Blog #3 — Theology, Worship and the Arts

Often times mass can be boring. There’s a certain element of repetitiveness to mass that sometimes allows us to worship “on autopilot.” The liturgy is designed, is ordered, in a structural way on purpose, however. As Romano Guardini explains, the liturgy is intended for all, for the entire faithful that makes up the Church.

We are all attending mass with differing emotions, different problems that strain our lives, different prayers to bring to God. In the context of the liturgy, however, the mass is not for our own individual expression. There is a reason the mass is structured so. Guardini explains, “the liturgy is the distillation of generations of theological reflections of the nature of God,” and henceforth our prayers and thoughts must be “steeped” in this. For Professor O’Malley, part of the reason why mass may seem boring is that we have not done enough work on our own, enough contemplation, to ponder the liturgy’s connection with the human condition.

The liturgy is structured in a way to direct us to God — it keeps our emotions in check and allows thought to take the lead during mass. All throughout the mass the liturgy evokes themes of repetition (“O God, O God;” “Holy, Holy, Holy”) while slowly building ourselves to the praise of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. It is structured in this liturgical style so that the essential may supersede whatever is going on in our individual minds, and the mass can be intended for many different people, places and times of our world.

The liturgy’s structure therefore makes sense. Things are done on purpose, so that the entire Church may be able to sit in on any given mass. And this structure allows for a beautiful element of mass — under the context of play, symbol and festival.

The liturgy’s repetition is festival-like. It calls us into this time of weekly worship that we may direct ourselves to God. Just as certain Holiday seasons usher in a familiar songs and traditions, the weekly mass, ushers in songs, hymns, and repetitive actions that confirm to us that we are in mass.

The mass is filled with intentional movements with reasons behind it. For Cyril of Jerusalem, the liturgical action is understood as a sort of “serious playfulness.” We engage in the mass physically, so that our soul can be in the presence of God. The union of the physical and spiritual senses are important for the mass’s perspective as well. It may be difficult to think of attending mass as “playing,” but that is essentially what we are doing. We are moving for an intended purpose, and the hymns, songs and prayers that are structured in the mass give us physical things to “play with.”

Our participation in the moment, our own experience in the liturgy allows us to make sense of the symbolism going on. For Guardini, the symbolism is linked to sensation for this purpose — our humanness requires that interior/spiritual elements manifest in something exterior/physical.

We can see symbolism all throughout the liturgy. Cyril of Jerusalem explains during the sacrament of baptism one is anointed with the Chrism, symbolizing our sharing in Christ through the materiality of the oil. Similarly, during the Sacrament of the Eucharist, while we believe the Eucharist is literally the body and blood of Christ, we receive Him symbolically in the “throne of our palms” as Cyril describes. In our receiving of the Eucharist in this way, it inscribes a new meaning upon the Eucharist for us. Gertrude of Helfta also speaks on the Eucharist in connection with sensation — that after tasting the Eucharist she was called to “reform her tongue.”

Guardini touches upon his own symbolic elements of liturgy, such as candles, water and incense, and there are many more in addition to this that can be covered. All these physical sensations and elements to mass, whether obviously symbolic or not, have extreme purpose for us as humans. The liturgical matter allows us to engage in the mass more fully, it allows us something to physically “play” with. In understanding this, we can see the liturgy’s connection to salvation. The beauty of the liturgy, the symbolism and the physical actions we perform are not just beautiful in themselves, they are not just for show. Their aestheticism allows us as members of the Church to contemplate to beauty of the mass, of the world, of the faith. It is through this contemplation — through our own work — that we can engage in a life closer to God and lead us to salvation.