In the 17th century, Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, rejected the philosophical traditions of Aristotle and the Scholastics.  For Descartes, the very fact that we think is the proof that we exist.  Cogito, ergo sum.  I think, therefore I am.  He rejected the use of his senses as the basis for knowledge.  In so doing, he wounded the unity between mind and body found in classical philosophy.  Over the course of time, the wound has widened.  The spiritual and the material have drifted apart.  The sacred and the secular clearly divided.

Besides modern philosophy, other factors have contributed to the separation of the sacred from the secular.  The scientific manipulation of human life in test tubes has lessened the respect for life itself.  Life is no longer, for some, a sacred gift from God.  Likewise, the divorce of human sexuality from procreation, coupled with the continual campaign to redefine marriage has helped to push God out of the intimacies of human life.  Marriage is no longer recognized as a sacred institution given by God for a man and woman to join with Him in bringing new life into the world.  The sacredness of even the natural order as coming from the hands of an all-wise God is thus lost.

The anti-authoritarian prejudice that we have inherited from the social revolution of the '60’s imprinted on many a deep mistrust not only of government but of Church.  Some even reject the very idea of hierarchy (literally, “a sacred origin”) as a spiritual authority established by God.  As a result, Church means, for some, simply the assembly of like-minded believers who organize themselves and make their own rules and dogmas.  Thus, the Church’s role in the spiritual realm is greatly eclipsed.

On the first day of the new millennium, Prince Charles of England said, "In an age of secularism, I hope, with all my heart, in a new millennium we will rediscover a sense of the sacred in all that surrounds us."  He said he hoped this would hold true whether in growing crops, raising livestock, building homes in the countryside, treating disease or educating the young.  He recognized by his statement that we have lost a sense of the sacred.

Living in our world, we breathe the toxic air that surrounds us.  Even within the most sacred precincts of the Church, we witness a loss of the sense of the sacred.  With the enthusiasm that followed the Second Vatican Council, there was a well-intentioned effort to make the liturgy modern.  It became commonplace to say that the liturgy had to be relevant to the worshipper.  Old songs were jettisoned.  The guitar replaced the organ.  Some priests even began to walk down the road of liturgical innovation, only to discover it was a dead end.  And all the while, the awareness of entering into something sacred that has been given to us from above and draws us out of ourselves and into the mystery of God was gone.

Teaching about the Mass began to emphasize the community.  The Mass was seen as a community meal.  It was something everyone did together.  Lost was the notion of sacrifice.  Lost the awesome mystery of the Eucharist as Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.  The priest was no longer seen as specially consecrated.  He was no different than the laity.  With all of this, a profound loss of the sacred.

Not one factor can account for the decline in Mass attendance, Church marriages, baptisms and funerals in the last years.  But most certainly, the loss of the sense of the sacred has had a major impact.

Walk into any church today before Mass and you will notice that the silence that should embrace those who stand in God’s House is gone.  Even the Church is no longer a sacred place.  Gathering for Mass sometimes becomes as noisy as gathering for any other social event.  We may not have the ability to do much about the loss of the sacredness of life in the songs, videos and movies of our day.  But, most assuredly, we can do much about helping one another recover the sacredness of God’s Presence in His Church.

On the first day of this millennium, the Prince of Wales struck a strong note of optimism for the recovery of the sacred. Paraphrasing Dante, he remarked: "The strongest desire of everything, and the one first implanted by nature, is to return to its source.  And since God is the source of our souls and has made it alike unto Himself, therefore this soul desires above all things to return to Him."  There is one place where we can begin to rediscover the sacred.

+Arthur J. Serretelli

To be continued….. 

The Dutch historian and philosopher of religion Gerardus van der Leeuw once said, “The modern man is not capable of finding himself in several circles simultaneously as his primitive cousins did. ‘When we dance, we do not pray; when we pray, we do not dance. And when we work, we can neither dance nor pray.’” In a word, the sense of the sacred has disappeared. But not completely nor irretrievably.

