Liturgy and Tradition Begin and End With Jesus

As I tried to outlined above, liturgy is highly personal and has the power to re-form my egoism. But this requires not simply my participation in liturgy well celebrated, but also good, biblical sound, preaching that introduces me again and again to the tradition of the Church. Especially in the context of the Eucharist, this means preaching in the service of helping the listeners both to offer to God and receive back from Him their own lives.

But the best liturgy and preaching in the world is not going to make much of a difference without sound catechesis, good spiritual formation and practice, regular confession, a life of evangelical and philanthropic witness and, oh yeah, personal faith in Jesus Christ.

Whether we are Catholic or Orthodox, we cannot make out life about liturgy. To do so is profoundly unbalanced and neurotic (n the technical sense, of holding to a rigid and fixed image of self, others and world). As anyone who knows me can attest, I love the liturgical tradition of both the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. In my own prayer life I use the Benedictine Monastic Diurnal and I cannot imagine absenting myself from the Divine Liturgy on Sunday and Feast Days even when I am sick (in fact, in 15 years as a deacon and priest, I think I have missed Sunday liturgy 3 times; twice because I was driving cross country traveling from one parish assignment to another and once because I was recovering from surgery three days before and could get dressed. I’m a firmly believer that priests should not attend Liturgy in our jammies.) When a man comes to me about seminary or about being ordained, I always, always, ask about his participation in Liturgy. If Liturgy isn’t the center of his, and his families, spiritual life…well let’s just day he needs to work on this before we can talk about ordination.

If anything, I think that both among Catholics and Orthodox Christians (at least in the US) our liturgical life suffers (albeit in different ways; both are too casual, Catholics in how they celebrate the Mysteries, Orthodox by habitual absence from the Mysteries) because we have neglected the whole rest of our Christian lives. First and foremost this neglect, to return to Sherry’s initial observation, flows not from a lack of commitment to our respective theological or liturgical traditions but a general lack of repentance. But running a close second are those in both communities who assuming, simplistically and wrongly, that commitment to tradition—ess.ential for salvation though it is—is the same as a personal commitment to Christ. It simply isn’t.

A commitment to Christ will, naturally, bring me into an ever greater appreciation and participation in the life of the Church. And this participation will be both for the day to day life of the Church here and now and the tradition of the Church. Let me be clear, both are necessary, I cannot be faithful to the tradition if I absent myself from the Church as it is today, but neither can I claim to share in the daily life of the Church if I am indifferent, or worse, hostile, to the tradition of the Church.

But all of this, to repeat myself, is the fruit of my personal commitment to Jesus Christ,

Anything else or anything less, is a betrayal of the Gospel and a theology (or liturgy) of demons.

As always, your comments, questions, and criticisms are not only welcome, but actively sought.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

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categories Holy Tradition, Liturgy, Orthodox Church, Orthodox/Catholic Relations | Fr Gregory Jensen October 28, 2009

  • s-p
    Mutual thanks and prayers to you, Chrys. I don't find many people who will admit the liturgy is tough to get into and through and hang with the Church anyway for any length of time. I think "liturgy" is so central to our apologetics and the "ethos" of the Church and most of the convert's writing about it is so "emotional" that we who struggle start thinking we're second class citizens or defective (which we are...). The connection to prayer life is true too. Openness to God is a "life" not discreet events during the scheduled services of the week and participation in the liturgy is part of the life of prayer, not a substitute for one.
    .-= s-p´s last blog ..Ultimate Prayer Smack Down Competition =-.
  • Chrys
    s-p, you and I are VERY much on the same page. (Thanks, too, for the kind comments.) I must admit that one of the biggest challenges I have had was/is the tedium, as you put it. This was a real obstacle prior to my conversion. I then came to understand and deeply appreciate the the liturgy's deep biblical foundations, the eschatological meaning of the liturgy and it's formative importance (essential!) - largely through Fr. Gregory's help and some additional study. Metropolitan Anthony's words - of one piece with the ascetical tradition - gave me hope, however, that it would eventually move beyond tedium.
    Most of the time it is still an exercise; on rare occasion I will get a glimpse - and it is indeed quite powerful. This may be a bit personal, but I have noticed that - for me at least - that I often am better disposed (in the manner His Eminence describes) when my prayer life seems fairly healthy. (Makes sense, since liturgy is essentially communal prayer.) For the same reason, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom's works on prayer have been especially helpful. And, yes, the judgment that this implies on the majority of my prayer life (often anemic at best) is rather staggering. I take it as a "heads up" of the judgment to come. Not that God will "grade" me on my experience or attainment, but that the capacity of my heart will be so small, so self-enclosed, that I will not be able to enter into heavenly worship - and where does that leave you? (Where it always does, dependent on grace.) So, I find that Met. Anthony's advice on cultivating a healthy prayer life is both extremely helpful and directly related to one's experience of liturgy. (Because, no matter where you go, there you are.) It's good to know that there are others waling the same road I am on.
    You are in my prayers; I ask for yours. Again, thanks.
  • s-p
    Excellent post and great comment Chrys. After 11 years I still find the liturgy "nice" but tedious, I've never been)a "liturgical aesthetic". I attend to it (as best I can on any given day), chant it, pray it, serve at it, but I can't say I "enjoy" it. I find myself somewhat jealous of people who gush about its beauty, its transformative power, the joy they feel in it, etc. I have to say it is very much a spiritual discipline for me, hopefully one that is chipping away at something in me like everything else I have to work at to be a Christian.
    .-= s-p´s last blog ..Ultimate Prayer Smack Down Competition =-.
  • Chrys
    David, of course, is correct - excellent post. The liturgy is many things: a participation in the heavenly worship of God, the primary structure for the definitive formation of our lives, the place in which the efforts of our daily lives are both realized and (more often) challenged.

