Andrew Cameron-Mowat sj
Music & Liturgy 49.2 (June 2023)
Desiderio desideravi is the Apostolic Letter of Pope Francis (2022) on the liturgical formation of the people of God. The text is available on the website of the Holy See here. Or from the Catholic Truth Society (UK) here.
It is worth noting the publication date of Desiderio desideravi: 29 June, 2022, on the Solemnity of SS Peter and Paul. I think this date was deliberately chosen to further enhance the status of the document. It is also roughly one year after Traditionis custodes (16 July 2021) with which Pope Francis withdrew Pope Benedict XVI’s previous liberalisation of the 1962 rites.
In general there are three main aspects to this document. First, it has some specific intentions; second, the document raises interesting issues with an emphasis on ‘breaking the bread’ so that it may be shared; third, some important elements of the document seem based in the Pope’s Jesuit experience and spirituality.
It is a challenging document for priests in particular. For example, n.5: ‘We must not allow ourselves even a moment of rest’ etc. Through the quality of the celebration and our preaching we invite others to come to the table of the Lord; we are also called to go out to the world and find those who are seeking Christ’s way in their lives. We are called to ‘go to the peripheries’ (Note 1), to ‘smell of the sheep’ (2), and so on.
The intentions of the document are set out clearly: ‘I simply want to invite the whole Church to rediscover, to safeguard, and to live the truth and power of the Christian celebration. I want the beauty of the Christian celebration and its necessary consequences for the life of the Church not to be spoiled by a superficial and foreshortened understanding of its value or, worse yet, by its being exploited in service of some ideological vision, no matter what the hue.’ (n.16)
The Pope hopes for an end to rivalry, destructive argument and hostility: ‘Let us abandon our polemics to listen together to what the Spirit is saying to the Church. Let us safeguard our communion.’ (n.65) His primary aim is to promote and to develop liturgical formation of the People of God with the explicit statement that everything is to be understood in the context of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, ushering in a significant transformation of the theology of the church, of liturgy, and of the sacraments. This is to take place by ‘drawing out the truth and beauty of Christian celebration’ (by which he means celebration of any liturgical event).
This Jesuit Pope draws on his Ignatian roots and experience, ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer’ (Luke 22:15). This use of the term desire recurs throughout the document and plays a specific role—moving towards the heart of what the community wishes, in a process of prayer, reflection, discernment and joy.
At the centre of the Church’s liturgy is a meal which commemorates/remembers (anamnesis) an act of salvation for the Chosen People; a meal that is a sacrifice; a celebration that continues to be presented as both a sacrifice and a meal; at which Christ comes to be truly present in the species of bread and wine.
The whole church desires for this event of Eucharist to take place, and for the bread and wine to be transformed and shared, and by this ceremony of Word and Sacrament the people are themselves changed in so far as this is what they desire.
The apostles gathered are there out of their ‘burning desire’ to be close to Christ and to share the meal with him.
Eucharist is offered to all: everyone is invited to respond to their desire to seek out the transforming presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is Christ’s desire (already) that draws people to seek him and to receive him in Eucharist.
In n.9, Pope Francis reminds us of the importance and contribution of Roman Catholic theology regarding liturgical prayer and celebration, not as something staged, as in a TV production, a play or a musical, nor as
a ‘bare memorial’, but as an event in which the Holy Spirit is alive and active, and in which something happens.
‘From the very beginning the Church had grasped, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, that that which was visible
in Jesus, that which could be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands, his words and his gestures, the
concreteness of the incarnate Word—everything of Him had passed into the celebration of the sacraments.’ (3)
The Liturgy: place of encounter with Christ (3)
In many places in the document we and use of the term encounter. In English this normally carries the connotation of being unexpected or surprising. But the meaning when used in theology is more general. It refers
to the nuance of the four modes of Christ’s presence in the celebration of the Eucharist (presider, assembly,
word, food). We are coming into the presence of a living person—the risen Christ himself. It is therefore a meeting, a dialogue, a call and response, offer and acceptance, welcome and participation (‘full, conscious, active’) (4).
Of course, what has become commonplace or habitual can also still be the place of what is surprising or unexpected. As ministers of the gospel and the celebration of Liturgy we are called to assist in fostering
the possibility of encounter, and certainly to avoid impeding it.
In n.11 we find words reminiscent of an Ignatian contemplation and we note the vivid use of the present tense: ‘the salvific power of the sacrifice of Jesus, his every word, his every gesture, glance, and feeling reaches us through the celebration of the sacraments. I am Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well, the man possessed by demons at Capernaum, the paralytic in the house of Peter, the sinful woman pardoned, the
woman afflicted by haemorrhages, the daughter of Jairus, the blind man of Jericho, Zacchaeus, Lazarus, the thief and Peter both pardoned. The Lord Jesus who dies no more, who lives forever with the signs of his Passion continues to pardon us, to heal us, to save us with the power of the sacraments. It is the concrete way, by means of his incarnation, that he loves us. It is the way in which he satisfies his own thirst for us that he had declared from the cross’ (John 19:28).
