Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Zenit ran a letter today from a reader, commenting on a previous Zenit article discussing the need for the organic element to be a governing factor in the adoption of liturgical music. If found the letter writer’s terminology very telling. Here is the short letter:

…I would like to add my 2 cents worth on the subject, being involved in Church worship services for many years.

I believe it is high time to consider the value and significant contribution of Catholic praise and worship music to the millions of people who have experienced transformed lives as a result of anointed, inspiring worship during prayer meetings and also other services.

I appreciate the Gregorian chants and also traditional hymns, at the same time we need to look at how praise and worship songs (most of which are based on verses from Scripture texts) have a very important role in today’s Church services.

Let’s all together work for the greater glory of God!

Now, I can agree with the sentiment of coming together and glorifying God. However, if one compares this letter writer’s language to that of the article to which he refers, one will see a stark difference. The previous article discusses comments from Monsignor Valentín Miserachs Grau, director of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music from a conference on sacred music. His comments reflect a recognition and appreciation of the Catholic understanding of liturgy. In contrast, the words above such as “Church worship services” and “anointed, inspiring worship” seem to suggest the Protestant Evangelical confusion between affective experience with “anointed” worship.

It leads one to ask what this writer might understand by his reference to “the greater glory of God.” I wonder if he understands that St. Ireneaus’ teaching that “the glory of God is man fully alive” (Against Heresies) means man fully himself. That is, man who is fully self-possessed such that he can give himself fully to God–traditionally we call this holiness. Does he recognize that “man fully alive” comes about by overcoming his concupiscent desires such that he can easily choose to pursue the authentic good and put aside the apparent, lower goods when the are in conflict.

Man can accomplish this task only through superhuman strength and he can find this strength only from grace–i.e. participation in the divine nature (2 Pt 1:4). The grace is mediated to us through the Sacraments, of which the Eucharist is the source and center. The problem with praise and worship music at Mass, as I have indicated before (see here for a related post), is that it reverses the direction of the liturgical movement. The liturgy brings into time, the divine condescension (God reaching down to and finally becoming Man) in order to divinize man and allow him to return to God through man’s cooperation with His grace. The cooperation has a purpose. It restores to fallen man the capacity for him to fully possesses himself in order to fully give himself back to God. The fruitfulness of grace does not come by means of passive reception. Fruitfulness requires man’s full cooperation.

The structure of liturgy reflects the manner of God’s invitation to man and so must the accidents of its atmosphere. God does not come to man in the earthquake but in the gentle breeze (cf. 1 Kings 19:12-13). Our affectivities (emotions, appetites, etc.) are good and we need them (see my concupiscence post linked to above). However, they must be trained because of our fallen state. While in our original condition of integration they were “trustworthy,” now they tend to draw us away from God and toward the material world. By contrast, the liturgy ontologically brings us to God and we are called to follow this movement, volitionally, with our whole selves.

This volitional following is hampered often by our affectivities. The affectivities were created to be subordinated to reason and to follow its direction, this now is a challenge because they often do not do so readily. This presents us with the problem of concupiscence. We are drawn most compellingly to the affectively good. With this background, we can see how the admonition from the Church that sacred music is meant to adorn the words and not drown them out follows from this. The words in the liturgy should first move our minds to God. The music should then have the capacity to draw our whole selves from this earth up to God. In this way, the structure of the music and word relationship allows our affectivities follow the intellect. The liturgy can actually help us train them. When we start with our affectivities, which is the effect of praise and worship music, we reverse this action. In other words, we do not subordinate the affectivities to the intellect, but interpret the intellect in terms of our emotions. This is why so many who acclimate themselves to praise and worship mistake the lack of affective experience for the lack of the “anointing” of the Holy Spirit.

Moreover, the heightened affectivities inhibit the silent contemplation of God in His Word and in the Word’s Eucharistic action. Ironically, we are drawn away from active participation in the liturgy and we don’t realize it because the affective experience is masquerading as active involvement when it is really passive reception of the experience.  Praise and worship music is antithetical to the liturgical grammar because it works at cross purposes with fallen human nature. Thus a good musical form (I have said before that I do listen to praise and worship…though I will admit that I have been told by those better musically formed that I have no musical taste) can become an evil in the wrong context.  Therefore, we must not allow the “consumer” mentality to drive our liturgy.  We must give people what they need, not what they think they want.

I applaud this writer’s desire to glorify God. However, God is not glorified by bodies swaying with arms raised in affective intoxication. Rather, He is glorified when man understands who God is and who he is. God is glorified by man’s holiness which is only possible through His grace, i.e. cooperative communion with God. It takes much effort on fallen man’s part. He must soak himself in grace and cooperate with it such that he is able to become “virtuous,” from the Latin term which perhaps could be equated with St. Irenaeus’ dictum. The Mass is the starting place for practicing self possession.  It is the place for moving away from the noise of the world which distracts us from the emptiness we have inside because we are not yet what we were made to be. It is the place to move toward God in silent, communal self-gift which is enabled by  self-possession and self-mastery.  Praise and worship may be fine for prayer meetings.  Hymnody is perhaps better placed in other venues such as the Liturgy of the Hours. But for the Mass, we must return to the foundation of chant and sacred polyphony and require that future developments in liturgical must must arise organically from these venerable traditions.

So yes, let us by all means consider the possible benefits of praise and worship, but let us first consider the meaning of the liturgy and a mature Christian anthropology and only then will we be prepared to discern the proper venues in which this musical style can be put to fruitful use. That’s my two cents worth…