By Veronica A. Arntz
Reflections on Cardinal Robert
Sarah’s Interview
Yet
again, Cardinal Robert Sarah has blessed the faithful with another interview,
available in English from Catholic World Report,
about the beauty, sacrality, and perennial importance of the sacred liturgy. The
faithful would do wise to listen carefully to what Sarah has said concerning
the liturgy, for it cannot be emphasized enough that we must change our current
liturgical praxis, putting properly celebrated liturgy back into the center of
our Christian life, if we wish to see any other mission within the Church
succeed.
As a Church, we talk about the
New Evangelization, social justice endeavors, and attempts at peace—but these
initiatives never seem to get very far. While all of these activities depend
solely on God’s grace, it is safe to say that the sacred liturgy is necessary to
receive God’s grace, which will assist us in bringing the Gospel to others.
Thus, above all else, we should be attentive to Cardinal Sarah’s words—as they
are an echo of our previous pontiff, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s own thought
on the liturgy—so that we can reflect on our own experience of the liturgy and
the way that we celebrate it today. Specifically, I would like to highlight
three key points from Cardinal Sarah’s interview: the centrality of Christ, the
importance of silence, and the role of the faithful in the liturgy.
Cardinal
Sarah says, “It is time to rediscover the true order of priorities. It is time
to put God back at the center of our concerns, at the center of our actions and
of our life: The only place that He should occupy.” While he does not
specifically mention liturgy here, we know that liturgy, as the re-presentation
of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, is the definitive act placing God at the
center of everything.
The liturgy is meant to draw us
into deeper union with God through an intimate encounter with Him. In the
liturgy, we are caught up into the heavenly realms and experience—for such a
brief moment—the heavenly liturgy while we are still here on earth. We sing the
song of the angels—“Sanctus, Sanctus,
Sanctus”—when we participate in the sacred liturgy. This is why liturgy
cannot be about man, and in a particular way, it cannot be about the specific
priest celebrating the liturgy. Cardinal Sarah has repeatedly talked about
celebrating liturgy ad orientem, to
the East, for celebrating liturgy with such an orientation is about more than “the
priest turning his back on the people.”
The deeper reality of ad orientem worship is that the faithful
are praying along with the priest, who acts in
persona Christi, and offering the Divine Victim along with Him (see Lumen
Gentium, art. 11). Sometimes in our modern liturgical praxis, we focus
too much on the personality of the priest or too much on the people in the
community. Such an overemphasis removes God from the center of the liturgy,
when all the focus should ultimately about Him, since liturgy is the way by
which we glorify God—above all, it is not meant to be a glorification of
ourselves.
For this reason, Cardinal Sarah
continues: “Let us not fool ourselves … What the Church needs most today is not
an administrative reform, another pastoral program, a structural change. The
program already exists: it is the one we have always had, drawn from the Gospel
and from living Tradition.” Cardinal Sarah is talking about the sacred liturgy
as the “program” already within the Church. The Church does not need to focus
on finding a “new” way of presenting the Gospel or catechizing the faithful.
Rather, we must turn back to a full and proper celebration of the sacred
liturgy, which has been handed down to us by Tradition. (NB: I am not
advocating for the liturgy as a means of evangelization for the un-catechized).
The sacred liturgy, which
properly belongs to the Bride of Christ, the Universal Church, has always been
the central way for the faithful to encounter God. The people do not need a new
program nor does the Church need to change its structure—rather, what the
people need is liturgy that is focused entirely on God, not on man. This
problem of focusing the liturgy on the people rather than on God has been a
constant problem since the time of the Second Vatican Council. Cardinal Sarah
desires us to see that our Catholic liturgy, which is so rich in tradition and
beauty if we would only pause long enough to see it, ought to be focused on God
once again (as it always should have been), so that the people can come to know
Him most deeply and more interiorly.
The second point in Cardinal
Sarah’s interview that we shall investigate is his emphasis on silence, and
this is his main point in the interview. Of silence, he says, “God is silence,
and this divine silence dwells within a human being … I am not afraid to state
that to be a child of God is to be a child of silence.” It is indeed a profound
mystery when Cardinal Sarah says that God is silence. Perhaps we can understand
this best in comparison to what he says about the devil. He says, “God is
silence, and the devil is noisy. From the beginning, Satan has sought to mask
his lies beneath a deceptive, resonant agitation.” The devil is continually
attempting to distract us from God, trying to keep us from awaiting the
Bridegroom, as in the Parable of the Ten Virgins (see Matthew 25:1-13).
While God patiently waits for us
to return to him, the devil is constantly trying to drive us away from the
Lord’s call. The devil fills our minds, especially our imaginations, with
temptations, images, and noise so that we do not make room for God and forget
about his constant presence within us. Cardinal Sarah writes that our “busy,
ultra-technological age has made us even sicker.” The devil can very easily use
technology for his own purposes, for he can use it as a constant distraction
from God’s presence. If we are constantly checking our e-mail or social media
websites because we have the ability on our phones, are we thinking about God?
Do we think about God when we have those spare moments, or do we turn to our
technology? All of us need to ask ourselves those questions honestly.
In a particular way, we can
experience, enter into, and learn silence through participation in the sacred
liturgy—provided that liturgy is not focused on man himself but on God. In the
sacred liturgy, we encounter the majesty of God, and such an encounter demands
silence, for we are nothing in comparison to the greatness of God. We have
nothing to say that could add to his greatness. As Cardinal Sarah says:
To refuse this silence
filled with confident awe and adoration is to refuse God the freedom to capture
us by His love and His presence. Sacred silence is therefore the place where we
can encounter God, because we come to Him with the proper attitude of a human
being who trembles and stands at a distance while hoping confidently.
