumenical Prayer Service St. Joseph's Abbey

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lltU RG Y BULLETIN serves to communicate among Cistercian members of the People of God whatever thoughts and experiences may contribute to the de velopment of a better liturgy for today -for their simple life is liturgy.

LITURGY EDITOR : Armand Veilleux, Mistassini. ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Fr. Chrysogonus Waddell, Geth semani, and Fr. Marcellus, Genesee. «9"

Manuscripts should be forwarded to: Armand Veilleux, Abbey of Mistassini, Village - des -

Peres, P. Que., Canada.

eoitonial

fl During the year 1967, the Consilium ad exsequendam Constitutionem d e Sacra Litur gia promulgated several Instructions which provoked various reactions among the faithful. In the conference we publish here, Fr. A. Bugnini, Secretary of the Consilium, explains the activities of the Consilium during the past year and its prospects for 1968.

fl The language of the liturgy is symbolical. Such language has been used abundantly by the Bible and the Fathers of the Church. Br. Chrysostom introduces us to that "lost language of symbolism." But, is it possible for secularized modern man to understand this language ? - Dr. Samuel H. Miller gives an answer to that question. Not only can modern man understand such language, he desperately needs it. To fill this need, however, the liturgy has to be lifted to a new level of clarity and human transparency.

fl Monks are deeply concerned about the renewal of their Monastic Office. Fr. Gabriel Bertoniere has some very useful thoughts on the subject and, although his paper was written four years ago, it is still pertinent.

fl Three projects for the redistribution of the Psalms in the Divine Office have been implemented by an indult granted our Order. Two of these projects are already known to our readers. The third one has been prepared by the community of Mount St. Bernard and is presented here by Fr. Nicholas of their monastery.

fl We owe to the Community of Spencer the five following articles. The first of them is an interesting proposal by Fr. Patrick Brown for the integration of Lauds and Mass. Historical and theological justifications are given. Fr. Basil Pennington concerns himself with the autonomy which should be given to a monastic community and which seems to have been forgotten in some recent liturgical legislation. Perhaps a theological study of the exemption of contemplatives from the active ministry could help us to clarif y the situation. Among the other papers from Spencer, one notes particularly the panel discussions on the celebration of the Sacrament of Penance. The part of the discussion reported in this number deals with the origin of the Sacrament of Penance.

fl Since the birth of our Bulletin in December 1966, each issue has improved in appearance, thanks to Fr. Chrysogonus Waddell's generous work and to the collaboration of other monks of Gethsemani. The Bulletin now enters its third year and, thanks again to Fr. Chrysogonus' mediation, Fr. Marcellus of Genesee has served as associate editor on the small staff, and the aid of a printer was enlisted.

fl As it has in the past two years, LITURGY will continue its two aims: to publish studies toward a better celebration of our liturgy, and to provide among our communities a means for the expression of their desires and an exchange of their experiences, their problems, their successes. To this end, each member is warmly invited to contribute his own thought or work -whatever may be of value to others. We have yet a long way to go . ...let's join hands!

Armand VeilleuxMONK OF MISTASSINI ABBEY

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The Consilium and Liturgical ReformAnnibal Bugnini, C. M.

SECRETARY, Consilium ad exesequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia

The twelve months of 1967 have been studded with documents and events in the liturgical sphere. Some agitation was occasioned by the Instruction Tres Abhinc Annos of May 4th, 1967, whose essential aim was the simplification of some of the rites retained which were incongruous and illogical, or at least decidedly out-of-date, after the measures taken in the first steps of the reform.

These measures had been requested by a good number of episcopal conferences, which wanted them furthermore to restrain private enterprises of questionable value. Every one of the simplifications proposed was studied carefully against the background of the over-all reform, so that the document should anticipate, and gradually prepare, the complete re form, no longer distant.

I will spare you the details of the negative reactions occasioned by the Instruction -the doctrinal "tendencies" that lie hidden in it, the theological and pastoral errors, the democratization, the vandalism, and so on.

None of this has any basis of truth.How can people suspect us of extremist tendencies when

a document passes the scrutiny of hundreds of experts, quali fied in the various sciences, and of the Church's hierarchy ?

A DYNAMIC CONCEPT OF LITURGY

But I want to assure you of something else: the concept of a liturgy tied to rubrics and ceremonies, fixed in its formulas and divorced from reality, has decidedly yielded place to a dynamic concept of worship, alive and vital, biblical and pastoral, traditional and contemporary; anchored to a healthy past, but straining towards the future. And from this onward march, indicated by the Council and effected by the Consilium, the Church will not deviate.

Last January, when the Instruction Tres Abhinc Annoswas in an advanced stage of preparation, a request arrived

Bugnini + The Consilium and Liturgical Reform

from a cathedral chapter, signed unanimously by all the canons. To commemorate their bishop's participation in the Second Vatican Council, they implored the Holy See to grant them the privilege of putting the paten above, instead of beneath, the corporal from the offertory on.

Darling canons! One does not know which to admire more- the piety and devotion towards the Church's laws, or the enchanting simplicity that used to decorate so many fine priestly souls, at least once upon a time. It was indeed lovely, that veneration for the Church's ceremonies, that sight of the priest at the altar like a superhuman being, estranged from the congregation, in isolated converse with God.

ACTIVE INVOLVEMENT OF ALL REQUIRED

But alas, today's needs, today's realities, are different. Today the liturgical action would have no sense if it did not involve the whole congregation, priest and people; if it did not involve them consciously, and therefore with the neces sary preparation (doctrinal and technical, musical and pastoral) ; if it did not involve them actively, and not be content with dumb and lifeless presence.

And this is the reality which you must pursue with tireless, continual, and persevering action. Especially those of you who direct the diocesan liturgical commissions.

You have at hand abundant and precious means -four Instructions which are the corner-stones of the building which you yourselves must build in the dioceses, in the parishes, wherever a community gathers to pray.

Talk given on the occasion of a liturgy convention, January 4, 1968, organized by the Italian Centro di Azione Liturgica, and published in the Centro's fort nightly bulletin, LITURGIA, 2 (1968) 34-37.

(Translated by Fr. Damian Smyth, Roscrea - Tre-Fontane)

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RUBRICS STILL NEEDED

We have abandoned rubricism, but we will not abandon rubrics. The new liturgical books will also have their rubrics. Why ? Because we want to realize in full the task entrusted to us by the Pope: "To preserve the liturgy's perennial youthfulness."

This is a demanding task. First, we must make the liturgy youthful, and that is what our study groups and the whole Consilium are laboring to achieve. And then we must pre serve this "perennial youthfulness" - preserving it with norms that are precise, clear, juridically sound; but sprightly, fresh, flexible, elastic, pastorally efficacious. The clergy must be helped to gradually attain this view of things; this is another job for you. Make people realize that the liturgy is no longer a medical prescription, or some prodigious instant remedy. It has to be studied, prepared, adapted if necessary for each congregation, just as a sensible priest prepares and adapts his homily.

NEW RUBRICS ADAPTABLE TO CIRCUMSTANCES

Nobody should get alarmed, much less be scandalized, if the new rubrics for a given day, in a given circumstance say weddings, or funerals, or confirmation-should provide a series of readings, of chants, or of prayers, from which the priest will have to choose those most suited for his congre gation. It is not a national or international disaster, nor will the Church collapse, the day when the rubrics inform the celebrant that he is no longer an automaton, but will have to prepare, in responsible fashion, the prayer of his people, and that this is his primary and principal priestly duty.

Give four fellows in the cloth the sense of the flexibility f th liturgy, of the adabtability indicated by the precise liturgical laws, and the preservation of discipline within the limits of this flexibility.

Does this mean good-by to uniformity in the diocese? To material uniformity-yes. And I will say more: once

the liturgy is renewed, the diocese that would remain uniform would reveal itself as liturgically inert or dead. Will ni be ost ? Not at all, because unity is a spiritual and

mtenor gif t, which manifests itself in legitimate, authorizedvariety.

DIGNIFIED STYLE REQUIRED IN LIVING LITURGY

The day has come when we must seriously rethink the liturgy as an action, as an artistic action, as a revealing "sign." Once the whole of liturgy was in the "ceremony." It had become almost an end in itself. Whole generations of clergy have been educated for resthetic worship and ceremonial celebration. Then historical, theological, biblical reflection on matters liturgical showed the weakness of this concept of worship, and it was almost entirely abandoned in a natural reaction. Now that we have found again the soul of the liturgy, now that we are restoring an authentic face and expression to the Church's prayer, we priests must return t a. dignified style in celebrating that we have in part lost, dict10n that is calm, coloured, harmonious. (When will each

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diocese have its own school of diction, for readers and for other key men in the congregation ?) Gestures that are controlled, noble, I would almost say studied, in the sense of measured and graceful. A celebration that is unhurried, tranquil, serene, on the part of celebrant, reader, schola, congregation. Furnishings sober, but becoming. These are some elements that come to mind today. With the altar turned towards the people, with the rites made simpler and clearer, with the language intelligible throughout, with greater euchological and scriptural richness, we have the fundaental means for a liturgy that is alive and pastorally efficac10us. Let us also provide a worthy frame that will facilitate our people's insertion into the sacred mystery.

PROBLEMS WITH MUSIC

No liturgical action without singing.The four years of the Consilium's lifetime have been four

years of musical polemics. Fruitless alas, at least for the most part, because based on prejudice and defensiveness, rather than on the positive initiative and generous involvement of our musicians.

Some sporadic episodes, for example, made people think that the reform was against the scholce cantorum. Certainly not. Everybody knows that for us the schola is an essential element of a worthy celebration, when it fulfills its twofold duty: to lead and support the congregation, and to perform the chants proper to the schola.

Others have believed that we are against Latin. This has been another shadow (and what a shadow!) created by misinformed prejudice. Past and present, traditional chant and contemporary song are equally dear to us, as long as they be pastorally efficacious to make our congregations pray, and not merely to delight the resthetic taste of some specialist.

Scholce cantorum, gregorian chant, polyphony, modern music, syllabic or psalmodic or strophic, in Latin or in the vernacular; choose whatever you want, but sing. A liturgy without song, a liturgy only read, would be once again a dead liturgy. It would lack lyricism, that elan, that spiritual elevation that is an indispensable coefficient giving wings and tone to the prayer of our congregations. If we have shown a certain partiality towards the Graduate Simplex, and similar initiatives in simple responsorial singing, it is only because we have found it up to now the most suitable means to. make singing possible for our large, popular congregations, and for our small, unsophisticated country parishes. If a parish or a schola can do more or better, by all means let them do it. We have proposed a minimum, in order that this minimum may be attained by the whole People of God.

Even if we restrict ourselves to these few points, barely outlined, I think there is enough work to occupy fully those liturgical action groups, the diocesan commissions. I hope that you may be able to do it methodically and progressively, in order to hasten in every diocese the coming of a promising liturgical Spring, and prepare the clergy and faithful to welcome with understanding love the renewed liturgy. D

Liturgy Bulletin + July 1968

The Lost Language of Symbolism

Chrysostom CastelMONK OF GETHSEMANI

BIBLICAL AND LITERARY ASPECTS

In our modern era of science, technology, fact and fission, we have lost sight of the role of the symbol in a healthy psychic life, a role which an equally modern psychology assures us is vital and indispensable. One area in our literature in which symbolism, metaphor, is an essential ele ment and vehicle of experience is poetry. Since it is the essential tool, the sine qua non of poetry, it surely follows that symbolism plays a major role in the Scriptures, for the greater part of the Old Testament is poetry, and it is becom ing evident that many of those parts, formerly considered to be strictly prose, are being shown by modern scholarship to contain many poetic passages hitherto unsuspected. To this must be added the fact that the Semitic mind, so con crete in its expression and thought, is by reason of that, most adept and agile with the use of the symbol; and of course our Lord himself, in the true Semitic tradition of the Old Testament, well knew the art of employing this phenomenon of symbology in his teaching in order to reach the heart of man. For all of his parables and analogies are skillfully woven symbolic stories using very concrete images, because it is the concrete image, word, or object that contains and conveys the symbol with its many allusions and meanings.

In his book Symbols of Christ, Dom Damasus Winzen says that the word "symbol" comes from the Greek word symballein meaning "to piece together," and from symbolon meaning the corresponding pieces of two halves of anything, or a sign or token which infers something else. The principle on which all symbolism works is analogy, by which it either spontaneously alludes to the thing or things that are symbolized, or it fails, and we have a rationally contrived and sterile allegorism. Fr. Reinhold in his introduction to this same book describes the true symbol as a veil, concealing the outline of the thing symbolized: such as bread, water, oil, wine, incense, candles, fire, a mountain, a tree, a river, the wind, hands outstretched or folded, prostration, bowing, kneeling, white linen-in short, the simple given things of

Chrysostom + Lost Language of Symbolism

social or solitary natural life fitted by the mind-/ogosWord-to be endowed with a unique and appropriate sense.1

Yet not only objects-or the words which convoke the images of those objects-but events too are symbolic, and those

of us who were privileged to hear the poetic eulogy of Br. Antoninus on the death of our late President Kennedy willrecall with what prophetic insight he recognized and spelled out the symbolic meanings of that event for America, and the profound statement he made, summing up and crystal izing the manner of God's dealings with and revelation to man, when he said: "Man thinks rationally, but God acts symbolically." Our Christian intuition confirms the truth of this statement and anyone familiar with the Seriptures has seen this fact frequently confirmed. We would all agree that our Lord's miracles throughout his public life are as important, or even more important, for the symbolic mean ings they bear for Christians than the actual events in their historic circumstances. St. John's Gospel is permeated with symbolism and we frequently find St. Paul explaining the symbolic meanings of Old Testament events for Christians. But one very evident confirmation in the Old Testament of this truth of God's symbolical dealing with man can be found in the fourth and fifth chapters of Ezechiel, in which Yahweh commands Ezechiel to carry out a whole series of symbolic acts in a prophetic drama by which he is to make known to Israel the punishments that are to come upon the people for their infidelity to Him in their exile.

Again, Fr. Reinhold asks:Why did God choose Sinai, Sion, Horeb, and Moriah, Golgotha and Tabor to manifest himself to man ? Be cause a rise, with heaven above, symbolizes to manmore erect than other creatures and carrying his forehead like a banner of reason-the Power of Light, while the soil in all regions bears in itself the symbol of dark, telluric . . forces of the underworld-as long as we stay within the realm of symbol and do not lapse into

1Dom Dama.us Winzen, osa, Symbols of Christ (New York: P. J. Kenedy,1955), pp. 5, 11.

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paganism or rank superstition. The Catholic Church is drenched and soaked in symbolism-with a generous shot of allegorism added by the playful and rationalistic Middle Ages, alas !-and it could not be otherwise since the very Incarnation, God's becoming Man, is in its deepest meaning a symbol of agape, God's outflowing love. But Catholics have been to a very great extent blinded to symbols and have lost the sense of the analo gical which would keep us aware of the basic fact that all our wordy definitions are not even approximations of reality, but analogies. A.nd so we have become sightless toward the infinite objects of our faith and are busy with its nearby mechanics: we don't seethe face and hands of the clock, but are forever busy with its cogs and wheels, forgetting that it might stop running if we continue to take it apart.

The naturalism and "photographism" in our Church art, the unrelatedness to the mystery in the furnishings even of the sanctuary, cry out for symbolism. The feasts, the Church year, all the Masses, baptism, their renewal in the hour-chant, cry for the more allusive art of the symbol. Our churches symbolize the meeting of man and God-a sacramental parousia, a piercing of the soul by the sword of the Word: therefore, the air needs to be filled with the fragrance of Christ, which demands the subtle and delicate, the allusive means of symbol. 2

It is this allusive and veiled multiplicity of meaning, this "fruitful ambiguity" perhaps, which gives the symbol power to penetrate the depths of man. It is this allusive quality which pervades our liturgy and is doubtless the reason-and a very important one--why some prefer the Latin liturgy to the English. As most of the Fathers of the Church, so too St. Jerome was doubtless steeped in the great poetic classics of ancient Greek and Latin literature, and was there fore keenly attuned to the symbolism of words and very faithful in retaining that symbolism in his translation of the Scriptures. It was through the art of this symbology that the Fathers achieved their effective and poetic exegesis of the Scriptures. Mircea Eliade, in his book Images and Symbols, speaking of the symbolism contained in images or the words which convoke them, says:

Images, by their very structure are multivalent. If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things, it is because reality manifests itself in contra dictory ways, and therefore cannot be expressed in con cepts . . . It is therefore the image as such, as a whole bundle of meanings, that is true, and not any one of its meanings, nor one alone of its many frames of reference. To translate an image into a concrete terminology by restricting it to any one of its frames of reference is to do worse than mutilate it-it is to annihilate, to annul it as an instrument of cognition. 3

This is of great importance for us, now that we have a vernacular liturgy, for the neglect or ignorance of the sym.bolism of words in translation results in a greatly impov erished liturgy, much less powerf ul and effective, as is evident in our present Lectionary for the Conventual Mass, as well as in most modern translations of the Bible.

