Splendor of Worship
by VP
Posted on Sunday October 23, 2022 at 01:00AM in Documents
Saint Catherine of Siena Catholic Church, Wake Forest, Raleigh Diocese, NC
"Mr.
LePlay, a world-renowned scientist, who during many long years of close
application made the study of social questions his special occupation,
but a short time before his death tersely recorded in a single phrase
the result of his investigations. "Nations," he wrote, "that observe the
Commandments of God prosper; nations that transgress them are on the
decline; while nations that openly reject them are dying out."
Now,
the first and all important duty prescribed by the ten Commandments is
that of divine worship: "The Lord thy God shalt thou adore and Him only
shalt thou serve" were the words of our Lord addressed to the tempter.
And why must we adore God? Because HE IS. For how, if His existence
cannot be denied, are we to refuse Him the homage which His sovereignty
demands? Moses was drawing nearer to the burning bush, where "the Lord
had appeared to him in a flame of fire," and he was bid to stand back by
the Almighty: "Come not nigh hither, put off the shoes from thy feet;
for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.... I am the God of
thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob."
Moses hid his face, for he durst not look at God.
And when Moses
was about to receive his mission, at the prayer of Moses God gave His
own name, a name implying the eternity of His duration and the necessity
of His existence: "I AM WHO AM,... Thus shalt thou say to the Children
of Israel: "He Who IS sent me to you"... This is My name forever; and
this is my memorial unto all generations."
God is the Supreme,
self-existent and Necessary Being immutable from all and for all
Eternity, for whom past, present and future are as the minute in which
we live.
"But amongst the many claims that God has upon us: the
very first of all is the claim of adoration or worship. He is our God -
our Creator. He is infinite in perfection, infinite in wisdom, infinite
in power, mercy and love. The very first thing that God demands is that
he should admit and recognize these attributes of God, and, recognizing
them, that we should bow down and adore them. Therefore the Holy Ghost
tell us in Scripture, that if any man wish to approach God the very
first thing is how to know God as He is. This virtue is called religion,
in which we recognize God in Himself, in His attributes, in His creatures; and the first act of religion is the act of adoration
or worship.
"Now, the Psalmist who uttered the words "I have love, O
Lord! the beauty of Thy house and the place where Thy glory dwelleth"
had not yet beheld the glory of God, the temple of Jerusalem. The temple
was not yet built, but was to be the work of His son, the great and
wise King Solomon. But David saw it not, and yet he said: "I have love,
O Lord, the beauty of Thy house." He beheld it in the vision of his
mind, he saw the stateliness of its grandeur, the majesty of its
proportions, the richness of its material. He saw there the gold of
Ophir, the scarlet twice-dyed of Tyre, and the costly marbles taken out
of the hearts of the hills, and he rejoiced because all this was fitting
for the house in which the glory of the Lord God was to dwell.
"But
above all things he beheld in the vision then in his mind all the
tribes of Israel coming to Jerusalem to worship in the temple and adore
their God. He beheld the beauty of adoration surpassing all other
beauties of the House of God. He saw as the vision extended before his
prophetic eyes the successive generations of true Israelites worshiping
there, and he rejoiced; until at length he beheld the Virgin leading in
that Child, who was God, into is own house. Then it was in the
fullness of his prophetic heart he exclaimed: "O Lord, I have loved the
beauty of This house and the place where Thy glory dwelleth; for lo! the
Lord God has sent down His only Son into His own mansion;" and then the
vision extended until the prophet saw the fading glories of Jerusalem
pass away. He saw the veil rent and the holiness depart from the house
of God, until the abomination of desolation was there. He saw the
mercy-seat empty, but again he saw rise from out the ruins of the one
temple of Jerusalem ten thousand temples surpassing each other in beauty
and loveliness. He saw the ten thousand temples of the living God
spring up under the sky, and everywhere the altar of sanctification, the
tabernacle of the Divine Presence. And the latter glories far exceeded
the former, and then it was that he again exclaimed: "I have loved, O
Lord! the beauty of Thy house and the place where Thy glory dwelleth."
