Liturgical Education

NY READER OF MY POSTS has come to expect a certain maniacal preoccupation with the education of our children in the art of sacred music, however, I want to focus on another incredibly important area of education: our clergy and especially our seminarians. Perhaps this issue is of a more fundamental importance than the training of choristers because it places the horse before the cart and might finally allow the Church to heal in matters liturgical since the bishop, and the priest in his stead, really is the custodian of the sacred liturgy in his local area, and only he has the power to effect widespread and healthy change.

Perhaps this topic is on my mind because of a recent wedding I provided music for where the priest joked his way through the couple’s vows and even had both the bride and groom stand with him behind the altar throughout the entire consecration and then asked each to distribute the Precious Blood on either side of him as he distributed Holy Communion to the congregation. When he asked before Mass if I would sing Sabath Prayer from Fiddler on the Roof for the Responsorial Psalm I simply smiled and played dumb and said I didn’t have a copy of if. It was the most bizarre wedding I have ever attended (with certain parts cut here and others added there), so much so that I was unusually at peace knowing the likelihood of ever experiencing such a circus again would be minimal to say the least (most of these clerics are entering the twilight of their lives). A priest once commented to me that he made it through one of our nation’s prominent seminaries in the 90s without ever having had a class on the sacred liturgy, which might account in part for the travesty previously mentioned, but I think the problem runs much deeper. Most of the clergy I know truly love the Sacred Liturgy and say the Black and do the Red, but that isn’t enough.

I feel that as Americans we have always taken a very pragmatic approach to all of our problems and seek to solve them as quickly and as efficiently as possible without much “stopping to smell the Roses.” This worked well enough before the Second Vatican Council when the Church maintained a strong central moral authority and society nominally upheld traditional Christian mores. Priests could sacramentalize their parishioners and keep them on the strait and narrow efficiently enough and collections assured that lighting and heating bills and the sisters (in that order) got paid. Efficiency makes for a wonderful taskmaster but a terrible lover and under this Culture of Efficiency the beloved suffered. The Church ran efficiently, but in the post-war years the heart of the Church in the western world grew cold and the Sacred Liturgy, that incredible place where man truly met God and was embraced by Him, became nothing more than one’s weekly obligation to avoid mortal sin.

I liken the effects of such a relationship over time to that of spouses whose love has grown cold. In the beginning the husband is always cognizant of his wife’s emotional needs and shows appreciation for the great work she does for the family and often indulges in small acts of love for her—a vase of flowers here and an embrace and heartfelt words of thanks there—but after time tiredness sets in and the husband assumes that his wife no longer needs to be told “I love you” because she already knows, and besides, where is his appreciation? In this new state the husband feels his time and his and his wife’s money are more efficiently put to use securing a new roof for the house. Love grows cold.

Of course, the cultural revolution of the 1960s didn’t help, and thankfully we are past much of that and I am truly edified by so many of the priests I know. At the same time, I find the tentacles of efficiency still lurking in the shadows. We live in a time when there is so much work to be done to bring about the Kingdom of God that we are tempted to boil down our coarse of action to finding the perfect evangelization program that will fill our pews efficiently, turn on the lights again, and maybe even furnish the parish with sisters one day, too. I feel we run the temptation of turning the Mass into the means of confecting the Holy Eucharist and the Divine Office into the private mental prayer of the priest. While the Church is given the gift of the Holy Eucharist at Mass and while the Divine Office is an essential part of a priest’s prayer life, such a reduction of the work and power of the Sacred Liturgy turns God into nothing more than a Divine dispenser of spiritual medication as opposed to the all powerful and Triune God, the Father who created Heaven and Earth and Who sent His only-begotten Son with the Holy Spirit to redeem mankind and Who carries out this work within the Sacred Liturgy.

Perhaps I am just a Benedictine at heart but I feel the Opus Dei (Work of God) must truly be given pride of place in our personal lives and in the life of the Church so that God can accomplish His Will in us and in all of creation to the glory of His name. The Sacred Liturgy and the Sacraments have the power to do just that. Unfortunately this is neither efficient to teach nor simple to learn.