6 (of 6) AVATAR Mar. 30, 1987 at 18:08 Eastern (12553 characters) LITURGY AND SANCTITY LESSON FIVE THE DIVINE LITURGY THE GREAT ENTRANCE TO THE CONSECRATION (INCLUSIVE) It is at this point we begin to prepare for the Coming of the Word of God, in much the same way as Israel prepared, for a thousand years and more, for the Coming of the Redeemer. We prepare, however, unlike the ancient Israelites who knew nothing of a Trinity or of Incarnation, for the Coming of the Incarnate Word of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity - and we begin with entreaties that we be strengthened ahead of time in His Grace, and in Wisdom and Knowledge and Beauty before God and Men, as the Scriptural phrasing has it. The First Prayer of the Faithful makes that abundantly clear. "We Thank Thee, Lord God of Powers, who has granted that we stand even now before Dhy holy altar to implore Thy mercy for our sins and for the ignorance of the people, receive, O God, our supplications; make us worthy to offer Thee prayers and entreaties, and a bloodless sacrifice for Thy whole people. By the Power of Thy Holy Spirit, strengthen us whom Thou hast placed in Thy service, so that we may always and everywhere call upon Thee without blame and without offense, with our conscience as a clear witness; and Thou, hearing us, mayest have mercy on us, according do the abundance of Thy Goodness." The Second Prayer of the Faithful is very similar in content. "Often and again we fall down before Thee, gracious Lover of Mankind, so that Thou mayest listen to our prayers, cleanse our souls and bodies from all defilements of flesh or spirit, and allow us to stand without blame or offense before Thy holy altar. Grant, O God, that these who join in our prayer may advance in life, faith, and spiritual understanding; grant that they may always worship Thee without guilt, but with fear and love, and share in Thy holy mysteries without condemnation, and may become worthy of Thy heavenly kingdom." And the great prayer of preparation itself - the prayer of the Cherubimic Hymn (here abbreviated): "...look down upon me a sinner and Thy unworthy servant; cleanse my soul and my heart from an evil conscience; and strengthen me by the power of Thy Holy Spirit, so that I, whom thou hast endowed with the grace of the priesthood, may stand before Thy holy altar and consecrate Thy Sacred and spotless Body and Precious Blood." Note particularly the strong and repeated emphasis on cleansing, purification, readying of ourselves to be present and to participate in the coming mysteries. And, make no mistake about it, mysteries they are - in the classic root sense of the Greek "mysterion," - i.e., secret and unknowable things. The Church would appear in the liturgy to warn us that to assist worthily at the Holy Sacrifice requires not one's presence so much as a good deal of strength and grace, wisdom and understanding; so much so, in fact, that humanly speaking it is impossible. And it is for this reason, if for no other, that we turn to the only true source of strength and grace, wisdom and understanding, the Lord God Himself. All too often, as I have said, we have fallen into the attitude that "Church" is something we "go to" to "do" something; and in fact, it is something we "are." That participation of which we speak in terms of reference to the liturgy is not the participation of a shared endeavor, but the participation of shared BEING. Here the analogy of the Mystical Body used by Pius XII in his encyclical of the same name does us great service - because the analogy (though it is analogy) makes it clear that one hand does not so much share the labor of the other, or of the head, as it does share the existence of the being who has both and does all. When we, as a people, as a people chosen by God for his especial service, consecrated to His service by His sacraments, and dedicated to His service by our own free and willing choice to respond with a loving "yes" instead of the defiant "non serviam," "I shall not serve" of Satan prior to the sin of Adam - then, and only then, will the Spirit work through us to bring about the Kingdom which we are meant to share. Once the Great Entrance is completed - that entrance with the Holy Gifts (which is intended to remind us of the entry of Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, preparatory to His final sacrifice), we find the Prayer of the Offering recited immediately upon arriving at the main altar, where once again a petition for an increase of grace is reiterated. "...and grant that we find grace before Thee...," "...and let the good spirit of Thy grace rest upon us and upon these gifts offered here, and upon Thy whole people..." Another litany follows immediately, beginning again with the petitions that God "help, save, have mercy on us, and protect us" by His grace, and continuing on so until the end. And the final preparation for the Coming of Christ, the Profession of Faith, the Creed. "I believe..." The Canon (or Anaphora, as it is called technically) begins with "Let us stand here with fear, let us carefully offer this holy sacrifice in peace...," and immediately thereafter a blessing is given, dispensing the grace of Christ in symbol to the people gathered here and present: "The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God the Father, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all!" "And [may it be] with YOUR spirit," respond the people, returning a blessing of their own to the celebrant. At last, with the Preface, we cease, for the time being, our petitioning of the Lord for grace and enlightenment, and we begin to offer, at long last, something of ourselves to God. Here we begin to offer our gifts of praise and thanksgiving, adoration and glorification. Here is the point when we should take especial care to be certain that we have offered to God not something of what we possess, but that which we ARE, and only secondarily alongside the