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The Spirit Of The Liturgy by Romano Guardini

3. THE STYLE OF THE LITURGY



STYLE is chiefly spoken of in a universal sense. By style we

understand those particular characteristics which

distinguish every valid and genuine production or organism

as such, whether it is a work of art, a personality, a form

of society, or anything whatever; it denotes that any given

vital principle has found its true and final expression. But

this self-expression must be of such a nature that it

simultaneously imparts to the individual element a universal

significance, reaching far beyond its own particular sphere.

For the essence of individuality embraces within itself a

second element; it is true that it is particular and

unreproducible, but it is at the same time universal,

standing in relationship to the other individuals of its

kind, and manifesting in its permanent existence traits

which are also borne by others. The greater the originality

and forcefulness of an individual thing, the greater its

capacity of comprehensively revealing the universal essence

of its kind,1 the greater is its significance. Now if a

personality a work of art, or a form of society has, by

virtue of its existence and activity, expressed in a

convincing manner that which it really is, and if at the

same time by its quality of specialness it does not merely

represent an arbitrary mood, but its relation to a corporate

life, then and to that extent it may be said to have style.



In this sense the liturgy undoubtedly has created a style.

It is unnecessary to waste further words on the subject.



The conception can, however, be given a narrower sense. Why

is it that in front of a Greek temple we are more intensely

conscious of style than we are in front of a Gothic

cathedral? The inner effect of both these structures is

identically powerful and convincing. Each is the perfect

expression of a particular type or form of space-perception.

Each reveals the individuality of a people, but at the same

time affords a profound insight into the human soul and the

significance of the world in general. Yet before the temple

of Paestum we are more strongly conscious of style than we

are before the cathedrals of Cologne and of Rheims. What is

the reason? Why is it that for the uncultured observer

Giotto has the more style in comparison with Grunewald, who

is without any doubt equally powerful; and the figure of an

Egyptian king more than Donatello's wonderful statue of St.

John?



In this connection the word style has a specialized meaning.

It conveys that in the works of art to which reference has

been made the individual yields place to the universal. The

fortuitous element--determined by place and time, with its

significance restricted to certain specific people--is

superseded by that which is essentially, or at least more

essentially, intended for many times, places and people. The

particular is to a great degree absorbed by the universal

and ideal. In such works an involved mental or spiritual

condition, for instance, which could only have expressed

itself in an abstruse utterance or in an unreproducible

action, is simplified and reduced to its elements.2 By this

process it is made universally comprehensible. The

incalculable ebullition is given a permanent basis. It then

becomes easily penetrable and capable of demonstrating in

itself the interweaving of cause and effect.3 The solitary

historical event serves to throw into relief the vital

significance, universal and unaffected by time, which

reposes within it. The figure which appears but once is made

to personify characteristics common to the whole of society.

The hasty, impetuous movement is restrained and measured.

Whereas it was formerly confined to specific relationships

or circumstances, it can now to a certain degree be accepted

by everyone.4 Things, materials and instruments are divested

of their fortuitous character, their elements revealed,

their purpose defined, and their power of expressing certain

moods or ideas is heightened.5 In a word, while one type of

art and of life is endeavoring to express that which is

special and particular, this other, on the contrary, is

striving to hold up to our view that which is universally

significant. The latter type of art fashions simple reality,

which is always specialized, in such a manner that the ideal

and universal comes to the fore; that is to say, its style

is developed and its form is fixed. And so whenever life,

with its entanglements and its multiplicity, has been

simplified in this way, whenever its inner lawfulness is

emphasized and it is raised from the particular to the

universal, we are always conscious of style in the narrower

sense of the word. Admittedly it is difficult to say where

style ends and arrangement begins. If the arrangement is too

accentuated, if the modeling is carried out according to

rules and ideas, and not according to its vital connection

with reality, if the production is the result, not of exact

observation, but of deliberate planning, then it will be

universal only, and therefore lifeless and void.6 True

style, even in its strictest form, still retains the

developed faculty of convincing expression. Only that which

is living has style; pure thought, and the productions of

pure thought, have none.



