The Spirit of the Liturgy

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Part One: The Essence of the Liturgy

Chapter 1 - Liturgy and Life: The Place of the Liturgy in Reality

• "A people without a common rule of law cannot live. It destroys itself in anarchy, which is a parody of freedom, its exaltation to the point of abolition. When every man lives without law, every man lives without freedom." (p. 7)

• "It is only, therefore, when man's relationship with God is right that all of his other relationships--his relationships with his fellowmen, his dealings with the rest of creation--can be in good order." (p. 8)

• "Even the decidedly atheistic, materialistic systems create their own forms of cult, though, of course, they can only be an illusion and strive in vain, by bombastic trumpeting, to conceal their nothingness." (p. 8)

Chapter 2 - Liturgy--Cosmos--History

• "And so we can now say that the goal of worship and the goal of creation as a whole are one and the same--divination, a world of freedom and love. But this means that the historical makes its appearance in the cosmic. This cosmos is not a kind of closed building, a stationary container in which history may be chance take place. It is itself movement, from its one beginning to its one end. In a sense, creation is history.

This can be understood in several ways. For example, against the background of the modern evolutionary world view, Teilhard de Chardin depicted the cosmos as a process of ascent, a series of unions. From very simple beginnings the path leads to ever greater and more complex unities, in which multiplicity is not abolished but merged into a growing synthesis leading to the "Noosphere", in which spirit and its understanding embrace the whole and are blended into a kind of living organism. Invoking the epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, Teilhard looks on Christ as the energy that strives toward the Noosphere and finally incorporates everything in its 'fullness'. From here Teilhard went on to give a new meaning to Christian worship: the transubstantiated Host is the anticipation of the transformation and divination of matter in the christological 'fullness'. In his view, the Eucharist provides the movement of the cosmos with its direction; it anticipates its goal and at the same time urges it on." (p. 12)

• "But everything is bound up with freedom, and the creature has the freedom to turn the positive exitus of its creation around, as it were, to rupture in the Fall: this is the refusal to be dependent, saying No to the reditus. Love is seen as dependence and is rejected. In its place come autonomy and autarchy: existing from oneself and in oneself, being a god of one's own making. The arch from exitus to reditus is broken. The return is no longer desired, and ascent by one's own powers proves to be impossible." (p. 15)

• "For them [the Fathers], the sheep caught in the thorn bush and unable to find its way home is a metaphor for man in general. He cannot get out of the thicket and find his way back to God. The shepherd who rescues him and takes him home is the Logos himself, the eternal Word, the eternal Meaning of the universe dwelling in the Son. He it is who makes his way to us and takes the sheep onto his shoulders, that is, he assumes human nature, and as the God-Man he carries man the creature home to God. And so the reditus becomes possible." (p. 15)

Part Two: Time and Space in the Liturgy

Chapter 1: The Relationship of the Liturgy to Time and Space: Some Preliminary Questions

• "Christian liturgy is no longer replacement worship but the coming of the representative Redeemer to us, an entry into his representation that is an entry into reality itself. We do indeed participate in the heavenly liturgy, but this participation is mediated to us through earthly signs, which the Redeemer has shown to us as the place where his reality is to be found. In liturgical celebration there is a kind of turning around of exitus to reditus, of departure to return, of God's descent to our ascent. The liturgy is the means by which earthly time is inserted into the time of Jesus Christ and into its present. It is the turning point in the process of redemption. The Shepherd takes the lost sheep onto his shoulders and carries it home." (p. 32)

Chapter 2: Sacred Places--The Significance of the Church Building

• "The destroyed Temple is no longer regarded as the place of God's earthly presence. The Temple built of stone has ceased to express the hope of Christians; its curtain is torn forever. Christians look towards the east, the rising sun." (p. 36)

Chapter 3: The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer

• "Despite all the variations in practice that have taken place far into the second millennium, one thing has remained clear for the whole of Christendom: praying toward the east is a tradition that goes back to the beginning." (p. 40)

