Wilfrid Stinissen OCD
(According to the Swedish magazine Karmel, August 1996)
Earthly and Heavenly Liturgy
Many of us suffer from the feeling that life is so insignificant, so limited, so fragmented. We long for breadth, space, for great perspectives. We are pained by the realization that life is somehow broken, that we often get stuck in trivialities, while the reality – which we only sense – is infinite. In a way, we all have something in common with Thérèse of Lisieux and recognize ourselves in her words: “Je choisis tout” (I choose everything). We want to have it all, the whole. This all-encompassing perspective, which is so often talked about in our time, is essentially a pre-human perspective. Ancient philosophy already knew this when it proclaimed that the human intellect is open to being in its entirety. The human mind cannot be satisfied with just this or that; it will find peace only when it understands the whole.
Thanks to the mass media and their news coverage, our horizons have remarkably expanded: instead of living in our small village, we now live in a big world, and news from the other side of the globe often reaches us faster than information about what happened in our neighborhood. Yet, we are still not satisfied. Most of us sense that this is not the whole, that behind what we see with our eyes, there exists an invisible reality, and that this invisible reality might be more interesting, more real than that which we can grasp with our senses. All religions seem to agree on this.
Hinduism speaks of “maya” (the word comes from Sanskrit and means trick, illusion): Brahmanic philosophy considers the world to be an illusion. Christians do not align themselves with this view and defend the character of the reality of the world. However, Hinduism does not claim that the world is not real, but – just like Christianity – points out that the world, as we see it with our eyes, is only a small part of reality. By believing that this small part is the whole – or at least living as if it were – we have distanced ourselves from the truth. The world is an illusion not because it is not real, but because what we perceive from it leads us to mistakenly assume that this is the whole reality.
Visible concrete reality itself is neither an obstacle nor a veil covering the invisible. For one who lives deeply in their interior, the visible becomes a revelation of the invisible and a bridge to it. The purer a person's relationship with creation is, the more “transparent” the creation becomes to them. John of the Cross expresses this important truth with the words: “A person who is unable to control the joy of the senses will never be granted to taste the elevated and unceasing joy in God through the beings he created and the other work... but a person who already has a pure heart will find in all things knowledge of God joyful, pleasing, chaste, pure, spiritual, cheerful, and loving” (Ascent III, 26).
The cause of so many people's interest in Hinduism or Buddhism today lies in the fact that both religions have a developed sensitivity for the invisible reality lying beyond or outside what is visible. However, Christianity also provides us with this sensitivity, at least when we live it fully. And in Christianity, this invisible reality moreover has a concrete content. It is not some shapeless, hazy reality but rather “has a face,” or better said, many faces, to which each individual has their personal relationship.
All this is clearly manifested in the daily prayer of the Church. When we pray it or sing it in our room or together with a few other believers, we do not do so as isolated individuals but in communion with the universal Church. In fact, even the word “universal” is too limited. The daily prayer of the Church is prayed with the whole Church, even with the heavenly Church. “The hymn that is sung to God in heaven for eternity, brought into this world by the priest Jesus Christ, has been faithfully realized in the Church in a wonderful richness of various forms for so many centuries,” these words begin Paul VI.'s constitution Laudis canticum. And in the General Instructions for the daily prayer of the Church, we read: “When the Church praises God with its daily prayer, it joins its song to that hymn, which resounds for all ages in the heavenly abodes, while also pre-tasting that heavenly glory, which constantly resounds before the throne of God and the Lamb, as John writes in the Apocalypse” (art. 16). We sing with all the angels and saints in a much larger choir than we can imagine. The heavenly liturgy is described by the Apostle John. We see a huge crowd standing before the throne of God and twenty-four elders, who lay their crowns at God’s throne, fall on their knees, and worship God. We hear the song: “... as the multitude cries out – it sounded like the roar of mighty waters and the thundering of great thunder: ‘Hallelujah! The Lord our God Almighty reigns! Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory, for the wedding of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready’” (Rev 19:6–7).
Christ Prays in Us
However, we do not sing only with all the angels and saints but also together with Christ. He conducts the hymn of praise, he sets the tone: “Let us sing praise to the Father!” As if we could hear his rich, unbeatable baritone singing the cantus firmus, the melody. We join in his song and together with him and in him we glorify the Father. “We have become members of Christ's body, and therefore we join in the prayer that our High Priest began during his life on earth” (from the preface to the Swedish edition of the Daily Prayer of the Church). As baptized individuals, we are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9). We indeed have the right to sing together with the choir, we are competent, we need not fear that we are singing off-key. “Come,” our High Priest urges everyone who hesitates, “let us sing praises to the Lord together!”