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Having seen then the essential place of symbolism in poetry, and thus in the Bible, as well as the symbology employed in the poetry of the liturgy, it would seem true to say that in the final analysis the exegesis of the Fathers which some modern scholars are so quick to condemn is in actual fact, a deciphering and elucidation of the symbols contained in the events and the words of Scripture. Their familiarity and intuition of the ancient and accepted symbols of life occurring in the classics and in the poetry of the Bible, had given them a very keen and ready awareness of the many allusions evoked by these symbols. Thus it would seem that the neat scholastic categories into which we like to rele gate their exegesis-as, for instance: typology, tropology, anagogy, allegory, etc.-are in fact decipherings of the different levels of meaning, or the different allusions which this or that symbol contains. It would seem rather rash for most of us of the modern era, handicapped as we are by a general blindness and deafness in the face of the symbolic, to pass critical judgement too readily on this or that Patristic exegesis, for we may well be rejecting a truth which was experienced in the realm of the symbolic, and which we. are as yet incapable of grasping. For the deeper one enters into the realm of the symbol, the more one feels the presence of the mysterious--of the unknown as somehow known.

SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS

Turning now to a more scientific approach, in line with the current Biblical movement, we can see even from this aspect of science, the great need for the symbolic in man's nature. It is surely evident to most of us that despite the great enrichment of knowledge contributed by the sincere efforts of modern scholars to the study of the Bible, some thing has been lacking-the all important element that would enable modern man to incorporate all of these new insights into his spiritual life. The more one studies the role of symbolism and symbology, however, in ancient religions and primitive cultures, the more the evidence points to the neglect of the symbol and its importance in man's life as the reason for this failure. It is surprising to see, for instance, how intimately connected and essential symbolism is to the psychic life of man, for this mysterious psyche or uncon scious of man is nourished, as it were, and lives-in the Biblical meaning of that word-in the realm of the symbol. Hence, the reason why symbols are the vehicles God has chosen for his revelation of himself to man, and for the communication of his grace--and indeed, of himself-in the liturgy.

Carl Gustav Jung, the well-known psychiatrist, apparently based his whole psychology and psychoanalysis on this inti mate need for, and use of the symbol in man's psychic life, for his writings are full of this symbolic element and the great part it plays in the unconscious of man. We recall, for instance, his statements on the healing effect which the sym bol has in the psyche of man, how it reintegrates the con scious with the unconscious, healing their division and disorder and enabling the whole man to function as a unit wherever this sensitivity to the symbol is active and living.

Liturgy Bulletin + Jul:y }968

But besides this personal unconscious acting in each individ ual person, and unique to his own experience of life, Jung also discovered that in addition there is present in man a collective unconscious- a deeper layer containing the inheri ted experience of the race. This ability to experience current life by means of the past history of mankind Jung called archety pal, and the postulated archetypes, although uncon scious, are representative of the age-old experience of man, reaching consciousness in a variety of images.

Fr. Victor White in his book God and the Unconsciousillustrates this discovery of Jung as follows:

Behind submerged "memories" of events in the indi vidual's lifetime lies a racial heritage manifested in archetypal figures. Behind the particularized womb of the physical mother lies the archetypal womb of the Great Mother of all living; behind the physical father, the archetypal Father; behind the child, the p11er teter nus; The second of all these pairs appears now, not as a· phantsy-substitute for the first, but rather does the first appear as a particular manifestation and symbol of the second. The way is now open to us, for instance, no longer to conceive of God as a substitute for the physical father, but rather the physical father as the infant's first substitute for God.4

Perhaps it is this inherited collection of memories of the race contained in the unconscious of man that may explain the strange experience of paramesia or deja vu-the experi ence that "this has happened before"-in an event appar ently happening for the first time. This experience is probably triggered by a symbolic event or word. But be that as it may, through a study of the collective unconscious, Jung reached the conclusion that there was in man a religious function of the utmost importance for the growth of the personality which he neglected at his peril.

Again, Mircea Eliade points out that the symbol, the myth, and the image are of the very substance of the spiritual life. They may become disguised, mutilated or degraded, but are never rooted out Thus it is, for example, that the nostalgia of the Earthly Paradise has survived until today, in adapted form, as an "Oceanian Paradise," or a South Sea Island Paradise 5 This nostalgia for the Paradise Lost seemingly pervades the collective unconscious of man through the ages, wd is given concrete expression in the "mythologies," fables, and symbolic rites of most ancient cultures and primitive societies. A striking example of this is related of the primi tives of New Guinea: they give expression to this inherited nostalgia for the life of Paradise Lost in a very ancient dance handed down from generation to generation, through which they re-enter once again, symbolically, this unconscious memory of a life that used to be.6 And of course, the most eloquent and beautiful expression of this universal nostalgia is to be found in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis.

SYMBOLISM IN ANCIENT CULTURES

We can now look at a few examples in ancient cultures, taken chiefly from Harold Bayley's The Lost Language of

Chrysostom + Lost Language of Symbolism

Symbolism, a very comprehensive collection and explanation of · ancient Christian arid pre-Christian symbols, many of which occur frequently in the Bible and, it must be remem

bered, are never restricted to one meaning or interpretation, but like all symbols, are multivalent or "multisymbolic." Blue, for instance, was the symbol of Truth as well as' holi

ness, and thus of happiness, and was no doubt derived from the azure blue of the clear sky.7 White, of course, ainong other things, is the symbol of innocence and purity. We recall our Lady is frequently depicted in a white robe and blue mantle with golden hair -gold being the ancient symbol of wisdom -and this is how the Art Censor of the Inquisition of 1649 ruled that artists were to portray her.8

Likewise, silver symbolized knowledge, while purple, a combination of red and blue, symbolized the union of Love and Truth.9 Here Bayley recalls the passage in the Canticle:

King Solomon made himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon. He made its pillars of silver, its bottom of gold, its covering of purple, and its midst was paved with love.10

The expression that Solomon "made himself" a chariot symbolizes the vital essence of mysticism, i.e., that man is his own fate and maker and controller of his own destiny. The wood of Lebanon was the symbol of incorruptability, and the Sun-a symbol of the Deity, and in Christian times,the Sol f ustitite-was generally depicted as a charioteerdriving a chariot with a team of four horses, symbols of the discordant faculties of the mind. These horses were repre sented as stumbling and blinded by the Sun's brilliance, but brought under control and trained to the equipoise of Per fection. We are reminded here of the firey chariot which carried Elijah away, related in the Second Book of Kings.11 The horse was the symbol of the Intellect 12 and "four" was was symbolic also of perfection, deriving perhaps from the equality of the four sides of a square.13 It would seem that almost all peoples of antiquity possessed a name for the Deity composed of four letters.14 Thus the Tetragrammaton or four-lettered 'YHWH,' the personal name given by God to the Hebrews, possessing in itself the past, present, and future forms of the verb "to be," or "to happen,'' was revered as a symbol of the immutable I AM.15

Green was at one time a widely understood symbol of evergreen or everlasting, and thus Bayley again quotes the Canticle:

Behold you are fair, my beloved, and pleasant: also, our bed is green. The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.16

2 Fr. H. A. Reinhold, Foreword to Symbols of Christ.3 Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols (New York: Sheed & Ward, 196l )p.15.4 Op. cit., p. 78-quoted in Psychiatry and the Christian: 20th Century

Encyclopedia of Catholicism, Vol. 93, p. 24.5 Op. cit., p. 11.6 Fr. Matthew Kelty, "Sermon for Feast of St. John the Evangelist," Dec.

27, 1963.7 Harold Bayley, The Lost Language of Symbolism (New York : Barnes &

Noble, 1967) Vol. I, p. 154.s Ibid., p. 236. 13 Ibid., p. 76.9 Ibid., p. 154. 14 Ibid., p. 79.

10 Cant. 3 : 9-10. 15 Ibid., p. 72.11II Kings 52 : 11, 12. 16 Ibid., p. 157; Cant. I : 15-17.12 The Lost Language of Symbolism, Vol. I, p, 156.

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According to Bayley:The "green bed" of Solomon would seem to be a poetic allusion to the everlasting nuptials of the Sun, and it follows that the "beams of our house" which "are cedar, and our rafters of fir," have reference to the City or Temple of the Sun. The lofty fir tree was the symbol of elevation, and the House of Cedar, incorruptible and strong, may be compared to the Temple of Solomon, the symbolic N ova Solyma, the New Jerusalem, the City of the Sun, the spiritual City which lay foursquare, and whose length was as large as its breadth.17

White was also a symbol for Time, and contrasted with Black which, unlike the meaning of evil or sorrow it has for us today, rather symbolized the Divine Darkness, Inscruta bility, Silence and Eternity. Bayley again quotes the Canticle where the Bride says:

I am black and beautiful, 0 Daughters of Jerusalem: as the tents of Kedar, and as the curtains of Solomon.18

Wisdom is proverbially the Pearl of Great Price, doubtless by reason of its numerous analogies with Truth. Brown ing calls it a very perfect orb of supreme loveliness, and for this reason it also symbolized Perfection, as did the numbers four and seven. The Pearl was certainly regarded too as a symbol of the Soul or Spirit lying encased within the human body, and in addition it symbolized, as Browning says, that inmost center in us all where Truth and Wisdom abide in fullness. In the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, there is a Gnostic poem called the "Hymn of the Robe of Glory," a masculine variant of the Assyrian goddess Ishtar's descent into the underworld-a myth which, incidentally, seems to foreshadow and prepare the pagan world for the Incarnation. The "Hymn of the Robe of Glory," however, tells the story of two Heavenly Parents who dispatch their son on an ardu ous quest for a certain Pearl lying in the sea and guarded by a giant serpent. The boy is deprived of his kingly apparel for this purpose and is promised that his magnificent garments will be restored to him on his return. He descends to the land of Babel, where the natives gradually lure the boy into forgetting his high origin and mission, and from the weight of their food he falls into a deep sleep. His parents having seen what had taken place, send a letter to their son admonishing him to arise from sleep, to remember he is a king's son, and to realize to whom he is enslaved, to think of the Pearl and his mission, and his glorious robe. Where upon the story continues:

I snatched up the Pearland turned to the House of my Father;

Their filthy and unclean garmentsI stripped off and left in their country.

To the way that I came I betook myself,To the Light of our Home -to the Dawnland.

His wonderful robe is returned to him on his return and he and his Pearl are received with great rejoicing in the Royal Court of his Father.19 This myth is highly symbolic of course and somewhat complicated, but the Pearl represents on the one hand, fallen man in the world of darkness, and on the other, the "Savior" himself "saved." It also symbolized

10

Reality, the Christ-King, Eternal Life, the Transcendent revealed to the senses. The Pearl symbolized all these things and yet more besides; its appearance in this phenomenal world is miraculous; its presence among fallen beings is paradoxical. 20 We recall that our Lord likened heaven to a Pearl of Great Price, and the Twelve Gates of the New Jerusalem were said to be twelve Pearls, each gate of one Pearl.21

Again, Bayley observes that little or no distinction can be drawn between classic myth and popular fairy-tale, both of which are highly symbolic. Thus, to appreciate the Canticle of Canticles as well as many other books of the Bible in the fulness of their symbolism, one must consult not only mythology and philology, but also fairy-tales which, in many cases, are mythology still living. Bayley sees the Canticle not only as a bridge linking theology to folk-lore, but containing several finger-posts pointing directly to the story known nowadays as Cinderella.22 The elements of this prehistoric and universal fairy-tale are present in the legend of Ishtar's descent into the underground world. But besides its con nection with the Canticle, Bayley in the several chapters he devotes to this fairy-tale, shows by an overwhelming mass of evidence gathered from the many different versions of this tale occurring in all cultures, that once again the un conscious of man has personified in this myth by highly symbolic figures, the memory of his former happy state and of his divine origin, and his hopes of someday returning to that state. For even the popular names of Cinderella are as recondite and symbolic as the classic word "Psyche" of Greek myth. "Psyche," who has much in common with Cinderella, means Breath or Soul and is generally regarded as symbolic of the Soul spark encased within the body.23

Thus the name "Cinderella" in its phonetic etymology is "Sinder" or spark of "Ella," which is the Greek "Ele" meaning "Giver of Light." Cinderella" then, seems to re solve into "Spark of the Giver of Light"; and this allusion seems, strangely enough, always contained in many of the names given to this tale in the various cultures of man. Bayley's extensive study of the various forms which this symbolic tale takes all over the world, would also appear to again prove the accuracy of Jung's concept of collective unconscious in the psyche of man, acting through and acted upon, by the symbolism of the poem, the myth, or the fairy tale. For another conclusion which Bayley reaches in com paring many of its versions is:

Cinderella . . . is a personification of the Holy Spirit, dwelling unhonored amid the smouldering ashes of the Soul's latent, never totally extinct Divinity, and, by patient tending, is fanning them into flame.24

Myth was obviously once fairy-tale, and what is often sup posed to be mere fairy-tale proves in many instances to be unsuspected Theology.25 Thus it appears to be the express purpose of Fr. Hugo Rabner-a member of the Eranos group associated with Jung-in his book Greek M yths and Christian M ystery, to show how this latent theology, as well as the longings, aspirations and hopes of man's psychic life,

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veiled and personified symbolically by his unconscious in the classic mythologies and poetry of ancient Greek literature, were assimilated, sanctified and sublimated into the Christian mysteries by the early Church.

In like manner, Eliade shows by several examples and quotations from the Church Fathers that their exegesis har monizes perfectly in many instances with the symbology universally attested by the religions of the non-Christian world, handed down from a long religious history and prehistory which Judaism-and consequently Christianity inherited from pre-Mosaic times: such symbolisms and symbolic images which were capable of conveying at no matter what moment, a powerful religious actuality.26 It would seem then, that in general the exegesis of the Fathers is validated and exonerated by the very criteria with which modern scholars have opposed it: namely, from the literary approach of Mythology, or better, Symbology as well as from the scientific aspect of Psychology. We could go perhaps still further and say that from these two points of view, much Pa tristic exegesis is even more advanced than modern scholar ship (at least in its present trends) in that the Fathers recog nized with spontaneous intuition and sensitivity one of the most basic needs of man's psychic life, a need amply pro vided for in Scripture.

DEMYTHOLOGIZING VS. REMYTHOLOGIZING

Hence it is that Fr. Edmund Hill, a Dominican writing in the periodical Scripture, shows that Bultmann's principles of demythologizing are indeed a most sincere but misdi rected attempt to meet the very real problem of modern man's blindness and deafness before the symbolic language of Scripture by stripping the message of the Bible of all its allusive and nourishing symbolism or "mythology," and thus reducing the remedy itself to the level of his blindness, instead of trying to cure his blindness by means of the remedy. This is to present him with a greatly impoverished message, stripped of what was meant for nourishment of both his spiritual and psychological life. This is to take from poetry the very element which constitutes it as poetry. It is, as it were, to take music from the song, or to extract water from the dew. On the contrary, Fr. Hill asserts that the remedy to the serious problem of man's disability in the face of Biblical symbology and mythology lies, not in de mythologizing the Scriptures-which necessarily must be a very narrow, limited and incomplete expression of their revelation and content-but rather in remythologizing, that is, resymbologizing, so to speak, the mind of modern man; by educating him to rediscover a new awareness and sensi tivity to the symbolic, so as to be able to live and experience once again in that realm proper to him, and in which God deliberately willed to reveal Himself to man.21

OUR MAGNIFICENT TASK

In conclusion we can quote the following reflections of Eliade on the subject:

Symbolic thinking is not the exclusive privilege of the

Chrysostom + Lost LanAuaAe of Symbolism

child, of the poet or of the unbalanced mind: it is consubstantial with human existence, it comes before language and discursive reason. The symbol reveals cer tain aspects of reality-the deepest aspects-which defy any other means of knowledge. Images, symbols and myths are not irresponsible creations of the psyche; they respond to a need and fulfill a function, that of bringing to light the most hidden modalities of being. Conse quently, the study of them enables us to reach a better understanding of man-of man "as he is," before he has come to terms with the conditions of History. Every historical man carries on, within himself, a great deal of prehistoric humanity.