Chapter 4: The Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament

• "So let no one say, 'The Eucharist is for eating, not looking at.' It is not 'ordinary bread', as the most ancient traditions constantly emphasize. Eating it--as we have just said--is a spiritual process, involving the whole man. 'Eating' it means worshipping it. Eating it means letting it come into me, so that my 'I' is transformed and opens up into the great 'we', so that we become 'one' in him (cf. Gal 3:16). Thus adoration is not opposed to Communion, nor is it merely added to it. No, Communion only reaches its true depths when it is supported and surrounded by adoration. The Eucharistic Presence in the tabernacle does not set another view of the Eucharist alongside or against the Eucharistic celebration, but simply signifies its complete fulfillment. For this Presence has the effect, of course, of keeping the Eucharist forever in the church." (p. 48)

Chapter 5: Sacred Time

• "When the eternal Word assumed human existence at his Incarnation, he also assumed temporality. He drew time into the sphere of eternity. Christ is himself the bridge between time and eternity. At first it seems as if there can be no connection between the 'always' of eternity and the 'flowing away' of time. But now the Eternal One himself has taken time to himself." (p. 50)

• "Between the two dates of March 25 and December 25 comes the feast of the Forerunner, St. John the Baptist, on June 24, at the time of the summer solstice. The link between the dates can now be seen as a liturgical and cosmic expression of the Baptist's words: 'He [Christ] must increase, but I must decrease' (Jn 3:30). The birthday of St. John the Baptist takes place on the date when the days begin to shorten, just as the birthday of Christ takes place when they begin again to lengthen." (p. 59)

Part Three: Art and Liturgy

Chapter 1: The Question of Images

• "Perhaps the most telling episode of all is that of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Their hearts are transformed, so that, through the outward events of Scripture, they can discern its inward center, from which everything comes and to which everything tends: the cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. They then detain their mysterious companion and give him hospitality, and at the breaking of the bread they experience in reverse fashion what happened to Adam and Eve when they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil: their eyes are opened. Now they no longer see just the externals but the reality that is not apparent to their senses yet shines through their senses: it is the Lord, now alive in a new way. In the icon it is not the facial features that count (though icons essentially adhere to the appearance of the acheiropoietos). No, what matters is the new kind of seeing." (p. 65)

• "The Second Council of Nicaea and all the following councils concerned with icons regard it as a confession of faith in the Incarnation and iconoclasm as a denial of the Incarnation, as the summation of all heresies. The Incarnation means, in the first place, that the invisible God enters into the question of images in the visible world, so that we, who are bound to matter, can know him." (p. 66)

• "God seeks us where we are, not so that we stay there, but so that we may come to be where he is, so that we may get beyond ourselves." (p. 66)

• "Iconoclasm rests ultimately on a one-sided apophatic theology, which recognizes only the Wholly Other-ness of the God beyond all images and words, a theology that in the final analysis regards revelation as the inadequate human reflection of what is eternally imperceptible. But if this is the case, faith collapses." (p. 66)

• "But, as Evdokimov says, there is also an apophatic Yes, not just an apophatic No, the denial of all likeness. Following Gregory Palamas, he emphasizes that in his essence God is radically transcendent, but in his his existence he can be, and wants to be, represented as the Living One. God is the Wholly Other, but he is powerful enough to be able to show himself. And he has so fashioned his creature that is capable of "seeing" him and loving him." (p. 67)

• "What is more, art itself, which is impressionism and expressionism explored the extreme possibilities of the sense of sight, becomes literally object-less. Art turns into experimenting with self-created worlds, empty "creativity", which no longer perceives the Creator Spiritus, the Creator Spirit. It attempts to take his place, and yet, in so doing, it manages to produce only what is arbitrary and vacuous, bringing home to man the absurdity of his role as creator." (p. 71)