(The beauty of Divine worship, Fr. Thomas N. Burke, OP vol 3, page 414)
This
worship we owe God is not, then, merely interior and personal. Far from
it. The Holy Council of Trent reminds us that is must also be outward
and public: "Man, in fact, being so constituted that it is but with
difficulty, if outward signs be wanting, as he is body and soul, that he
can raise his thoughts to Heaven and consider the things that are of
God. Wherefore Holy Church, like a tender mother, has instituted certain
rites and varied ceremonies, mystic blessings, lights, incense,
sacred vestments and a number of other outward practices based on
Apostolic teaching and Tradition." Or, in the words of the illustrious
Dominican: "The very nature of man requires this; for such is the
intimate union of souls and body in man, that it is impossible to reach
the soul save through the senses of the body; if you wish to influence
the mind of man, and touch his heart either for good or for evil, you
must appeal to his bodily senses. God Himself respects His own divine
disposition in this regard, making the sense the ordinary channels of
His highest graces; and the Church of God - the only true interpreter of
His Will - whose mission it is to raise fallen man up to God, to purify
and to preserve his soul, and to make him perfect by charity, makes
uses of everything that strikes and captivates the senses, in order
thereby to reach man's soul, to touch his heart, and offer to God the
homage of the entire creature, as well of the body as of the soul." This
will explain to us why the Catholic Church uses so much of external
grandeur in her ceremonies. The lights and ornaments of the altar, the
vestments of the priests, the smoke of incense, the pealing notes of the
organ, the lofty dome, the graceful arch, the pictures and statues -
all these things are intended by the Church as means whereby to reach
the hearts and souls of her children, by instructing, ennobling,
touching and captivating their senses.
"Now, the mission of the
Church in this world is to win man to God; in order to do this, she must
take him as he is, and treat him according to his nature, leading
him up from natural things to supernatural - from the things that are
made to the invisible things of God, and to a knowledge of "His eternal
power and divinity." She must turn to God all the powers of man's soul,
all the affections of his heart; and therefore she seizes upon all that
is beautiful in this world, and makes it subservient to this end.
"Hence,
the fine arts have always found their most generous protection, as they
found their highest inspiration in the Catholic Church. Painting and
sculpture were exclusively hers until the heretical spirit of this
world, and then they fell, nor found in their wretched imitations of Paganism anything that could make up to them for the fair Christianity which they had abandoned.
"But
painting and sculpture, after all, can hardly be called the offspring
of the Church, though she consecrated, refined and exalted them. They flourished
in ancient times, and Greece and Rome beheld them in all their glory.
But there is another of the fine arts which God seems to have consecrated
in a peculiar manner to the services of the sanctuary, and which may
be said to be especially the child of the Church, and this is music." (Music in Catholic Worship, Fr. Thomas N. Burke OP, Vol 1 p345)
Though
we have borrowed already largely from the great Irish orator, we cannot
bring ourselves to omit the development of this last thought, which we find
in another part of the first lecture from which we quoted: "If He
(Christ our Lord) had intended to appeal only to the mind of man, He
would have stopped at the tradition of the word; but the intention of
Our Lord Jesus Christ in founding the Christian religion was to go
farther and deeper than the mere intelligence. It was to strike home
to the heart. It was to penetrate the spirit and to obtain possession of
the whole man; and therefore He did not stop at the mere granting of
the word, creating light and faith, but He furnished His Church with
every means by which she can appeal to the heart, move the spirit,
bow down the head, and chasten and purify the body as well as the soul
of man; and amongst the means with which God furnished His Church to
reach the heart and to strike the spirit of man in His worship, one of
the most direct, one of the most powerful is the appeal which is made by
the music of the Church to the ear, and though the hearing to the heart
of man.
Church music, the voice of praise lifted up in
melodious chords; the swell and the pealing of the organ bearing aloft
the loud hosanna of adoration to God; the soft, low, tender notes
that steal through the senses into the heart of man, and draw us away
from ourselves until we are altogether before God; a mild strain that
falls like the breathing of God's angels in its soothing influence on
the trouble spirit, until we are truly called, lulled into that state
of sacred rest that is necessary in order to hear the voice and realize
the presence of God; the storm-rushing notes that proclaim in voice of
praise, some strong emotion of joy, some delightful surprise of revealed
truth, some mighty mystery giving us triumph over the enemies of God -
all this interpreted by the Church's music forms one of the most
powerful appeals which she makes in her worship to man, not only to his
intelligence but it rouses the heart of man to the preacher, proclaiming revealed truth as on appeal to the mind."
So
much for the necessity of outward ceremonial and splendor in the
worship man owes to his God. But there is something more of which we
must not lose sight. God did not create man to, as it were, an isolated
or solitary being, to live apart or estranged from this fellow-men. On
the contrary, He created him for companionship with these his
fellow-mortals. Both reason and infallible Church demand that God's
worship be not outward and personal only, but that it be public and
social. For, as the individual is wholly dependent on his Creator, so
society depends on Him for its existence and preservation; and without
the public recognition of God's supreme sanctioning authority, society
would suffer dissolution, and the reign of barbarism or anarchy would be
the inevitable outcome.