In escaping from his historicity, man does not abdicate his status as human being, or abandon himself to "ani mality": he recovers the language, and sometimes theexperience, of a "lost paradise." Dreams, waking dreams, the images of his nostalgias and of his enthusi asms, etc., are so many forces that may project the historically-conditioned human being into a spiritual world that is infinitely richer than the closed world of his own "historic moment."

It is of greatest importance to rediscover a whole mythology, if not a theology, still concealed in the most ordinary, everyday life of contemporary man; it will depend upon himself whether he can work his way back to the source and rediscover the profound meaning of all these faded images and damaged myths.depend upon man himself whether he can work his way back to the source and rediscover the profound meaning of all these faded images and damaged myths.

The study of symbolism is not a work of pu re and simple erudition but one that concerns, at least indirectly, the knowledge of man himself : in short, that it has something to say to anyone who is speaking of a newhumanism or a new anthropology.

We have seen that myths decay and symbols become secularized, but that they never disappear, even in the most positivist of civilizations, that of the Nineteenth century. Symbols and myths come from such depths: they are part and parcel of the human being and it is impossible that they should not be found again in any and every existential situation of man in the Cosmos.28

It seems quite evident then, that the harmony and synthesis of the old and the new, of Patristic exegesis and modern scholarship, and entrance into the Biblical world of thought and the liturgy, this will be found in the study and rediscovery of symbolism. D

17 The Lost Language of Symbolism, Vol. I, p. 157-8.18 Ibid., p. 215; Cant. 1 : 5-NOTE: The Hebrew conjunction rendered usually

as "but" in this passage can also be rendered "and," its more literal and usual meaning.

19 Ibid., p. 219-220.20 Images and Symbols, p. 149-150.21 The Lost Language of Symbolism, Vol. I, p. 221.22 Ibid., p. 179-180.2a Ibid., p. 193.24 Ibid., p. 194-5.25 Ibid., p. 178.26 Images and Symbols, Chap. 5.27 Fr. Edmund Hill, OP, "Remythologizing: The Key to Scripture," Scripturt,

Vol. XVI, July '64, p. 65-75.28 Images and Symbols, Foreword.N.B.: On the relation of Jung's studies of the symbol to Patristic exegesis

confer especially the excellent article by Fr. W. W. Meissner: "Origen and the Analytic Psychology of Symbolism" Downsidt R1ui£w, 1961, p. 201.

11

Liturgy : Sign and Symbol

Dr. Samuel H. MillerDEAN OF THE HARVARD DMNITY SCHOOL

It is an honor to come from the more or less lunatic fringe of Protestantism, where one has lived most of his life in the homogenized liturgy-if it may be called that-to speak about the central problem that confronts all liturgy in a technical society. The letter which Fr. Sigler sent me asked several questions under the title which was given me. One of them which focused my attention was, "Are the constitu tive elements of traditional Christian liturgy still viable today?" It is on that question that I want to speak, for I think the erosion of the symbolic habit in our modern culture has placed in jeopardy the whole effort to create a liturgy sufficient and adequate for our time.

MODERN SOCIETY AND SYMBOLIC EXPRESSION

One of the most characteristic things that occurs in our churches today is the question asked by people what a symbol means. And when you ask what a symbol means, you are already beyond the meaning of a symbol. We have people who are not only deaf to verbal problems, we have people who are blind to the whole structure of the liturgical act. For the natural language or vocabulary of religion is symbol, myth, and rite. And our vocabulary of contemporary culture is fact, formula, and fission-and fission extended to human community and to the human self. So that I am here con-

An address delivered at the Twenty-dghth North American Liturgical Week Conference held in Kansas City, Missouri, August 12-24, 1967, and is reproduced here as originally delivered with the kind permission of The Liturgical Conference. An edited version of the address appears in the volume of the proceedings of the Conference published by Tkt Liturgical Co10ferenu, Inc., "ExperimttJt1 in Community" (Washington, D.C., 1967).

12 Liturgy Bulletin + July 1968

cerned as to whether our contemporary society is really capable of expressing itself in a liturgical act. This may seem extremely theoretical. It may even lead us to some essentially negative points of view. But I think it is a question that must be asked.

We are not concerned merely with the continuance of the liturgy as a valid expression of ecclesiastical tradition, but we are asking whether signs and symbols can be used by our kind of society to affirm its beliefs about life with religious seriousness. The cultural and philosophical revolutions of the last three centuries have been so radically iconoclastic, and the consequent pattern of thought produced by them so hostile to symbol, that it is questionable today whether we can indulge ourselves in a public communal act without engaging in some kind of spiritual schizophrenia. That this kind of spiritual schizophrenia is perfectly possible, no one denies; but that it is a healthy condition, either for the indi vidual or for society, few would affirm. The question I should like to ask, therefore, is: What are the conditions by which the liturgy may fulfill its normal or classical function, not only for the church but for society as a whole?

DIVERGENCE OF CULT AND CULTURE

In the present situation, we confront a confusing state of affairs. On the one hand, the life of the church culminates in the cultic act of worship, affirming by signs and symbols its profoundest insights of faith about the nature of ultimate reality. On the other hand, society as we know it has become increasingly non-religious in its basic operational beliefs, and presumes either a neutral scientism or a crude industrialism from which it derives its morals and its motives. Particu-

Miller + Liturgy: Sign and Symbol

lady in the last three centuries, the cultus and culture have diverged further and further apart until they now constitute two worlds which seldom meet, or if they do, they do so tentatively at finger tips, or hostilely at swords' points.

When T. S. Eliot described the wasteland of the world following the First Wodd War, he found a great plethora of symbols and images out of the contemporary world which he could use for his poetic purpose. But when he wrote the Four Quartets in a description o( the mystical character of human experience, almost the entire poem reverted to class ical and traditional symbols. Scarcely was anything available in the contemporary technical culture that could be used. I think this represents our basic embarassment.

Certainly in primitive times the cultus and the culture were more or less one and the same thing. The cultic acts defined the cultural life of the people, and the manners and customs of work, marriage, death, harvest, and health could not be understood apart from the signs and symbols of the cultic act. But with the growing complication of history, the two tend to "forget" each other. And as the cultural revolutions move from nomadic to agricultural and finally to an indus trial or scientific age, the cultus tends to cling to its primor dial roots in previous phases of life. Then the difficulty of transmitting the cultic wisdom except by a severe conserva tism of rigid images becomes evident, and the communication between religion and culture becomes strained, or even hostile. Religion may hold the world in contempt, as it often has, or the world may pay mere lip service to religion, as it often does. But then there emerges the widespread urgency of some kind of liturgical reformation by which the gap can be resolved.

13

ARE SYMBOLS APT IN SECULAR CULTURE?

Can the liturgy, with its Christian signs and symbols, however purified, recast, vitalized, become the public act by which our kind of culture affirms its own life in depth ? Or has society as we know it moved so far away from any religious understanding of life that it is no longer able to express itself appropriately or intelligibly in such terms? Has not the analogical habit been eroded so completely by the analytical habit that we can no longer utilize it with force and power ? Does the urban Sitz-im-Leben provide the imaginative and spiritual resources sufficient for acting liturgically as a community?

I think it is rather interesting to see the glib use being made of the word "secular" in recent theology. It is hard to understand exactly what Bonhoeffer meant by this word. And it is still more difficult to understand what Harvey Cox infers as being a "sufficiency in the secular world to provide us with a religious experience without a cultic act of litur gical meaning." If the secular is thus taken to be the ground and origin of the sacred, if the world is where God acts, then this new praise of the secular is no essential threat to f aith, but merely urges it on to a greater penetration. But if the revolutionary mind now moves to the secular as if it is self-sufficient, and did not need or in a sense require the cultic act for its fulfillment, then that is another matter. And one cannot be altogether sure in the present climate of discussion. There are so many varieties of narcissistic idolatry in recent and present history that one would like to be cer tain how far this particular pendulum is intended to swing. A hundred years ago, there was recognized the rather radical transition that was occurring, not only in the outer world of the industrial revolution, but in the inner world of man's imagination. John Stuart Mill said that a change has taken place in the human mind; a change which, being affected by insensible gradations and without any public noise, has already proceeded so far that it is seldom perceived by the popular mind. But it is felt, however, that men are hence forth to be held together by new ties and separated by new barriers, for the ancient bonds will now no longer unite men nor the ancient boundaries confine them. And then he goes on to say that those men who carry their eyes in the back of their heads and can see no other portion of the destined track of humanity than what it has already travelled, imagine that because the old ties are severed mankind henceforth need not be connected by any ties at all. And hence their afiliction, and of ten their awful warnings.

In a more recent word from Susanne Langer (who is not a Christian but a very perceptive philosopher) she says: "There are relatively few people today who are born to an environment which gives them any spiritual support. Only persons of imagination and effective intelligence can picture an environment in which they will be supported and can deliberately seek it out. They are the few who feel drawn to some realm of reality that contains their ultimate life sym bols, and dictates activities which may acquire ritual value." "Our intelligence" she says, "is keen but precarious; it lacks

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metaphysical myth, regime, and ritual expression." 1 This it seems to me, is the problematic embarrassment which we face underneath and in back of the liturgical renaissance. Can we take a structure of symbols and signs in the enaction of the liturgy and appropriately, intelligibly communicate this as something in which our contemporary society can find its own deeper life and ultimate fulfillment ? Or is the technological culture itself averse to this kind of expression and this level of perception ? I am anxious, therefore, to explore the dark f rustrations that confront us at this point, and I should like, therefore, to describe the first of all the peculiar and essential traits of the liturgical act, the nature of what it means to enact signs and symbols in a community group. And then we shall move on to isolate in our culture several of the dynamic structures which f rustrate and make it difficult to act liturgically. And finally, I hope I can point out certain possible encouragements in the situation, for some of this I must confess is a bit discouraging. But I think it is better, if we want to move on to the best, also to know what is the worst.

THE LITURGICAL ACT

First of all let us take a look at the liturgical act itself. I should like to describe three of its basic intentions, without which it falls back into the innocuous desuetude of mere ecclesiastical custom. In the first place, it articulates symbolically the true nature of totality; secondly, it approaches and elicits the Other, which transcends every self and which stands over and against man, and from which he derives his own position and very existence; and lastly, it is at best the act of the whole society in which human diversity is embraced, reconciled, and fulfilled. These three factors not only describe the nature of the liturgical act but point as well in the direction of its sociological and cultural function in the history and economy of man.

SYMBOLIC ARTICULATION OF WHOLENESS

As the symbolic articulation of the true nature of whole ness, it is never a reduction in the interests of logic, or of special interests, or of human preference. It is itself a totality-image of living and dying, of birth and death, of sin and forgiveness, of necessity and freedom, of time and eternity, of suffering and joy, of blessedness and damnation, of the human and the divine, of the past and the present, and of the present and the future. It is an affirmation of a meaning intrinsic to the wholeness in which all the contra dictions of life are included. Its dynamic pattern is full of tensions and of such complicated irony that only the symbol can gather them in and support their coexistence.

Gerhardus van de Leeuw, that great Dutch phenomenol ogist, has referred to the religious man as "one who evaluates in regard to total value, and to ultimate meaning. Religion demands totality at every point, its judgments recognizing no others after or beside itself. The values which it recog nizes are not conditioned by a particular point of view, but are values posited before God.''2

Indeed, that sense of totality or of an ultimate meaning

Litury Bulletin + July 1968

in historic wholeness is symbolized in concrete terms in the liturgy. In our tradition it is the Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection through which "all things work together for good to them that love God." The affirmation of God as the alpha and the omega, the ultimacy of God's kingdom in history, the eternal perspec tive, and the endless creation, the rebirth of man into the realm of grace, all characterize the nature of our liturgy as a Gestalt of faith, an affirmation of total meaning.

APPROACHES AND ELICITS THE OTHER

In the second place, the liturgical act approaches and elicits the Otherness, which stands over and against each and all of us, and from which we derive our own position and our very existence. Rudolph Otto long ago called attention to this sense of the wholly Other. It is when man is driven to the very boundary of his life, either by force of mystery in himself or in circumstances which befall him, that he reaches that decisive line which marks off his own existence from all else, from that which preceded it or is completely independent of it. Then he perceives the strangeness of the Other, however it may appear: in the mystery of another person, or in the darkness of death by which he is threatened, or in the elusive ground of being which fades and fluctuates with the coming of each hour and each day. As St. Augus tine put it, "We live beyond the limits of our bodies." We move into distances, but always against limits and with a consciousness or the Otherness of things and persons, and of the transcendent reality beyond and within their appearances.

The liturgy is a daring playfulness with these boundaries. It breaches every ordinary limit; it penetrates all experiences, all appearances, it shouts past every echo. It searches hun grily, and not without fear, the power of that Other which stands over against it. One may come close to it, and yet the risk of finding the Other cannot be avoided if life is to be celebrated and maintained. The mysterium tremendum is also at the same time the mysterium fascinans. The holy fire has power to destroy but without it life is ashes anyway. The liturgy is the evocation of this potency of the Other, the powerful Other on whom all things depend.

ACT OF THE WHOLE SOCIETY

In the third place, the liturgical act presumes a community, an essential community acting in wholeness. It is not pro duced by a collection of individuals assembled temporarily or fortuitously. Difficult as it is for us who have inherited the extreme individualization of the last three or four cen turies of western development to understand the substantial character of social unity manifested in the Old Testament period, or that of the medieval world before the rise of the Renaissance man, we do come nearer to a sense of it, I think, in the fears and neuroticisms of that general malaise which we call "alienation" in our time. In Professor G. Ernest Wright's description:

The conception of the children of Israel as a term for the people involved a psychic unity and was traditionally

Miller + LiturAy: SiAn and Symbol

simplified af ter the patriarchal pattern by the assumption of a common ancestor: "We are children of Abraham." Even in the Gentile Church continuity with the old ideal was preserved in the teaching that Christians are children of Abraham by faith and adoption . . . to belong to the community is to share the life of a "people," and the conception of "people" arose from the understanding of kinship, starting in the father's household, extending to the family, and finally to all kinsmen who take part in the whole of the common history.a

John V. Taylor, writing of the African mind, illustrates this well. He says in his book The Primal Vision, published in 1963:

The sense of the personal totality of all being, and of a humanity which embraces the living, the dead, and the divinities, fills the background of the primal world view . . . This is the context in which Africans learn to say, I am because I participate. To the Af rican the indi vidual is always an abstraction; man is a family. (p. 93)

Whereas, you see, with us, we have turned it around: I am because I have separated myself from everybody else and exaggerate my ego in order to be individualistically describ able. I am because I prefer not to paticipate.

It is necessary to point out, therefore, that community is not ideological in character. Opinions held in common do not constitute what I have been talking about. To be able to say the Creed is not enough. Undoubtedly there are ideas which form thought patterns of a community, but the signicant bond of unity out of which the communal or cultic act occurs, derives its power essentially from a common body of emotion and feeling about all kinds of things-dying, marrying, harvesting, about eating or bathing, and the ordinary current routines of life. Where feelings tend to diversify and build up different and competing systems, then liturgy is no longer a viable expression of the community.

Here then we face three factors intrinsic to the liturgical act, which must be assumed if we are to rehabilitate it in its classic vitality and meaning for the life of man.

It represents, in a profound sense, the imaginative com prehension of wholeness, the wholeness of life; secondly, it elicits and reconciles the self and society to the Otherness that stands over against it, whether it is in other persons, other groups, other nations, or that transcendent Other which is represented in our liturgy by the great mystery of God. And thirdly, it is an act in which the total life of a people, the past of a people as well as their "presentness," the feelings of a people as well as their ideas can be expressed totally in a consumation of that which Alfred North Whitehead once called the basic sacrament of life, namely, expression.

CULTURAL STRUCTURES OPPOSED TO LITURGY

Now let us turn away from the cultus to culture itself, and try to discern the peculiar style of dynamics which has

1 Susanne K. Langer, Philo1ophy in a Ntw Key. Mentor Books (New York: The New American Library, 1942).

2 Sacrtd and Pro/ant Btaut y (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963),p. 5.

3 G. Ernest Wright, Tiu Biblical Doctrine of Man in Socitty. (London:SCM, 1954), pp. 49, 51.

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provoked the urgency of a liturgical reformation in our time. There are many hostile factors in contemporary culture which militate against the religious frame of mind or way of look ing at life, such as our speed, our mobility, our disregard of tradition. But deeper than these, I should like to point to three aspects of the modern mind which make it difficult to express itself in the liturgical act. The first of these I would describe as technical sophistication, or I might be tempted to say, technical superstition-for it does carry with it a certain mystique in the ultimacy and sufficiency of ideas, technical manipulation, and the whole paraphernalia of science and industry in its aggressive solution of problems. The second element that I find is rather more elusive and hard to put into a phrase, but basically, I think, it is a reduction of reality to what is natural, dispensing with all mystery, resulting in a world crowded with distractions, concerned only with the immediate and the near-at-hand, quite obsessively contempo raneous, contemptuous of ceremony, or of great words, or of contemplative disciplines, generally characterized, as Gabriel Marcel puts it, by a refusal to reflect. I do not mean that the modern world does not think; it thinks a great deal. But it does not want to reflect on any of the issues which lie beyond the methodology of science or the activism of in dustry - the great realities of death, of sin, of love or the final destiny of man. The third factor which I have separated out can be marked simply pluralism, but in itself it is a complex product of aggressive individualism, sectarian fragmentation, political and cultural freedom, increasing tolerance, the mobility of peoples, and a profound sense of the inadequacy of any one finite position to comprehend with justice all points of view.