As such, we ought to give God the silence that is his due—in the silence of the
liturgy, God is free to work in our hearts to bring about his will in us and
his will for the universal Church. This truly is an awesome and mysterious
encounter: How can a Divine Being, Omnipotent, All-Perfect, desire to work in
our lives, we who are miserable, sinful, mortal creatures? The sacred liturgy,
Cardinal Sarah goes on to say, is the proper place for us to encounter God in
silence. How many of us experience a liturgy that is filled with silence and
provides an atmosphere in which we can truly encounter God? Chances are that this
is not the usual experience at most parishes.
Cardinal Sarah says the
following, which is of great significance if we wish to understand liturgy
properly celebrated: “Silence teaches us a major rule of the spiritual life:
Familiarity does not foster intimacy; on the contrary, a proper distance is a
condition for communion. It is by way of adoration that humanity walks toward
love.” The liturgy, therefore, cannot become merely about familiarity, nor can
it become about understanding every action and every word. The liturgy cannot
become simple to the point of banality: In our modern age, we are almost afraid
of encountering the mysterious power of God in silence. We are thus tempted to
shape the liturgy so that it looks like everything else we do.
The music comes from familiar
tunes (and sometimes uses the same instruments of popular music, such as the
guitar or, outrageously, the drums), the words are just like our common speech,
and the priest acts just like us. There is no “proper distance” between
ourselves and the sacred liturgy—the liturgy becomes just like us, and in such
a way, we can no longer be transformed by it. As Cardinal Sarah continues,
“Under the pretext of pedagogy, some priests indulge in endless commentaries
that are flat-footed and mundane. Are these pastors afraid that silence in the
presence of the Most High might disconcert the faithful?” Indeed, we should be disconcerted by the silence—we
should feel that there is something deeper, something more profound than
ourselves in the liturgy.
In the silence of the liturgy, we
are meant to be drawn out of ourselves to God—it is to be an intimate
encounter, for we encounter the God who took on human flesh in the unfamiliarity
of the sacred liturgy. Cardinal Sarah significantly says: “Often we leave our
noisy, superficial liturgies without having encountered in them God and the
interior peace that He wants to offer us.”
This leads us into the third and
final point that I would like to emphasize from Cardinal Sarah’s interview: How
are the faithful meant to approach and participate in the liturgy? Here,
Cardinal Sarah returns to the concept of liturgy celebrated ad orientem, which includes more than
just a physical orientation, but also an internal orientation. Drawing from
what he just said about silence, “As long as we approach the liturgy with a
noisy heart, it will have a superficial, human appearance. Liturgical silence
is a radical and essential disposition; it is a conversion of heart. Now, to be converted,
etymologically, is to turn back, to turn toward God.”
Thus, of the faithful,
the liturgy demands conversion, which means turning back to the Lord.
Conversion through the liturgy means forgetting the distractions of this
world—completely forgetting them, so that we no longer have a divided heart—and
giving everything to the Lord. This will require a conversion within our own
liturgical practices. Liturgies, as we have already explained, should not be
marked by noise and distractions—these liturgies will only hinder our true
conversion to God. As Cardinal Sarah profoundly says, “There is no true silence
in the liturgy if we are not—with all our heart—turned toward the Lord.”
Thus, the conversion, in our
modern day, must be twofold The faithful must have an interior orientation
toward the Lord and the complete desire to give everything to im. At the same
time, our liturgical celebrations need to enable the people to do that—the
liturgies themselves cannot be full of oddities and distractions that are in
contradiction to the rich liturgical heritage of the Church. It seems then,
according to Cardinal Sarah, that this two-fold conversion is the way that we
will place God back at the center of our lives and our liturgies.
Specifically, Sarah says that our
external orientation influences our interior orientation. This is why
physically turning ad orientem is
essential for regaining an attitude of silence and wonder in the sacred
liturgy. As Sarah explains, “Facing the Lord, he [the priest] is less tempted
to become a professor who gives a lecture during the whole Mass, reducing the
altar to a podium centered no longer on the cross but on the microphone!” How
true this is—so often the priest, when he is facing the people, enters into a
long dialogue with the people in the midst of the prayers of the Mass. Rather
than adhering to the prayers that would enable an atmosphere of silence, he
feels the need to fill that silence. When the priest is no longer facing the
people, but rather praying with them, then it is possible for there to be
silence and for the faithful to enter into that silence.
In many parishes, we are
unfortunately very far from this liturgical reality of an attitude of silence
and orientation toward the Lord, which is why it is so important for us to pay
attention to what Cardinal Sarah is saying. The faithful should not be afraid
of advocating for liturgy properly celebrated within their parishes, for such a
liturgy is not only what is fitting for the Church, but it is also necessary if we wish to see a return to
reverence for and focus on God. If we wish to quell the spirit of noise within
our society, we, as a Church, ought to embrace fully the proper celebration of
liturgy, one that truly orients man to the divine, turning him away from
himself and his own thoughts.
As Cardinal Sarah has reminded us
yet again in this beautiful interview, the sacred liturgy, when celebrated with
its orientation to God, is the appropriate place for encountering him in
silence. Our society, which is continuously flirting with noise and
distraction, is in desperate need of a liturgy that is totally other, a liturgy
that is pregnant with silence and focused entirely on God, the Creator and
Sustainer of the universe. We would do well to follow the words of Cardinal
Sarah in our liturgical praxis.