gift of ourselves of those things which He has placed into our custody. If, as St. Paul has said, baptized into Christ we have become one with and in Him, then the ONLY real sacrifice we CAN offer which will be at all pleasing to the Father is the SAME sacrifice which was offered by Christ - the sacrifice of Himself. And only in and through our oneness with Him and in Him can we do so. It should be eminently clear from that fact alone, if from no other, that simple presence at the liturgy is insufficient for the true Christian. Not only must we offer the same sacrifice as Christ, the gift of self and everything pertaining to self, but it must be offered for the same intentions as Christ offered - i.e., not in any pursuit of salvation for ourselves, but for the salvation of mankind, each and every member of it, past, present and yet to come. As Christ lived and died and rose again for every human who was to be, it is exactly in that that WE must share, in every liturgy (which is always the SAME liturgy, as pointed out previously). For it is not our "good deeds" that will win salvation for us, nor our gifts, nor the nobility of our souls and our virtue. The Kingdom of God has already been won for us, and has been given us as a free and untrammeled gift from the hand of a loving Father. Nothing we can do can earn us more. The only thing it is possible for us to do with that gift is to reject it, to lose it, to waste it. And for that we need take especial care, moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day. That kind of vigilance is beyond human beings - and so again, we find ourselves forced by reality to plead with God for the grace not to throw away His precious gifts. At this point the Liturgy will have become a two-way path. Grace and strength and wisdom come down from God the Father, and we, responding in love with praise and thanksgiving, in union with Christ, our head, offering sacrifice of reparation and propitiation - THE sacrifice of reparation and propitiation, for ALL mankind. Not simply for those who happen to share our beliefs. The Consecration is difficult to speak of. Whatever one says of it, it is inadequate. The mystery is such a profound one that however much we struggle to grasp the thoughts and concepts, they are fleeting and ever just beyond our grasp, as is the concept of a Trinity itself. This is the Sacrifice of Christ, the Crucifixion on Calvary, the final offering of the totality of Life Itself - that same Christ who called Himself "The Way, and the Truth, and the Life" - in reparation for the sins of mankind, and to restore man to favor with His Father - because both He and the Father have loved us since long before time itself began, and therefore also did His Holy Spirit. And the Elevation, which is the commemoration of His Resurrection and Ascension follows immediately. That it IS meant to symbolize and remind us of both Resurrection and Ascension is clear from the accompanying prayer, the Anamnesis, (commemoration/reminder): "We, therefore, remembering this salutary precept [to do this in remembrance of Him] and all that was done on our behalf, the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand of the Father, the second and glorious coming - we offer to Thee, Thine of Thine own, of what is Thine own, in all, and for the sake of all." For the first time we find here the added thought that the Liturgy, besides being the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, is ALSO the pledge and promise that Christ WILL come again one day in glory, seated at the right hand of the Father, and coming on the clouds of heaven as He promised Caiaphas to his very face in the courtyard of the High Priest. What a comforting thought! All WE need to do is to bear up, to hang on, to accept gracefully and gratefully what has been given us to bear. The time is coming when Christ will come for each one of us, and the time is coming when He will come for the entire human race as well. We need not "succeed" at anything, we need not become "great" or "rich" or "powerful" or "wise with the wisdom of this world." We need to endure, in patience and in trust, and leave the rest to Christ. One caution, though, there is here also the added encouragement to keep ourselves worthy, (in the sense of "clean" and "undefiled") because no one of us knows the day or the hour when Christ will call us to Him. The Epiclesis is the Invocation of the Holy Spirit, and is reminiscent of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down upon the Chosen People of God with the thunder of winds and tongues of fire. And immediately following that, the Epiclesis, we begin instantly to renew the various petitions for the different intentions, to begin anew to beg once again the mercy of God, His Grace, His Wisdom, His Strength, His Understanding, in the deep awareness that we cannot survive even for those few seconds without them; we being immediately to prepare ourselves further for the highest point of the Liturgy, the culmination of the "Economy of Salvation," the Plan of Christ to save us - participation in the Sacrament of Love itself; the most intimate sharing it is possible to receive, far more intimate even than that intimacy of marital relations which is so necessary for the procreation of life itself. "...We beg, and pray, and beseech Thee: grant that we may partake of Thy heavenly and dread mysteries, of this sacred and spiritual table with a pure conscience, for the remission of sins, for the pardon of offenses, for the Communion of Thy Holy Spirit, and for the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven, for confidence toward Thee, and not unto judgment nor unto condemnation." NEXT WEEK: The Communion, beginning with the Prayer of Preparation (Etaisis) to the Dismissal, Inclusive. Following that, there will be a discussion on the place of the Liturgy in the sacramental system of the Church, and in the Catholic system of theology and dogma.