In the biography of Saint Luitgarde (a Cistercian nun who lived from 1182 to 1246, the patroness of Flanders; her statue also adorns Prague's Charles Bridge – note from the editor), there is a cheerful story in connection with the prayer of the hours. Luitgarde felt distressed over her inability to control her distractions during prayer. Then Jesus appeared to her and asked why she was so sorrowful. “Do you not understand,” he said, “that I fill all the gaps and provide everything that is lacking?” The daily prayer of the Church is more of Christ’s work than our own. We need not despair when we cannot pray it as we would like. Only one being prays this prayer perfectly, and that is Jesus Christ. By engaging in his prayer, our prayer becomes part of his perfection.
Christ's love for us is so great, so absolute, that it cannot be otherwise but to allow us to participate in what constitutes his life: to praise and glorify the Father and thank him. “Father, I want,” he says, “that those you have given me may be with me where I am” (John 17:24). Jesus is completely absorbed in praising his Father; he wants us to be with him in this as well. “All that is mine is also yours,” he tells us. It is he who encourages us to join in his song of praise. “Let us magnify the Lord together, let us exalt his name!” (Ps 34:4). “In this great work, which perfectly glorifies God and sanctifies man,” says the liturgical constitution, “Christ always joins himself to his beloved bride the Church. She petitions her Lord and honors the eternal Father through him” (SC 7).
Therefore, the daily prayer of the Church is indeed the opus Dei in both senses of the word: as a work that man creates for God (genitive of the object) and as a work that God himself creates – God's work (genitive of possession). The daily prayer of the Church is the hymn of praise that the Son lifts up to the Father. It is part of the divine dialogue between the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. When we pray it, we participate in this dialogue. Along with the Son, we say: “You are my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation” (Ps 89:27).
The daily prayer of the Church is also vox Christi ad Patrem: Christ speaks to the Father. However, Christ is never alone. “He is the head of the body – that is, the Church” (Col 1:18). The head cannot be without the body, the vine cannot be without the branches. Christ does not sing to his Father solo. “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the assembly – in medio ecclesiae – I will praise you” (Ps 27:23). Christ stands at the heart of the Church. He is not ashamed to call us his brothers (Heb 2:11). He draws us with him to the Father, his “prayer introduces us into the Father.” By identifying with Christ's prayer, we begin to resemble Jesus more and more. His prayer becomes our prayer; we take on his inner disposition, his “mindset” (Phil 2:5). It increasingly holds true that it is no longer I who pray, but Christ prays in me (cf. Gal 2:20).
If we want to grow together, there is no better way than to pray together. By praying together with Christ in his own words, we are one with him. The daily prayer of the Church opens up the possibility for us to put Jesus’ words into our mouths. After all, Jesus prayed the psalms during his earthly life, and everything he ever did has the dimension of eternity. When we read: “The Lord said to me: You are my son; today I have become your father” (Ps 2:7), we know that Jesus understood these words as being addressed to him by the Father. We behave just as he did: we allow the Father to address them to us, and thus we become sons in the Son, children in the Child. When I read in the psalm: “... then I said: ‘Here I am; I have come; it is written about me in the scroll: I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart’” (Ps 40:8–9), the words have a completely different weight for me when I hear them spoken by Christ.
Words do not primarily express my inner disposition, but Christ’s disposition; they open up immeasurable horizons for me and invite me to enter into the infinite, prompting my tiny willingness to do the Father’s will for the enrichment and expansion in Jesus’ perfect obedience.
In the liturgy – although we continually pronounce words – it is more about listening than speaking. The texts we read are not composed by ourselves; rather, the words are offered to us, placed in our mouths. Therefore, it is so reassuring to simply follow the liturgical prescriptions instead of improvising according to our own will. When the liturgy can flow along a predetermined path, it is filled with peace and silence.
“Whoever sings the psalms in the daily prayer of the Church does not sing them only for themselves, but also in the name of the entire body of Christ, and even in the name of Christ himself. If one keeps this in mind, there will be no difficulties if they notice while singing that the feelings in their hearts diverge from those feelings expressed in the psalm; for when a joyful psalm meets their sad and sorrowful state or vice versa. In pure private prayer, one can easily avoid this, because they can choose a psalm that aligns with their own mood; in the sacred office, however, a generally predetermined sequence of psalms is recited not privately but in the name of the Church, even when someone may be praying it alone. Whoever sings the psalms in the name of the Church always finds a reason for joy or sorrow, because here too the Apostle’s words apply: ‘Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn’” (Romans 12:15) ... (General Instructions for the Daily Prayer of the Church, art. 108).
(Translated from Swedish by prof. Dagmar Chvojková)
Image from the breviary (on the right) made according to a photographic reproduction of the Infant Jesus from Ittenbach, called “Messinian,” because it was brought by Sister Mary of the Trinity from Carmel in Paris to the Messinian Street.
When Thérèse takes three photographs on June 7, 1897 (on the left), she holds two images in her hand that summarize her spirituality: the Holy Face from Tours and the Infant Jesus of Messina. She will keep both images ever before her eyes in the hospital.
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