Martin Foster
Music & Liturgy 49.2 (June 2023)
One of the most astonishing statements by Pope Francis in Desiderio Desideravi is ”. . . when God created water, he was thinking of the Baptism of each one of us, and this same thought accompanied him all throughout his acting in the history of salvation every time that, with precise intention, he used water for his saving work.”1
My baptism was in the mind of God at the beginning of creation—a thought which is almost incredible. In this image, the Pope encapsulates the nature of symbol within the liturgy. Symbols are natural, ordinary, created things which God uses for the extraordinary.
I think Desiderio Desideravi is the first papal or church document to explore the nature of symbols in the liturgy and this is one of the most (not the only) striking features of the document which I think goes to the core of what Pope Francis is writing about. Though it is a short document, I find it dense in its content. The Pope is not only shooting out a series of ideas, he is setting them in motion and saying look how they connect. I think it is significant that the document is an apostolic letter and not an encyclical—a teaching document; nor is it an instruction—a series of things to be carried out.
At the very beginning he states, “with this letter I do not intend to treat the question in an exhaustive way. I simply desire to offer some prompts or cues for reflections that can aid in the contemplation of the beauty and truth of Christian celebration.”2
I suggest that Pope Francis is offering some insights and inviting us to listen, discern and enter into dialogue, to engage in a synodal conversation.
Symbols
The liturgy is done with things that are the exact opposite of spiritual abstractions: bread, wine, oil, water, fragrances, fire, ashes, rock, fabrics, colours, body, words, sounds, silences, gestures, space, movement, action, order, time, light.3
It is not only that the natural world is created by God that we take the things of earth and use them in our liturgy; because of the incarnation, when the divine becomes human, the things of earth have potential to be transformed and become (or at least point to) the divine. In the Eucharist we do not offer wheat and grapes, fruits of the earth, but bread and wine, the work of human hands: the gifts of nature transformed into food and drink. These gifts are then transformed once more in the Eucharistic Prayer and offered back to us as the Body and Blood of Christ. Pope Francis notes what his predecessor Leo the Great said: “Our participation in the Body and Blood of Christ has no other end than to make us become that which we eat.”4
Symbols in the liturgy are usually simple natural things. They have, however, a complexity of meaning or can hold a number of meanings and they can be ambiguous. A sign is simpler and has only one meaning. A road sign gives us one set of information whether it is speed or road conditions. It points to something outside itself.
A candle, the symbol of light, not only illuminates but burns down, so it can mark the passing of time. It can be shared, without being dimmed. It can be fragile, subject to a breeze; it can be extinguished. A candle holds all these layers of meanings—it is what it signifies. We interpret the candle with the eyes of faith—so we connect with Christ who named himself as the Light of the World.
In the liturgy, when we use symbols, we often surround them with framing devices which interpret the symbol in the context of which we are celebrating. So, the quotation on water at the beginning of this article relates to the prayer over the baptismal water. In a similar way, the Exultet shapes our understanding of the Paschal Candle. Because of their use at significant moments in the liturgy, symbols become also bearers of memory.
When we place the Paschal Candle beside a coffin, we are not only invoking all those natural aspects given above including the passing of time and the fragility, we are also invoking the memory of the Easter Vigil and the promise and hope of Christ’s resurrection.
A Challenge
The focus of Desiderio Desideravi is the ‘liturgical formation of the people of God’. Pope Francis sees the use and reception of liturgical symbols as a key part of liturgical formation. It is perhaps worth noting that what we might initially think of as liturgical formation—the better knowledge of the liturgy and the development of good practice—is only part of Pope Francis’ aim. It goes deeper: what is the purpose of the liturgy and therefore our formation in it?; how are we formed for the liturgy so that it forms us to be more like Christ?
However, Pope Francis throws down a challenge in the writings of Romano Guardini (1885-1968). He was a German theologian, often seen as the father of the Liturgical Movement in Germany. For those who play Popes Benedict and Francis against each other, he is an important point of connection. Benedict, as Joseph Ratzinger, wrote his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, using the same title as one of Guardini’s most important writings. Francis not only quotes him in Desiderio Desideravi but also in Laudato Si’ (2015).
Towards the end of his life, in the light of the reform of the liturgy at the Second Vatican Council, Guardini wrote a letter to the Third Liturgical Congress taking place in Mainz in 1964. He wondered if modern man was capable of the liturgical act; that changes to text and rubrics were necessary but something more profound was at stake.
