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Can there really be
special holy places and holy times in the world of Christian faith?
Christian worship is surely a cosmic liturgy, which embraces both heaven
and earth. The epistle to the Hebrews stresses that Christ suffered
‘‘outside the gate’’ and adds this exhortation: ‘‘Therefore let us go
forth to him outside the camp, bearing abuse for him’’ (13:12). Is the
whole world not now his sanctuary? Is sanctity not to be practiced by
living one’s daily life in the right way? Is our divine worship not a
matter of being loving people in our daily life? Is that not how we
become like God and so draw near to the true sacrifice? Can the sacral
be anything other than imitating Christ in the simple patience of daily
life? Can there be any other holy time than the time for practicing love
of neighbor, whenever and wherever the circumstances of our life demand
it?
Whoever asks questions like these touches on a crucial dimension of
the Christian understanding of worship but overlooks something essential
about the permanent limits of human existence in this world, overlooks
the ‘‘not yet’’ that is part of Christian existence and talks as if the
New Heaven and New Earth had already come. The Christ-event and the
growth of the Church out of all the nations, the transition from Temple
sacrifice to universal worship ‘‘in spirit and truth,’’ is the first
important step across the frontier, a step toward the fulfillment of the
promises of the Old Testament. But it is obvious that hope has not yet
fully attained its goal. The New Jerusalem needs no Temple because
Almighty God and the Lamb are themselves its Temple. In this City,
instead of sun and moon, it is the glory of God and its lamp, the Lamb,
that shed their brilliance (cf. Rev 21:22f.). But this City is not yet
here. That is why the Church Fathers described the various stages of
fulfillment, not just as a contrast between Old and New Testaments, but
as the three steps of shadow, image, and reality. In the Church of the
New Testament, the shadow has been scattered by the image: ‘‘[T]he night
is far gone, the day is at hand’’ (Rom 13:12). But, as Saint Gregory
the Great puts it, it is still only the time of dawn, when darkness and
light are intermingled. The sun is rising, but it has still not reached
its zenith. Thus the time of the New Testament is a peculiar kind of
‘‘in-between,’’ a mixture of ‘‘already and not yet.’’ The empirical
conditions of life in this world are still in force, but they have been
burst open, and must be more and more burst open, in preparation for the
final fulfillment already inaugurated in Christ.
This idea of the New Testament as the between-time as image between
shadow and reality, gives liturgical theology its specific form. It
becomes even clearer when we bear in mind the three levels on which
Christian worship operates, the three levels that make it what it is.
There is the middle level, the strictly liturgical level, which is
familiar to us all and is revealed in the words and actions of Jesus at
the Last Supper. These words and actions form the core of Christian
liturgical celebration, which was further constructed out of the
synthesis of the synagogue and Temple liturgies. The sacrificial actions
of the Temple have been replaced by the Eucharistic Prayer, which
enters into what Jesus did at the Last Supper, and by the distribution
of the consecrated gifts. But this properly liturgical level does not
stand on its own. It has meaning only in relation to something that
really happens, to a reality that is substantially present. Otherwise,
it would lack real content, like bank notes without funds to cover them.
The Lord could say that his Body was ‘‘given’’ only because he had in
fact given it; he could present his Blood in the new chalice as shed for
many only because he really had shed it. This Body is not the ever-dead
corpse of a dead man, nor is the Blood the life-element rendered
lifeless. No, sacrifice has be- come gift, for the Body given in love
and the Blood given in love have entered, through the Resurrection, into
the eternity of love, which is stronger than death. Without the Cross
and Resurrection, Christian worship is null and void, and a theology of
liturgy that omitted any reference to them would really just be talking
about an empty game.
In considering this foundation of reality that undergirds Christian
liturgy, we need to take account of another important matter. The
Crucifixion of Christ, his death on the Cross, and, in another way, the
act of his Resurrection from the grave, which bestows incorruptibility
on the corruptible, are historical events that happen just once and as
such belong to the past. The word semel (ephapax),
‘‘once for all,’’ which the epistle to the Hebrews emphasizes so
vigorously in contrast to the multitude of repeated sacrifices in the
Old Covenant, is strictly applicable to them. But if they were no more
than facts in the past, like all the dates we learn in history books,
then there could be nothing contemporary about them. In the end, they
would remain beyond our reach. However, the exterior act of being
crucified is accompanied by an interior act of self-giving (the Body is
‘‘given for you’’). ‘‘No one takes [my life] from me,’’ says the Lord in
Saint John’s Gospel, ‘‘but I lay it down of my own accord’’ (10:18).