The Liturgy of the Church is a moment where all the dimensions of our lives come before the living God. It is the place where we have an active encounter with God. It is the place, therefore, where we can rediscover the sacred in our lives.

The Second Vatican Council began the liturgical reform with the hope of reinvigorating this sense of the Presence of God who comes to meet us in love. Two generations after the Council, we are still searching for a deeper sense of the sacred in our Liturgy. We now realize some of the ways in which this can be accomplished. It is good to look at a few of these.

Certain settings demand their own particular etiquette. Dress at a wedding reception differs from dress at a sports event. Conversation in a bar is louder than in a funeral home. The more we realize we are coming into the Presence of God in Church, the more respectful and reverent our whole person becomes. Chewing gum in Church, loud talking, beach attire and immodest dress simply do not belong!

In church, we need to cultivate a sense of God who is present to us. This is why we are called to observe moments of silence. Both before Mass begins and during Mass. Liturgy is much more than our joining together. It is our opening ourselves to God. By our singing and praying, we respond to the God who addresses us in Liturgy. A constant torrent of words and songs filling every empty space in the Liturgy does not leave the heart the space it needs to rest quietly in the Divine Presence.

In the Annunciation, after the angel announces to Mary that she is to be the Mother of the Lord and Mary gives her fiat, there is silence (cf. Lk 1:38). In this pregnant silence, that Word becomes flesh. Mary remains the model of the disciple before the Word of God. She reminds us that we need moments of silence for God to enter our life. We need those moments in our personal prayer and in the Liturgy.

In the Liturgy recorded in the last book of the New Testament, in the Book of Revelation, the word proskynein (to bow) is used twenty-four times — more than in any other part of the New Testament. John, the author of the Book of Revelation, presents this heavenly Liturgy as the model and standard for the Church’s Liturgy on earth. Our body bowed in prayer acknowledges the Lord’s majesty. It visibly confesses our belonging to God who is the Lord of all. Here is a strong reminder of the place of body in Liturgy.

We are not just spirit when we pray. We pray in our total reality as body and spirit. And so, to recapture the sense of the sacred, therefore, we need to express our reverence through our body language. The norms of the Liturgy wisely have us stand in prayer at certain moments, sit in attentive listening to the readings, and kneel in reverent adoration during the solemn prayer of consecration. These norms are not arbitrary nor are they left to the discretion of any individual celebrant.

Creativity is not an authentic rule for celebrating the Church’s Liturgy. In many cases, it humanizes the Liturgy and draws attention from God to the celebrant. The priest is merely the servant of the Liturgy, not its creator or center.

Commenting on this, Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, said: “The greatness of the Liturgy depends—we shall have to repeat this frequently—on its unspontaneity (Unbeliebigkeit)…. Only respect for the Liturgy’s fundamental unspontaneity and pre-existing identity can give us what we hope for: the feast in which the great reality comes to us that we ourselves do not manufacture but receive as a gift (Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 170). Since the Liturgy is a gift and not something of our own creation, it takes great humility to celebrate the Liturgy properly and reverently.

Observing the norms of the Liturgy helps to create a profound sense of the sacred in each of us at Mass. Celebrating Mass and observing liturgical norms also makes us visibly one with the entire Church to which we belong. “Priests who faithfully celebrate Mass according to the liturgical norms, and communities which conform to those norms, quietly but eloquently demonstrate their love for the Church” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 52).

Today it has become commonplace at the end of the Liturgy to recite a litany of gratitude for all those who, in some way or another, have made the celebration beautiful. No doubt there is a way to express gratitude at the end of Mass. But is it possible that each time applause breaks out in the Liturgy at the end of the Mass for someone’s contribution, we lapse into seeing the Mass as a human achievement? Sometimes even during the Mass after someone has sung a beautiful hymn, there is spontaneous applause. At such a moment, does not the real meaning of Liturgy lapse into some kind human entertainment?

