The Sign of Peace

The 2005 Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist, raised the subject of the present position and form of the "sign of peace" at Mass. Since then, the subject has been studied by the Congregation for Divine Worship and Episcopal Conferences around the world. As a result, the Congregation recently released a Circular Letter in the hope that it "may become an occasion for a new and more intense Eucharistic catechesis between the priests and the communities, in order to help the people of God to grow in a more profound understanding of this important moment of the celebration, that is clearly oriented to communicate the sentiments and the attitudes of Christ, the Prince of Peace, the Risen One, Giver of Peace for the church and for the world, and that, through the Sacramental Communion with his Body and his Blood, makes us become one with Him and in Him."

The "sign of peace" is, of course, the contemporary equivalent in the Paul VI Mass of the traditional Pax or "Kiss of Peace, that used to be exchanged among the clergy at Solemn Masses after the Agnus Dei. Done only at Solemn Masses and exchanged only among the clergy, the rite had become almost unknown among ordinary faithful until its restoration in 1969.

In several non-Roman Rites - for example, the Ambrosian (Milan), the Mozarabic (Toledo) - and in the liturgies of the Eastern Churches, the Kiss of Peace" occurs earlier in the Mass, at the "Offertory" (in the spirit of Matthew 5:23-24, about being reconciled with one's brothers and sisters before offering one's gift at the altar). With the restoration of the "sign of peace" to the entire congregation in the contemporary Roman Rite, some have suggested moving it to that alternative position. This Circular Letter acknowledges that discussion but decides "to retain the rite of peace in its traditional place in the Roman liturgy and not to introduce structural changes in the Roman Missal."

It seems to me that good arguments can be made for either position, but I am sympathetic to the letter's concern to show fidelity to the long-standing tradition of its placement in the Roman Rite, as well as to the practical desire not to introduce any additional element of liturgical change or experimentation at this time.

In the decades since the restoration of the rite in modernized form, most of the debate and controversy concerning it have been about its impact - perceived possibly as disruptive - in the celebration of Mass, especially coming as it does just before the reception of Holy Communion. Thus the Circular Letter acknowledges and warns against certain common abuses. Specifically it mentions: the introduction of a "song of peace" (something that has never been an official part of the Roman Rite but which I have occasionally experienced at Masses in Spanish), also people leaving their places and moving around the church to offer the peace (something one sometimes still sees), and the priest himself leaving the altar to do so (something that used to be quite common and is still seen but is now much less commonly encountered than was the case until relatively recently), and finally the rite becoming a vehicle for congratulations, condolences, and holiday greetings on special occasions. Such abuses, the letter reminds us, should be "definitively" avoided.

So, actually, other than settling the debate about whether to move the rite elsewhere in the Mass and warning against some common misuses of the rite, there is not much new in the letter. It is, however, an invitation to pay more attention not only to how we do the "sign of peace" (from a ritual standpoint), but also to its ultimate meaning in relationship to the larger meaning and significance of the Eucharistic celebration. For what it may be worth, my own view has long been that many liturgical abuses stem from a common failure, for whatever reason, to appreciate that larger meaning and significance, with the result that lesser elements - precisely because they have a sort of pop culture feel - acquire disproportionate significance and increased popular appeal. 

In our post-modern society, in which traditional social and communal bonds have atrophied, it is understandable that people look for experiential substitutes for community wherever they can find them. The Mass itself - and the "sign of peace" in particular - express the powerfully new kind of community that is being realized among God's People. To experience that new community, as we are really meant to experience it, requires commitment and effort, of course. In reality, we often fall short. If, in fact, our main experience of this new kind of community remains largely at the level of ritual, it is easy to see how that ritual may be hijacked by well-meaning but ultimately misguided efforts to invest it with greater subjective reality - even if that means drawing on the superficial emotionalism endemic in our popular culture in place of the authentic spirit of the liturgy.

Praying for the Persecuted Christians in Iraq and Elsewhere

Yesterday, our monthly First-Friday Exposition, Litany, and Benediction were augmented by prayer for the persecuted Christians in Iraq and elsewhere. Looking to utilize some existing formulary for such a prayer, I ended up drawing upon my childhood memories and turned to the old (and generally not much missed) "Leonine" Prayers that used to be routinely recited after every Low Mass from 1884 until the 1960s. In those days, after the Last Gospel the priest and congregation together recited three Hail Marys and the Hail, Holy Queen, after which the priest prayed a Collect followed by a prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel. It was that once-familiar Collect that I used yesterday: 

O God, our refuge and our strength, look down with mercy upon the people who cry to you; and by the intercession of the glorious and immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Saint Joseph her spouse, of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and of all the saints, in your mercy and goodness hear our prayers for the conversion of sinners, and for the liberty and exaltation of the Holy Mother the Church. Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.

