1) Karl Rahner developed the concept of the "liturgy of the world" to explain that God is present everywhere, not just in church. God's grace permeates daily life, not just religious rituals.
2) Understanding this helped the author better relate the Mass to his everyday experiences outside of church. He saw more continuity between Sunday worship and daily living.
3) Going to Mass is now a way to praise and thank God for God's constant presence in all aspects of life, not just a way to "fill our tanks" with grace for the week.
Original Description:
A pastoral approach to Karl Rahner's understanding of grace and the sacraments.
1) Karl Rahner developed the concept of the "liturgy of the world" to explain that God is present everywhere, not just in church. God's grace permeates daily life, not just religious rituals.
2) Understanding this helped the author better relate the Mass to his everyday experiences outside of church. He saw more continuity between Sunday worship and daily living.
3) Going to Mass is now a way to praise and thank God for God's constant presence in all aspects of life, not just a way to "fill our tanks" with grace for the week.
1) Karl Rahner developed the concept of the "liturgy of the world" to explain that God is present everywhere, not just in church. God's grace permeates daily life, not just religious rituals.
2) Understanding this helped the author better relate the Mass to his everyday experiences outside of church. He saw more continuity between Sunday worship and daily living.
3) Going to Mass is now a way to praise and thank God for God's constant presence in all aspects of life, not just a way to "fill our tanks" with grace for the week.
Several years ago, when I was teaching high school, a friend asked, "Mark, why should I go to Mass? It just seems to be an empty ritual. I don't see how it has anything to do with my life anyway." I nodded my head in agreement, sympathizing with those same feelings. My answer at that time was something like this: Mass was the primary way to get grace. Using John's Gospel story about Jesus' meeting the woman at the well (John 4:4-42), I explained that the Mass is like that water which Jesus offered to the woman. Just as that woman had to go to the well everyday to get her jug filled with water, so we need to go to Mass to get our supply of grace to meet the needs of everyday life. Now, years later as a theologian, I realize that my explanation of the woman's encounter with Jesus at the well falls short of what may actually be a better understanding of the Mass. At that time, I still carried with me the idea of God being in some places, like in the church building, but not in other places, especially not in the "real world." Since then, I have gone through a lot of changes in my life. Both from my academic training as well as my own experiences, I have gradually come to understand that there is more of a continuity between what happens in my daily life and what happens at Sunday Mass than a discontinuity. I have come across a concept which has uniquely put into focus alot of these loose ends in my thinking.
Liturgy of the World During my Ph.D. program, I read about Karl Rahner's understanding of worship. He used a phrase called "liturgy of the world." 1 Fr. Rahner recognized the same disillusionment my friend had identified concerning the contemporary relevance of the Mass. Consequently, Rahner was
1 Michael Skelley, The Liturgy of the World: Karl Rahner's Theology of Worship. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1991. trying to explain the Christian faith, and especially the necessity of something like the Sunday Eucharist, for modern people who seem unable to relate to all the ceremony and symbolism of what appears to be by-gone days. But the most important development was understanding that God is not limited to a particular place, no matter what religious symbols may be attached to God. Rather--here is the important point--God is as close to me while I sit here typing as God is in church. A result of this idea is that Sunday Mass is intimately related to my everyday life. That's the radical idea that I have to deal with now. But why should you care if I have a new way of attending Mass? Because we all want to feel important. And one of the ways we feel important is by having the ordinary events and happenings in our daily lives accepted and confirmed by someone else. Therefore, if it's true that someone as important as God, who at least is in church, wants to be messed up with my everyday life, then we can all benefit from understanding Rahner's ideas about the "liturgy of the world." Hopefully, this will lead to greater renewal in our own lives, as well as in our formal worship.
Grace: God's Self-communication Fr. Rahner's main idea is that the world, the "real world," is always and everywhere permeated with God's gracious self-communication. In other words, he taught that the experience of God is primarily found in the midst of our ordinary lives. God is hidden there. "God's self- communication" is another word for "grace." Sometimes we hear talk about grace as if it were a thing. We might speak of the sacraments almost as if they were immunization shots which give us a certain amount of grace. Or, we might even use a crude way of speaking about the Mass like it was a gas station. We drive in on Sundays to have our spiritual tanks filled for the week. Whenever we go to confession it might have the appearance of getting our oil changed. It was just enough maintenance to get us by for one more week "out there in the real world." I don't claim to know all the answers now, but I have gone through some changes in the way I think about how all-pervasive God's grace is. I am especially fond of understanding God's self-communication as the Gift of the Holy Spirit. God's presence among us, in us, and around us is the Holy Spirit. The more I have studied theology and prayed about what I am studying the easier it is for me to relate to a Person who is God present to me than to some abstract idea like "grace." Therefore, God's Self is offered to everyone, everywhere. As a result, people can and do, unreflectively, interact with God anytime, anywhere. Let's go back to that Gospel story about Jesus with the woman at the well. I was wrong about how I had first explained that passage because I didn't grasp the big picture. The exact point that Jesus is making in that encounter with the woman is that through Him we become a well of life-giving water. He is making the point that we don't need to limit God to a particular place, like the mountain the Samaritans worshipped on or the church buildings which we worship in. We also don't need to limit God to a particular time, like just Sunday mornings. Rather, Jesus says, "God is Spirit. His worshippers will worship Him in spirit and truth" (John 4:24). It's the Holy Spirit who is this life-giving water. We often take water for granted. It is so available to us in North America. Usually, we don't have to think about getting enough water for the day, do we? How absolutely essential water is! Yet, how unreflectively we think about it! That's how close the Holy Spirit is. Let me use one more image for the Holy Spirit - air. This is a very old and common image which works so well. Since my bout with pneumonia at the beginning of graduate school, I have greatly come to appreciate my lungs. I try to treat them with tremendous care. But most of the time, they work just fine on their own without my being aware of their activity. Furthermore, I unthinkingly expect to have air available for me to breathe. I don't think about breathing. That's how near God - the Holy Spirit - is to us. Both images limp somewhat, but Fr. Rahner was trying to stress the idea that in the most routine moments of our everyday lives God is as close to us as God is in the Sunday liturgy. That's really quite a shift from the older view which sees such a discontinuity between our "weekly" lives and our "Sunday" lives. Fr. Rahner uses the unique phrase, "liturgy of the world" to describe the enterprise of worshiping God. Granted, that is not a very common phrase among us Catholics. He himself did not use those specific words very often, but his whole understanding of worship projects this idea. I should try to spell that out in more detail.