TECHNICAL SOPHISTICATION

The problem of technical sophistication has many facets. It begins far back in the habits of men, accumulating facts at the expense of wisdom, becomes lost in a compulsive elaboration of ideas, which begin and end in a complete and irresponsible vacuum, and finally disregards all the land marks of tradition and of the past. While religion is con cerned with wholeness, technical sophistication is concerned with parts; the former proceeds by analogy and produces sign and symbol; the latter proceeds by analysis and pro duces formulre for prediction and control. Faith moves toward the Other and places the self before it, humbly asking to be reconciled; technical sophistication moves in such a way as to control the object and make the self the master of it. In the liturgical act, the self expects to be changed-or at least it ought to expect to be changed; in contemporary culture we expect to change the world, so we do not need to be changed! The former is conscious of that which transcends the self ; the latter tends to transcend everything by under standing it. Faith is aware of mystery as the primary condition of all reality and experiences of reality, whereas our techno logical culture presumes mystery merely to be an antecedent to understanding. In short, every aspect .of the liturgical act is in tension, if not in opposition to the frame of mind

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established by the habits of technical sophistication. The brainwashing -and I use the term as non-perjoratively as I can - of our contemporary culture makes it eminently difficult for us to engage in true liturgy. In Yeats' famous line, "the ceremony of innocence is drowned."

REDUCTION OF ALL TO THE NATURAL

Let me turn to the second characteristic of our culture, the reduction of all phenomena or experience to the natural. Van der Leeuw has said that "the holy does not fear reality, but only the natural." The paradox here is close. Tillich referred to it by saying the most significant condition of our culture is its "lack of depth." It lives on the surface, dis regards the essential mystery of things, obscures the reality and power of sin and death, covering such things with evasive terms and deceptive disguises. The natural always remains within the limits of man's understanding; everything else is ruled out. The dread potency of being and non-being is eluded by every deceptive distraction available to man. On the moral level, this finally means that appearances are more important than being, so that in our churches respectability and status tend to take the place of righteousness and humility. We stand, as someone has said, in the myth of the Lost Presence-the Lost Presence of the Other. Certainly such a reduction of reality to the paper-thin stratum of the "under standable" leaves the imponderable totalities and the pro found potencies of religion outside the experience of modern man. A liturgy, comprising symbols and signs, refers pre cisely to that realm which the "natural" ignores.

PLURALISM - SOCIETY TORN APART

The third of these factors rises in the fragmentation of society we know as pluralism. There is no doubt that our pluralism is the ground of much of our contemporary free dom, but it also constitutes one of the sources of our confu sion about ultimacy or wholeness. Whether such a shattered social order as ours can engage in an affirmation of whole ness may be a serious question. No one has put it better than Robert Bellah, sociologist, who says:

It is difficult to speak of a modern religious symbol system. It is indeed an open question whether there can be a religious symbol system in the modern situation.. . . It is not that modern life has become again a one possibility thing. . . . It is a question of as many worlds as there are modes of approaching them . . . Every fixed position has become open to question in the process of making sense out of man and his situation.4

ENCOURAGING ASPECTS OF THE SITUATION

When we bring, therefore, these three essential, intentional characteristics of liturgy over against the three major dy namics of our culture, there are few places where they meet each other except in conflict. And while we do not want to imply that the liturgical act and the cultural life has ever coincided, even in a primitive society, yet the chasm between these divergent attitudes in recent history has widened far

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beyond anything man has ever known before. We must ask the implications for those who are working in a liturgical renaissance. What evidences are there that contemporary culture may be moving nearer the realm where symbol and sign can be effectively used in the statement of truth ? How far toward culture can the cultus move in adapting itself to new symbols and signs without losing connection with its own roots in revelation, or in the primordial ground of the human mystery of faith ?

INADEQUACY OF TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION

I think here the first observation that must be made is a negative one. A technical civilization such as ours-thus far at least--has been inadequate in its dealing with the depth of human mystery, the potency of ontological reality, or the breadth of social community. It fragments in order to under stand; and it distracts the self from every traumatic or reli gious depth of reality. Its general position is significantly a retreat from every symbol which might involve non-rational factors in favor of purely descriptive terms, objectively articulated, bereft of the subjective reality of feeling and repudiating the involvement and responsibility of relation ship. The symbols of our culture tend to be non-human: the H-bomb, space ships, jet planes, speed and power, all too often combined in awesome conjunctures of death and destruction. One does not need to be religious to recognize what Albert Camus called "the conspiracy of death," or what a social scientist like Seidenberg described as "the progres sive elimination of the individual."

It is, I believe, significant that the neurotic manifestations of Western culture in our time, namely, the great totalitarian movements of the Nazi, Facist, and Communist revolutions, were all concerned with precisely the factors which technical culture denied, namely, symbolic totality, the vital power of life, and the cohesive sense of community. All of these were neurotically passionate in their fanaticism, reacting from the objective, the neutral, and the individualist philosophies that had preceded them.

Somehow or other we must recover the social function of ritualistic symbol and sign without succumbing to these forms of fanatical exclusiveness. We must acknowledge and expose the inadequacies of the technological culture, which continue to "superficialize" and "distract" the soul of mo dern man. We must make it plain that whatever grace we find in secular society, however we may discern the move ment of God in modern history, it is not to sanctify those forces which depersonalize life or to elevate the machine beyond man, or to increase the anonymity of our cities.

Indeed, we may need to go on reworking the Christian liturgy, incorporating wherever we can the bold images to be found in contemporary culture, without being able to formulate a true "mass" for the "technical" man. We may have to wait until the techn.ical man runs through the inade quacy of his "know-how" and his "techniques," becomes disillusioned with the ideals and motivations of his industrial and business efficiency, before he will be open to the depth

Miller + Liturgy: Sign and Symbol

of that mystery in man which computers do not touch, and that potency of life which statistics will not disclose. Until then we can only proceed with all the compassion and imagi nation of which we are capable, not resting in our tradition as if that were all God wanted us to do, but refashioning it as magnificently, and as vitally as we can, to speak to the man in the world, even as we are men in the world.

RENAISSANCE OF THE ARTS

And I suspect that one of the most encouraging things at this point is the way in which the arts of our time have undergone a renaissance; in which the search for a reality profounder than superficial appearance, the probes in the direction of powerful and even subconscious dynamics, and the prophetic testimony in behalf of man, all assert an interest that cannot be gainsaid. In literature the testimony is insistent. From Kafka to Camus, from Kierkegaard to Sartre, the ways and motives and modes of thinking of middle-class society and the industrial order have been criti cally examined and found wanting. Moreover, the literary, dramatic, and artistic imagination has opened up in fresh disclosures the religious dimensions of man's experience of the world in terms of contemporaneity. Dramatists such as Sartre and Robert Bolt, Ionesco and Ugo Betti, novelists such as Camus and Faulkner, poets such as Eliot and Rilke and Warren, all bring to their work a profoundly religiou,s and eminently serious moral quality. The arts of our time, however confused they may seem because of the violent diversity of their expression, nevertheless, by and large, have spoken boldly and magnificently for that spirit of man which traditionally uttered itself in symbols and signs, but which has been ostracized to a large degree by a technological cul ture evading the hunger of man for a liturgical fulfillment.

GOAL : A TRANSPARENT LITURGY LEADING ALL TO CELEBRATION

Can we go further than this ? I think we may try to clarify the situation as honestly as we can, but after we have done that, we still have a large and responsible task in lifting the liturgy to a new level of clarity and transparency so that men everywhere might be able to understand-indeed, could not possibly avoid understanding- what we are doing when we act liturgically. What we are trying to say in the symbols and rites of our Christian worship of God ought to be rendered as transparent as possible. In it and by its disci plines, we would demonstrate to a world not yet come of age-and I do not believe it has come of age-the liturgical basis of society, of truth, and of self. Such a demonstration would be more than a careful extension of our tradition. It would be a vigorous shaping of our Christian faith in the living forms of a church, diversified perhaps beyond our present comprehension, in which the liturgical forms would make visible to the world the vision of reality by which we live an abundant life, and to which we call all men with gladness, that together with them we might celebrate the wholeness we will only know in the kingdom of God. D

4 Reader in Comparative Religion, ed. Lessa and Vogt (New York : Harper &Row, 1962).

17

Tawards a Renewal of the Monastic Office

Gabriel BertoniereMONK OF SPENCER

In this hour of sacred history, the pilgrim Church is reflecting deeply upon herself, seeking to understand and realize more fully her nature as the People of God, the Spouse of Christ, His Body. In a practical way she is trying to express as clearly as possible and to live as fully as possi ble, her sanctifying mission. In this light she is re-evaluating and renewing all the aspects of her greatly varied, life-giving activity. The contemplative monk, the member who has gone apart in some way from his brothers to turn his face more totally ad Patrem, his ear to the Word of God, remains indeed a member of the Church. In him she lives most fully her life as the adoring Spouse. In his communal, liturgical life, she realizes her cult most ideally. But he too must enter into the present mind of the Church, be sensitive to the breathing of the Spirit, and endeavor also to clarify and renew and live as fully as possible his particular vocation among the People of God with its own proper forms.

In the face of the almost infinite possibilities for liturgical reform which has been offered by the great awakening of Vatican II, it is imperative for us to appreciate the lessons of the past and to prepare for the material changes by an under standing of their meaning and, therefore, their usefulness. We have had ample experience of the fact that doing some thing different does not achieve the results that might be

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expected (on the basis of the value inherent in the "new way") unless it is understood by those for whom it is des tined.

EVOLUTION OF THE PRESENT OFFICE

The study of the Comparative Liturgy (whose object is an investigation of the similarities and diversities of the various rites, Eastern and Western) has shown with great consistency that there is a basic distinction between the litur gical Offices of monasteries and those of cathedrals or of parishes.1 Judging by the most detailed account we have of this matter (that of John Cassian in his I nstituta ) ,2 the monastic Office consisted purely and simply of a reading of the psalms and other Scriptures by one monk, while the others listened. The service was punctuated by prayer, both silent and vocal. The observance aimed at the spiritual en richment of those participating, by means of their pondering on the inspired words as they were read aloud. Alongside of this type of service, which might be called the desert Office, there existed the cathedral or parish Office. This type was also simple in its basic structure but, unlike the monastic Office which used the psalms one after the other in order, the cathedral type limited itself to the use of psalm verses or even whole psalms, chosen for their appropriateness to the time of day at which the Office was celebrated,

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:::: }

or to the feast day on which they were used. The structure here was as follows: introduction of some kind ( ?), read ing, song, concluding prayer, and finally in some rites, the kiss of peace. The heart of the Office is once again the Word of God, heard by all, the response of the congregation to this Word, and finally a carrying out of Christ's command to ask for what we need in His Name. In the organization of the material however, the style of celebration was more "popular" in character-short, readily understandable, and not too demanding on one's powers of endurance.

This double type of celebration stands, then, at the origin of the Divine Office in all the rites of the Church. What is even more surprising is that further developments in East and West continue to parallel one another. With the rise of cenobitic monasticism, the cathedral Office found its way more and more into the monasteries, and the end product was a blend between the two traditions, this becoming char acteristic of the cenobitic Office. The development took still another step (once again in all rites save the Chaldean). With the increasing influence of cenobitic monasteries in the life of the Church, the new hybrid Office ousted the cathe dral Office from the parishes and became the universal type. This hybrid Office is that which is outlined in St. Benedict's Rnle as the Office of his monks, and is, in broad outline, of identical structure with the existing Roman Office.

Just how is the blend between the traditions realized.? The answer is that this was accomplished, for the most part, simply by juxtaposition. The part characteristic of the desert tradition (that is, the performance of the psalms in numeri cal order according to a cycle of one week) has been placed at the beginning of each hour. The greatest concentration of this element is obviously at Vigils, where twelve psalms are performed to fulfill the required number for the day.3

The "parish" element is generally represented in each hour by the capitulum and all that follows. Note from the follow ing chart how perfectly the cathedral pattern is present in this part of the hours of Sext (simpler form) and Vespers (more developed).

CATHEDRALSTRUCTURE SEXT VESPERS

READING Capitulum Capitulum

TOWARDS A REFORM OF THE OFFICE

An awareness of this historical process has led to a desire on the part of liturgists to revive a purely cathedral type Office for use in parish churches. This movement has had its effects on the recent Decree of the Council concerning the Liturgy, and will no doubt be even more pronounced in the actual working out of the new Breviary. What is to be our attitude toward the future? It seems doubtful that the re vision of the Roman rite will effect a complete return to the cathedral type, or to put it more simply, there will probably remain some small measure of cursus psalmody. It will, however, be reduced. Even in the Office of the Brothers of Taize, this principle has been retained. Therefore, it would seem that as cenobitic monks (the originators of the "blend") we should retain the traditional structure. Whether or not the cycle of psalmody should be extended over a longer period of time, we will not discuss for the moment. I per sonally believe that as monks we should continue to perform the Psalter at least once a week.

What then should be done about our Office? It seems to me that our greatest needs are:

1) Adoption of the vernacular for the entire Office.2) Clarification of the component parts of the structure.3) A greater flexibility in the manner of performance.4) Restoration of the primitive form of the prayer section.5) Enrichment of source material.

With regard to the first point, our needs are now overcome.CLARIFICATION OF COMPONENT PARTS OF STRUCTURE

Our present attitude toward the structure of the Office is nowhere better symbolized in a very concrete way than in the manner of its performance. The choice is between singing or reciting, or some blend thereof. Everything comes out in the same dress. This is especially true in the recto tono rendition, but also, in large measure, in the sung version. In other words, there has been a loss of the sense of the distinct parts that go to make up the whole. It seems to me that according to the genius of our language, the various readings (capitula, lessons, etc.) should be read and not sung. The same is true of prayers in the strict sense. For solemnity and greater emphasis, the style of our language calls for a modification in the manner of reading but not a cross-over into song!If we were to put this into practice, that part of the Office

SONG

PRAYER

Versicle Brief Resp. (generally from Scripture)

Hymn (ecclesiastical origin)

Versicle (often Serip tural)

Magnificat (Scriptur'l)

Prayer of the day Same as SEXT Prayer for those absentPrayer for the dead

which is truly and properly song would stand out in its true character and not be engulfed in a mass of sung readings and prayers. In other words, one would be aware of "turning the corner" liturgically from one line of activity to another. Thus, the now all-important question, "Shall we sing or recite?" is seen to be poorly phrased. We should always read the readings and prayers, but always sing the songs, be it at Vigils or Sext.

1Among the many publications on this theme, of special interest is La Moison Dieu, 5 1, entitled "Liturgic Monastique et Liturgic Paroissiale." The historical background for the study of the monastic Office is provided by Odilo Heiming. o.s.B., "Zurn Monastischen Offizum von Kassianus bis Kolumbanus," in Archiv

Thus there is a clear distinction between the two parts,monastic and cathedral. One is juxtaposed to the other.

Gabriel + Renewal of the Monastic Office

Fur liturgiewisunscha ft, Band VII, a, 1961.2 Throughout the Liber secundus.3 This number of psalms is fulfilled by other Offices as well.

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Most of what has been said pertains to the second part of each hour, the cathedral element. What about the first part, which represents the desert tradition ? I feel that the distinct origin of these two parts points to the spirit in which each should be performed. The Desert Office, as was seen, was characterized by a meditative approach to the Psalter and other Scriptures. Its character of song was certainly not to the fore. All was organized to facilitate pondering on the meaning of the inspired words. This should be a guide to us in deciding how this part should be performed. The almost universal experience of us all points to the inefficacy of the present system in achieving this part of the Office. Among the many items which militate against a more prayerful approach to the Vigil psalms, the following might be mentioned: 1) the very unmusicality of singing on one note for so long, 2 ) the maintenance of a given pitch throughout 12 psalms,3) the difficulty of staying together at mediants, etc. All of this has been intensified with the introduction of the venacular, as the English language does not lend itself to recto tono -does any language do so, as a matter of fact ? What about the possibility of reverting to the usage described by Cassian of having one read while others listen ? True, there would be the obvious difficulty of "slumberers," but would this be a sufficient reason for ruling it out ? In any case, this should be a possibility for those who wish to make use of it. This leads naturally to our next point.