As for the principal effects of outward
ceremonial or sensible signs in divine worship, instituted, we must
remember, by the Savior Himself and perpetuated by His legitimate Spouse, the Holy Catholic Church, show of all oratorical ornament, they may be stated as follows:
-
The great liturgical prayer - for such would be the correct appellation
of divine worship enhanced by the many holy rites which accompany it -
raises up the hearts of the faithful to the consideration and
contemplation of spiritual and divine things; it constitutes the most
perfect and most striking of all professions of faith; it unceasingly
reminds us of our great duties; it forms the most powerful of social
ties; in a word, as a master mind in such matters has put it, "it is
above all divine; it is at one and the same time milk for the little
ones and the bread of the strong, in this, that like unto the miraculous
manna of the desert, it assumes every savor according to the taste of
those whose nourishment it becomes." (The Liturgical Year, Don
Gueranger, T.T. p. 16)
It cannot certainly escape our observation
that the greater the pomp and splendor which surrounds the worship
given to God by His Holy Church, the more do the wonderful effects we
have enumerated manifest themselves, and all the greater exuberance. For
no other reason has the Church, as we have seen, from the very
beginning, even in the hidden recesses of the catacombs, and the dim
windings of subterraneous Rome, endeavored to impart to divine worship
all the grandeur, solemnity and beauty at her command, circumstances of
time and place being taken into account. Never has she hearkened for an
instant to these imitators of the Iscariot, who have lived in every
country and in every age, and who in our own days more particularly
persist in crying out: "To what purpose is this waste? For this might
have been sold for much and given to the poor." Let us not be dazzled by
their specious objections,and let us bear in mind that if Jesus Christ,
our God made Man, who of all the poor ought to be dearest to us, were
honored and surrounded as He should be with becoming splendor in His
tabernacles and in His temples, all of His suffering members, the
indigent, the blind, the halt and the weary, would be the better for it,
and that from that hour waning zeal and charity growing cold would be
fanned into flame in the heats of the faithful, and good works would
flourish and bear fruits in abundance.
Let those on whom God has
lavished the goods of this world, surrounded without stint with the
comforts of this life, endowed with all the resources of wealth,
rejoice in being able to rear temples and shrines befitting the august,
the infinite majesty of the living God. The "eye of the needle" will be expanded
to the proportions of Heaven's great portals thrown open to receive
them, and their mansion will be all the grander and more sumptuous for eternity.
Let
those who have caught from some faint echo of celestial melody the true
inspiration of heavenly song enrich the repertory of the Church's
music;
or, in a lesser degree, according to the talent they have
received from the Master, contribute to the sweetness and majesty of her
chant or accompanying harmony.
Let those who have snatched from
the bow which spans the heavens the secret of blending, not with tawdry
effect or meretricious coloring, its evanescent hues and of fixing them
on groined arch or willing canvass, lend their skill to the decorating
of God' sanctuaries.
But let all our beloved Apostles of
Prayer, by whom the great LITURGICAL PRAYER should be held in such high
esteem and reverence, energetically battle against lukewarm piety, the
growing evil of the day, which dims the splendor of divine worship. It
is in this particular that the sterner sex especially should make a
greater effort to add, by their presence, solemnity to our feasts and
sacred ceremonies, and lend their influence to make them more imposing.
As
for the devout sex, women and Christian maidens, let them continue from
day to day to swell the membership of such excellent associations as
tabernacle societies or workers for poor churches, and lay under
contribution their innate taste and deft fingers for the ornamentation
of the altar in the many divers ways the love of God's holy places alone
can suggest. And when all else is wanting and the God of all majesty is
adored in the poor nude chapel, recalling the penury of Bethlehem's
crib, let the altar line be at least spotless and of immaculate
whiteness, for there one is to rest Holiness and Purity itself, for who
is there who is too poor or too lowly not to be able to assist in
maintaining cleanliness in whatever is consecrated to God's service?
Nothing is too good or too costly to be devoted to Him, neither is there
any office to be considered menial when performed for the God of Glory.
(...)
May our prayer be, that divine worship may again become what it was in
the most glorious days of the Church: "the light of the learned, the
book of the lowly and the joy of nations."
Source: The Canadian Messenger of the Sacred Heart, Vol 4, page 81. 1894
O! Holy Virgin, powerful Help of Christians, we entreat thee, come to
our aid. Come quickly with the celestial army, especially the intrepid
Archangel Michael. Kindle in all hearts, especially in the hearts of
Priests, the sacred fire of most ardent zeal. Place thyself at our head,
august Mother of the God of hosts, and lead us to the battle. Sustain
us by thy prayers; encourage us by thine eye. Scatter before us these
new infernal legions, as the wind scatters the clouds. Powerful Help of
Christians, give us victory, give us triumph and peace; obtain for us a
holy life and a holy death. Amen.