Sunday Liturgy To paraphrase the words of Fr. Rahner, to substantially alter our way of approaching the Mass by becoming more aware of God's all-embracing presence in the ordinariness of life is the key to renewing our worship. Where we once thought about going to Sunday liturgy to fill our jugs, we now need to see that our jugs are running over. We have a need to come together to worship because we are so grateful for God's grace. Where we once thought of weekly Eucharist as filling our gas tanks, now we realize that we have an abundance of spiritual fuel; our reason for joining with other members of God's family in a church building is to offer praise for the greatness of this gift. Where I once thought of the sanctuary lamp as symbolizing God's presence only in the church building, now I understand that this candle represents the absoluteness of Christ's presence as the fire of the Holy Spirit in, among, and around us and the whole world. The implication for us is that we should gather to worship together on Sunday, then, not because our lives are devoid of God's grace, but because we humans need to express all of the grace-filled moments of our lives which we so readily overlook or ignore. In other words, it is part of our nature - when we are really being ourselves - to offer praise and thanksgiving to the God who envelopes us, literally, with every breath we take. The radical position Rahner espouses, which has been a way for me to get a handle on my own experiences, is to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit permeates our lives even more fundamentally than those times which we set aside for God. The experience of God is so utterly inescapable, Fr. Rahner believed, that it is very difficult to catch ourselves in the act of experienc- ing God. In other words, God is so obvious in every aspect of our human lives that we usually can't recognize God's presence. A little experiment: Do you see the paper this article is printed on? Yes, you do. But you weren't focusing on the paper until I mentioned it, were you? As you are thinking about the paper, are you aware of the chair which you are presently sitting on? Now that I have drawn your attention to it, you are aware of it. What if we were to approach the Mass this way? What I mean is, what if, instead of going to Mass to get something out of it like a spiritual supermarket, we felt compelled to celebrate the Eucharist because we know that it is the most fitting way to praise and thank God for God's ever-abiding presence in our daily lives? Why couldn't the Mass become the most excellent visible symbol of what we unthinkingly know God is doing in our midst every moment of every day? For a while now, I have been going to Mass with this in mind. It has provided me with some specific insights. The liturgy of the world we celebrate in our everyday lives. This is the first liturgy, first in order and first in the sense of the most basic, the most fundamental. The Church's liturgy we celebrate most formally on the Lord's Day. This is the second liturgy, following the liturgy of the world in order and practice. Theologically, we would describe the liturgy of the world as a celebration of God's first act of creation, and the Church's liturgy as God's second act of creation - our redemption, the new creation. So, now, Mass on Sunday morning is no longer where God is exclusively. Rather, I'm going from being with God in the world to being with God in church. Same God, different location. Further, I'm not going from not participating in a liturgy to participating in a liturgy. Instead, I'm going from participating in one kind of liturgy to participating in another kind of liturgy. Rather easily, I think, one could reflect on all the parts of the Mass to see how the liturgy of the world is connected with the Eucharistic liturgy. A general principal to apply in this translation is that by simply doing those human things which seem so ordinary (the liturgy of the world) we are really doing divine things (Eucharistic liturgy). For example, in Matthew 25, Jesus talks about feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, etc. just as if those people in need are Jesus himself. Below is a brief diagram of how the liturgy of the world might be represented in the two main parts of the Mass: liturgy of the Word and liturgy of the Eucharist.
Liturgy of the Word Liturgy of the World Eucharistic Liturgy Saying, "Good Morning!" to my family. The Greeting House rule: If you have hurt someone, you must apologize. Then, that person must for- give you. The Penitential Rite The cycle of living is a praise hymn. Glory to God The Holy Spirit speaking to me through conscience in daily life and decisions. Readings Our daily wishes, reactions to news stories, wishing someone "good luck." Prayers of the Faithful
Liturgy of the Eucharist Liturgy of the World Eucharistic Liturgy "Mysticism of Daily Life" - recalling simple, "unreligious" events from the prior week Preparation of the Gifts Selflessness between spouses and in families Eucharistic Prayer: Christ's sacrifice Family prayer times; our own litany of saints. Eucharistic Prayer: Unity Experiences of fragility, limitedness, and need for a Redeemer Communion Saying, "Good Bye." Closing Rite
The Church's liturgy draws to a close but the liturgy of the world goes on. Even though the liturgy of the world is first, the Lord's Day celebration helps us to refocus on God's presence in our daily lives. The Sunday liturgy meets that need to give praise and thanksgiving to a God who is as near as our very breath. The liturgy of the Church helps us to recognize how much fuel we already have, how full our jugs really are, and how bright that candle is that burns within us. God dwells around, among and within us; it is the Church's liturgy which reminds us of that fact as we continue in the liturgy of the world.