The Moral Theology
of the Liturgy: Ecclesia de eucharistia and
theosis
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
University
of Dallas
November 16, 2006
(NB. This is the text for a presentation I gave at the University
of Dallas commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Second Vatican
Council. )
One way to approach
to this topic is to talk about the liturgy of the Church as
instructive for the moral life of the Christian, that is, to explore
how Roman Catholic liturgy, particularly the liturgy of the
Eucharist, is an engine for prayer, a source of and guide to
holiness, and a push outward toward the evangelization of the world.
Though all of this true, it doesn’t go far enough.
In this brief
presentation, I will argue that the Church’s liturgy is more than
moral pedagogy, more than spiritual refreshment, and more than
exhortation to be socially just. It is the Christian life brought to
concentration, highly focused, and distilled into a moment of moral
clarity, an instant where the divine and the human meet in a
transformative act of sacrifice, an act of sanctification through
assent and surrender; in other words, the Church’s liturgy is that
moment and that place where the human person meets his/her final end:
divinization, theosis, a transfiguration of the merely human into the
perfectly human.
This is not simply a
reorientation of the Christian’s moral life toward “being good”
behaviorally. Nor is it simply a refurbishing of a dilapidated but
serviceable moral house. If we take seriously the prayer of the
Church’s liturgy, particularly the prayer of the Mass, we cannot
help but come away from its celebration stunned by what we have
experienced, overwhelmed by what we have committed ourselves to, and
driven by an almost ecstatic desire to be Truth, Goodness, and Beauty
in the world.
My thesis, then, is: the
liturgy of the Church is the time and place when and where we meet
ourselves as God created us to be forever.
I. The terms
I take as my working definition of “moral
theology” the definition offered by Pope John Paul II in his 1993
letter, Veritatis splendor:
The Church's moral reflection…has also developed
in the specific form of the theological science called “moral
theology,” a science which accepts and examines Divine Revelation
while at the same time responding to the demands of human reason.
Moral theology is a reflection concerned with “morality,” with
the good and the evil of human acts and of the person who performs
them...But it is also ``theology,'' inasmuch as it acknowledges that
the origin and end of moral action are found in the One who “alone
is good” and who, by giving himself to man in Christ, offers him
the happiness of divine life. (29)
Unpacking this a bit we
get the following definition: moral theology is that sort of rational
reflection on good and evil human acts that begins with the reality
of God’s self-revelation—scripture, creation, Christ—and
attempts to assess the degree to which human acts succeed or fail in
promoting progress toward the final end of every human person—“the
happiness of divine life.”
“Moral” modifies
“theology,” making the phrase “moral theology” connote
something more specific (and substantial) than “religious ethics”
or “spiritual values.” “Moral” has to do with an already
acknowledged distinction between what is right and what is wrong, or
what promotes goodness and what promotes evil. “Religious” and
“spiritual,” though certainly hinting at something beyond the
secular or the material, do not conjure the same sense of clear
division between what is right/wrong, good/evil. The “religious”
and the “spiritual” are more neutral in their overt commitments
to specific judgments about discreet acts performed by the human
person. I think what is important about the use of the adjective
“moral” here is that it leaves us with the distinct sense that
the objects of moral theology are discovered and not created by our
rational exploration.
“Theology,” as the
term modified by “moral,” is much less ambiguous here precisely
because we are discussing moral theology in the context of the Roman
Catholic theological tradition. As John Paul II notes in the
definition above, theology is the science of examining Divine
Revelation by means of human reason. Jean-Pierre Torrell offers an
appropriate elaboration:
Before all else, theology
is an expression of a God-informed life, an activity in which the
virtues of faith, hope, and, charity are given full scope[…]it
should be clear that this faith is not pure intellectual adhesion to
the collection of truths that occupy the theologian. It is rather, in
Saint Thomas as in the Bible, the living attachment of the whole
person to the divine reality to which every person is united through
faith by means of the formulas that convey that Reality to us. (4)
The connection of faith
to the science of theology gives the scientific project its object:
God. Again, Torrell notes: “Theology finds in faith not merely its
point of departure but also its reason for being. Without faith, not
only would theology lack justification, it would have no
object[…]only faith allows the theologian to come into possession
of his object”(5).
