Liturgy lacks imagination

In the August 27, 2007, issue of America, Cardinal Godfried Danneels writes about liturgy 40 years after the Council. The entire article is deserving of a careful read, but here are my favorite lines:

How many celebrants consider the homily to be the climax of the liturgy and the barometer of the celebration? How many have the feeling that the celebration is more or less over after the Liturgy of the Word?

Too much attention is also given to the intellectual approach to the liturgy. Imagination, affect, emotion and, properly understood, aesthetics are not given enough room....

Liturgy is neither the time nor the place for catechesis....

Nor should liturgy be used as a means for disseminating information, no matter how essential that information might be. It should not be forced to serve as an easy way to notify the participants about this, that and the other thing. One does not attend the liturgy on Mission Sunday in order to learn something about this or that mission territory....

The church fathers, too, adhered to the principle that mystagogical catechesis (in which the deepest core of the sacred mysteries was laid bare) should come only after the sacraments of initiation. Their pedagogical approach was “sensorial”: participate first and experience things at an existential level in the heart of the community, and only then explain....

Knowing Christ is our goal

When I was a kid, we didn’t have “tech.” If we did, I would have been identified as “tech-challenged.” I once tried to make a telephone out of two soup cans and string. Let’s just say AT&T’s R&D department has nothing to fear from me. I also bought a set of those X-ray glasses that were in the back of the old Superman comics. In the ad, the kid using them could see people’s bones. When I finally got them, they were two plastic rims, each encasing a single chicken feather. I guess it was supposed to look like you were seeing “bones” when you looked through the feathers.

My next door neighbor, on the other hand, two years younger than I, was a budding scientist. He built a volcano one summer. It was about four feet high and spewed rivers of colorful muck all over his father’s driveway. He also built a working telegraph, which put my tin-can phone to shame. We stretched the wires between our bedroom windows, and he’d send me Morse code messages. The fact that I didn’t know Morse code dimmed neither his enthusiasm nor my amazement.

I feel the same amazement when I see children text messaging their friends or tricking out their MySpace pages. While I struggle to set the alarm correctly on my cell phone, people who have to be “this high” to get on a Disney ride are practicing a tech wizardry that must surely be classified somewhere under the dark arts.

How do we know?

I suppose I should be more disturbed than amazed by this. After all, as an elder to these tech-savvy youngsters, I should be the one who, after long years of experience and study, has acquired a superior and even mysterious knowledge. But I don’t think of knowledge that way.

To think of knowledge as something I have, like a bottle of water, which I open up and pour over you at my discretion, isn’t really how knowledge works. That bottle of water is more like information

Knowledge on the other hand is more like the ocean. It’s not mine to give or to keep, but only to discover. I can help you discover it or not. But if you get anywhere near it, you’ll discover it with or without me. The more of us who dive in together, the more we will discover. The more we will know.

As catechists and teachers, our ministry is about discovering knowledge, not dispensing information. The General Directory for Catechesis says our goal is “to know [Christ’s] ‘mystery,’… the requirements…in his gospel message, and the paths that he has laid down for anyone wishing to follow him” (80).

If we discover a new facet of the mystery, we could try to let others know by using my soup-can phone. But the kids will have it posted on their MySpace pages before I can find my can opener. More than any previous generation, they’ve turned the idea of “teaching” on its head. They are teaching us elders what it is to be co-discovers of the Mystery of Christ. Just as the gospel requires. I think that’s amazing.

Mary on Edge: A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

Do not be afraid, Mary.

We hear the gospel words
but any mother can tell you
fear and worry fall heavy on the heart.

Do not be afraid, Mary.

What about colic and ear infections?
What about school?
Will my child have friends?
What will I say when others make fun of my child?

Do not be afraid, Mary.

It began in fear, and the fear did not flee.
It tugged at her heart each time the baby’s cry turned shrill,
each time he ran from the house—as little boys do—
only to come back with a swollen lip or blood matted hair.

Fear.

This son of hers,
cradling lepers with open sores
lifting children into his lap;
going down to the river, out to the desert
out on the sea to pull in fish
with arms bronzed with the sun.

And she knew—as only a mother can know—
blood would string down his arms
now so strong, but once so small.
And nails would pierce the hands she once washed.

And some day soldiers would come—she knew—
they’d come for him.

--Jim Schmitmeyer

Expect September to be full of possibility

It was a warm September day more than 20 years ago, and I was late for my first day on the job. (I hadn’t lived in Twin Cities long enough to fully grasp the difference between I-35E and I-35W.) I didn’t have a key yet and had to ring the bell. The parish secretary answered the door, and she seemed to know who I was. She showed me around the building—a converted rectory—and eventually showed me to my office on the second floor. A real office with a window, a door that closed, and a typewriter on the desk. (Back in those days, personal computers were still too expensive for most church workers.)

She left me there, with instructions on how to use the intercom if I needed anything. I sat down on the armless swivel chair and stared at the wall. I remember two dominant feelings: creeping panic and a sense of unlimited possibility.

The panic eased with time, but the sense that anything is possible never has. Sure, it wanes and waxes, but it seems like every September there is renewed expectation and hope. Perhaps that comes from those early days in the parish. Our parish, like most, was a little drowsy in the summer. But come September, everyone was back from vacation, rested, and ready to go.

One of the first things I did to those unsuspecting-but-well-rested souls was start a liturgy committee. I’m afraid I conducted it a bit like a graduate course, showing off my new master’s degree and my book learning. They were a tolerant bunch of folks though, and together we read the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Environment and Art in Catholic Worship, and Music in Catholic Worship. It was only the third or fourth time I’d read the liturgy documents. It was the first time for most of them. We had a couple of English teachers on the committee who the bemoaned the grammar and sentence structure, especially of the Constitution. But no one failed to get excited by the promise those texts held. Ours was a Vatican II parish. The Council had only closed 15 years earlier, and everyone on the committee knew what liturgy was like before. While they weren’t ready to endorse every trend and fad coming down the pike, they were heart and soul committed to the primary aim of the Council: the full, conscious, and active participation of the people.

Well, that was a long time ago. Some say those days are over, the reform has been completed, and perhaps we should think about returning to some of the practices from before. I don’t know. It doesn’t sound right to me.

The last liturgy committee I served on was just a few years ago. I was a parish volunteer, not the staff liaison. At my first meeting with them, I was the only one who grew up speaking English. I’m pretty sure I was the only one who had read the liturgy documents. But we didn’t talk about that. We didn’t talk about Vatican II. And we really didn’t do much planning. We did talk a lot about what we loved about liturgy.

We also told stories about the best liturgies we’d ever participated in. And every story was about the participation of the folks. In every story, the people were heart and soul fully involved the priestly action of doing the liturgy. We all agreed we wanted more of that.

When he opened the Second Vatican Council, Blessed Pope John XXIII said, “The human family is on the threshold of a new era.” Maybe I’ve got too many “Septembers” under my belt, but it still feels to me like we are only on the threshold. Unlimited possibility lies ahead of us. Why would we ever think of going back?