The history and practice of the old "Leonine" Prayers was as unique as their format. Originally prescribed by Blessed Pope Pius IX exclusively for use in the Papal States in 1859, when papal sovereignty was threatened by the newly forming Kingdom of Italy, they were revised and extended to the Universal Church by Pope Leo XIII in 1884. After the 1929 Reconciliation between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy, Pope Pius XI continued the recitation of the prayers, assigning as their new purpose freedom for the people of Russia to profess the faith.

So. while the specific intentions changed somewhat over time (from the freedom of the Church in united Italy to the freedom the Church in Soviet Russia), the heart of the intention was always the same - the freedom of the Church. Hence the renewed usefulness of the old, almost forgotten Collect - refitted for our contemporary concern for the persecuted Christians in iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim Middle East.

Finding Faith

100 years ago today, Germany and Russia declared war on each other, thus transforming a 4-day old Balkan war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia into a large-scale European conflict. In just a few days more, France, Belgium, and Britain would also become belligerents, thus turning that European war into a truly world war - "the Great War," as it soon came to be called, "World War I," as we now know it. 

This somber centennial is getting a lot of well deserved attention this anniversary year. But the Great War was not the only thing that ever happened on this August date.

Thus, seventy years earlier, a 24-year old Isaac Hecker, the future founder of the Paulist Fathers, took the most momentous step in his ongoing spiritual journey and was received into the Catholic Church at New York’s original Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. In his diary for August 1, 1844, he wrote quite calmly: This morning we were baptized by Bishop McCloskey [future Archbishop of New York and 1^st American Cardinal]. Tomorrow we attend the tribunal of Confession. … We cannot stop long on the mystic bridge between Earth and Heaven if we once have started on our journey. There is no half-way house, it is either onward or backward. … Baptism is the declaration of our intention of becoming naturalized citizens of the holy city of God – Jerusalem. The next day (August 2), Hecker wrote with somewhat greater emotion: O ancient faith how dear how good is god in giving us sinners thee. Blessed is the grace of God that leadeth sinners to thee! O how thou hast comforted the Soul. It would turn from thee but thou strengthened it. … Our soul is clothed in brightness. Its youth is restored. No clouds obscure its lustre. O blessed ever blessed unfathomable divine faith. O blessed faith of Apostles Martyrs Confessors and Saints! O holy Mother of Jesus thou art my Mother. Thy tender love I feel in my heart. O holy Mother thou hast beheld me! Bless me Virgin Mother of Jesus.

Reflecting back on that occasion near the end of his life, Hecker wrote in the October 1887 issue of The Catholic World (the Paulist periodical Hecker had founded in April 1865): As for myself, I never had been a member of any denomination of any kind and, when received into the Catholic Church by Cardinal McCloskey early in the year 1844, the creed I recited was my first adhesion to any form of religion. I had no heresy to renounce, for I never had embraced any. Not having had personal and experimental knowledge of the Protestant denominations, I investigated them all, going from one of them to another – Episcopal, Congregational, Baptist, Methodist, and all –conferring with their ministers, reading their books.

Not unlike Christian history’s most famous seeker, Saint Augustine (354-430), Hecker eloquently exemplifies the spiritual search at its best. Like Augustine, he examined as many as possible of the leading intellectual and religious currents of his time, before finally finding his permanent religious home in the Roman Catholic Church. The very personal story of his spiritual search, of his intense attention to his own inner spiritual sense, certainly speak to the spiritual longings of our own spiritually hungry century, with its legions of souls claiming to be “spiritual but not religious.” Hecker too was “spiritual but not religious” for most of the first 25 years of his life. What was – and remains – significant about Hecker, however, was precisely that he did not remain that way. For Hecker, seeking was never an end in itself. The point of seeking is finding. Hecker found fulfillment in the Catholic Church and never desired to look farther. Rather, he devoted himself to helping others – especially other seekers, as he himself had been – to find the truth in the Church.

Without doubt, the First World War and its aftermath profoundly destroyed the prevalent cultural certainties and demolished widely held expectations and hopes for secular rationality and progress. In retrospect at least, it is likewise obvious that the cynical nihilism that was one of that war's profoundest legacies has continued the undermining of faith and religion that the pre-war period of progress and prosperity had already begun.

Yet, Hecker's search for faith and his zeal for bringing faith to others still remain an inspiration even in this dark, war-torn, faithlessly cynical and skeptical century.