Now the liturgy--at any rate, as far as the greater part of

its range is concerned--has style in the stricter sense of

the word. It is not the direct expression of any particular

type of spiritual disposition, either in its language and

ideas, or in its movements, actions and the materials which

it employs. If we compare, for instance, the Sunday Collects

with the prayers of an Anselm of Canterbury, or of a Newman;

the gestures of the officiating priest with the involuntary

movements of the man who fancies himself unobserved while at

prayer; the Church's directions on the adornment of the

sanctuary, on vestments and altar-vessels, with popular

methods of decoration, and of dress on religious occasions;

and Gregorian chant with the popular hymn--we shall always

find, within the sphere of the liturgy, that the medium of

spiritual expression, whether it consists of words,

gestures, colors or materials, is to a certain degree

divested of its singleness of purpose, intensified,

tranquilized, and given universal currency.



Many causes have contributed to this result. For one thing,

the passing centuries have continually polished, elaborated

and adapted the form of liturgical expression Then the

strongly generalizing effect of religious thought must be

taken into account. Finally, there is the influence of the

Greco-Latin spirit, with its highly significant tendency

towards style in the strict sense of the word.



Now if we consider the fact that these quietly constructive

forces were at work on the vital form of expression, not of

an individual, but of an organic unity, composed of the

greatness, exclusiveness and strength of the collective

consciousness that is the Catholic Church; if we consider

further that the vital formula thus fashioned steadily

concentrates its whole attention upon the hereafter, that it

aspires from this world to the next, and as a natural result

is characterized by eternal, sublime and superhuman traits,

then we shall find assembled here all the preliminary

conditions essential to the development of a style of great

vigor and intensity. If it were capable of doing so

anywhere, here above all should develop a living style,

spiritual, lofty and exalted. And that is precisely what has

happened. If we reflect upon the liturgy as a whole, and

upon its important points, not upon the abbreviated form in

which it is usually presented, but as it should be, we shall

have the good fortune to experience the miracle of a truly

mighty style. We shall see and feel that an inner world of

immeasurable breadth and depth has created for itself so

rich and so ample an expression and one at the same time so

lucid and so universal in form that its like has never been

seen, either before or since.



And it is style in the stricter sense of the word as well--

clear in language, measured in movement, severe in its

modeling of space, materials, colors and sounds; its ideas,

languages, ceremonies and imagery fashioned out of the

simple elements of spiritual life; rich, varied and lucid;

its force further intensified by the fact that the liturgy

employs a classic language, remote from everyday life.



When all these considerations are borne in mind it is easy

to understand that the liturgy possesses a tremendously

compelling form of expression, which is a school of

religious training and development to the Catholic who

rightly understands it, and which is bound to appear to the

impartial observer as a cultural formation of the most lofty

and elevated kind.



It cannot, however, be denied that great difficulties lie in

the question of the adaptability of the liturgy to every

individual, and more especially to the modern man. The

latter wants to find in prayer--particularly if he is of an

independent turn of mind--the direct expression of his

spiritual condition. Yet in the liturgy he is expected to

accept, as the mouthpiece of his inner life, a system of

ideas, prayer and action, which is too highly generalized,

and, as it were, unsuited to him. It strikes him as being

formal and almost meaningless. He is especially sensible of

this when he compares the liturgy with the natural

outpourings of spontaneous prayer. Liturgical formulas,

unlike the language of a person who is spiritually

congenial, are not to be grasped straightway without any

further mental exertion on the listener's part; liturgical

actions have not the same direct appeal as, say, the

involuntary movement of understanding on the part of someone

who is sympathetic by reason of circumstances and

disposition; the emotional impulses of the liturgy do not so

readily find an echo as does the spontaneous utterance of

the soul. These clear-cut formulas are liable to grate more

particularly upon the modern man, so intensely sensitive in

everything which affects his scheme of life, who looks for a

touch of nature everywhere and listens so attentively for

the personal note. He easily tends to consider the idiom of

the liturgy as artificial, and its ritual as purely formal.