    It also brought to mind an interchange which was very important in changing my view of liturgy back when I was still Protestant (and viewed the apparent formalism of liturgy with suspicion). From Jacob Needleman's book, Lost Christianity (1990), pp. 24-25:


    “Metropolitan Anthony,” I began, “five years ago when I visited you I attended the services which you yourself conducted. And I remarked to you then how struck I was by the absence of emotion in your voice. Today, in the same way, where it was not you but the choir, I was struck by the same thing, the almost complete lack of emotion in the voices of the singers.”

    “Yes,” he said, “that is quite true. It has taken years for that, but they are finally beginning to understand . . .”

    . . .

    I put my question further: “The average person hearing this service – and of course the average Westerner having to stand up for the several hours it took – might not be able to distinguish it from the mechanical routine that has become so predominant in the performance of the Christian liturgy in the West. He might come wanting to be lifted, inspired, moved to joy or sadness – and this the churches in the West are trying to produce, because many leaders of the Church are turning away from the mechanical, the routine–”

    He gently waved aside what I was saying, and I stopped in mid-sentence. There was a pause, then he said: “No. Emotion must be destroyed.” He stopped, reflected and started again, speaking in his husky Russian accent: “We have to get rid of emotions . . . in order to reach . . . feeling.”

    . . . He continued: “You ask about the liturgy in the West and in the East. It is precisely the same issue. The sermons, the Holy Days – you don’t know why once comes after the other, or why this one now and that one later. Even I you read everything about it, you still wouldn’t know, believe me.

    “And yet . . . there is a profound logic in them, in the sequence of the Holy Days. And this sequence leads people somewhere – without their knowing it intellectually. Actually, it is impossible for anyone to understand the sequence of rituals and Holy Days intellectually. It is not meant for that. It is means for something else, something higher.

    “For this you have to be in a state of prayer, otherwise it passes you by –”

    “What is prayer?” I asked.

    He did not seem to mind my interrupting with this question. Quite the contrary. “In the state of prayer one is vulnerable.” He emphasized the last word and then waited until he was sure I had not taken it in an ordinary way.

    “In prayer one is vulnerable, not enthusiastic. And then these rituals have such force. They hit you like a locomotive. You must not be enthusiastic, nor rejecting – but only open. This is the whole aim of asceticism: to become open.”
  • Father, please forgive the effulgent nature of this post, but this is one of the finest examples of why I LOVE this blog. I know, I know, flattery and all that, but it needs to be said (can't believe I haven't said it yet): You are asking all the right questions, it seems to me. The answers are there--this Church has an entire way of life built into it already--if we'll but appropriate it. Tradition, liturgy, repentance, communion, family, home, training up of children...God grant this vision spread.

    Thank you.
    .-= David´s last blog .. =-.
  • Fr Gregory Jensen
    David,

    I live to serve! And thank you for your kind words. :)

    We easily lose sight of the fact that our life as Orthodox Christians presuppose our personal faith in Jesus Christ. As you say, what we have in the Church is the entire life of Christ given to us. But it is of us, for me, to take it. I'm finishing an article now for the American Orthodox Institue that touches on just this topic (and how we seem to miss this point pastorall)--so stay tuned!

    In Christ

    +FrG
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