Entering the Kingdom

The liturgy begins...

Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And blessed be his Kingdom, now and for ever. Amen.

Because that's where we're going in the liturgy... entering that Kingdom. Entering that life. God's life--the Trinitarian life: Movement, love, infinite depth... creation, not out of necessity, but out of love, joy, delight.

I wonder if I can even go there. I wonder if I can even write these words. Yes, but only to say right away that they are inadequate beyond measure. And yet we have to go there, right? Because in the liturgy that's where the Church goes.

Entering the Kingdom, or rather, the Kingdom coming to us (is there a difference? Maybe). The important thing is this: Whatever the liturgy is, it's not less than a taste of the Kingdom here and now (even if it's only a taste because it's fullness lies in our future where Christ stretches out his arms to draw us to himself).

Why, then, do we want less? Why do we settle for cheap entertainment, interesting words, maybe a spark of insight and even (usually) less than that? Cheap thrills are regularly recognized as the lure away from real communion with God outside the Church. Why should we expect it to be any different in the Church?

We don't even know who we are...

We don't even know who we are until Christ shows us to ourselves... And still we spend so much time and energy asserting a self that we don't even know.

Un-spontaneous

In The Spirit of the Liturgy, Benedict XVI says that liturgy is un-spontaneous… Maybe that’s a little awkward, but it's right on. The point is that “creativity” in the liturgy in the sense it’s usually meant is exactly wrong. The liturgy is a gift from beyond us. Not that it doesn’t grow and change and develop, but it does so organically—over time—under the guidance of the Spirit, not according to the idiosyncratic sensibilities of individuals or dioceses or national Churches. Episcopalians (in seizing on the liturgy as our “added value” over other churches while at the same time losing confidence in the truth and power of the received forms as evidenced in its need to “tweak” it*) have largely forgotten that.

Anyway, see the section called “Rite” in The Spirit of the Liturgy. Benedict says it much better than I did/can.


*I'm not talking about the 1979 Prayer Book, BTW, which I think is a very Catholic book overall, restoring the Triduum (and the rhythms of the Church year in general) and Baptism and Eucharist to their proper, central place.

Modernity and Post-modernity

What has modernity (and post-modernity) brought us? What is so good? That we live a little longer? But what if we aren't living at all?

Between Ascension and Pentecost

Jesus in heaven. Spirit on the way. Still in Easter season. Getting ready for mission. We are it... Well, not exactly. It is the Spirit who comes and enlivens us to be the Church, Christ's Body.

Easter as the remaking of creation... of human nature... in Christ. But now, moving toward Pentecost, we're at the point where we're about to receive that LIFE into our lives--to be enhypostasized into God's life (see V. Lossky).

The fact of what Christ has accomplished... we celebrate that during Holy Week/Easter. Now, how will our particular lives be reshaped to become a new version of it? This is what Pentecost is. The Paschal Mystery transforming us (and all of creation) into it.

Sola scriptura

Codes. Symbols. Text. (Don't even images function in this way today?)

Text based culture wants to turn everything into a text so that we can read it as individuals. So that we can own it. The world as Book. Sola Scriptura.

The alternative? Catholicism of course.