Consequently he will often take refuge in forms of prayer

and devotional practices whose spiritual value is far

inferior to that of the liturgy, but which seem to have one

advantage over the latter--that of contemporary, or, at any

rate, of congenial origin.



Those who honestly want to come to grips with this problem

in all its bearings should for their own guidance note the

way in which the figure of Christ is represented, first in

the liturgy, and then in the Gospels. In the latter

everything is alive; the reader breathes the air of earth;

he sees Jesus of Nazareth walking about the streets and

among the people, hears His incomparable and persuasive

words, and is aware of the heart-to-heart intercourse

between Jesus and His followers. The charm of vivid

actuality pervades the historical portrait of Christ. He is

so entirely one of us, a real person--Jesus, "the

Carpenter's Son"--Who lived in Nazareth in a certain street,

wore certain clothes, and spoke in a certain manner. That is

just what the modern man longs for; and he is made happy by

the fact that in this actual historical figure is incarnate

the living and eternal Godhead, One with the body, so that

He is in the fullest sense of the word "true God and true

Man."



But how differently does the figure of Jesus appear in the

liturgy! There He is the Sovereign Mediator between God and

man, the eternal High-Priest, the divine Teacher, the Judge

of the living and of the dead; in His Body, hidden in the

Eucharist, He mystically unites all the faithful in the

great society that is the Church; He is the God-Man, the

Word that was made Flesh. The human element, or--

involuntarily the theological expression rises to the lips--

the Human Nature certainly remains intact, for the battle

against Eutyches was not fought in vain; He is truly and

wholly human, with a body and soul which have actually

lived. But they are now utterly transformed by the Godhead,

rapt into the light of eternity, and remote from time and

space. He is the Lord, "sitting at the right hand of the

Father," the mystic Christ living on in His Church.



It will be objected that in the Gospels of the Mass we can

still follow the historical life of Jesus in its entirety.

That is absolutely true. But if we endeavor to listen more

attentively, we shall still find that a particular light is

thrown on these narratives by their context. They are a part

of the Mass, of the "mysterium magnum," pervaded by the

mystery of sacrifice, an integral part of the structure of

the particular Sunday office, current season, or

ecclesiastical year, swept along by that powerful straining

upwards to the Hereafter which runs through the entire

liturgy. In this way the contents of the Gospels, which we

hear chanted, and in a foreign language, are in their turn

woven into the pattern. Of ourselves we come to consider,

not the particular traits which they contain, but their

eternal, super-historical meaning.



Yet by this the liturgy has not--as Protestantism has

sometimes accused it of doing--disfigured the Christ of the

Gospels. It has not set forth a frigid intellectual

conception instead of the living Jesus.



The Gospels themselves, according to the aims and purpose of

the respective Evangelists, stress first one, then another

aspect of the personality and activity of Christ Facing the

portrait contained in the first three Gospels, in the

Epistles of St. Paul Christ appears as God, mystically

living on in His Church and in the souls of those who

believe in Him. The Gospel of St. John shows the Word made

Flesh, and finally, in the Apocalypse God is made manifest

in His eternal splendor. But this does not mean that the

historical facts of Christ's human existence are in any way

kept back; on the contrary, they are always taken for

granted and often purposely emphasised.7 The liturgy

therefore has done nothing that Holy Scripture itself does

not do. Without discarding one stroke or trait of the

historical figure of Christ, it has, for its own appointed

purpose, more strongly stressed the eternal and super-

temporal elements of that figure, and for this reason--the

liturgy is no mere commemoration of what once existed, but

is living and real; it is the enduring life of Jesus Christ

in us, and that of the believer in Christ eternally God and

Man.



It is precisely because of this, however, that the

difficulty still persists. It is good to make it absolutely

clear, since the modern man experiences it more especially.

More than one--according to his instinctive impulse--would

be content to forego the profoundest knowledge of theology,

if as against that it were permitted to him to watch Jesus

walking about the streets or to hear the tone in which He

addresses a disciple. More than one would be willing to

sacrifice the most beautiful liturgical prayer, if in

exchange he might meet Christ face to face and speak to Him

from the bottom of his heart.



