On the 40th Day of Easter

In the Philippines and in some other countries, the celebration of the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord will be transferred to Sunday and it will take the place of the 7th Sunday of Easter. The reason for this is that the Ascension Feast is not a Holy Day of Obligation here and so the Feast is transferred to Sunday when people are obliged to assist at Mass.

I have no objection to celebrating an External Solemnity of the Ascension on Sunday so that more people can participate in it. However, I have issue with not celebrating this Feast on the ACTUAL 40TH DAY OF EASTER. In most parishes today, there is not even a hint that om this day, Christ ascended into heaven. It is as if nothing happened today. Why is that an issue for me?

First of all, the Acts of the Apostles is written: "After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. " (Acts 1:3) The Scriptures testify to the fact that the Ascension happened on the 40th day of the Resurrection. When we do not celebrate the Ascension today (the 40th day) because we will celebrate it on Sunday, then we are giving out the message that Christ our Lord ascended to heaven on the 43rd day of Easter.

Before the Vatican II liturgical reform, the celebration of the external solemnities on Sundays was already practiced. Its purpose was to enable more people to celebrate the mystery in as much as Sunday was an obligatory day for Mass. However, even if there was an external solemnity, still, the Feast of the Ascension was celebrated on Ascension Thursday, which is the actual 40th day. Perhaps, fewer people are able to assist at Mass but at least there was no liturgical denial that the Lord ascended to heaven on the 40th day.

In fact, in the new English Translation of the Roman Missal, the collect for the Vigil Mass of the Ascension reads: "O God, whose Son TODAY ascended to the heavens as the apostles looked on, grant, we pray, that in accordance with his promise, we may be worthy for him to live with us always on earth..." If the Vigil Mass were celebrated on Saturday evening (which would be the eve of the 43rd day), would he really be honest in the prayer if he said "Your Son TODAY ascended to the heavens..."? Of course, the liturgists would appeal to the argument that the prayer refers to the Liturgical Hodie (today) but these are distinctions in theology which the ordinary faithful are not familiar with. The same is said by the Preface of the Ascension: "The Lord Jesus,,,ascended TODAY to the highest heavens..." The same is said by the Solemn Blessing of the Feast: "May the almighty God bless you for ON THIS VERY DAY his only begotten Son pierced the heights of heaven."

I repeat that I do not have any objection to the celebration of an external feast on Sunday for the sake of the people who cannot go to Mass on Ascension Thursday. But let us not liturgically deny on the actual 40th day that Christ ascended to heaven. To my opinion, we have to keep the Feast on the actual 40th day itself.

The Transfiguration and the Pontificate of Benedict XVI

The papacy of Pope Benedict XVI is like the Transfiguration of the Lord. At the Transfiguration, our Lord manifested his glory as God's only begotten Son - that glory which lay hidden beneath the veil of his human nature. During his pontificate, the Holy Father unveiled for us the true glory of Catholic Liturgy - that glory which, for some time, lay hidden beneath much of the confusion that occurred after the 2nd Vatican Council. For some time, the liturgy seemed to be no more than just a social assembly, a fraternal meeting of members of the Church, a fellowship and even to some extent, a show that was meant to entertain. For some time, many members of the Church lost sight of the Supernatural in the Liturgy. The Holy Father unveiled for us the  true glory of Catholic Liturgy. He reminded us that Liturgy is not about us, but about God. He reminded us that Liturgy is not some project made by some committee but a gift that we have received from God. He reminded us that Liturgy is not an exchange of pleasantries between celebrant and people but rather, it is a procession towards the Lord. He taught us that Liturgy is seeking the face of the Lord. Indeed, in the illustrious pontificate of Benedict XVI, the glory of Christ's face was once again beheld through the Liturgy.

