Category: The Spirit that Breathes in the Mass

“I Will Go Unto the Altar of God”

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

One of the most spiritually life-giving verses of the Bible for me comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!'” (8:15)

Slavery. Fear. Adoption. Abba!

Slavery—powerlessness, punishment, constriction, working for another, having nothing of one’s own—not even one’s own body…

Fear—to “fall back into fear” is to face the acknowledgement that there is no future, there is no hope, there is no belonging, only loss and despair…

Adoption—the “Spirit of adoption”: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (8:14). “So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God”  (Galatians 4:7).

Abba! Father!—The cry of the soul that has touched the utter loving reality of God’s being toward her, for her…. The exclamation at being saved and hidden now with Christ in God…. The song that issues from a heart that desires—at all times and in all things—to bend low in trusting worship.

Dietrich von Hildebrand turns our eyes to the Liturgy where we learn this loving reverence through immersion: “The Liturgy is penetrated more than anything else by the spirit of true reverence. It is deeply permeated by the fear of God, by the cum timore et tremore (with fear and trembling), and at the same time by the consciousness that we are sons of God, in which we cry out ‘Abba, Father!’ It is full of the spirit of servire Domino in laetitia, of serving God in joy.”

In the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church prays a psalm at the beginning of each day which vividly “presents before our mind our own nothingness before God’s majesty, our absolute dependence on Him, [as well as] the fact that we belong to Him.”

The Lord is God, the mighty God,
the great king over all the gods.
He holds in his hands the depths of the earth
and the highest mountains as well
He made the sea; it belongs to him,
the dry land, too, for it was formed by his hands.

Come, then, let us bow down and worship,
bending the knee before the Lord, our maker,
For he is our God and we are his people,
the flock he shepherds. (Psalm 95)

The Mass is also pervaded with this reverence.

The Mass is pervaded with this consciousness of “his absolute dominion, and the acknowledgment that we receive all from Him.”

“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to people of good will.
We praise you, we bless you,
we adore you,we glorify you,
we give you thanks for your great glory.”

“It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,
always and everywhere to give you thanks,
Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God,
through Christ our Lord” (Preface I of Sundays of Ordinary Time).

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.”

“When these words are sung, how especially are we enveloped in the deepest reverence before God and drawn in to the true situation of the creature in relation to God.”

Its spirit is that of the “Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum, qui laetificat juventutem meam” (I will go in unto the altar of God, unto God, who giveth joy to my youth). This attitude is one which finds its expression in the “Quoniam in aeternum misericordia ejus” (For His mercy endureth forever), the “Gustate et videte quam suavis est Dominus” (Taste and see how sweet is the Lord), the “Misericordias Domini cantabo in aeternum” (I shall sing through all eternity the mercies of the Lord). Let us recall the upward glance which marks the beginning of each day, the “Deus in adjutorium meum intende, Domine ad adjuvandum me festina” (O God, come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me).

How much more our hearts would be nourished in the Mass if we were to step through the door of repeated words into the larger theme of reverence which pervades every prayer and posture and gesture of the Liturgy. If we were to become reverence, in a trusting worship of our Father.

Quotations from Dietrich von Hildebrand, Liturgy and Personality, Chapter Five.

Featured image: by Lupe Belmonte


The Breath of Christ in the World

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

One word has been devastating my spirit of late: “monster.” Too frequently this word is heard in civil discourse and political rhetoric as an identifier of human persons. Even when read off screen or paper, it has a quality that grates against the soul and seems unworthy of human speech.

In the Prayer Over the Offerings in today’s Mass, the Church prays: “…grant that, through this offering, we may do fitting homage to your divine majesty and, by partaking of the sacred mystery, we may be faithfully united in mind and spirit.”

A person who lives in the spirit of the Liturgy is spiritually molded into a Christ-actor in the world. Such a person immerses themself in the values the Liturgy expresses and enters with their entire being into the prayer of Jesus whose act of adoration and worship we are invited to share in.

Today’s Prayer Over the Offerings, then, is a school of humble acknowledgement of our creaturehood and dependence on the “divine majesty” to whom we owe “fitting homage.” When our relationship with God is rightly ordered, we value our fellow human beings rightly, realizing that we are in some fundamental way united with them—no better and no worse, but equally loved and sustained in life; honored to be fellow creatures who come from the hands and loving creative work of one Father, as a fellow member of the body of Christ, or potentially a fellow member in that body because of the Incarnation.

The Liturgy forms the personality, as Dietrich von Hildebrand reminds us, so that we “hear” words in their relation to value. “It is the spirit of the God-man that speaks to us in the Liturgy.” In his book Liturgy and Personality, he explores how “…the spirit embodied in the Liturgy, the spiritual molding of the man who lives in that spirit,” shapes a person’s personality. “The radical theocentrism of the liturgy,” Bishop Robert Barron states in his Foreword, “teases us sinners out of our native egocentrism and thereby prepares us to see even created values [think here, created persons who should be valued for themselves by their very existence] with fresh eyes.”

It is a reminder that the Liturgy is a school.

Through Christ himself and through us who enter that school, it is he who breathes new life into the world.

As we are formed in the Liturgy into other Christ’s, we do indeed begin to shine with light, his Light. Through our language and attitudes and worship and right standing with God and others, we can offer a world exhausted by power and aggression, the hope that the humble Christ is here, risen, alive, now, and victorious.

Every human person secretly longs to breathe his Name.

Quotations from Deitrich von Hildebran, Liturgy and Personality, Introduction.