The Church: sacrament of the Body of Christ
We see the use of the language of the activity of the Body of Christ, head and members, so we are (through our baptism in which we become members of his Church/his Body) radically (in our deepest being) offered up with Christ to the Father during the celebration of Mass. This is a strong claim for the sacramentality of the Church (declared as sacrament in Lumen gentium). Thus: ‘The subject acting in the Liturgy is always and only Christ–Church, the mystical Body of Christ.’ (n.15)
The theological sense of the liturgy
Pope Francis reminds us in n.16 that something had got lost or had been forgotten for a long time up to the Liturgical Movement and Vatican II: ‘We owe to the Council—and to the liturgical movement that preceded it—the rediscovery of a theological understanding of the Liturgy and of its importance in the life of the Church’. In fact, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the early pioneers of the liturgical movement, including Pope Pius X, Dom Lambert Beauduin, Romano Guardini, and many others, for awakening the church to the need of liturgical reform as the foundational energy for the renewal of the whole church.
The liturgy: antidote for the poison of spiritual worldliness
Here the Pope seeks to help us to shift away from (a) my subjective world of self-referencing and (b) a tendency towards ‘narcissistic and authoritarian elitism’ (n.17). We need rather to focus on the Church–Christ, the Church–Assembly, on ‘We’ rather than ‘I’.
Rediscovering daily the beauty of the truth of the Christian Celebration
If celebrated as intended and as designed, there is every chance that the celebration will, in some sense or way, be ‘beautiful’ (simple, profound, mystical, holy, prayerful, quiet, bold, unifying, uplifting, uniting, creative, filling the senses with wonder, etc.).
‘Let us be clear here: every aspect of the celebration must be carefully tended to . . .’ Step one: the assembly knows what to expect, and departures from norms/rubrics immediately place the celebrant to the level of ‘he does it his own way’ or ‘he is a bit idiosyncratic’. (n.23) It becomes about him not about us (including him). The celebration of the liturgy should always be about Us and Christ. In the next step, Pope Francis asks us to consider our response to the liturgical celebration: Do we have a sense of ‘amazement’? For him, this is an essential part of the liturgical action. We must seek to foster ‘astonishment’ at the profound and tremendous Rex tremendae Majestatis (n.24) (5).
For Pope Francis, n.25 expresses the significance of the experience of mystery (now said to be lacking) in the
life of the Church and especially in the Church’s liturgy. This is interpreted by this Jesuit Pope as felt knowledge
of the truth of Christ’s death and resurrection for me, the realisation of which brings transformative grace, healing, freedom and a desire to act. He means that liturgy is prayer that fosters encounter, generates wonder and astonishment, and brings about transformation through the action of Christ.
The need for a serious and vital liturgical formation
For the Pope, there continues to be a dearth of engagement with people of the power of the liturgy to heal and transform, and to give clear, long-lasting relevance and meaning to their lives (in rapidly changing contexts).
With Sacrosanctum Consilium as the beacon, the rest of the documents of Vatican II followed, and so did the transformation of the liturgy and the various sacramental rites. How is the church and its ministers to draw the
people into the liturgical act?
First: through formation by the Liturgy. Proper celebration of the liturgy is itself formative. People notice liturgy when it is done properly/well. They might bring their friends; they might invite non-Catholics or non-Christians to ‘come and see—and hear’. They experience a community (a remarkable mixture of ethnic races, ages, stages of health) united in prayer and worship through gesture, song, movement, silence, reverence). Here the liturgy itself is doing something important. It is not militantly fussy or fusty. Christ is alive and active in good-quality proclamation of scripture and prayer, in good preaching, in relevant Prayers of the Faithful. The attitude and actions of the priest and other ministers teach the assembly/visitors about the significance of what is taking place. It is a fulfilment of the text from the ordination of Deacons: ‘Receive the book of the Gospels whose herald you now are: believe what you read; teach what you believe; and practise what you teach’.
Second: Formation for the liturgy. This point is especially important for ministers of the liturgy, but it is for the assembly also, with the emphasis on the Sunday Eucharist as ‘the foundation of communion, at the centre of the life of the community’ (n.37).
In n.44 the Pope promotes fostering of the deeper engagement with the language of symbol as an encounter with the living Christ. In Liturgy, the symbols make present their true reality (what is within them contained) which is the living and risen Christ.
n.45 points to an emerging key question: ‘How can we become once again capable of symbols? How can we again know how to read them and be able to live them?’ The Pope realises that in most western civilisations we have an impoverished appreciation of symbols and symbolic life. This impedes our awareness of the activity of the Spirit in the celebration of the sacred rites.
In n 47 Pope Francis then raises the essential problem with the liturgy as it is now celebrated: in order for it
to be effective we have to pay attention—we have to participate consciously and fully, even actively to become
united properly with Christ who is the centre of the sacramental event. It is not just a matter of being there while something goes on in the sanctuary. To foster this participation we are formed by our grandparents, parents, godparents, in catechesis, in school, by chaplains, parish priests, etc. We learn gestures, movements, songs, words, actions. From an early age we are exposed to (and gradually become aware of) the true meaning and significance of our symbolic words, actions, gestures in liturgy.
