The
life of the liturgy does not come from what dawns upon the minds of individuals
and planning groups. On the contrary, it is God’s descent upon our world, the
source of real liberation. He alone can open the door to freedom. The more
priests and faithful humbly surrender themselves to this descent of God, the
more ‘new’ the liturgy will constantly be, and the more true and personal it
becomes. Yes, the liturgy becomes personal, true, and new, not through
tomfoolery and banal experiments with the words, but through a courageous entry
into the great reality that through the rite is always ahead of us and can
never quite be overtaken.
Spirit of the Liturgy, 168-9
Reflection – Well, the Christmas hits just keep on coming
here at LWAGS, from all kinds of unexpected directions. Yesterday modern
mistaken notions of freedom took us right to the foot of the cradle, the cross,
and the tabernacle. Today a wrong notion of liturgy and creativity therein
leads us to this luminous statement: ‘it is God’s descent upon the world [that
is] the source of real liberation. He alone can open the door to freedom.’
This idea of the
‘descent’ of God upon the world is so charged with meaning and beauty. We think
of the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary, and the hidden invisible life beginning
in her womb, soon to come forth in radiance and wonder. We think of the hills
of Bethlehem
We think of stars
leading the wise and kings being disturbed and frightened for their power as
this new and strange power arises in the land. We think of their lashing out
with intensity by the murder of children—a terrible and heart-breaking
Christmas resonance this year. We think of so many things, all in this phrase,
the descent of God into the world.
God has come; God is
coming; God is perpetually descending, perpetually entering into our human
sphere, like a pirate on a raid, an invading army landing on our beaches, a
colonization program perpetually subduing the natives—us—and bringing the
divine culture and ways into our savage humanity.
It is Sunday, and most
of you readers will go to church some time today, I hope. There is God, coming,
descending, invading, raiding, conquering: on the altar, and in your heart as
you receive communion. This constant reality that is always greater than us,
always surpassing us, always more than what we bargained for, more than what we
thought would happen.
God always give us more
for Christmas, which is every day, than we asked for. Most of us want a
peaceful content life, largely pain-free, with some outlet for creativity
perhaps, and at least a few people around to love and who love us. This is the
normal desire of roughly decent human beings, and indeed it is a faint echo of
the longing for heaven.
We have to realize,
though, that God brings us to the heavenly life, not by giving us a nice little
content life here and now, but by pouring his Spirit upon us here and now,
filling us with his divinity here and now, summoning us into the adventure and
grandeur of divine charity here and now, beckoning us to love the world as he
loves the world here and now, even though that love will break our hearts at
times and certainly never allow us to relax into complacency and ease.
God comes into the
world, into the liturgy, into our hearts, and bursts all of it open into true
freedom which is the life of love in the world. That is his constant desire and
his constant action. That is what Christmas is for, and Calvary , and Communion. In the face of this strange
and overwhelming action and love of God, what are we to respond? With
tomfoolery and banal improvisations, bringing all our ‘brilliant’ human ideas
to God to improve his divine program? This can happen in life as well as in
liturgy, you know. Or are we to essentially fall down and worship and adore
him, and surrender all our ideas, our words, our hopes, our plans, our dreams,
our cleverness, our relationships, our culture—everything, everything,
everything to Him.
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