GREATER FLEXIBILITY IN MANNER OF PERFORMANCE

While it is true to say that our present-day Office squares rather well with what is laid down in the Rule, it certainly has lost much of the freedom of choice that is connoted by the Rule. A well known example is the reading at Vigils, which was not tied down to begin at this word and end at that. The program was determined on the spot by such contingencies as the length of the night, a negligent bell ringer, or simply the decision of the Abbot. Another point of inter est is the opposition between singing the psalms in directum and cum antiphonis. The distinction was probably between having all sing the psalm together on the one hand, or hav ing a soloist do the psalm with the community joining in for a refrain or antiphon, on the other.

At the basis of this whole attitude towards the Office lies a concept of participation which we no longer possess. We tend to look on the Office as an obligation binding on each member of the choir, in such a way that if he were to miss some part of the whole, it needs making up. Starting from this, we proceed to excuse such a one from this obligation for various, well-defined reasons. We tell him that it is sufficient to be able to hear the reader to "fulfill his obliga tion." If he leaves however, for some non-liturgical chore, he must "supply." Consider all the ink that has been spilled about the supposed duty of the organist regarding his sing ing along with the choir.

The more authentic approach was one in which the Office was seen as a living whole in which each shared in his own way. Not all are called to perform the same liturgical func-

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tions. Those who cannot do so in a fitting way are for bidden to read or sing by St. Benedict !

In the case of a community where the psalms were sung by one with the rest joining in for the refrain, the great part of one's time was spent in participation by hearing. The exterior participation consisted largely in these refrains to the cursus psalmody, in the more elaborate singing of the section following the capitulum, and in the responses during the prayer section. If this concept were revived, many of our brothers who are now repelled by the Office due to the utter exterior involvement of constantly "being in act" vocally, would be able to find in the Office a natural setting for their prayer life, which would be truly nourished by it. The present set-up imposes a kind of democracy upon the Office, which runs counter to the fact that not all have the same role to play in the celebration. Each shares the same reality ac cording to his individual vocation, and, it might be added, that in contemplative communities it is expected that many will be attracted to a more simple and interior participation, joining in the singing and responses at given times only.

RESTORATION OF THE PRIMITIVE FORM OF PRAYER SECTION

Unfortunately, St. Benedict takes much for granted in what he has to say on this section, and too literal an interpre tation of his words has led to a form which is somewhat lacking in cohesion and meaning. First of all, when St. Benedict refers to sup plicatio litania: in Chapter Nine, he doesn't mean that we should simply say K yrie eleison several times and then call it quits !He is making reference to a real series of petitions, such as are found in various other rites. The History of the Liturgy in the West shows that there has been a great impoverishment of this type of prayer over the centuries. A case somewhat similar to the one with which we are dealing here is the K yrie of the Mass, which is also a litany which has lost its petitions ! Further, when St. Benedict urges us to pray for the absentees ad orationem ultimam operis Dei (Ch. 67), he doesn't mean literally right smack at the end of the prayer section, but rather "in the last section of the Office, which is that devoted to prayer." Thus they should be commemorated during this litany of which we are speaking. The same is true of the faithful departed. After this litany there follows a period of silent prayer at all the hours save Lauds and Vespers, during which all recite the Pater in silence. Why not prolong this slightly in order to incorporate silent prayer in some measure into the structure of the Office? The Office concludes then, with the prayer of the priest which gathers up, as it were, the silent prayer of all into the voice of the praying Church. All give their assent with "Amen."

ENRICHMENT OF SOURCE MATERIAL

The present formularies of the Office are too rigid. There should be more variety in the use of Scripture, according to the Decree of Vatican II on the Liturgy.4 Why not have a

4 Constitutio de Sacra Liturgia, 35, 1.-concluded on page 23

Liturgy Bulletin + July 1968

The Weekly Psalm Distribution ofMount St. Bernard

SOME GENERAL REMARKS

The aim was to provide a more meaningful arrangement, taking account of the nature of each psalm and grouping them accordingly. In short, the redistribution was meant to be an 'aid to prayer.' Psalms were placed together so as to throw light on each other, though this was not always done in the same way. On Sunday and Friday the choice was determined by the nature of the day: Sunday has psalms which express Christ's triumph over death and our share in his risen life; Friday has psalms of the persecuted and suffering just man, expressing Christ's Passion and our share in it. On other days there was no intention of picking a particular 'theme' for each day and various factors entered in. In some case there seemed no particular reason for changing the traditional order, e.g., Lauds for most of the week, the gradual psalms 119 - 127. In other cases psalms of similar meaning are put together, as at Sext on Wednesday. Sometimes contrast is used, as in Monday's first nocturn.

VIGILS: We chose to vary the invitatory psalm because there are several psalms suitable for this, and we wished to keep as far as possible to the principle of 'no repetitions'-a principle that needn't be argued here! For the two nocturns the psalms were chosen because of similar or allied meaning and, apart from Sunday which has fairly short psalms and a 3rd nocturn, these consist of one long psalm between two short ones, following Dom Fiiglister.

LAUDS: This hour preserves the traditional progression from confessio peccatorum to confessio laudis.

COMPLINE: Psalms were chosen that express confidence and trust in God, as well as actual references to the time of day.

THE HOURS FOR EACH DAY

-SUNDAY -

INVITATORY: Ps. 94 is retained because of its traditional use, and also because several Sundays (from after Epiphany to Easter) have invitatories taken from this psalm. There

Nicholas + On Weekly Psalm Distribution

Father NicholasMONK OF MOUNT ST. BERNARD

seemed no point in adding to the number of new texts re quired.VIGILS: This hardly needs comment. The Resurrection theme is clear. Pss. 2, 29 and 75 were part of the former Cistercian Vigils for Easter Sunday.LAUDS: The traditional psalms are retained, with omission of pss. 66, 148, 149. For comment on this see LITURGY, ocso August 1967, pp. 5 - 9.TIERCE: Ps. 118 is used throughout the week. It expresses love of God's word, of his Law. We use it of the new law of love, of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, since this is his 'Hour' par excellence.SEXT: We selected pss. 18 and 23. The first of these is used as a special psalm on many occasions, e.g. at Vigils for Ascension and Pentecost. Its use in the Christmas liturgy, and for Apostles and Virgins brings a richness of association which can remind us that the Paschal Mystery contains all our faith. Ps. 23 is the psalm of Christ's entry into glory, traditionally used of Resurrection and Ascension.NoNE: Pss. 22, 83 and 92 are used. These psalms have marked liturgical and sacramental associations, each of them making mention of the Temple, God's house. Their rele vance for this day needs no comment.VESPERS: No special comment is needed since the Paschal orientation is clear. We decided on pss. 109, 110, 113-A and 114/115.CoMPLINE: This .Hour has the traditional psalms pre scribed by St. Benedict.

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-MONDAY -lNVITATORY: All Christian prayer is the prayer of a redeemed people, and today begins with a certain 'overflow' from Sunday. Ps. 97 is an invitation to praise God who has redeemed us, and it looks forward also to the future coming.VIGILS: This Office, along with Thursday's, takes all but one of its psalms from Dom Fiiglister. The change occurs in the middle psalm of the 1st nocturn, ps. 106 being sub stituted for ps. 103. This was partly because ps. 103 was wanted for Saturday, to go with ps. 8, but mainly because ps. 106 appeared more suitable. It is a thanksgiving psalm. God has saved us, and continues to save us from sin death and the many human situations in which perils and dath ar; close. Pss. 1 and 111 are intended to be sung in the light of this. They indicate our response. The second nocturn may be seen in the same way. In the middle is ps. 104, used as an Introit psalm on Easter Monday, Tuesday and Saturday, because of its Exodus theme. Redemption is accomplished, but also remains to be accomplished; and man still has problems to face and anguish to live through Pss. 48 and 70 are prayers which arise from situations which will always need faith and trust in God.LAUDS: The selection was 'automatic.' The first of the Penitential Psalms is followed by the usual Monday psalms. After the Canticle, the office concludes with ps. 145, the first of a series of psalms of praise which are taken in numerical order to conclude Lauds from Monday to Friday. SExT: Pss. 13 and 72 were chosen because they express the problem of evil and innocent suffering.NONE: This office for today and the next two days contains the Gradual Psalms used formerly at the Little Hours from Tuesday to Saturday. There seemed no good reason for separating them.VESPERS: There is no obvious unity between the psalms for this Hour, namely, 128, 39,113-B and 66+116; and this is an office which could perhaps be improved upon. How ever, it can be seen as f alling into two main sections. The first two are prayers which follow after the psalmist has come through great trials, the first on a national level, the second as an individual. The two final psalms are ones of thanksgiving and praise. Ps. 116 has been joined to ps. 66 (to which it forms a fitting continuation aud conclusion) because it was felt with St. Benedict that it is too short to stand on its own.CoMPLINE: Pss. 24, 130, 132 are used with their sentiments of confidence, trust, and love of the brethren.

-TUESDAY -Today's psalms are perhaps the only ones apart from

Sunday and Friday which can be said to possess a 'theme.' The Holy City, the Temple, God's Holy Mountain are pres ent in nearly all the psalms.INVITATORY: Ps. 45 is used with its theme of trust in God"s power. Jerusalem is the Church.VIGILS: For the first nocturn we have pss. 3, 17, and 10,all from the more ancient part of the psalter. Life on earth

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is a warfare and our enemies are the powers of evil. We need God's help as David did. In the second nocturn, pss. 73 and 43 are laments in time of national disaster. Ps. 105 gives an answer to their questioning.LAUDS: The same remarks apply as yesterday. If the Peni tential Psalms had been taken in order, today's office would have begun with ps. 31, but ps. 101 was used because of the theme of exile and return.SEXT: Ps. 84 and 41 were selected, with their thoughts about the Exile and return.NONE: Gradual psalms are used.VESPERS: For this hour we have pss. 134, 28, 47, and 86. Jerusalem, the Temple, is the main theme. Ps. 134 has been separated from ps. 135 (both occur together in St.Benedict's Wednesday Vespers) since they are almost identical. It ends with a great burst of praise which is continued in the next psalm. The final two psalms are centered on Jerusalem and the Temple. This office is a good illustration of the general aim of this new distribution: to prevent violent changes in the progress of prayer and to attempt to make one psalm flow naturally into the next one. Although only one of these psalms is a traditional Vesper psalm it may be worth remark ing that the majority of psalms for this office are taken from pss. 109 - 147. Only ten of the traditional psalms have been removed, and for each case there seemed to be a convincing reason.CoMLINE: Pss. 60 and 26 are used expressing personal trust m God. Ps. 26 fits well into today's theme.

-WEDNESDAY -lNVITATORY: Ps. 46 was selected. It contains a call to praise God, King of the world.VI•GILS: The first nocturn is pss. 11, 9, and 27. They are appeals to God to bring salvation from evil and oppression. The second nocturn uses pss. 81, 88, and 82. All are prayers of God's people in times of danger and disaster. (Dom Fiiglister has pss. 81 and 82, but puts ps. 77 in the middle.) LAUDS: As with previous days, it is 'automatic' in structure, but ps. 37 dovetails well with ps. 63.SEXT: Ps. 78 and 79 are used to express lament and appeal in time of disaster, thus continuing themes found in the night office.NONE: This hour has gradual psalms. This office, with Sunday Compline, is identical with St. Benedict's!VESPERS: We chose pss. 32, 135, 98, and 112. All are psalms of praise and rejoicing. Ps. 135 retains its place at Wednesday Vespers.CoMPLINE: Ps. 138, the psalm chosen, portrays faith in God's presence, 'even darkness is not dark for you, and the night is as clear as the day.'

-THURSDAY -lNVITATORY: Ps. 80 which has eucharistic associations,

was selected.VIGILS: The psalms, with the exception of the final one, are from Dom Fiiglister's scheme. They emphasize the fleeting nature of man's existence. Ps. 40 was used by Christ

Litury Bulletin + July 1968

at the Last Supper and fits well with the day. The second nocturn has themes of covenant and Exodus.LAUDS: A traditional psalm is absent for the first time. Ps. 87 has been transferred to Friday's night office since its application to the suffering of Christ is so compelling. Ps. 99 takes its place, giving this office a more sustained and suitable note of joy.SEXT: For this hour we have pss. 69 and 33, recalling the approaching Passion and the Eucharist.NoNE: Ps. 54 is used to express Christ's betrayal. VESPERS: We chose pss. 7, 137, 61, and 131 for this hour. Appeal, thanksgiving, confidence and the promises to David are all contained in these psalms. This office, like Monday Vespers, could perhaps be improved -at least if the idea behind this rearrangement is to be followed rigorously.CoMPLINE: Pss. 53, 140, and 55 are used. They are psalms of trust, but more apt than others for the eve of the Passion.

-FRIDAY -

Most of the psalms were chosen because of reference to the suffering Christ.INVITATORY: Ps. 94 was selected and becomes the only psalm to be said twice in this new arrangement. It has been given to the two 'theme' days.VIGILS: Comment seems superfluous. Ps. 87 was put at the beginning of the second nocturn and not at the end, where Dom Fiiglister places it, because it has not a single note of hope in it. This did not seem a fitting ending to the psalmody. But others may think differently.LAUDS: This hour begins with the de pro fundis, but moves on to praise.SEXT: Ps. 108 was used. NoNE: This has ps. 34.VESPERS: It attempts to combine both collective and indi vidual suffering. It speaks for itself. Pss. 136, 93, 139, and 141 were used.CoMPLINE: Ps. 30 was chosen, especially for the verse, in manus tuas.

-SA1URDAY -INVITATORY: It is similar to Monday's. Ps. 95 is a fitting introduction to the nocturns which celebrate God's glory in creation and in the redeeming act of the Exodus.LAUDS: This keeps the same structure as on other days. The canticle is not divided.SEXT: In pss. 59, 19, and 74 we have a prayer in defeat, a prayer for victory, and a prayer of thanks for God coming to judge.NONE: Pss. 57, 51, and 52 are all psalms which speak of God's judgment on the wicked. Ps. 52 ends with a plea for salvation.VESPERS: Ps. 143 and 144 are each divided into two sec tions. These were the last available psalms in the 'Vesper' section of the psalter.CoMPLINE: Here we have pss. 14, 15, and 16. Dom Fil glister's choice -to be said in the context of Holy Saturday and the expectation of the Resurrection. D

Nicholas + On Weekly Psalm Distribution

Towa rds Renewal of the Monastic Office-concluded from page 20

different capitulum each day of the year, a little cursus of especially rich texts for use during these brief readings ? The same is true of antiphons, hymns, versicles and the like. It would be advisable to arrange these in the form of a reper torium or anthology from which choice might be made for various needs (ferial days, commons, etc.). This would permit a greater flexibility of celebration of the daily Offices which tend to be repetitive on ferias and on feasts of three lessons. It is in this area of hymns that the use of the vernac ular will prove a challenge to us. Anyone who has set his hand to the translation of the Latin poetry of the Office knows that he is faced with an almost insurmountable ob stacle. The nature of poetry is so closely linked with the language and culture of which it is a part that translation often produces quite ludicrous results. We can only go so far in providing material for our new English Office by means of translation. We are faced with a challenge to our creativity. We must produce originals! This is especially true of the metrical hymns.

In view of this, the Office of the future would be identical with that proposed by St. Benedict, and in large measure similar to our present Office, but it would be one enlivened by the concept of participation outlined in the preceeding pages, one whose rythm would be perceptible through the performance of each component part according to its own style. The first, "monastic" section of psalms would be devoted to a prayerful awareness of the psalms. With the capitulum read aloud the tone changes as we move into the "parish" section, in which the cenobitic monk shares. After this short reading, one or several songs are sung. Finally our thoughts turn in prayer to the needs of the Church, of the community, and of all men. The rythm comes to rest with the prayer of the priest in the name of all to God through Christ. D

A P P E N D I XThe above proposals have been made on the supposition

that the Office of the future would follow the details of St. Benedict's legislation on the matter. No doubt, some would prefer an even greater simplification in the working out of the traditional structure on the basis of the spirit of the Church's legislation for our own day and age.