The point of this short
excursion into the definition of theology is this: if moral theology
is to be useful to us in our exploration of the liturgy, then the
theological component must connote a clear commitment to a life of
faith. It is not enough that theology be useful here as an instrument
for measuring and evaluating claims about the phenomena we
collectively call “the divine” or “religious experience.”
This is more properly the task of a sociology of religion or a
psychology of religious experience. For a moral theology of the
liturgy to make sense it must have the same commitment to a life of
faith that any other branch of theology in the Roman Catholic
tradition has.
The last term to explore
briefly is “liturgy.” This is the term that I am least familiar
with and most hesitant to tackle. In many ways it is the easiest term
to define but has the most complex connotations of the three terms
we’ve explored so far. “Liturgy” is the public worship of the
Church, or in the case of the Roman Catholic tradition, the public
celebration of the sacraments according to the rites of the Church.
We all know how inadequate this definition is in the end. Each
element of this definition (“public,” “celebration,”
sacrament,” “worship,” etc.) carries the weighty baggage of
long dispute. So, I will let the Fathers of the Second Vatican
Council suggest a use for the term:
For the Liturgy, "through
which the work of our redemption is accomplished,” most of all in
the Divine Sacrifice of the Eucharist, is the outstanding means
whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and manifest to
others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true
Church.” (n. 2)
Liturgy, along with being
the public celebration the Church’s sacraments, is the exceptional
way that 1) our redemption is accomplished and 2) an exceptional
means the faithful use to convey to others the redeeming work of
Christ and the nature of the Church. The liturgy is not just the
logistics of organizing the particulars of public rites nor is it the
acquisition and use of the arcane knowledge associated with color,
symbols, fabrics, sacred objects, and incantations. Liturgy, Roman
Catholic liturgy, is the where and when of our transformation from
fallen into graced humanity, from sinful individuals into the living
Body of Christ.
John Paul II’s 2003
letter, Ecclesia de eucharistia, will provide the
instigating text for a meditation on what it might mean for us take
seriously the radically transformative power of the liturgy,
particularly the liturgy of the Eucharist.
II. “until He
comes in glory”
The first paragraph of
Ecclesia de eucharistia begins: “The Church draws her life
from the Eucharist. This truth does not simply express a daily
experience of faith, but recapitulates the heart of the mystery of
the Church”(1). What does this mean? This is a reaffirmation of the
Church’s traditional teaching that the Eucharist forms the
sacramental center of our lives as Christians. More forcefully put:
our Holy Father is teaching us that the Eucharist is the Church, that
is, without the Eucharist, the Church is not—not the Church,
non-existent. The truth that the Church draws her life from the
Eucharist summarizes the mystery of what the Church is: the living
Body of Christ, fed by the paschal meal, transformed by the sacrifice
on Calvary, and brought to participate in the Divine Life as fully
graced human beings.
Part of the mystery of
the Eucharist as a mystery of the church and about the church is how
this foundational sacrament brings together the historical meal of
the Upper Room and any parish Mass. John Paul writes,
[The Church’s]
foundation and wellspring is the whole Triduum paschale, but this is
as it were gathered up, foreshadowed and ‘concentrated’ for ever
in the gift of the Eucharist. In this gift Jesus Christ entrusted to
His Church the perennial making present of the paschal mystery. With
it He brought about a mysterious ‘oneness in time’ between that
Triduum and the passage of centuries.”(5)
It is this “making
present” in the “oneness of time” that makes the Eucharist the
most capable engine for building an ethics strong enough to confront
the world. How so? John Paul points to the “cosmic” character of
the Eucharist as a starting point: “Yes, cosmic! Because even when
it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the
Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world.
It unites heaven and earth. It embraces and permeates all
creation”(8). The strength of this arrangement rests on two
historical events, the Passion and Easter. Christ’s suffering and
death on a cross and his rising from the dead energize the Eucharist
across time because these events happened not to a mere human person,
but to the Son of God, God Incarnated. That they happened to the
God-Man of history means that the events took place temporally and
atemporally, in human time passing and in the eternal now.