Ars Celebrandi
Pope Francis hopes that we can avoid subjectivism (doing our ‘own thing’) and excessive rubricism (an obsessive attention to instruction), and that for each celebration we need to reflect/pray in order to ensure we are ‘in harmony with the action of the Spirit’. For a start, the celebrant can ask to what extent is what I am doing and what I am saying not only true prayer but done/said in such a way as to foster true prayer in the assembly? Then to ask, to what extent have I reflected upon what works for this assembly in this place?
Pope Francis asserts that, in one way or another, celebrants are not robots but artists: ‘But for an artist, in addition to technical knowledge, there has also to be inspiration, which is a positive form of possession. The true artist does not possess an art but rather is possessed by it . . . A diligent dedication to the celebration is required, allowing the celebration itself to convey to us its art.” (n.50)
With n.51 he reminds us also that neither are members of the assembly to be excluded from this event. They are
full participants, not merely spectators. Full, conscious and active participation is not members of the Kop seeing Steven Gerrard scoring a goal from thirty yards. Depending on our allegiance, this may be wonderful in itself, but as an analogy it is simply not enough. Participation in liturgy is akin to scoring the goal. The people are united with the priest in the silences and in the prayers, and especially in offering themselves in the renewal of the sacrifice of Christ to the Father. Through the participation of everyone, the bread and wine are offered up (and us with them) and the species are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, which we then consume. But we are also thereby transformed by the same united action. The assembly from now on is different because they have participated fully in the celebration of the Eucharist. They are reminded by St Paul (1 Corinthians) that this should be reverent, worthy, and so forth.
With regard to reverence, we are reminded in n.52 about the importance of proper and appropriate silence,
which in the context of liturgy is a ‘moment of arrival’ of the Holy Spirit. Within this silence the Holy Spirit acts. ‘Silence moves to sorrow for sin and the desire for conversion. It awakens a readiness to hear the Word and awakens prayer. It disposes us to adore the Body and Blood of Christ. It suggests to each one, in the intimacy of communion, what the Spirit would effect in our lives to conform us to the Bread broken. For all these reasons we are called to enact with extreme care the symbolic gesture of silence. rough it the Spirit gives us shape, gives us form.’
Pope Francis, in n.54, acknowledges that problems often start with the presider. This can be seen in a celebrant
drawing too much attention to himself through being idiosyncratic, careless, poorly prepared, or having a bad
attitude to what is taking place. It is a moment of true penance for a parish to have a priest with a poor attitude
to liturgy, knowing that a replacement might never come.
The Pope then concludes with several pages of advice to the presider/priest:
1. It is Christ who is present in the action of the priest—‘the risen Lord is in the leading role, and not our own
immaturities, assuming roles and behaviours which are simply not appropriate’ (n.57). He is the agent of the love of Christ for this assembly. That love is ‘burning’ with the priest in the ‘furnace of God’s love’.
2. Recognise the participation and protection of Mary, who protected Christ in her womb, who protected the first Church, who protects the celebrant/assembly by whose act Christ comes to be present in Eucharist (n.58).
3. Allow the Holy Spirit to act. First, by believing that from time to time, the Holy Spirit can and does act on and in me. That is what inspiration means. (n.59)
4. Always try to recognise true participation in the anamnesis (active remembering) of the Eucharistic Prayer, making present and making real that which is remembered (‘made into the body once more’). (n.60)
5. Recognise the possibility and reality of true participation in the Body of the Risen Christ. ‘The
priest cannot recount the Last Supper to the Father without himself becoming a participant in it. He
cannot say, “Take this, all of you and eat of it, for this is my Body which will be given up for you,” and not
live the same desire to offer his own body, his own life, for the people entrusted to him. This is what
happens in the exercise of his ministry.’
Pope Francis ends with a point of clarification in n.61. He makes it clear that the Church (since Sacrosanctum
consilium) has developed and authorised Rites for the use of the whole Church. The renewal is, for him, irreversible. We are not going back to what was done before. We are not capable, in an authentic way, to have variable versions of the Roman Rite. The situation that arose following the decree of Pope Benedict XVI (‘two usages of the one Rite’) was a neologism that cannot continue. The claim that the 1962, 1964, and 1965 rituals were not ‘juridically abrogated’ does not stand up to proof. The magisterial documents of Paul VI show otherwise. In n.65 Pope Francis ends with an appeal to the unity of the Church, so that we may all celebrate the liturgy free
from the polemics and lack of charity which divide us. May this be true!
Notes
1. World Day of Migrants and Refugees (May 2021) and elsewhere
2. Meeting with French priests (June 2021)
3. The subheadings are taken from Desiderio desideravi (29 June 2022)
4. Sacrosanctum Consilium (1963) n.14
5. Listen to Mozart’s, Verdi’s or Berlioz’s setting of this text for a sense of what is suggested here