My only worry is that at the Transfiguration, the Lord gave his disciples only a brief glimpse of his hidden glory. Will the close of Benedict's papacy also hide again the glory of the Liturgy which shone for but a brief moment? As the radiance of Christ's face will later on disappear to give way to the blood, sweat and spittle of the passion, will the same happen to the Liturgy? Will the glory of the Liturgy be covered once again with human attempts to make it more man-oriented than God-oriented? Will Liturgy be once again a project subject to the tinkering of human committees? I hope not.

But should it happen, I am confident that just as the radiance of Christ's face will reappear on a permanent basis at the Resurrection, so also will the glory and radiance of the Liturgy be made manifest again at a time we do not know. How I wish that the glory of the Liturgy which was unveiled for us by the Holy Father should never fade! How  I wish that the Benedictine Reform continues! 

This gives us reason to pray and fast even more seriously for the election of the new Pope when the Holy Father abdicates from the papal throne. Like Queen Ester and Mordecai and the Jewish People, we should fast and pray as if our lives depended on it. May the Holy Spirit appoint a Pope who would show the splendor of the Liturgy even more. Let us pray and fast as if our lives depended on it!

Truth in Liturgy

Over the social networks, I found out that TV Masses here are shot weeks before the actual Sunday when they are supposed to be aired. A Palm Sunday Mass was offered in some church on the first week of Lent for the purpose of airing it on Palm Sunday. I am concerned about the way the Mass is treated like a TV series which may be taped many weeks before the actual airing. Is it right to shoot the Mass weeks before the actual feast?

In the liturgical reform after the second Vatican Council, there was an emphasis on the return to the "Truth of the Hours" in matters concerning the Liturgy of the Hours. This is the reform of a prevalent liturgical practice wherein the celebration of matins and lauds were anticipated on the night before (as in the case of the Tenebrae of Holy Week) or the celebration of all the hours were lumped together at the most convenient time of the priest. Also, in the 1955 reform of Holy Week, the hour of the celebration of Easter Vigil was transferred from the morning of Holy Saturday to the hours of the night. 

If the "truth of the hour" mattered, should the "truth of the day" be treated differently? The Liturgy is not a game of "make believe" but an actual encounter with the Blessed Trinity. It is not honest (and therefore not right) to offer the Mass of Palm Sunday when it is not yet Palm Sunday. Perhaps it is true that the Mass will be aired on Palm Sunday itself but when it was actually celebrated, it was not yet Palm Sunday.

The Holy Father Benedict XVI reminded us that the Liturgy is not a show. It is not meant to be a form of entertainment. Liturgy is an encounter with God.  Liturgy is prayer in Spirit and in TRUTH.

Liturgy is the Place where the Church is Fully Experienced

Liturgy is a going out of being closed in on ourselves...

The Holy Father, in the General Audience (October 3, 2012), gave a catechism on the Ecclesial Nature of Liturgical Prayer. The highlights would be the following:

"In the Catechism of the Catholic Church we read: “In the liturgy of the New Covenant every liturgical action, especially the celebration of the Eucharist and the sacraments, is an encounter between Christ and the Church” (n. 1097); therefore, it is the “whole Christ”, the whole Community, the Body of Christ united with her Head who celebrates. The liturgy then is not a kind of “self-manifestation” of a community; instead, it is a going out of simply “being ourselves” -- of being closed in on ourselves -- and the portal to the great banquet, the entrance into the great living community, in which God himself nourishes us. The liturgy involves universality, and this universal character must enter ever anew into everyone’s awareness. The Christian liturgy is the worship of the universal temple, which is the Risen Christ. His arms are extended on the Cross in order to draw all men into the embrace of God’s eternal love. It is the worship of heaven opened wide. It is never merely the event of a single community, with its own position in time and space. It is important that every Christian feel and really be inserted into this universal “we”, which provides the foundation and refuge for the “I” in the Body of the Christ, which is the Church.