I have always found Guardini’s letter challenging and I confess that I have always read it in a ‘glass half empty’ sort of way—today we are not capable, why both…? I am interested that Pope Francis thinks it necessary to restate it almost 60 years after it was written—is it still true? I found it helpful to revisit the letter and some of Guardini’s other writings. I had grown to assume that ‘modern man’ was a product of writers such as Max Weber, who looked at capitalism and the growth of industrialisation. I think it is an element of the challenge.
The liturgy remains primarily shaped by a rural agrarian economy. What does it mean for a society shaped by industry and urban centres? What does it mean today with a different economy and globalisation? Though I think this is part of the picture, to Guardini it is more about religious practice. Modern man is shaped by nineteenth century devotions, by the dominance of personal piety over the communal action, and the care for rubrics over content. When considering a liturgical procession, the primary question is not how do we do it in practical terms—do we need a different route, different music etc.—but how do we form people so that walking in procession becomes a liturgical act? We become not only interpreters of the symbol, but the symbol itself.
Wonder
Pope Francis thinks this remains a challenge. We may have reformed the liturgy but is it reforming us? He offers a partial solution when he writes about ‘amazement before the Paschal mystery’. He suggests, “Wonder is an essential part of the liturgical act because it is the way that those who know they are engaged in the particularity of symbolic gestures look at things. It is the marvelling of those who experience the power of symbol, which does not consist in referring to some abstract concept but rather in containing and expressing in its very concreteness what it signifies.”5
He exemplifies this at the beginning of the document when he offers a reflection6 on the Blessing of Baptismal Water, already referred to. It is full of wonder and amazement—but it is also a close reading of the liturgical text. It is worth looking at the reflection alongside the blessing.
Entering into dialogue
Here, however, I want to suggest that there are a couple of key ideas absent in the Apostolic Letter. the first is a key idea in liturgical catechesis and Pope Francis writes about it in Evangelii Gaudium (2013): mystagogy.7 This is the model for all post-baptismal catechesis, not just for those initiated at the Easter Vigil. It is a way of reflecting on what we celebrate so that we not only deepen our faith but also learn how we should live. In working with catechists, a basic starter question might be ‘where did you experience the presence of Christ in the liturgical celebration?’ In our responses we might not appreciate more who Christ is but we are invited to have our lives shaped by him. This process seems to me to be essential in Pope Francis’ desire that liturgy forms us.
The second idea I would have like to have seen in the document is about eschatology and looking ahead. The rich theology of the opening section could, I think, have been further developed with an idea of where it is all heading: the new heaven and new earth. More than that is the link between symbols of the liturgy and the current environmental crisis. The naturalness of our symbols means that they are often key aspects of the environment. When we look at water, as well as quenching and cleansing we need to recall floods and drought. We need to remember those who do not have access to clean water. A good symbol can hold all these contradictions—it is effective if it inspires us to act.
Looking back and looking forward
I have suggested that Pope Francis believes that the crisis which Guardini identified in 1964 is also true today. Christopher Walsh, another distinguished liturgist, wrote the following in 1979 in English Catholic Worship, a book of essays published to mark fifty years of the Society of St Gregory:
“For to my mind, the principal problem, indeed crisis, facing liturgy in this country is that of credibility. Despite all the revision and reform (and sometimes perhaps because of it), a hiatus amounting in many cases to a chasm of Grand Canyon proportions has opened up between language and experience, between description and reality, between ideology and fact. Thus: ‘families’ whose members know nothing of each other, ‘communities’ which are nothing of the sort, ‘songs’ which are recited, ‘acclamations’ which are muttered by one voice, baptisms where people are ‘bathed’ and ‘buried’ in Christ under 10ml of water and ‘welcomed into a community’ which has not bothered to turn up or even been informed of the event, ‘meals’ at which no one drinks and where ‘sharing one bread’ means simultaneous consumption of 500 individual breads, ‘gifts of the people’ which are not theirs and which they do not give, ‘celebrations’ which are the joyless and perfunctory discharge of an obligation. The list is depressing and almost infinitely extensible. It is questionable how long the liturgy can endure this corrupting disease without being irretrievably weakened.
Reforms and revisions we have had in plenty, but liturgical renewal will never be achieved until our texts, rites and affirmations are translated not into this or that sort of English but into reality in the lived experience of the people; and they will rarely be experienced as real until the congregations celebrating them are genuine communities of faith, witness and action.” 8
Notes
1. Pope Francie, Desiderio Desideravi (2022) n.13 [henceforth DD]
2. DD n.1
3. DD n.42
4. DD n.41
5. DD n.26
6. DD n.13
7. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (2013) n.166
8. Christopher Walsh in ed. JD Crichton, HE Winston and JR Ainslie English Catholic Worship: Liturgical Renewal in England since 1900, (Geoffrey Chapman London 1979) p.139-140