Chapter 2: Music and Liturgy

• "The alliance of love and song came into the Old Testament in a rather curious way, namely, through the acceptance of the Song of Songs. This was a collection of thoroughly human love songs, but almost certainly its acceptance involved a far deeper interpretation. These very beautiful love poems of Israel could be seen as the inspired words of Sacred Scripture because of the conviction that, in this serenading of human love, the mystery of the love of God and Israel shines through." (p. 76)

Part Four: Liturgical Form

Chapter 2: The Body and the Liturgy

• "This oratio--the Eucharistic Prayer, the 'Canon'--is really more than speech; it is actio in the highest sense of the word. For what happens in it is that the human actio (as performed hitherto by the priests in the various religions of the world) steps back and makes way for the actio divina, the action of God. In this oratio the priest speaks with the I of the Lord--'This is my Body', 'This is my Blood.' He knows that he is not now speaking from his own resources but in virtue of the Sacrament that he has received, he has become the voice of Someone Else, who is now speaking and acting. This action of God, which takes place through human speech, is the real 'action' for which all of creation is in expectation. The elements of the earth are transubstantiated, pulled, so to speak, from their creaturely anchorage, grasped at the deepest ground of their being, and changed into the Body and Blood of the Lord. The New Heaven and the New Earth are anticipated. The real 'action' in the liturgy in which we are all supposed to participate is the action of God himself. This is what is new and distinctive about the Christian liturgy: God himself acts and does what is essential." (p. 94)

• "True, the Sacrifice of the Logos is accepted already forever. But we must still pray for it to become our sacrifice, that we ourselves, as we said, may be transformed into the Logos (logisiert), conformed to the Logos, and so be made the true Body of Christ. This is the issue, and that is what we have to pray for. This petition itself is a way into the Incarnation and the Resurrection, the path that we take in the wayfaring state of our existence. In this real 'action', in this prayerful approach to participation, there is no difference between priest and laity." (p. 95)

• "The point is that, ultimately, the difference between the actio Christi and our own action is done away with. There is only one action, which is at the same time his and ours--ours because we have become 'one body and one spirit' with him. The uniqueness of the Eucharistic liturgy lies precisely in the fact that God himself is acting and that we are drawn into that action of God. Everything else is, therefore, secondary." (p. 95)

• "The bodily gesture itself is the bearer of the spiritual meaning, which is precisely that of worship. Without the worship, the bodily gesture would be meaningless, while the spiritual act must of its very nature, because of the psychosomatic unity of man, express itself in the bodily gesture. The two aspects are united in the one word, because in a very profound way they belong together. When kneeling becomes merely external, a merely physical act, it becomes meaningless. On the other hand, when someone tries to take worship back into the purely spiritual realm and refuses to give it embodied form, the act of worship evaporates, for what is purely spiritual is inappropriate to the nature of man. Worship is one of those fundamental acts that affect the whole man. That is why bending the knee before the presence of the living God is something we cannot abandon." (p. 105)

• "The man who learns to believe learns to kneel, and a faith or liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core." (p. 107)

• "Whenever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of the liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment." (p. 109)

• "Liturgy can only attract people when it looks, not at itself, but at God, when it allows him to enter and act. Then something truly unique happens, beyond competition, and people have a sense that more has taken place than a recreational activity. None of the Christian rites includes dancing. What people call dancing in the Ethiopian rite or the Zairean form of the Roman liturgy is in fact a rhythmically ordered procession, very much in keeping with the dignity of the occasion. It provides an inner discipline and order for the various stages of the liturgy, bestowing on them beauty, and above all, making them worthy of God." (p. 109)

• "When the rite is respected and animated from within, unity and diversity are not in opposition." (p. 111)

• "Liturgical education ought to regard it as its duty to facilitate this inner process, so that in the common experience of silence the inner process becomes a truly liturgical event and the silence itself is filled with content." (p. 116)

• "In 1978, to the annoyance of many liturgists, I said that in no sense does the whole Canon always have to be said out loud." (p. 118)