This act of giving is in no way just a spiritual occurrence. It is a
spiritual act that takes up the bodily into itself, that embraces the
whole man; indeed, it is at the same time an act of the Son. As Saint
Maximus the Confessor showed so splendidly, the obedience of Jesus’
human will is inserted into the everlasting Yes of the Son to the
Father. This ‘‘giving’’ on the part of the Lord, in the passivity of his
being crucified, draws the passion of human existence into the action
of love, and so it embraces all the dimensions of reality—Body, Soul,
Spirit, Logos. Just as the pain of the body is drawn into the pathos of
the mind and becomes the Yes of obedience, so time is drawn into what
reaches beyond time. The real interior act, though it does not exist
without the exterior, transcends time, but since it comes from time,
time can again and again be brought into it. That is how we can become
contemporary with the past events of salvation. Saint Bernard of
Clairvaux has this in mind when he says that the true semel (‘‘once’’) bears within itself the semper
(‘‘always’’). What is perpetual takes place in what happens only once.
In the Bible, the Once for All is emphasized most vigorously in the
epistle to the Hebrews, but the careful reader will discover that the
point made by Saint Bernard expresses its true meaning. The ephapax (‘‘once for all’’) is bound up with the aionios
(‘’everlasting’’). ‘‘Today’’ embraces the whole time of the Church. And
so in the Christian liturgy, we not only receive something from the
past but become contemporaries with what lies at the foundation of that
liturgy. Here is the real heart and true grandeur of the celebration of
the Eucharist, which is more, much more than a meal. In the Eucharist,
we are caught up and made contemporary with the Paschal Mystery of
Christ, in his passing from the tabernacle of the transitory to the
presence and sight of God.
Let us go back to where we started. We said that there is, first, the
level of the event of institution and, secondly, the liturgical making
present, the real liturgical level. I have tried to show how the two
levels are interconnected. Now if past and present penetrate one another
in this way, if the essence of the past is not simply a thing of the
past but the far-reaching power of what follows in the present, then the
future, too, is present in what happens in the liturgy: it ought to be
called, in its essence, an anticipation of what is to come. But we must
not be overhasty. The idea of the eschaton, of the Second Coming of
Christ, immediately comes to mind, and rightly so. But there is yet
another dimension to be considered. This liturgy is, as we have seen,
not about replacement, but about representation, vicarious sacrifice
[Stellvertretung]. Now we can see what this distinction means. The
liturgy is not about the sacrificing of animals, of a ‘‘something’’ that
is ultimately alien to me. This liturgy is founded on the Passion
endured by a man who with his ‘‘I’’ reaches into the mystery of the
living God himself, by the man who is the Son. So it can never be a mere actio liturgica.
Its origin also bears within it its future in the sense that
representation, vicarious sacrifice, takes up into itself those whom it
represents; it is not external to them, but a shaping influence on them.
Becoming contemporary with the Pasch of Christ in the liturgy of the
Church is also, in fact, an anthropological reality. The celebration is
not just a rite, not just a liturgical ‘‘game.’’ It is meant to be
indeed a logike latreia, the ‘‘logicizing’’ of my existence, my
interior contemporaneity with the self-giving of Christ. His
self-giving is meant to become mine, so that I become contemporary with
the Pasch of Christ and assimilated unto God. That is why in the early
Church martyrdom was regarded as a real Eucharistic celebration, the
most extreme actualization of the Christian’s being a contemporary with
Christ, of being united with him. The liturgy does indeed have a bearing
on everyday life, on me in my personal existence. Its aim, as Saint
Paul says in the text already referred to, is that ‘‘our bodies’’ (that
is, our bodily existence on earth) become ‘‘a living sacrifice,’’ united
to the Sacrifice of Christ (cf. Rom 12:1). That is the only explanation
of the urgency of the petitions for acceptance that characterize every
Christian liturgy. A theology that is blind to the connections we have
been considering can only regard this as a contradiction or a lapse into
pre-Christian ways, for, so it will be said, Christ’s Sacrifice was
accepted long ago. True, but in the form of representation it has not
come to an end. The semel (‘‘once for all’’) wants to attain its semper
(‘‘always’’). This Sacrifice is only complete when the world has become
the place of love, as Saint Augustine saw in his City of God. Only
then, as we said at the beginning, is worship perfected and what
happened on Golgotha completed. That is why, in the petitions for
acceptance, we pray that representation become a reality and take hold
of us. That is why, in the prayers of the Roman Canon, we unite
ourselves with the great men who offered sacrifice at the dawn of
history: Abel, Melchizedek, and Abraham. They set out toward the Christ
who was to come. They were anticipations of Christ, or, as the Fathers
say, ‘‘types’’ of Christ. Even his predecessors were able to enter into
the contemporaneousness with him that we beg for ourselves.