Where is the angle to be found from which this difficulty is

to be tackled and overcome? It is in the view that it is

hardly permissible to play off the spiritual life of the

individual, with its purely personal bearing, against the

spiritual life of the liturgy, with its generalizing bias.

They are not mutually contradictory; they should both

combine in active co-operation.



When we pray on our own behalf only we approach God from an

entirely personal standpoint, precisely as we feel inclined

or impelled to do according to our feelings and

circumstances. That is our right, and the Church would be

the last to wish to deprive us of it. Here we live our own

life, and are as it were face to face with God.8 His Face is

turned towards us, as to no one else; He belongs to each one

of us. It is this power of being a personal God, ever fresh

to each of us, equally patient and attentive to each one's

wants, which constitutes the inexhaustible wealth of God.

The language which we speak on these occasions suits us

entirely, and much of it apparently is suited to us alone.

We can use it with confidence because God understands it,

and there is no one else who needs to do so.



We are, however, not only individuals, but members of a

community as well; we are not merely transitory, but

something of us belongs to eternity, and the liturgy takes

these elements in us into account. In the liturgy we pray as

members of the Church; by it we rise to the sphere which

transcends the individual order and is therefore accessible

to people of every condition, time, and place. For this

order of things the style of the liturgy--vital, clear, and

universally comprehensible--is the only possible one. The

reason for this is that any other type of prayer, based upon

one particular set of hypotheses or requirements, would

undoubtedly prove a totally unsuitable form for a content of

different origin. Only a system of life and thought which is

truly Catholic--that is to say, actual and universal--is

capable of being universally adopted, without violence to

the individual. Yet there is still an element of sacrifice

involved in such adoption. Each one is bound to strive

within himself, and to rise superior to self. Yet in so

doing he is not swallowed up by, and lost in, the majority;

on the contrary, he becomes more independent, rich, and

versatile.



Both methods of prayer must co-operate. They stand together

in a vital and reciprocal relationship. The one derives its

light and fruitfulness from the other. In the liturgy the

soul learns to move about the wider and more spacious

spiritual world. It assimilates--if the comparison is

permissible--that freedom and dignified restraint which in

human intercourse is acquired by the man who frequents good

society, and who limits his self-indulgence by the

discipline of time-honored social usage; the soul expands

and develops in that width of feeling and clearness of form

which together constitute the liturgy, just as it does

through familiarity and communion with great works of art.

In a word, the soul acquires, in the liturgy, the "grand

manner" of the spiritual life--and that is a thing that

cannot be too highly prized. On the other hand, as the

Church herself reminds us--and the example of the Orders who

live by the liturgy is a proof of this--side by side with

the liturgy there must continue to exist that private

devotion which provides for the personal requirements of the

individual, and to which the soul surrenders itself

according to its particular circumstances. From the latter

liturgical prayer in its turn derives warmth and local

color.



If private devotion were non-existent, and if the liturgy

were the final and exclusive form of spiritual exercise,

that exercise might easily degenerate into a frigid formula;

but if the liturgy were non-existent--well, our daily

observations amply show what would be the consequences, and

how fatally they would take effect.







ENDNOTES

1. The essence of genius, of the man of genius (e.g., of the
Saint), and of the really great work or deed consists in
this, that it is immeasurably original and yet is still
universally applicable to human life.

2. Cf. the inner life in Ibsen's plays, for instance, with
that of Sophoclean tragedy, the "Ghosts," perhaps, with
"Oedipus."

3. Cf. the line of action adopted by, e.g., Hedda Gabler and
Antigone.

4. Such is the origin of social deportment and of court
usage.

5. Such is the origin of symbols--social, state, religious
and otherwise.

6. It is this which differentiates various classical periods
from the classical age.

7. As, for instance, in the beginning of the Gospel of St.
John.

8. Even if here, as in the whole range of spiritual things,
the Church is our guide. But she is so in a different manner
than where the liturgy is concerned.














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