We can recapture more and more the sense of the sacred, the more we allow the Liturgy to be what it is. A gift from God that allows God to speak and act in our life. A gift that draws us out of ourselves and out of time into the eternal life of God even now.

Bishop Arthur Serratelli, S.T.D., S.S.L., D.D.

To be continued

The early Christian basilicas in Rome, the Cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the Gothic Revival churches in 20th century America and the more contemporary constructions of recent years all share the same purpose. The church building is meant to be “a sacred building destined for divine worship” (Code of Canon Law, 1214). More than just a place where we gather, the church building makes visible the Church living in this place, the dwelling of God with us reconciled and united in Christ" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1180).

Central to every Catholic church, therefore, is the altar on which the Eucharist is celebrated. For the Eucharist is the summit and source of the Church’s life. The Eucharist makes the Church. And the Church makes the Eucharist. No Eucharist, no Church. The Eucharist is the Church’s most sacred treasure, because the Eucharist is the Lord Jesus.

So great is the mystery of the Eucharist that it cannot be straight-jacketed into a single concept or explanation. Jesus gifted the Church with the Eucharist at the Last Supper. On the evening before he died, he celebrated God’s deliverance of Israel and the redemption he himself was accomplishing for all. He did this in the context of the Passover meal.

First, the very giving of the Eucharist reminds us of the structure of a meal. “Take, eat... Then he took a cup and... gave it to them, saying: Drink from it, all of you” (Mt 26:26, 27). The Eucharist is the meal in which we enjoy table fellowship with the Lord. When we worthily receive the Eucharist, we enter into a profound communion with Jesus. He abides in us and we in him (cf. Jn 15:4).

Israel celebrated communion sacrifices in which part of the victim was offered to God and another portion given to the faithful to eat. Thus Israel expressed her desire to be one with God. When Moses ratified the covenant with Israel, Moses, Aaron and his two sons Nadab and Abihu, along with the seventy elders, went up the mountain. In a very rare sentence in the entire Old Testament, we are told, “they actually gazed on God and then ate and drank” (Ex 24: 11). At the very birth of God’s chosen people, the meal on the mountain prefigures the fellowship which God wishes to establish with all his children. Today, as we sit down at the Lord’s Table and eat and drink in his sight, we enter that fellowship, sharing in the very life of God himself.

Second, all the narratives of the Last Supper (Mt 26:26-28: Mk 14:22-23: Lk 22:19-20; and 1 Cor 11:23-25), help us understand the Eucharist as not just a meal but as sacrifice. Jesus gives his body broken for us and his blood poured out for us. Jesus is the Suffering Servant who is offering himself in sacrifice, pouring out his blood for the new covenant. He offers himself in place of humanity and for the salvation of all (cf. Is 42:1-9; 49:8).

The Cross begins at the Supper (cf. 1 Cor 11:26). In the Upper Room, Jesus makes present in an unbloody manner his self-offering on the Cross. In every Eucharist, Christ makes present to us anew that same sacrifice offered once for all on Golgotha. The Eucharist is sacrifice, not repeated again and again, but the one sacrifice of the Cross made present to us in every age.

Third, at the same time that the Eucharist makes present what occurred in the past, it also impels us towards the future. The Liturgy itself reminds us of this in the acclamation following the consecration: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” The Eucharist is an eschatological event.

St. John Chrysostom reminds us of this. He says, “For when you see the Lord sacrificed, laid upon the altar, and the priest standing and praying over the victim, and all the worshippers empurpled with that precious blood, can you then think that you are still among men, and standing upon the earth? Are you not, on the contrary, straightway translated to heaven, and casting out every carnal thought from the soul, do you not, with disembodied spirit and pure reason, contemplate the things which are in heaven?” (De Sacerdotio, III, 4).

