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In this new year, the 2007th Year of Our Lord, may our diocesan family of faith and each of us individually be blest with all the good things that are truly important in God’s eyes.
I want to thank the many people who sent me Christmas and New Year’s greetings. Although I cannot acknowledge them all in writing, I have read your Christmas cards and notes, and am filled with gratitude for your thoughtfulness, prayers and support for me as your bishop.
I would like to begin 2007 with some words about the Mass, the gift and mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist. I have written about this topic before, and will continue to do so because the Eucharist is central to the church’s very being.
Those of us who are old enough to have experienced the history of the last 40 years know well the great changes that have reshaped Catholic liturgy and piety. It is inevitable that one age reacts to the previous one, but by any standard the pendulum of history has moved back and forth with greater force than ever at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.
When it comes to the Eucharist, the “the source and summit of Christian life,” Catholics have been pulled, and to a certain extent continue to be pulled, in many directions. However, the fundamentals — and this is something that we can only affirm by Catholic faith — remain unchanging because they come from Christ. When we celebrate the Eucharist, we are only, as St. Paul says, “handing on what we ourselves have received.” (cf. 1 Cor 11:23-26)
Eucharist includes both the Mass and the Body and Blood of Christ under the forms of bread and wine. This is a divine reality instituted by Christ at the Last Supper, and now continually enacted by Christ, a living Person Who speaks and acts in His church body, endowed by Him with an apostolic order of priesthood.
All of us, clergy and laity alike, participate in and receive the Eucharist according to our respective roles. We do not create the Eucharist. Christ does, sacramentally, through a church that exists concretely in a given place and time and yet transcends the particular space and time of any one group of members.
That is why, since ancient times, Christians in both the East and West have been very attentive to authority and tradition when it comes to the Eucharist.
The very ancient practice of naming the pope and local bishop in the Eucharistic Prayer is not a nice gesture of praying for them, but rather an authentication that the Mass being celebrated is truly “catholic,” “in full communion” with apostolic authority.
This ancient concern also extends to liturgical discipline, prayers, gestures and actions. Even though the appearance of the Mass has changed over time, it is remarkable just how much has stayed the same. Not only the structure of the Mass, but even the priest’s vestments are from antiquity, as are the responses and most of the prayers.
This does not mean that there is no development, and that nothing new ever arises. What it does mean is that new expressions are subject to apostolic authority and tradition, as reflected in liturgical principles, practices and discipline that have been handed on to us. That is why the Second Vatican Council specified that no one, “not even a priest, may add, remove or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 22) And at our ordination, we who are priests make a solemn promise “to celebrate faithfully and reverently, in accord with the church’s tradition, the mysteries of Christ.”
At the same time, it is also important to recognize that the apostolic tradition is not confined to the externals of the celebration of Mass.
In the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read that believers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” They “were together and had all things in common . . . . praising God with glad and generous hearts.” Of the early Christians it was said, “see how they love one another!” And they were also filled with missionary zeal.
The “faithful and reverent” celebration of Mass by the priest and “the full, active, conscious participation” of the people are thus ordered to the witness of holiness by each and all through love of God and neighbor in communion with Christ. The celebration of Mass from a liturgical point of view is at the service of the worship “in spirit and truth” that each of us must cultivate with love on the altar of our hearts.
I conclude with these challenging words of the late Pope John Paul in his encyclical on the Eucharist, Ecclesia de Eucharistia:
Many problems darken the horizon of our time. We need but think of the urgent need to work for peace, to base relationships between peoples on solid premises of justice and solidarity, and to defend human life from conception to its natural end. And what should we say of the thousand inconsistencies of a “globalized” world where the weakest, the most powerless and the poorest appear to have so little hope! . . . .For this reason too, the Lord wished to remain with us in the Eucharist, making His presence in meal and sacrifice the promise of a humanity renewed by His love . . . . Proclaiming the death of the Lord “until He comes” (1 Cor 11:26) entails that all who take part in the Eucharist be committed to changing their lives and making them in a certain way completely “Eucharistic.” It is this fruit of a transfigured existence and a commitment to transforming the world in accordance with the Gospel which splendidly illustrates the eschatological tension inherent in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the Christian life as a whole: “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20).
May 2007 be a year of continued Eucharistic renewal in our diocese, both in our manner of celebrating it and in our manner of living it. God bless you.
+MOST REVEREND LEONARD P. BLAIR
BISHOP OF TOLEDO |