One possible modification of the Office as outlined in the Rule would be to simplif y the song section of the Office of Lauds and Vespers. The chart on page 19 shows that this section at these two Offices is somewhat complex. It consists of several songs juxtaposed. The impression given is that this is a series of rather brief items which tend to distract somewhat by their multiplicity. I would suggest that 1) only one song be used here (choice between a metrical hymn or a Scripture canticle), and 2) the short reading of the capitulum be prolonged into a more considerable pericope.

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The Integration of Lauds and Mass

Patrick BrownMONK OF SPENCER

Following the direction of the first session of the special General Chapter of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, May 20 - June 5, 1967, and inspired by a specific project for the "Integration of Lauds and Mass" presented by the Order's Liturgical Commission, 1 and also the "Request to the Consilium concerning the renewal of the Office"2 made by the American Regional Meeting of Cister cian Abbots, we would like to present a proposal for the integration of Lauds and Mass.

We are trying to avoid two juxtaposed celebrations 3 en- tailing duplication of prayers, reading-responses, hymns, thanksgiving chants and dismissals. We are also striving for a more felicitous balance of prayer (liturgical and private) , study and self-support in the context of twentieth century monastic life.

GUIDELINES FOR INTEGRATION

Using as a basis for our proposed integration the ground plan of the early Christian Mass4 along with a Lauds struc ture of two psalms, canticle and Benedictus, as alreadyapproved for the Latin Church,5 and working in the contextof a two-week psalter, our project would entail the follow ing:

1) A Lauds psalm, proper to the day, sung with an anti- phon6 while the minister enters.

2 ) Prayer of the day.3) First reading, taken from the Old Testament.4) The Old Testament canticle of Lauds proper to the

day (as a response to the reading) .75) Second reading from the New Testament - the "Apostle."6) A Lauds psalm (Psalm 148, 149, 150)8 or the brief

response of Lauds or the Alleluia responsory.7) Gospel, (homily/creed) .8) Prayer of the Faithful.9) Af ter the offertory the concelebrants gather around the

altar.10) During communion, the New Testament canticle, Bene

dictus, with an antiphon,9 and also possibly a Laudspsalm.

24

11) Recessional -possibly the hymn of Lauds.

The recent Instruction, Eucharisticum M ysterium, of the Sacred Congregation of Rites (May 25, 1967) provides that when a community Mass is celebrated in a church, a choral celebration of the Divine Office which would distract from the Mass is to be avoided.10

Quoting the Constitution on the Sacred Liturg y the same Instruction requires pastors of souls to take care that when the liturgy is celebrated something more is achieved than the mere observation of the laws governing valid and licit celebration. They should endeavor to choose what seems most suited to the needs of the faithful and favorable to their full active participation. 11

The second Instruction implementing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (May 4, 1967) from the same congrega tion provides a Lauds structure of three psalms, the Bene dictus, and a longer scripture reading replacing the brief chapter. A choice of one of the prayer psalms, together with the canticle from the Old Testament and one of the Laudate celebration psalms, would compose the three required psalms for the celebration.12

INTEGRATION WOULD BE TRADITIONAL

Applying these three directives to the particular needs of our communities, composed as they are of both choir and non-choir members, they would seem to postulate an integrated Lauds-Mass synaxis which would establish a satisfac tory and simplified liturgical worship suitable to our unified communities and thereby fulfill a genuine pastoral need. This celebration would highlight Dom Cyprian Vagaggini's position that actually every Mass realizes in a sort of foreshortened way the whole object of the liturgy and the other rites are only pre parations for or consequences of the essential act; they simply bring to light one or other aspectof the unique mystery.13 The Liturgy of the Word, with anemphasis on the theme of praise, would be the appropriate pre paration for the liturgy of the Eucharist when it is cele brated at the Morning Hour. Fr. Pius Parsch, the Augus tinian liturgist, in his book Liturgy of the Mass, offers us theground plan of the early Christian liturgy,14 The Liturgyof the Word is constructed in accordance with an objectivelaw of form, namely, a reading, a psalm, community prayer, and the prayer of the priest. 15 There are three readings 16 in an ascending order of dignity: the prophecies 17 read by alector; the epistle, by the sub-deacon; the gospel, by the deacon. A sermon by the bishop is followed by the petitionsalternated between priest and people. 18 Fr. Parsch maintainsthat the essential element in the Liturgy of the Word is the Scripture readings. Our proposal is formulated to stress the readings, especially if we recall St. Augustine's teaching that the chanting of the psalms is an integral part of the Liturgy of the Word and that these psalms are lessons justas the Epistle and Gospel.19

Fr. James J. Megivern, 20 thinking in the same vein in an article entitled "American Catholic Worship Tomorrow," 21

Litury Bulletin + July 1968

presents us with a birds-eye view of the traditional shape of the Christian liturgy in both East and West:1) An opening ceremony, concluded by the prayer of the

president in the name of the assembly.2) Scripture readings.3) The Eucharist, embracing offertory, the great prayer of

thanksgiving (canon) , communion and short final ceremony.

Our proposal has followed this traditional structure using a psalm proper to the day for the opening ceremony conclu ded by the prayer of the day; next, the scripture readings concluded by the prayer of the faithful; and finally, the eucharistic celebration concluded possibly with the hymn of Lauds as a recessional.

- AND MODERN, TOO

Turning now to a source of our own Order, we have a pertinent memorandum recently distributed by Fr. Chrysogonus Waddell, o.c.s.o., of Gethsemani Abbey22 entitled,"On the Redistribution of Psalms Over a Two-week Period," which lays down the guidelines for restructuring the Office. Our proposal has respected these guidelines in the following manner:

1) Faithful to St. Benedict's deepest intention -by stress ing the theme of praise at the morning hour.

2) Consideration of the community's spiritual needs -by simplification through integration and removal of duplication. This will facilitate a unified, communal, liturgical prayer-life.

3) Organic growth from existing forms (cf. art. 2 3 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy ) by building on the ground plan of the early Christian Mass and following the example of the May 4th Instruction of the Sacred Congregation of Rites in its directives per taining to Lauds.

4) Avoiding monotony while preserving inner unity of Lauds - by the elimination of duplication through integration, while maintaining and stressing the morn ing prayer theme of praise.

The structure of our proposal, calling for the entrance of the ministers during the first psalm proper to the day, con cretizes this same memorandum's remark that the initial psalmody in some instances was chiefly a preparation for the readings and that the clergy made their entrance just prior to the beginning of the reading with which the celebration began in earnest. Jungmann concurs with this position when he writes, "in the separate Hours according to the Roman and Benedictine Office, the section beginning with the capi tulum, i.e., the lesson, is the older part and represents the true basis of these Hours and the preliminary antiphonal psalmody is the later supplementary section and consequently secondary element.''23

SUPPORTED BY HISTORY OF ORIENTAL LITURGY

Fr. Mateos,24 specialist in the oriental Divine Office, has recently written a pertinent article, "The Origin of the

Patrick + lnteration of Lauds and Mass

Divine Office,"25 in which he cites article 34 of the Consti tution on the Liturgy, giving the norms for the revision of rites: they should be distinguished by a noble simplicity, be short, clear and unencumbered by useless repetitions and be within the assembly's comprehension, not requiring much explanation. These are the guidelines our proposal has pur sued.

From his reading of Hippolytus, Fr. Mateos maintains that in the early Church there existed in the morning an instruction held by the bishop and his clergy in a designated church for the teaching of the Christians within the area of

RGY (Trappist, Ky: Gethsemani Abbey), vol. 2, no. 2, 1967, p. 70 ff. 2 Report of the American Regional Meeting of the Order of Cistercians of the

Strict Observance, New Melleray Abbey; Dubuque, Iowa, Oct. 23.- Nov.·'' 1967,Appendix I. It should be noted here that the proposal is one of integration, notof suppression of a canonical Hour.s "The older portion of the foremass which began with the lessons was originally

an independent liturgical entity. Sometimes the foremass was conducted in one church, the Mass proper in another. This was also the custom in Jerusalem at the turn of the fourth century and also in North Africa." J. A. Jungmann, s.J., The Mass of the Roman Rite (New York: Benziger, 1959), pp. 187-188.

"The morning hour was a public service led by the clergy. It was the daily morning service which lasted until the end of the first Millenium, during which the celebration of Mass was generally reserved for Sundays, feastdays and holy seasons." Jungmann, Pastoral Liturgy, (New York: Herder, 1962), p. 132.

"There was a daily Office in the Latin Church at the close of early Christian times designed for clergy and people in common. It consisted of a Morning Hour and an evening Vespers. The place of the former has been taken by daily Mass." Jungmann, Pastoral Liturgy, p. 152.

4 P. Parsch, Liturgy of the Mass (London: B. Herder, 1957), p. 60.5 fnstruction of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, May 4, 1967, no. 21. Cf.

also, NotititZ, 35 (1967), pp. 357-362, no. VI.6 This could be the antiphon of Lauds or the introit of the Mass.7 The present canticles assigned for summer and winter could be used on a two-

week cycle, although other Old Testament canticles could be added to enrich the collection.

8 If one of these is not sung during the communion service.9 This could be the antiphon of the Benedictus or the communion antiphon of

the Mass.10 Part II, no. 17: The Pope Speaks, vol. 2 (1967), pp. 221. This perhaps ex

plains why some Benedictine monasteries recite the Office preceding Mass in the chapter house.

11 / bid., no. 46, p. 230.12 Acta ApostolictE Sedis, 59 (1967'), pp. 442-448, no. 21.13 Theological Dimenrions of the Liturgy (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press,

1959), Vol. I, p. 84. Dom Cyprian Vagaggini occupied the chair of theology at the Ponti fical Athenanum of San Anselmo, Rome, and was professor of liturgy at the Roman Institute, Regina Mundi, at the time of the publication of his book. An outstanding peritus at Vatican II, he is active in the work of the Consilium ad exesequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgica.

14 Liturgy of the Mass, loc. cit.15 Die Liturgische Feier, (Regensburg: Pustet, 1939), The Mass of the Roman

Rite (New York: Benziger, 1959), p. 188.16 Cf. NotititE, 35 (1967), p. 359 for the vote of the recent Synod of Bishops:

III. Placetne Patribus ut tempore experimentorum in Missa tres statuanter lecti ones. Placet, 72; Non placet, 59; Placet iuxta modum, 41. Cf. Also, De Missa normativa, ibid., p. 372.

17 The purpose of the Old Testament reading in the foremass is for its pro phetic worth and its value as an illustration of the New Testament. Cf. Jung mann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, p. 261.

18 Parsch, Liturgy of the Mass, p. 63.19 fbid., p. 148.20 Fr. Megivern is chairman of the department of theology at St. John's Uni

versity, Jamaica, New York.63-85. Fr. Gerard is Secretary of the Liturgical Commission of our Order.

21 W orJhip, (Collegeville, Minn.: St. John's Abbey), Vol. XL (1966) 484ff. This article was originally an address given at the national Liturgical Week (Houston, Texas), August, 1966.

22 Fr. Chrysogonus is a member of the Liturgical Commission of our Order and also Moderator of the American Regional Liturgical Commission of the Order.23 Pastoral Liturgy (New York: Herder, 1962), p. 158. Cf. Also,

Jungmann,The Early Liturgy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959), p.287.

24 Fr. Mateos is a consultor to the Roman Liturgical Consilium. He edits

Omntalia Chrirtiana Periodica published by the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome. He teaches liturgy at the same institute, as well as in the Liturgical Insti tute at San Anselmo.

25 Worship, Vol. XLI (1967), pp. 477-485.

25

that church, and that on these occasions the instruction took the place of the Morning Prayer.26 We can draw from thisa precedent for proposing a single morning synaxis, through the integration of Lauds and Mass.

Fr. Mateos goes on to point out the two-fold approach to the psalter: first, the Egyptian monastic approach which stressed the numerical order of psalmody rather than the content or spirit; secondly, the liturgy of the cathedral and urban monasticism which chose psalms according to the spirit of the Hour and purpose of the Office. Fr. Mateos also quotes Eusebius of Cesarea who taught that the morn ing Office is one of hope in the mercy of the Lord (praise and thanksgiving) , while the evening prayer is penitential(a confession of faults) .27

MAINTAINING LAUDS THEME OF PRAISE

These traditions stressing a thematic approach to the psal ter and Divine Office, specifying Lauds as an hour of praiseand thanksgiving offer welcome support to a recent proposal by Dom Augustine Roberts, o.c.s.o.28 entitled, "Redistribution of the Psalms Over a Two-week Period." This manu script pursues a thematic approach to the psalter and Divine Office and if it receives the approval of the Consilium it could readily and profitably be inserted into the structure of our proposal. It would be apropos to recall here the memo randum on the redistribution of the psalms mentionedearlier29 which emphasizes the two-fold understanding ofthe word conf essio of Psalm 66, namely, the confession of sin and confession of praise. For those who wish to maintain this two-fold sequence and yet profit by Dom Augustine's thematic approach, we would suggest viewing Vigils (which the community has already celebrated) in its penitential di mension, as expressing a confession of sin. The Lauds entrance psalm, which is next in liturgical sequence, would then accent the theme of praise for the morning Office which it is introducing. In this case greater flexibility could be permitted in regard to this psalm of praise.

Granting this flexibility we can now proceed to consider the insight that Fr. Gerard Dubois, o.c.s.o., of the Abbey of Mont-des-Cats, expressed in his article, "Eucharist andCommunity." 3° Fr. Gerard compares the Office, which sanctifies the hours of the day, to the weavers "woof," and the Eucharist, which sanctifies the days of the week (as link between Easter and Parousia) , to the weaver's "warp." Accepting this insight, a simple integral fabric of praise in the spirit of the Resurrection could be woven for the morning synaxis by the integration of Lauds and Mass as we have suggested.

FULLY CISTERCIAN

Furthermore, we consider this proposal to be faithful to the characteristics of the Cistercian liturgy as recently eluci dated by Fr. Nivard Rondeau, o.c.s.o., of the Abbey ofPort-du-Salut: 31

AUTHENTICITY -By restructuring along the traditional lines of the Christian liturgy.

26

SIMPLICITY -By eliminating duplication and the more variegated elements of the cathedral liturgy.

AUSTERITY -By maintaining an authentic and simplified integration.

A final reference might be drawn from The Origins of the M odern Roman Liturgy by Fr. Van Dijk, O.F.M., M.A., Ph.D., in which he states that there can be no doubt that the monastic life was the basis of the canonical hours. Be cause of reduced opportunities for manual labor the monks in and around Rome performed their own hours in the basil icas besides assisting at the clergy's morning and eveningprayer.32

Under the leadership of St. Benedict of Aniane in theeighth century, feudal monks opted for study and official prayer rather than for a return to manual labor.33 And thus,"medieval monastic life suffered from sheer liturgical ex haustion, from overnutrition and consequent spiritual indi gestion."34 In 1132 Peter the Venerable suppressed several devotions because of tiresome and, for many, the odious mass of psalms, 35 and the Benedictine nuns at Rijnsburg in Holland appealed to Pope Innocent IV, informing him thatthey could not stand the excessive psalmody any longer.36The Benedictines in England at their chapter of 1277 ac knowledged openly, "that the length of the Office causes disgust and extinguishes devotion, likewise study has becomeobsolete."37 Public worship which once took the place ofmanual labor had destroyed intellectual work also.

LEADING TO A BALANCED MONASTIC LIFE

Fr. Van Dijk illustrates here the perennial monastic prob lem of establishing a balanced life of prayer, study and self-support. Although we have made significant strides to correct the excesses of communal prayer illustrated by Father, the contemporary monastic needs of self-support and intel lectual training would seem to require even more emphasis on quality rather than quantity in our liturgical prayer, particularly on the workdays of the week. We are more fortunate than the early monks, having the Eucharistic sacri fice as the center of each day. The integration of Lauds into the Liturgy of the Word, as a fitting preparation for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, would be a welcome solution toward achieving a balanced monastic life compatible with contemporary needs.

We hope that we will be given the opportunity to experi ment along the lines suggested by our proposal and thus take our share in the work of renewal called for by the Sec ond Vatican Council. D

26 Ibid., p. 480.21 PG 23 : 1169-1172. The M arist Breviary, which is still used by at least one

Benedictine Congregation (Hungarian), has a thematic arrangement for the psalter.

28 Dom Augustine is Superior of the Cistercian monastery of Our Lady of theAngels, Azul, Argentina. .

29 On the Redistribution of the Psalms Over a Two-week Period, memorandumdistributed by Fr. Chrysogonus of Gethsemani Abbey.

30 LITURGY (Trappist, Ky.: Gethsemani Abbey), Vol. II (1967), no. 3, pp.31 LITURGY, Vol. II, no. I, pp. 1-7.32 Origins of the M odern Roman Liturgy (Westminster, Md.: Newman,

1960)p. 17. 35 f bid., p. 22.