"In this, we must always be mindful of and accept the logic of the Incarnation of God: He has drawn close, become present, by entering into history and into human nature, by becoming one of us. And this presence continues in the Church, his Body. The liturgy then is not the memory of past events, but rather the living presence of Christ’s Paschal Mystery, which transcends and unites both time and space. If the centrality of Christ does not emerge at the forefront in the celebration, we will not have Christian liturgy, which is totally dependent upon the Lord and sustained by his creative presence. God acts by means of Christ and we cannot act except through him and in him. Every day, the conviction must grow in us that the liturgy is not ours, my own “doing”; rather, it is God’s action in us and with us.

"Therefore, it is neither the individual – priest or faithful – nor the group who celebrates the liturgy; rather, it is primarily God’s action through the Church, who has her own history, her own rich tradition and her own creativity. This universality and fundamental openness, which is proper to the liturgy as a whole, is one of the reasons why it cannot be designed or modified by individual communities or by experts, but must be faithful to the forms of the universal Church.

Even in the liturgy of the smallest communities, the entire Church is always present. For this reason, there are no “strangers” in the liturgical community. In every liturgical celebration the whole Church participates together, heaven and earth, God and men. The Christian liturgy, although it is celebrated in a concrete place and space and expresses the “yes” of a particular community, is by its very nature catholic; it comes from the whole and leads to the whole, in unity with the Pope, with the Bishops, with believers of all times and ages and from all places. The more a celebration is animated by this awareness, the more fruitfully will the authentic meaning of the liturgy there be realized.

"Dear friends, the Church is made visible in many ways: in charitable works, in missionary endeavors, in the personal apostolate that every Christian should carry out in his own environment. But the place where she is fully experienced as the Church is in the liturgy: it is the act, we believe, whereby God enters into our reality and we can encounter him, we can touch him. It is the act whereby we enter into contact with God: He comes to us, and we are enlightened by him. Therefore, when in our reflections we focus our attention only on how we may render it attractive, interesting, beautiful, we risk forgetting the essential: the liturgy is celebrated for God and not for us; it is his work; he is the subject; and we should open ourselves to him and allow ourselves to be guided by him and by his Body, which is the Church."

The Link: ZENIT - On the Ecclesial Nature of Liturgical Prayer

The Catechetical Dimension of Liturgy

Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone gave this address to the 62nd Italian Liturgical Week, in behalf of the Holy Father. Here are salient points:

"The Church, especially when she celebrates the divine mysteries, recognizes and manifests herself as a reality that cannot be reduced to a solely earthly and organizational aspect. It must appear clearly in these mysteries that the beating heart of the community should be recognized beyond the narrow yet necessary limits of ritualism, because the liturgy is not what man does, but what God does with his admirable and gratuitous condescendence. This primacy of God in the liturgical action was highlighted by the Servant of God Paul VI at the closing of the second period of the Vatican Council, when he announced the proclamation of the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium: "In this event we observe that the correct order has been respected of the values and duties: thus we have recognized that the post of honor is reserved to God; that as first duty we are called to raise prayers to God; that the sacred Liturgy is the primary source of this divine exchange in which the life of God is communicated to us; it is the first school of our soul, it is the first gift that must be made by us to the Christian people." (Paul VI, Address for the Closing of the Second Period, December 4, 1963, AAS [1964], 34).

"In addition to expressing the absolute priority of God, the liturgy manifests its being "God with us," since "being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction." (Benedict XVI, encyclical Deus Caritas Est, 1). In this connection, God is the great educator of his people, the loving, wise, tireless guide in an through the liturgy, the action of God in the today of the Church."

"From this foundational aspect, the 62nd National Liturgical Week is called to reflect on the educational dimension of the liturgical action, in as much as it is a "permanent school of formation around the Risen Lord, educational and relative place in which the faith acquires form and is transmitted" (Italian Episcopal Conference, Educare alla Vita Buona del Vangelo, n. 390). For this purpose, it is necessary to reflect ever better on the relation between catechesis and liturgy, yet rejecting all undue instrumentalization of the liturgy with "catechetical" ends. In this regard, the living Patristic tradition of the Church teaches us that the liturgical celebration itself, without losing its specificity, always has an important catechetical dimension (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 33). In fact, in as much as it is the "the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit" (ibid., 14), the liturgy can be called the permanent catechesis of the Church, the inexhaustible source of catechesis, precious catechesis in act (cf. Italian Episcopal Conference, Il Rinnovamento della catechesis, Feb. 7, 1970, 113). As an integrated experience of catechesis, celebration and life, it expresses in addition the maternal support of the Church, thus helping to develop the growth of the believer's Christian life and the maturation of his conscience.