Our connection to God the
Father is made through the sacrifice of the Mass itself, the making
present of the original sacrifice for our sakes and the sake of the
whole world. Of this connection John Paul writes: “The thought of
this leads us to profound amazement and gratitude” (5). And he sees
his project in this letter to be the re-establishment and
strengthening of that amazement over and against the “shadows” of
the world and those shadows that have crept in through ecclesial
neglect of the mystery and truth of the Real Presence (10). It is
clear that he sees the failure of some to hold and practice the Real
Presence, a failure, in other words, to hold to the efficacy of the
sacrament, as the darkest shadows cast. And it is in returning the
Eucharist as the gift of Christ Himself that we will dispel these
hungry shadows.
So, how does John Paul
understand sacrifice in light of the Real Presence? Acknowledging
that there are various ways to construe the “presence” of Christ,
the empowering presence is the Real Presence of Christ, his
substantial, abiding “hereness” in the elements of the sacrament
(15). The sacrifice of the Eucharist is real inasmuch as Christ’s
presence on the altar of sacrifice is real. John Paul writes in
language mindful of Trent:
The Mass makes present
the sacrifice of the Cross; it does not add to that sacrifice nor
does it multiply it. What is repeated is its memorial celebration,
its “commemorative representation,” which makes Christ’s one,
definitive redemptive sacrifice always present in time. (12)
Since the sacrifice of
the altar is not separable from the sacrifice of Calvary, the
sacrifice of the Mass cannot be understood as Christ merely offering
himself to the Church as spiritual food. We must understand the
sacrifice of the Mass to be “first and foremost a gift to the
Father,” the gift of Christ offered by Christ through his Church
for the sake of the Church and the world (13).
Having reaffirmed the
traditional outlines of the Church’s Eucharistic theology, John
Paul moves into less chartered waters in order to tie the sacrifice
of the Mass to the larger world by offering to the world a means of
living ethically. He characterizes the link between the presenting
action of the Eucharistic sacrifice and the broader world as a kind
of “eschatological tension”(18). This tension is first felt in
the liturgy itself when the assembly acclaims the mysterium
fidei, concluding with “until you come in glory.” The
tension felt here is the tension between our present state and the
possibility of living face-to-face with God in heaven. John Paul
writes: “The eschatological tension kindled by the Eucharist
expresses and reinforces our communion with the Church in
heaven”(19). Rather than directing out limited attention to life
after this one, John Paul argues that the tension inherent in the
longing for union with God directs us instead to a deeper engagement
with our world: “Certainly the Christian vision leads to the
expectation of ‘new heavens’ and ‘a new earth,’ but this
increases, rather than lessens, our sense of responsibility for the
world today”(20). The eschatological tension is best exemplified by
the “fruit of a transfigured existence and a commitment to
transforming the world in accordance with the Gospel[...]”(20).
Here is where the ethics of the Eucharist begins to make sense:
transfigured men and women transforming the world according to Gospel
values.
If the reception of the
Body and Blood of Christ at the sacrifice of the Mass is going to
produce evangelical fruit, it seems that two conditions must be met:
1) the presence consumed must be the Real Presence of Christ and 2)
the person consuming the presence of Christ must become Christ in and
for the world. Though he exhorts the church to celebrate the mystery
of the Eucharist (its Real Presence, sacrifice, and banquet) in a way
that “does not allow reduction or exploitation,” he also exhorts
the man and woman taking communion not to reduce or exploit their
reception of the mystery by failing to live lives structured by
gospel integrity. And this is the key to understanding how John Paul
envisions the church functioning with the world without being
overwhelmed by it. Two elements must always balance within the Church
as the Body of Christ: first, the ineffable mystery of the Eucharist
must be maintained because the salvific efficacy of the sacrament
depends on the Real Presence; and second, the celebration and
reception of the mystery must drive the Christian man or woman to
evangelize the world fully conscious of his/her transfigured
existence, fully aware that he/she walks now as the real presence of
the divine, the really, truly present body and blood of the Savior.
How do we communicate to
the world the presence and power of Christ when the world seems
thoroughly in love with ideologies of death, radical materialism, and
skepticism? Here’s how we do not communicate the power and presence
of Christ to this world: Christ is only symbolically present, Christ
is present because the bread and wine have had their final ends
changed or because their nominations have changed. None of this
communicates power or presence; it communicates doubt, embarrassment,
and perhaps even denial. What communicates power and presence to this
world is the hard example of Christians working in the world to bring
to life those gospel values that signify the divinizing effect of the
sacrifice of the Mass. This is work done now in light of Christ’s
promise that he will be with us always– here now, there then and
always.