33 f bid., p. 19. 36 f bid., p. 23.34 Ibid., p. 21. 37 Ibid., p. 24.

Liturgy Bulletin + July 1968

A Qgestion of Due Autonomy ?

M. Basil PenningtonMONK OF SPENCER

The Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance is an integrally contemplative institute with a relatively strict enclosure for the monks as well as the nu,ns. It finds its ideal in number seven of Perfect(JJ Caritatis:

Some institutes are wholly ordered to contemplation so that their members, in silence and solitude, in con

stant, devoted prayer and cheerful, ready penitence, may be free to attend to God alone . . . with the greatest

fidelity, their withdrawal from the world and the practices proper to the contemplative life are to be preserved.

This Order welcomed with gratitude the exemption, so necessary to its life and witness, provided for it in the Con ciliar Decree, Christus Dominus:

Especially in view of the urgent needs of souls and the scarcity of diocesan clergy, religious communities, which are not dedicated exclusively to the contemplative life, can be called upon by the bishop to assist in various pastoral ministries. (no. 35 -italics added)

Their apostolate is that one "in the heart of Christ" spo- ken of in no. 46 of Lumen Gentium:

Let no one think that by their consecration religious have become strangers to their fellow men or useless citizens of this earthly city. For even though in some instances religious do not directly mingle with their contempo raries, yet in a more profound sense these same religious are united with them in the heart of

Christ and cooperate with them spiritually. In this way the work of building up the earthly city can always

have its foundations in the Lord and can tend toward Him. Otherwise, those who build this city will

perhaps have labored in vain.These contemplative monks realize a need of remaining "in the heart" so that they might "impart a hidden, apostolic fruitfulness, making God's people grow." ( Perfect(JJ carita-

Basil + Question of Due Autonomy?

tis, no. 7) And thus they carefully avoid an active involve ment in the pastoral ministry of the dioceses.

A PARTICULAR CASE

Recently this Order petitioned the Sacred Congregation of Rites for permission for the priests of the community, on the occasions when they offer mass for the benefit of some of the brethren, guests, or the like, to be able to join fully in the community concelebration. This daily concelebration of the monastic community is the heart and center of its life. The monks have more fully experienced this since they have been able to concelebrate and to share the Chalice among all the brethren. But the Father, who for some reason does offer a mass at another time for the benefit of others, finds himself "excommunicated." He is properly expected to be at the community's central act of common worship. Yet when all the brethren gather around the altar to share in the Body and Blood of the Lord, he must remain in his stall. As he stands there, there cannot help but come to his mind such words of the Council as these:

Inliturgical celebrations each person, minister or layman, who has an office, should do all of, but only those parts which pertain to his office by the nature of the rite and the principles of liturgy. ( Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 28)

He is a priest at mass in response to ecclesial obligation. Yet he cannot perform his function.

Hearty endorsement is given to that closer form of participation in the Mass whereby the faithful, after the priest's communion, receive the Lord's body under ele ments consecrated at that very sacrifice. (Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 55)

Yet he is not allowed to approach the table of the Lord. In

27

making its petition to the Congregation of Rites, the Order sought to remedy this situation.

THE SACRED CONGREGATION'S REPLY

The Sacred Congregation replied that the matter was to be provided for by the local Ordinary in accord with number 9, d) of the Ritus servandus in concelebratione missal/ he was to delegate the Abbot or whoever presided at the community liturgy. This paragraph provides:

One who concelebrates at a Synod, pastoral visit or other gathering of priests with the Bishop or his delegate, can celebrate another Mass for the benefit of the faithful according to the judgment of the Bishop.

The reasoning of the Congregation seems to be that since the community mass is a gathering of priests, if the Bishop has the principal celebrant as his delegate, he can allow all the priests to take part in the concelebration, even though they might offer another mass for some of the brethren or guests that same day.

Perhaps in making such a provision the Congregation wished to emphasize that the Bishop is the center of the liturgical life of the diocese (thou,gh one is tempted to sus pect the presence of the more pragmatic motive of trying to keep everything within the context of the prevailing legisla tion). But to the monk this seems to be resorting to a fiction of law. The monk who has gone apart to live the monastic contemplative life, is conscious of that reality expressed by Pope Paul VI:

The Church and the world need, for different but converging reasons, to have Saint Benedict leave both the ecclesial and social community and withdraw into his enclosure of solitude and silence. . . We need to get a picture of that small, ideal society. ( Quale salute, Oct. 24, 1964 -italics added)

The monk has in some very real way stepped out of the ordinary structures of the ecclesial society, the local diocese, and entered into a society apart ("ideal" more in hope than reality, perhaps) for a purpose and service of the whole Body of Christ. For him to be allowed to enter into the heart-center of his community's liturgical and prayer life only because the principal celebrant is now considered the delegate of the Bishop (and from the wording of the legis lation it would not seem that this is necessarily even the local Ordinary) seems to be making much too much of a juridical nomination and not responding at all sufficiently to princi ples of living theological reality, expressed by the Council in the Constitution on the Liturgy. In these days of quest for truth and authenticity, it does not strike a happy note.

Our question basically is this, should not a community established by the Church have the autonomy to arrange its communal liturgical life fully in accord with the directives of the Council, most especially when there is at the head of that community an autonomous Ordinary invested with juris diction. Is the nature of the monastic community and its role of witness, so well expressed by Pope Paul, properly

28

respected when it is required that an outside jurisdiction be called in so that the community can fully celebrate its communal liturgy ?

ANOTHER INSTANCE

The Ritus servandus in distribuenda communione sub utraque specie provides eleven instances when Communion might be given under both species. It also provides four ways in which it might be given: that which is best and most proper, drinking directly from the Chalice; intinction; using a tube; and finally, using a spoon. All liturgists agree that the first method best expresses the desired sacramental sign and should be used wherever possible. One of the eleven instances includes the lay brethren at the community concelebration. But it was provided that it was to be the Bishop who was to decide in all these instances whether Communion could actually be given under the two species and by what method. In the later Instructio de cultu mys terii eucharistici, when the number of instances was in creased, this provision was reaffirmed. This possibility of the entire community once again sharing the Chalice was welcomed with great joy by the Cistercians. It seems they were one of the very last communities to lay aside completely the practice of Communion under both species, this being in 1437 at the time of the Council of Basel.

But again we have the incongruity of the monastic com munity having to go to a jurisdiction outside itself in order to be able to celebrate fully its own liturgical agape. To cite but one instance: We all do properly think of St. John's Abbey, Collegeville, as being one of the great liturgical centers of America. The author was painfully surprised to learn when he visited there, in November, 1967, that this community had been given permission to share the Chalice only on relatively rare, special occasions. This is probably not a common thing. Most monastic communities of men have been able to share the Chalice daily. (The situation has been diff erent with the nuns because the sharing of the Chalice has been restricted to concelebrations. This certainly should be remedied.) But what is more common is that communi ties have been restricted, often simply by a general directive given for the whole diocese, to the use of one of the less perfect and less satisf ying methods. Yet what communities would be more aptly prepared than monastic communities, both as to the understanding of the recipients and the dispo sition of things, to celebrate fully the sacramental sign ?

These restrictions seem all the more incongruous in that in the same context there is given some recognition of the due autonomy of the abbot in regards to this celebration of the community liturgy. It is provided that he be the one who is to judge the opportuneness of the concelebration itself , and to determine the number of priests participating. (Ritus servandus in concelebratione missal, no. 3)

We might then ask the question, has due autonomy been consistently granted to monastic communities in regards to the implementation of the directives of the Second Vatican Council for the renewal of their own proper liturgical life and celebration ? 0

Liturgy Bulletin + Juiy 1968

Celebration of the Sacrament of Penance Renewed

Panel Discussions at St. Joseph's Abbey

PURPOSE: To consider the historical evolution and the content of the celebration of the Sacrament of Penance so that we might fruitf ully discuss how we might best adapt the present rite within the scope allowed to us, and what we might propose for a new experimental rite.

PLAN: In the course of the discussions we would develop the following:1) The origins and early development (up to the sixth

century).2 ) The monastic contribution and the development of

private penance (sixth to ninth centuries).3) Subsequent developments inside and outside of the

Catholic Communion.4) Renewal and adaptation.

The first discussion will be Monday evening, November 27th, 7:00 P.M.

A bibliography is given below. All are invited to add to this.

In the course of the discussions all are welcome to raise questions and make contributions.

FIRST DISCUSSION: The origins and early development.1) Some introductory thoughts on the role of the sacra-

ment in our lives.2 ) Its origins in the New Testament.3) Prefiguration in the Old Testament.4) Elements in non-revealed religion-expressive of a

human phenomenon.5) The rite of the early Church.6) The rite of public penance.7) The conclusion of the discussion-what these pre

cedents indicate the celebration of the sacrament should express.

St. Joseph's Abbey + Sacrament of Penance Renewed

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE DISCUSSIONSABBOTT, WALTER M., s.J. (gen. ed.) and GALLAGHER, JosEPH ( trans. ed ). The

Documents of Vatican II . New Y rk: America Press, 1966. "The Consti tution on the Sacred Liturgy," no. 72, p. 161 and the general doctrine of chaps. 1 and 3, pp. 139-143, and 146-152.

CARRA DE VAUX SAINT-CYR, o.P., et al., The Sacrament of Penance. New York: Paulist Press. (Articles from Lumiere et Yie on the history, theology, practice in and outside the Church, and some practical doctrine.)

CoRRIGAN, J. E. "The Community Celebration of Penance," Catholic DigestXXXI (1967) 29-34.

---."Pastoral Renewal of Penance," W orship XXXVIII (Oct. 1964) 565-571. ELLARD, GERALD. Christian Life and Worship. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1956. Chap.20,

pp. 295-310.HowELL, CLIFFORD, S.J. Of Sacraments and Sacrifice. Collegeville: Liturgical

Press, 1953. Chap. 8, pp. 78-84.]UNGMANN, J. A. Pastoral Liturgy. New York: Herder and Herder, 1962. Passim.---.The Early Liturgy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959.

Chap. 19, pp. 240-252.KASPER, WALTER. "Confession Outside the Confessional," The Sacraments.

( Consilium, Vol. XXIV.) New York: Paulist Press, 1967. Pp. 31-42.MILLER, OscAR, c.M. ''Confession: Suggested Rite of Communal Celebration,''

Homiletic and Pastoral Review, LXVll (Feb. 1967) 405-412.MooRE, J. "The Celebration of First Penance," Worship in the City of M an.

( Twenty-seventh North American Liturgical Week.) Washington: Liturgi cal Conference, 1966. Pp. 158-161.

O'HAGAN, A. ''Confession: End-time Phenomenon,'' Review for Religious, XXIII(July, 1964) pp. 404 ff.

O'NEIL, C. "Meeting Christ in the Sacraments. Staten Island : Alba House, 1964.Chap. 11, pp. 273-291.

PALMER, P. F. Sacraments of Healing and J'ocation. Englewood Clifts: Prentice Hall, 1963. Chap. I, pp. 5-40. (Historical Approach.)

--- (ed.). Sacraments and Forgiveness. ( Sources of Christian Theology, Vol.II.) Westminster: Newman, 1960. (Texts.)

PASCHER, I. "De Pamitentia," Constitutio de Sacra Liturgia cum Commentario.Pp. 320-323.

"La Penitence," La Maison-Dieu, No. 90 (1967). (Article on the rite, doctrine, personal and community dimension, venial sin, etc.)

"Prenitemini," Apostolic Constitution on Fast and Abstinence. Feb. 17, 1966. PoscHMANN, BERNARD. Penance and the Anointing of the Sick. New York :

Herder and Herder, 1964. (Historical evolution.)RIGA, PETER. "The Liturgy of Confession," Cross and Crown, XVI (June, 1964)

pp. 134-141.THURIAN, MAX. uconfession in the Evangelical Churches," The Sacraments.

(Consilium, Vol. XXIV.) New York: Paulist Press, 1967. Pp. 24-30.VAN DER PoEL, CoRNELIUS, c.s.sP. "Confession of Religious," The Jurist, Vol.

XXVI, pp. 214-233. (Historical development of theology, frequency, and kinds of confessors.)

VON SPEYER, A. Confession. New York: Herder and Herder, 1964. Chaps. 1-5. (Origins and ecclesial dimension.)

29

FIRST Discuss10N: Otiins and Early Development

[The moderator opened the discussion noting that the pur· pose of the panels has evolved from being just informative on the content and significance of the Conciliar constitution to giving the necessary background for our dialogue on the communal renewal of the Sacrament of Penance. The dis· cussions would be noted for their informality and all were invited to make contributions and ask questions as we moved along.}

The importance of the Sacrament of Penance was brought out by reason of its frequency, by reason of its monastic significance and origins (which will be developed later) , and by reason of its particular response to modern day aspira· tions. Penance as a sacrament of conversion might be con· sidered a particular sacrament of the state of monastic con· version, ever deepening that conversion in view of contemplative union which is celebrated in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

The Council has rightly stressed the didactic purpose of its rites. The Sacrament of Penance has something to say to us; but as Pope John noted, while the realities remain the same, they need to be expressed in a different way as times are different. Actually, throughout the centuries various aspects of this sacrament have been more clearly brought out by the way it was celebrated. We will, as it were, walk back through history to see these various facets.

WHAT THE NEW TESTAMENT SAYS

Christianity is a religion of response, response to the Word of God, to his revelation in Christ Jesus. Therefore we begin by considering the revelation that Jesus gave us and how the primitive Church understood this, as found in the New Testament.

[One of the panelists then developed the New Testament teaching.}

We find in the New Testament a series of documents written as the result of reflection on experience, which bears witness to the belief of the early Church and its kerygma. First there is brought out the fact that Christ as man had the power to forgive sins and to transmit this power to his followers, which he did.

Christ first showed his ministry of forgiveness in the cure of the paralytic lowered through the roof (Luke 5: 18-24). The response was scandalized disbelief confuted by a mir· acle. Then in Simon's house he forgives the woman who was a well-known sinner in the town. Though the reaction is expressed in similar words, its tone and spirit are different, more one of wonder.

Then Christ transmitted the power of binding and loosing. These words have a certain technical significance, indeed several meanings:

1) They sometimes were used in regards to magical pow-

30

er to cast spells (something like modern-day hypnotism).

2) In Jewish tradition they referred to the power of a rabbi to declare what was forbidden (bound) and what was permitted (free) by the law.

3) Finally, they refer to judicial power, and in the case of the Christian community they meant the power to excom municate, to cast out of the communion of the community, and to free again to enter into communion.

In Matt. 16: 15-19 we find our Lord committing this power to Peter after his well-known confession of Christ's divine relationship. Two chapters later Matthew shows Christ conferring the same power on the Twelve. It seems that the primitive Church is expressing here the origins of her authority.

InJohn's Gospel we find this power being directly applied to the forgiveness of sins. It is almost immediately after his resurrection that Christ shares this ministry of forgiveness with the Apostles.

Inthe rest of the New Testament we do not find any great development of this sacrament. In Paul we do find an

exam ple of "binding." In chapter five of First Corinthians Paul commands that the incestuous man be

expelled. The com munity is forbidden to associate with him as a member of the community. In II Cor. 2: 6-10 there is evidence of "loosing" by means of penitential

reconciliation: "the pun ishment is enough," "I have forgiven it for your sake in the presence of Christ." The sinner was also to be forgiven in the community, to be

received back again into its fellowship.

[The moderator noted that we would come back to a fuller discussion of the laying on of hands. J

It was noted that the New Testament doctrine brought out two things:

1) The presence of the power of Christ in the Sacrament. In practice confessors experienced the need to have this well brought out in the administration of the Sacrament, especially in the case of worried or scrupulous penitents. It was ob served that our present rite does bring it out: May our Lord Jesus Christ absolve you, and I, by his authority . . . .

2 ) The doctrine also emphasized the role of the Church and community in this sacrament of reconciliation. It was thought that this was an area in which our present rite seemed deficient and which we might consider further in the light of the early practice of the Church.

[Two other insights into the spirit that should animate the celebration of the Sacrament of Penance were broughtout from the New Testament: - J

3) Peace. This was the context in which Christ gave the power of ministry of forgiveness to the apostles. First, My peace be with you"; then, "Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you shall forgive . . . ." The Sacrament was to bring

Litur y Bu11etin + July 1968

Christ's peace, responding to man's basic need to share his guilt and be forgiven.

4) Joy. In the parable of the Prodigal Son we find all the elements of the Sacrament: sin, realization, repentance, confession, forgiveness and joy in reconciliation. The cele bration of the Sacrament should end on a note of joy.

WITNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

One of the panelists then pointed out that in the Old Testament we find instances of man's need of repentance and a rite of forgiveness which provide some antetypes for the New Testament practice.

But first it is important to note that there is a lack of con tinuity on the plane of grace. The "sacraments" of the Old Testament were not grace-producing causes with an efficacy contained within themselves. They did not cause reconcilia tion in the way the Sacrament of the New Testament is able to cause it. They were "sacraments" given to foster faith in the Christ to come.

One of the panelists, resuming the first session, noted that we had seen how penance was based on the granting of the power of the keys, directed specifically toward the remis sion of the sins of man. In the cure of the paralytic the note of personal spiritual healing was brought out. In this text and others the note of joy and peace were found, overflowing into a communal celebration-the ecclesial dimension.

Another pointed out that in the last discussion we failed to demonstrate the role of the Spirit: "Receive the Spirit,

whose sins you shall forgive . . ." It is through the confer ring of the Spirit that sins are forgiven, joy and

peace re stored. The East has kept the role of the Spirit more in mind. The Cistercian rite does better than the

Roman, retaining pardon and remission "through the grace of the Holy Spirit."

Then the discussion returned to the Old Testament and a consideration of penance and forgiveness in the pre-Chris tian revelation. Yahweh gave to his people certain rites by which they were able to express exteriorly their repentance. In chapter four of Leviticus we find rites for the ablution of "unwitting" faults. Leviticus 5 : 5-6 brings in all the elements of confessing, placing the ritual act, the priest atoning for the one at fault In chapter sixteen of Leviticus we find Aaron commanded to lay upon the head of a goat, on the great day of atonement, the sins of the people. A more personal confession and God's personal response are found in the well-known scene of David's confession before the prophet Nathan (II Sam. 12). In Nehemiah we find gen eral public confession (chap. 4) and public penance (chap. 9). In Jonah we find a whole city doing public penance in response to prophetic witness. Many other examples are to be found throughout the Old Testament of an external, and therefore sacramental, expression of sorrow and forgive ness under the inspiration of the Divine. The forms are usually confession, penitential prayer, and then such signs as fasting, abstinence, sackcloth and ashes, rending of gar ments, sacrifices, and alms.

St. Joseph 's Abbey + Sacrament of Penance Renewed

CONTRIBUTION OF THE EARLY CHURCH

There was then pointed out a parallelism between the Old Testament and the early Church that is problematic. The Old Testament provided rites for lesser unwitting sins and also recognized deadly or mortal sins that received the death penalty, but had nothing for the in-between, lesser yet serious "mortal" sins. Later Jewish tradition realized this and in the Mishnah assigned the scapegoat to taking care of these. The early Church had solemn public penances for three great sins; also recognized sacramentals and prayer, especially the Pater, to care for minor sins. Later the litur gical absolutions at Mass and Office would be considered to care for these, as is still the case in the separated Eastern churches.

It was noted there was an evolution in the sense of sin and therefore in the corresponding penitential rites. At first sin was thought of primarily as a stain coming from without, hence ablutions and the like (Cf. Heb. 9: 9). Then sin was seen more as something in the people interfering with their relationship with God; hence communal sacrifices, fasts, etc. to wipe out this evil. Finally, a sense of personal guilt came out fully only in the prophets, especially Jeremiah.

UNIVERSAL NEED FOR PENANCE

From this we moved to the non-revealed religions, to note a parallel growth among the Greeks. It seems the Moslems, returning to the more primitive revelation, retained the early ablutions of the Jews and the sense of communal sin, needing communal fasts, etc., but no rite of personal expi ation.

A recent article by Fr. Edward in LITURGY was cited as indicating among an African people a sense of sin as more external to the person and a thing of the community.

A more developed culture had a more developed sense of sin and therefor more developed rites expressing this sense of sin. Paul VI in Pamitemini was guoted in reference to this.

Almost everywhere and at all times penance has had a place of great importance since it is closely linked with the intimate sense of religion which pervades the life of most ancient peoples as well as with the more advanced expression of the great religions, connected with the progress of culture.

Examples of more developed rites were the special rite of personal purification from sin celebrated by the Hindus at the sacred rivers every fourteen years. The Buddists have a long examination of conscience of 250 points based on their personal response to the virtues and ways. The monks have a monthly rite following this, not unlike our chapter of faults, where they confess, receive penance and pardon. With Confucius the sense of personal sin extends itself even to a concept of purgatory after death and vicarious penance for those in purgatory.

Examination shows then that the need to express one's sin or even to proclaim one's sinfulness in some rite and to have

31

some sign of pardon responds to a common human phenom enon. The modern witness is the great need modern man has for the psychiatrist. As in matrimony, Christ took a basic human institution and elevated it to a channel of grace, so in penance he made another human reality into a sacrament, another means for man to make a divinized re sponse to the self-revealing God.

SECOND DISCUSSION: Origins and Early Development, Cont'd

[The moderator summed up the previous discussions' insights: In the New Testament we have seen how penance is to be an exercised of the power of Christ through the Holy Spirit in the ecclesial community, producing peace and joy in the individual and the community. It was pointed out how the parable of the Prodigal Son brings out this last element, and how our Lord had said that there would be more rejoicing in heaven over the repentance of one sinner, etc., so even the heavenly community joins the earthly one in this. The Old Testament showed, in types, how God according to man's evolving sense of sin provided rites, "sac raments," to satisfy his need to "proclaim" his sinfulness and to experience forgiveness. An examination of extra revealed religion showed that where revelation had not brought such rites from God, man tended to create them for himself, thus indicating a deep natural need. The sacrament of confession and pardon responds to a deep human phe nomenon which has thus been integrated into man's super natural dimensions. With this background we were ready to begin to discuss how the Church through the centuries of her life has understood and used this sacramental gift.]

EARLY DEVELOPMENT IN THE CHURCH

One of the panelists then began to briefly survey this in the first centuries of the Church.

From the first and second century we have very little documentary evidence of penitential practice. The few indi

cations we have are strongly pastoral in their orientation. Before the first century closes we find St. Clement speaking of the pardoning of those who have fallen into apostasy. St. Ignatius directs the Philadelphians to be open to pardon the repentant. In the Didache (c. 100), in the liturgical section and elsewhere, there is reference to confession of

sins which brings forgiveness. The exact form this confession took is not clear. It may have been a general

confession in the liturgical rite, similar to our confession at the beginning of Mass, but we have no early record of such a 'confiteor., One of the most important witnesses

from this early period in regard to penance is the so-called Shepherd of Hermas. In its ecclesial dimension he treats of

it under the analogy of building a tower. One can be set apart from the construction for a time by sin, but he can

later be reincorporated into the structure. He does speak of there being only "one penance."

This brings us to the difficult question of the limitations on the use of the Sacrament of Penance in the early Church. With Hermas it seems to be a psychological and pastoral question rather than a doctrinal or dogmatic one. If one is

32

frequently admitted after frequently falling away again, the power and meaning of penance is greatly lost. The widespread practice of only one penance became the prevailing thought. And thus it tended to be put off until near death. Indeed baptism itself was being put off.

As the second century turned into the third we still find a certain benignity in penitential practice expressed in the writings of some of the Fathers. Dionysius of Corinth and St. Ignatius of Lyons were quite open to the reconciliation of the Gnostics. And even this repeatedly. There is one case of a man reconciled four times! But rigorism was begin ning to prevail more and more.

EVOLUTION OF THE RITE

At this point one of the panelists took up the rite of penance which began to evolve at this time.

First, however, the question was asked, why study this ancient rite. Perhaps the best answer was the analogy be tween what we are doing and Scripture study. We do depend greatly on study of the Old Testament to understand the New. Here too, the old will enlighten us in our search for fuller understanding of the new. Our present form of con fession and absolution is ultimately a simplified descendent of the former rite of public reconciliation. They are the one sacrament.

The embryo of the rite perhaps first appears in Tertullian's De Pa:nitentia (c. 200) . He describes the Exomolegesis, or external manifestation of penance. The confession of sin is in private, but the penance is public: "Which is better, to be damned in secret, or to be absolved in public ?" It was the Bishop who determined the length of this public penance. At Rome we soon find it coinciding with the duration of Lent. Since it had two primary ceremonies: the expulsion from the community of the Church and the reconciliation, these were placed at the beginning of Lent (Ash Wednesday) and at the end (Holy Thursday) .

The rite was constantly in evolution, even at Rome. It reached its present form in the Roman Pontifical only in 1595 under Clement VIII. In Resonance, no. 2 (1966) there is a translation of this. It is actually very close to the rite in the Gelasian sacramentary of the eighth century.

The expulsion is done quite publicly and pontifical y. e private confession of sins has preceded and the penitential attire has been adopted, when the penitents present them selves to the bishop. Some public sinners might be expected to publicly confess their sins. A set way of life, quite rigor ous, involving fasts and even pilgrimages, is assigned to the penitents for the duration of the penitential J:?rid.

But we are more concerned with the reconol1at10n cere mony as being more at one with our rite of penance. There is great emphasis on community participation and prayer for the penitents. The deacon is sent several times to encourage the penitents. The bishop comes finally to lead them back into the Church. There is in the ceremony a twofold absolu tion (as in our rite) : a previous deprecative one -ma God forgive you . . . -and the final solemn one by the bishop in the course of several long prayers. D

Liturgy Bulletin + July 1968

The Blessing of t

he We ekl(Y

Senvens

an() Rea()en

St . Joseph's AbbelY

+

St. Joseph's Abbey + Blessin of Servers and Reader

To implement the 'Votum' of the community of St. Jos· eph's Abbey, Spencer, regarding the blessing of the weekly servers and reader, the following points were suggested as an experiment: Time, Place, Manner of recitation, and the Content of the prayers.

1) TIME: The blessing for ingoing and outgoing servants and for the reader at the same time, i.e., immediately before dinner on Sunday.

2) PLACE: The refectory. Both servants stand in their usual place by the door, south side) ; the reader in his place in the pulpit.

3) MANNER OF RECITATION: Spoken in a conversational tone. When the superior rings the bell the servant(s) ending his (their) week says the verse as found in the Rule : "Blessed are you, 0 Lord God, who have helped me and consoled me."

The community then repeats the verse. The servant again says the verse himself. It is not repeated by the community. Thus the verse is repeated a total of three times.

The same procedure is immediately followed by the in· coming servant(s) with his (their) verse: "O God, come to my aid; 0 Lord, make haste to help me."This, in turn, is followed by the reader with his verse: "Lord open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise," the community repeating it once only, as above.

4) CONTENT OF THE PRAYERS: The Rule simply states that the servants are given a blessing after the verse is said, without stating the form of the blessing. As some have expressed dissatisfaction with the present formula as not expressing the ideas which the Rule wishes to convey, the following is suggested. Combining the ideas of fraternal love expressing itself in humble service after the example of Christ, the one blessing is intended for both the serv· ant(s) of the refectory and the reader. They are, after all, exercising analogous functions, i.e., serving the brethren by nourishing their bodies and minds. The blessing also embra· ces the community itself which must accept service in love (recall Peter at the Mandatum of the Lord) .

Finally, the formula includes a blessing for the meal itself. Thus the 'ceremony' need not be prolonged unduly by having to add the usual 'grace' to it. Here also it brings out the sacramental notion of the communal meal and the eschato logical idea which must be so much a part of monastic life. The blessing is most appropriately said by the Superior.

Heavenly Father, taught by the example of your Divine Son to minister to one another in humility and love, grant that we may both serve and be served in communal and fraternal charity. May these ministers whom we now bless and this food be for us a sign and pledge of the heavenly ban quet in which we hope to partake through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

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September 30, 1967 Bolton Monastery Ireland

Dear Editor,

I would like to have an opinion, either from yourself or from some other liturgical expert, on a point which occured to me when preparing for the Holy Week ceremonies.

Of the Good Friday ceremonies, Gregory Dix says,The Roman Missal . . . affords an almost perfect specimen of the old Roman synaxis of the second century, followed on this occasion not by the eucharist but by the fourth century Syrian rite of the Veneration of the Cross and the second century service for Communion from the reserved Sacrament. ( The Shape of the Liturg y, p. 36)

Now I think it is the experience of most that the ceremony of the Veneration of the Cross is strangely at variance in character with the ceremonies which precede and follow it. Elsewhere in the work quoted (pp. 348-351) Dix complains of the innovations of the fourth century which gave rise to a new historical understanding of the liturgy. This weakened the old eschatological conception of the Pascha and had serious consequences on eucharistic doctrine, concentrating on the Death of Christ to the exclusion of the Resurrection and Ascension.

The present arrangement then appears to be unsuitable, so it may ease the problem temporarily if the Veneration of the Cross were to be celebrated at some other time of the day (e.g. after Tierce) and the liturgy of the Word and Com munion service to be held together at the normal time. The problem is, does this adaptation come within the liberty dealt with in the letter of the Commission of April 17,1967 ? It seems to me that it deals with ceremonial: qui ne touche pas a la substance d es rites.

Another desirable improvement would be to read the account of the Resurrection as well as the Passion from the Gospel. But perhaps this "addition" would be regarded as substantial.

I would like some expert advice on the whole question, firstly, as to whether it is permissable legally, and most important, whether it is really desirable liturgically. This latter involves many problems as, for example, the authority of Gregory Dix.

EOIN DE BHALDRAITHE

[ Your comments solicited. -Ed. ]

34 Litur y Bulletin + July 1968

:

Adven t "Lucena rium"- Ecumenical Prayer Service -

Holy Cross Theological School (Greek Orthodox) Saint Joseph's Abbey / Spencer, Massachusetts

"The God who said, 'Out of the darkness the light shall shine/' is the same God who made his li'1at shine in our hearts, to bring us the light of the krowledge of God's glory, shining in the face of Christ." -ll Cm. 4 :6

*Hnm: "Wake, Awake, For Night is Flying" . . . . ._.St. Joseph's Abbey Hymnal,

A·lO

YI Shepherd of Israel, listen, you who lead Joseph like a Bock; From your home upon the cherubim shine forth; rouse your power and come to save us!

The congregation responds -Lord of hosts, restore us; let your face shine upon us and we shall be safe.

Yf Your word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path.For your darkness itself is not dark, and night shines as the day.

READING . .. . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . .. ..... . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . .Genesis 1: 1 5, 14·19

YI Io contrast to the darkness, you gave your people a pillar of blazing fire, to guide them on their unknown journey.

0 House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

YI I, the Lord have called you to serve the cause of right; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations.

The people that walked in darkness has seen a great light; on those who live in a land of deep shadow a light has shone.

Yf Arise, shine out, for your light has come, the glory of the Lord is rising on you, though night still covers the earth and darkness the peoples.

Above the Lord now rises, and above you his glory appears. The nations come to your light and kings to your dawning brightness ..

HYMN: "Hail Gladdening Light (Phos Hilaron) .. ... . . . . .. . . .. ... . .Hymnal, K·3The octet will sing the 1st stanza; everyone the 2nd and 3rd stanzas

-LIGHTING OF THE ADVENT WREATH -

READING by Archimandrile . . . . . .. .• . • .. . . . . .• . . . . . . . . . . .Gospel of St. John 1: 1·9

HOMILY . .• . ..... . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Father Abbot

35

II

I

11 Hail, 0 Virgin, dwelling place of light; through you the True Light has come into the world!

Hail, 0 Virgin, in whom creation is renewed! Hail, fulfillment of the plan beyond description!

HYMN: "Behold A Mystical Rose" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Hymnal, B-7

11 The Lord be with you. And with your spirit.

PRAYER: Let us pray: 0 God, the Father of all light, from whom comes allthat is good, everything that is perfect; which is given us from above, '

prepare us for the Appearing of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who at the _,appointed time will be revealed by you, the blessed and only Ruler of all, King of kings and Lord of lords, alone immortal, whose home is in accessible light; to you be honor and everlasting power.

Amen.

THE LORD'S PRAYER WITH DOXOLOGY:Let us pray for Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul, for all our Bishops, priests, monks and faithful; for the unity of Faith and for the communion of the Holy Spirit; let us commend ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God, saying: -

ALL: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.For Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory, of theFather and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

BENEDICTION:

May the Lord bless you and keep you;May the Lord make his countenance shine upon you, and be gracious to you; May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. Amen.

"Then l saw Jerusalem, the Holy City, coming down from God out of heaven. It had all the radiant glory of God and glittered like some precious jewel ot crystal-clear diamond. . ..and its lamp was the Lamb." -REv. 21 : 10,11

*

36 '--•

:'eRlNTEV lH u .a.A