Theological Significance of Worship: Catholic
Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 04:52:44 PM PDT
Mahanoy and I got to talking in another diary about how the theological significance of worship differs in various traditions, and thought this would be a good topic for a blogathon (ha! I remembered the word!) so that we could get as wide a discussion as possible.
I've also been meaning to start an occasional series on "The Theological Significance of (something)", so this seemed like a good start to it.
Follow me below the fold to read about one Catholic's understanding of the theological significance of worship; and please post your own diary this week, on the theological significance of worship, specifically communal worship, in your own tradition.
For Catholics, "worship" usually means Mass. Certainly when we're talking about attending church every Sunday, as in the diary that sparked this, we mean Mass. There are other ways in which Catholics worship communally, but our basic default mode is Mass.
Mass is just a shorthand way of saying "the celebration of the eucharist". The whole Mass, from the opening blessing, to the scripture readings and sermon, to the consecration and distribution of communion, to the closing blessing and dismissal, constitutes "the celebration of the eucharist".
The theological significance of the eucharist is such an incredibly rich topic that I found it difficult to write this diary. I finally gave up on trying to organize it into any particular structure, and have just written what comes to mind.
I'd like to say one thing about the requirement to attend Mass. It is indeed still true that Catholics are required to attend Mass every Sunday unless illness or some other circumstance prevents us from doing so, and missing Mass is still considered a sin. Aside from the issue of how seriously Catholics do or do not take such prescriptions from the church these days -- a whole other diary!! -- I would like to point out that such prescriptions are simply a mechanism by which to define and implement practices. "Because the Church says so" isn't actually theologically significant, although it may be ecclesially significant, personally significant, sociologically significant, and have significant implications for the demographics and structure of the Church.
But the theological significance is the reason why the Church "says so", and that's what I'm exploring here.
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The celebration of the eucharist is the "source and summit" of a Catholic Christian's life, and of the life of the Church. Everything we do -- ritually, ecclesially, or in our everyday lives -- is to flow from the celebration of the eucharist, and lead us towards it.
The eucharist is our catechism. The old saying "Lex orandi, lex credendi" -- the law of prayer is the law of belief -- is quite true. The eucharistic liturgy shapes our faith, and leads us more deeply into it.
The eucharist is the place in which all our relationships come together: our relationships with God, with ourselves, with the other people in our parish, with the worldwide church, with the Universal Church, and with all of creation. All relationships need attention, and the eucharistic liturgy is the context in which, and the ritual means by which, we affirm, nurture, and strengthen those bonds.
The weekly rhythm of Sunday mass is the heartbeat of the church, but there's a yearly rhythm as well. Attending every week connects us to the seasonal rhythms of the church year, so we can walk together around the circle of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, the holy days, and the themes of Ordinary Time, despite the calendar of the secular culture that doesn't match our calendar.
As Catholics, we share the common priesthood of Christ, and thus it is our privilege and responsibility to intercede for the world in prayer. We do this most explicitly in the General Intercessions, but also in the Eucharistic Prayer (the Great Thanksgiving) that is offered "to advance the peace and salvation of all the world".
Every celebration of the eucharist mystically participates both in the Last Supper, and in the sacrifice on Calvary. The liturgy is meant to give us practice in "living as if death doesn't matter". When the bread and wine are placed on the altar, we are to place ourselves there, our lives, our gifts, our strengths, our weaknesses: so that, "by the working of the Holy Spirit", we ourselves may be transformed into the body and blood of Christ; so that, "by the mingling of this water and wine, we may come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity."
We come to tell our stories,
We come to break the bread,
We come to know our rising from the dead
We come because Jesus told us, "Do this in remembrance of me." We come because "It is right to give God thanks and praise". We come because "from age to age, You gathered a people to Yourself, so that from east to west, a perfect offering may be made to the glory of Your name" -- and without all the people, the offering is imperfect.
We come to celebrate and to receive the sacrament that is the treasure at the heart of the Church, for the grace it gives us that sustains us and gives us strength. We come to build, to be, the temple of living stones.
We come for practice in becoming who we already are.
Catholicism is not an individualistic religion. It's not primarily about "me and God". Even our hymns tend not to use the first person singular, unless we're quoting from Scripture; we use the first person plural, because our emphasis is on the assembled believers, the communion of saints, the body of Christ.
Nobody gets to heaven alone; we are all on the road together, and coming to Mass on Sunday is how we help ourselves and each other along the way.
(If you wanted to stretch this metaphor out of shape, you might even call it the pit stop on the road to heaven. ;) )
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