III. Meeting ourselves as God created us to
be forever: theosis
It seems to me that the Holy
Father’s exhortation to us in Ecclesia de eucharistia is
precisely right, that is, he is directing us to move from the
liturgical celebration of the sacrifice of Calvary into the world as
living Christs, transfigured persons set ablaze with the love of
Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit. Taking everything I’ve
said so far about what we mean by “moral,” “theology,” and
“liturgy,” a moral theology of the liturgy then has to tell us
something about the person who is moved to be Christ in the world and
how the liturgy of the Church makes this transformation possible. I
said earlier that if we take the prayer of the Mass seriously we
should be awed beyond rational description by what we commit
ourselves to in sharing communion and driven by a desire to take that
filial bond of communion out into the world as living sacraments of
God’s presence. This is not simply a matter of allowing the prayers
of the Mass to teach us a lesson, or finding spiritual refreshment in
taking communion, or even being exhorted by the priest in his homily
to go out and do good works. Surely, all of these happen in the Mass.
But if what we’re talking about here is a moral theology of the
liturgy in light of Ecclesia de eucharistia, then we have to move to
a more radical concept of who becomes Christ and how the liturgy
makes this possible. This radical concept is theosis.
If it appears that I’ve
decided to pick up the topic of my presentation right here at the
end, let me say: not true. I’ve said from the beginning that the
Church’s liturgy is that moment and that place where the human
person meets his/her final end: divinization, theosis, a
transfiguration of the merely human into the perfectly human. The
Dominican, Jean Corbon, describes this beautifully:
The lived liturgy does
indeed begin with this “moral” union [a face-to-face encounter
between the person of Christ and our own person], but it goes much
further. The Holy Spirit is an anointing, and he seeks to transform
all that we are into Christ: body, soul, spirit, heart, flesh,
relations with others and the world. If love is to become our life,
it is not enough for it to touch the core of our person; it must also
impregnate our entire nature (216).
Underneath John Paul’s
teaching that the Eucharist is the Church is the notion that Holy
Spirit transforms His assembled people into a living offering for
sacrifice. From the invocation of His presence at the beginning of
Mass, and especially at the epiclesis over the offerings of bread and
wine, the Holy Spirit sanctifies the people as an offering,
transforming them from a collection of the merely human into a body
of the perfectly human. This in no way replaces, displaces, or in any
way disturbs the absolutely essential transformation of the bread and
wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. In fact, it is through the
transubstantiation of the bread and wine that we are constantly
perfected by the Spirit. Without this efficacious sign our
transformation is only symbolic, or merely moral, meaning it is only
an exhortation to imitate Christ. What I believe that John Paul is
teaching us, and Corbon is describing so beautifully, is that while
the bread and wine become the Body and Blood, we also are changed,
radically changed into what God has created us to be forever:
Himself. And as He has offered Himself for us, we offer ourselves in
the world for the transformation of the world. Corbon, again: “If
we consent in prayer to be flooded by the river of life, our entire
being will be transformed; we will become trees of life and be
increasingly able to produce the fruit of the Spirit: we will love
with the very Love that is our God”(216).
IV. Conclusion: three questions
1. What does theosis mean for your daily life? I
mean, if we take theosis to be our understanding of what salvation in
Christ is, then what difference does it make for you as a Christian
day-to-day?
2. If we take “grace” to be both God’s
invitation to theosis and the mechanism by which we are divinized,
then what does it mean for us to say that we “receive grace” in
the liturgy of the Eucharist (or in any liturgical celebration of a
sacrament)?
3. We said that moral theology is the science of
rationally reflecting on the good/evil actions of the human person in
light of his/her final end as a creature of God. How does human evil,
sin, corrupt or thwart the process of theosis in the liturgy?
Works Cited
Corbon, Jean. The Wellspring of
Worship, 2nd ed. Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 2005.
Torrell,
Jean-Pierre. Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master. CUA
Press, 2003.
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