ZENIT - Papal Message on Liturgy as Source of Catechesis

Interesting Liturgical Commentaries from Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff on Vatican Website

Easter Vigil Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite 2010

Easter Vigil Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite 2010

The Holy Father during Good Friday services 2010

The New Liturgical Movement brought to our attention the liturgical commentaries coming from the Office of the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff on the Vatican Website. At last, something is said about the centrality of the Crucifix in the Liturgical Celebration and this on the Vatican website itself!

How I wish the liturgists in the Philippines would read this! I remember that once I was reprimanded by a liturgist about the Crucifix I placed on the altar. He said, "The Cross is not the center of the celebration." I asked, "Father, if the Cross is not the center of the celebration, then, what is the center of the celebration?" He gave a very strange answer, "The Celebration is the center of the Celebration!" I do not know what is it with these liturgists who are allergic to the Cross on the altar!

Follow this link: Interesting Liturgical Commentaries from Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff on Vatican Website

Dominus Vobiscum

I get upset whenever I hear a priest greet the people: "The Lord is with you!" I even heard some priests complain that "Dominus vobiscum" is so archaic a greeting that it no longer is relevant to our modern use. With the new translations returning to "and with your spirit", many liberals object that this response does not mean anything more than the formula we use today: "and also with you." I came across this very enlightening article which I think would make us appreciate the return to the more literal translation of "et cum spiritu tuo."

Check out this link: Psallite Sapienter: Dominus Vobiscum

Liturgy as Expression of the Mystery of the Holy

To the advocates of "liturgical creativity", some words from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI):

"The liturgy is not a show, a spectacle, requiring brilliant producers and talented actors. The life of the liturgy does not consist in 'pleasant' surprises and in attractive 'ideas' but in solemn repetitions. It cannot be an expression of of what is current and transitory, for it expresses the mystery of the Holy. Many people have felt and said that liturgy must be 'made' by the whole community if it is really to belong to them. Such an attitude has led to the 'success' of the liturgy being measured by its effects at the level of spectacle and entertainment. It is to lose sight of what is distinctive to the liturgy, which does not come from what we do but from the fact that something is taking place here that all of us together cannot 'make'. In the liturgy there is a power, and energy at work which not even the Church as a whole can generate: what is manifests is the Wholly Other, coming to us through the community (which is hence not sovereign but servant, purely instrumental)."

J. Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, 126

Liturgical Creativity?

Creativity in liturgy seems to be the rule of the day. We have forgotten that Liturgy is something which the Church received from the Lord. We have lost sight of the humility which is required of all who approach the Sacred Liturgy. To the mind of many ministers, liturgy is simply a vehicle for self-expression. We have forgotten that we are not lords of liturgy but its servants.

"Man cannot simply 'make' worship. If God does not reveal himself, man is clutching empty space. Moses says to Pharoah: '[W]e do not know with what we must serve the Lord' (Ex. 10:26). These words display a fundamental law of all liturgy. When God does not reveal himself, man can, of course, from the sense of God within him, build altars 'to the unknown god' (cf. Acts 17:23). He can reach out toward God in his thinking and try to feel his way toward him. But real liturgy implies that God responds and reveals how we can worship him. In any form, liturgy includes some kind of 'institution'. It cannot spring from imagination, our own creativity - then it would remain just a cry in the dark or mere self-affirmation. Liturgy implies a real relationship with Another, who reveals himself to us and gives our existence a new direction."

J. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 21-22.