It is tempting to say that this third dimension of liturgy, its
suspension between the Cross of Christ and our living entry into him who
suffered vicariously for us and wants to become ‘‘one’’ with us (cf.
Gal 3:28), expresses its moral demands. And without doubt, Christian
worship does contain a moral demand, but it goes much farther than mere
moralism. The Lord has gone before us. He has already done what we have
to do. He has opened a way that we ourselves could not have pioneered,
because our powers do not extend to building a bridge to God. He himself
became that bridge. And now the challenge is to allow ourselves to be
taken up into his being ‘‘for’’ mankind, to let ourselves be embraced by
his opened arms, which draw us to himself. He, the Holy One, hallows us
with the holiness that none of us could ever give ourselves. We are
incorporated into the great historical process by which the world moves
toward the fulfillment of God being ‘‘all in all.’’ In this sense, what
at first seems like the moral dimension is at the same time the
eschatological dynamism of the liturgy. The fullness of Christ, of which
the Captivity Epistles of Saint Paul speak, becomes a reality, and only
thus is the Paschal event completed throughout history. The ‘‘today’’
of Christ lasts right to the end (cf. Heb 4:7ff.).
When we look back on our reflections hitherto in this essay, we see
that we twice encountered—in different contexts—a three-step process.
The liturgy, as we saw, is characterized by a tension that is inherent
in the historical Pasch of Jesus (his Cross and Resurrection) as the
foundation of its reality. The ever-abiding form of the liturgy has been
shaped in what is once and for all; and what is everlasting—the second
step—enters into our present moment in the liturgical action and—the
third step— wants to take hold of the worshipper’s life. The immediate
event—the liturgy—makes sense and has a meaning for our lives only
because it contains the other two dimensions. Past, present, and future
interpenetrate and touch upon eternity. Earlier we became acquainted
with the three stages of salvation history, which progresses, as the
Church Fathers say, from shadow to image to reality. We saw that in our
own time, the time of the Church, we were in the middle stage of the
movement of history. The curtain of the Temple has been torn. Heaven has
been opened up by the union of the man Jesus, and thus of all human
existence, with the living God. But this new openness is only mediated
by the signs of salvation. We need mediation. As yet we do not see the
Lord ‘‘as he is’’. Now if we put the two three-part processes
together—the historical and the liturgical—it becomes clear that the
liturgy gives precise expression to this historical situation. It
expresses the ‘‘between-ness’’ of the time of images, in which we now
find ourselves. The theology of the liturgy is in a special way
‘‘symbolic theology,’’ a theology of symbols, which connects us to what
is present but hidden.
In so saying, we finally discover the answer to the question with
which we started. After the tearing of the Temple curtain and the
opening up of the heart of God in the pierced heart of the Crucified, do
we still need sacred space, sacred time, mediating symbols? Yes, we do
need them, precisely so that, through the ‘‘image,’’ through the sign,
we learn to see the openness of heaven.
We need them to give us the capacity to know the mystery of God in the
pierced heart of the Crucified. 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.
Editorial Note: This full essay is an excerpt from: Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy: Commemorative Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2018), 67-75. Used by kind permission of Ignatius Press. All rights reserved. Editorial Statement: This reflection is an invitation to the McGrath Institute’s conference at Notre Dame celebrating the 50th anniversary of Introduction to Christianity. This event starts this weekend and will feature many of the world’s preeminent experts in the field of Benedict XVI’s thought. Posts will be collected here as they are published.
Featured Image: The Good Shepherd mosaic in the mausoleum of Galla Placidia [detail], 5th c., taken on: 27 April 2015, taken by: Petar Milošević; Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