Christ who will come again at the end of time comes to us in every Eucharist. This eschatological aspect makes the Eucharist an event that draws us up into heaven. Thus, the Eucharist fills our life journey with hope. In every Eucharist, we enter the Holy of Holies, the Body of Christ, and we are sanctified (cf. Heb 90:11-14). The Eucharist is the privileged place where life becomes sacred. The Eucharist makes our life a sacred adventure of ever-deepening communion with God.

Bishop Arthur Serratelli, S.T.D., S.S.L., D.D.

To be continued

One of the major divisions between Catholics and Protestants is the Eucharist. How do we understand what Jesus did at the Last Supper? What was his intention? Did he gift the Church with a simple memory of his suffering and death in giving the bread and wine as symbols of the Paschal Mystery? Did he actually give his Body and Blood to the disciples around the table in the Upper Room? Does he give his Body and Blood to believers around the altar today?

From apostolic times, all the followers of Jesus have believed in the Real Presence. That is until the birth of Protestantism in the 16th century! Before the time of Luther, however, there were a few dissident voices who denied the faith of the Church in the Real Presence.

Very early on, St. Ignatius of Antioch (110 A.D.) tells us that the Gnostics refused to believe in the Real Presence. He says, “They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that the Father, in his goodness, raised up again” (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2-7:1). At least they had the personal integrity not to approach the Eucharist because they did not accept what the Church taught.

When the early Church Fathers read 1 Cor 10:16–17; Jn 6:32–71; and the accounts of the Last Supper (Mt 26:26-28: Mk 14:22-23: Lk 22:19-20; and 1 Cor 11:23-25), they interpreted these passages literally. J. Kelly, the renowned Protestant historian of the early Church, succinctly summarizes their teaching on the Real Presence when he writes, "[Their] Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realistic, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior’s body and blood" (Early Christian Doctrines, 440).

The first Christian of any prominence to deny the Real Presence was Berengar of Tours. He lived in the 11th century! He was a young priest in charge of a theological school in Tours with many distinguished students who later became bishops and archbishops. Berengar denied the belief that Jesus is really and truly present in the Eucharist under the appearances of bread and wine. He called such belief "the opinion of the mob." And he taught that the Eucharist is simply a symbol of Christ's presence among us.

Berengar’s teaching actually helped the Church. In response to his denial of an essential element of the deposit of faith, the Church began to teach more extensively about the Real Presence. Interestingly enough, in the pursuing discussion of his teaching among theologians and bishops, he retracted what he said at least five times.

Finally, at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the Church formally defined that "by divine power bread and wine are transubstantiated into the Body and Blood" (canon 1). The doctrine of the Real Presence is simply, yet profoundly, this: the Eucharist is the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ under the appearances of bread and wine.

Under the appearances of bread and wine. This means it is not bread. It is not wine. It is the Body and Blood of Christ. What a great disservice to the faith of the Church when it is said at communion time that the wine will be distributed in such and such a way or the bread will be given out in a certain fashion. Why not call Holy Communion what it truly is: the Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ?

The fourth gospel conspicuously lacks the narrative of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. But John is deeply Eucharistic in his gospel. The day after Jesus performed the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, John records Jesus teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. Jesus openly declares that he had come to give us his flesh and his blood as true food and true drink (cf. Jn 6:26-58). To many, his teaching was strange and difficult to accept. Many who had been following him complained, “This is hard saying! Who can accept it?” (Jn 6:60). Some of his disciples stopped following him because of his teaching on the Eucharist. Jesus let them go.

“Then, as now, the Eucharist remains a "sign of contradiction" and can only be so because a God who makes himself flesh and sacrifices himself for the life of the world throws human wisdom into crisis” (Pope Benedict XVI, Homily at St. John Lateran, June 7, 2007). True following of Jesus includes acceptance of the sacred gift of the Eucharist. And proper faith in the Eucharist as the Real Presence opens the way to understand all the dimensions of this mystery and the sacredness of our entire life.

Bishop Arthur Serratelli, S.T.D., S.S.L., D.D.