Saint Martha

Saint Martha, whom the Church's calendar commemorates today, engaged Jesus in one of his most famous dialogues, first reprimanding him for showing up late for her brother's funeral, then eliciting from him the powerful proclamation, I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and anyone who lives and believes in me will never die. In response to that, Martha made her great profession of faith, for which she is so especially honored and remembered today: Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.

For centuries the standard Gospel reading at most Catholic funerals, this account (John 11:19-27) has solidified Martha's status not only as one of Jesus' intimate friends, but as a disciple and an evangelizer.  Yet, for most people perhaps, the Martha story which has had the deepest impact upon her reputation is the account of one of Jesus' other visits to her home, at which she provided hospitality for him and his disciples but also remonstrated with him about her sister Mary's not helping out with the household chores (Luke 10:38-42). In John's account of Jesus' dining in Bethany at the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus (John 12:1-11), while there is no suggestion of any complaint on Martha's part, again it is Martha who does the serving, while Mary steals the spotlight by anointing Jesus' feet with expensive perfumed oil.

If anything, the very obvious ordinariness of the situation and the ease with which we can all identify with one sister or other in Luke's story has guaranteed its popularity. It has also, unfortunately, allowed a certain trivialization - as, for example, the way we used to stereotype one another in seminary as either a Martha or a Mary, the religious analogue perhaps to the traditional categorization of congressmen as either "workhorses" or "showhorses."

Ours is a society in which we define ourselves for the most part by our work. Of course, our society honors and rewards wealth much more than work, and there is no connection between work and wealth. But, after wealth, we seem to place the greatest value on our work. For the vast majority, it is work which provides whatever degree of respect our society allows to the non-wealthy. And, inasmuch as work has always been necessary for most people, I think Martha's complaint about her sister must have resonated with most people as just commonsense. Of course, there is more to life than work, but the work has to get done! 

I'm sure Jesus and his disciples wanted their dinner! So I think they valued Martha's efforts to be hospitable. (Certainly, the Church has seen Saint Martha a model of service, a sentiment evident in today's Collect. And it is no accident that the Vatican hotel - where the Pope presently lives - is named for her, Domus Santae Marthae.) Of course, Jesus' response to Martha's complaint can be heard primarily as praise of Mary for choosing the better part (and has been so employed for centuries to prioritize contemplative over active religious life), but at the same time I think that Jesus was not criticizing Martha so much as offering her some helpful advice about her priorities: Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. 

Again, Jesus' point wasn't exactly that there is nothing to be anxious and worried about, but that the solution to our anxieties and worries is not in intensified focus on ourselves (what we do when we get anxious and worried, but rather a redirected focus on him - just as later on, at Lazarus' tomb, Jesus would refocus Martha's attention away from her frustrations about the schedule and onto him as the resurrection and the life

War!

Today, July 28, marks the 100th anniversary of Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia, the official beginning of the First World War. From his Kaiservilla in Bad Ischl, Austrian Emperor and King of Hungary Franz Josef I signed the momentous decree, the tragic consequences of which for his own empire he happily did not live to see. The immediate trigger had been the assassination, one month before of the heir to the Hapsburg throne by a Serbian terrorist; but, within a week, the war would engulf Europe's major powers. The fact that Austria-Hungary no longer even exists as such is but one testimony to the total transformation of Europe that that unfortunate war would bring about.

Wars can accomplish all sorts of things and solve all sorts of problems (for example, slavery and secession in the case of the U.S. Civil War, German and Japanese imperialism in the case of World War II, Saddam Hussein's annexation of Kuwait in the case of the 1st Gulf War), problems that probably would not get solved any other way. What stands out so appallingly about World War I, however, was how little it solved and how much long-term harm it did - much more harm than any conceivable good. Of course, the small Balkan War that began on July 28, 1914, was intended to resolve the (relatively) serious problem of Serbian-inspired terrorism and its long-term threat to the stability of Austria-Hungary. And, had it remained a small Balkan War, it might perhaps have accomplished that end. (There had, after all, been small Balkan Wars in previous years. So it was not impossible to imagine another.) But, of course, the thing about World War I was how it immediately involved the major powers and quickly became about much more than a serious but presumptively manageable Austrian-Serbian quarrel. Instead, it became something no one on either side had expected and no one had wanted, but which created a momentum all its own which no one on either side seemed to now how to stop.

The lesson is not - as some sentimentally (and very foolishly) resolved in the 1920s "never again to war for king and country." But there were lessons to be learned from the civilizational suicide that was World War I - lessons that we still find it hard to assimilate adequately into our strategic thinking. If nothing else, World War I was a warning about how badly (and how quickly) things can get out of hand, how the assumptions everyone takes for granted at the beginning of a conflict may have little to do with how things actually turn out - and how hard it is for nations to backtrack, to climb back up from the brink once they have jumped over it.