‘Living the liturgical action’: some principles for Christian liturgical formation in Desiderio desideravi

The Council, the People of God, and the worship of the Church

In its landmark constitutions Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes, Dei Verbum and especially Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council offered a dramatic new vision of the Church. Read together, these constitutions present the worship of God as an activity in which all the baptized have a role to play, and in which lay and ordained, ministers and congregation, contribute collaboratively and productively to the worship offered to God. This principle comes from the inception of the notion of the Church as being constituted by the People of God, a principle articulated in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (LG). ² In that document, which is one of the foundational expressions of the conciliar ecclesiology that has been embraced by the Catholic Church as well as by other churches, the Fathers of the Council explore the idea of the whole People of God taking part in the life and worship of the Church in, among other ways, exercise of their common priesthood. The Holy Spirit gives different gifts to the various members of the Church, understood as different members with different charisms of the Body of Christ of which Jesus Christ is the Head (LG 7). While those endowed with the ministerial priesthood have a particular role to play, it is the whole community of the baptized who ‘are consecrated as a spiritual house and a royal priesthood … all the disciples of Christ … should present themselves as a living sacrifice’ (LG 10, emphasis added).

The public worship of the Church is presented in Lumen Gentium and in all that flows from it as no longer an action of ordained ministers by themselves, but as a principal action of the whole Church, by which the whole Church is built up and grows, and which is essential for its flourishing. While this teaching may now be seen as mainstream in the post-conciliar generations, and fundamental to the Catholic ecclesiology of the twenty-first century, it represented then a significant shift in the self-expression of the Catholic Church. There were consequent implications for both the whole body of the faithful corporately and individually, and indeed for the relationship of the Church with its own components and its ecumenical partners.

In this vision of the Church, the full and active participation (participatio actuosa) of all Christian people is seen as essential to all kinds of public worship and especially to the Eucharist, where those in both the common and ministerial priesthood are united. The lay faithful also have an obligation to be appropriately formed, spiritually and intellectually, for the particular functions they undertake. Their participation in public worship and in the sacraments necessitates and flows from their unification with Christ and his Church by adherence to teaching, participation in sacramental life, and submission to the discipline and structures of the Church.

In Sacrosanctum Concilium, ³ the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which was the first of the documents of Vatican II to be ratified:

the liturgy is considered as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. In the liturgy the sanctification of the man is signified by signs perceptible to the senses, and is effected in a way which corresponds with each of these signs; in the liturgy the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and His members. (SC 7)

Background to Desiderio desideravi

At various points in the Letter, the Pope relies on, and quotes from, the work of the liturgical theologian Romano Guardini (d.1968), who was at one time the potential subject of his erstwhile doctoral research. Guardini’s work (his best known book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, was a significant inspiration for the Council Fathers) reflects on the liturgy in an age of subjectivity and relativism and seeks ways in which God’s people can relearn and transform old habits, allowing themselves to be transformed in relationship with God. These ideas form the bedrock on which Francis’s Letter is built.

But DD needs to be read alongside and in the context of the papal documents Summorum Pontificum (2007) and Traditionis Custodes (TC, 2021). In the former, the late Pope Benedict XVI expanded the range of situations in which priests were enabled to use the pre-Vatican II 1962 Missal (the ‘Extraordinary Form’). In the latter, Pope Francis imposed new stringent conditions on its use, preferring to see the Mass promulgated in 1970 as the ‘unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite’ (TC 1), seeing the use of the older missal as ‘characterized by a rejection not only of the liturgical reform but of the [Council] itself’. ⁴ The close connection between DD and TC can be seen in ss. 31 and 61–2 of the former. DD continues the plea of TC for the unity of worship within the Catholic Church, particularly as an expression of ecclesial communion. It is put several times that one cannot believe in the outcomes of the Council without also believing in the revised liturgy that bore the marks of its influence, and that unless the liturgical reform itself is embraced, we cannot ‘grow in our capacity to live in full the liturgical action’ (DD 31). For Pope Francis, there can be no longer any suggestion of discontinuity between the content of the pre- and post-Vatican II missals: the latter is to be seen as a refinement of the former.

General principles

Central to Desiderio desideravi is the conciliar notion that the liturgy is a celebration in which the whole Body of Christ participates and shows its unity, with Christ at the head. The liturgy helps to form a ‘place of encounter with Christ’ (DD 10) that begins with baptism by water and the Spirit and continues throughout the lives of the faithful. ‘There is only one act of worship, perfect and pleasing to the Father; namely, the obedience to the Son, the measure of which is his death on the cross’ (DD 15). Sharing in the liturgy together is an expression of ecclesial communion. The Eucharist is an invitation to a feast, every iteration of which ‘was already desired by [Christ] in the Last Supper’ (DD 6), which will ‘not be satisfied until [people] from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation’ are welcomed at the table (DD 4). The post-resurrection Church relies on the Eucharist and its memory-making for a ‘true encounter’ with Christ in the ‘community that celebrates’ (DD 8).

Beyond these positive principles there is an assumption in both Desiderio desideravi and Traditionis Custodes that some among the communities where the 1962 Missal is used are using that form of the Mass for reasons that detract from the unity and communality of the Catholic Church, whether to criticize or call out abuses in the Ordinary Form of the Mass or to draw the theological position of the Council into question. Francis writes:

I want the beauty of the Christian celebration and its necessary consequences for the life of the Church not to be spoiled by a superficial and foreshortened understanding of its value or, worse yet, by its being exploited in service of some ideological vision, no matter what the hue. The priestly prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper that all may be one (John 17.21) judges every one of our divisions around the Bread broken, around the sacrament of mercy, the sign of unity, the bond of charity. (DD 16)

Francis also speaks of another danger for the Church: ‘spiritual worldliness’, which may be present in those who think that by preferring, prescribing or criticizing the forms and orders of the Church’s liturgy they are doing something productive. Referencing his own Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (EG), ⁵ he mentions specifically ‘neo-Pelagianism’, a sense that humanity can somehow act to save itself, or ‘neo-Gnosticism’, taking the view that union with God is entirely interior and does not relate to the wider world. Gnostic thought ‘ultimately keeps one imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feelings’ (EG 94), the neo-Pelagian critique panders ‘to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying’ (EG 94) – a caricature, perhaps, of those who are rubricians. Another danger is a so-called ‘abstract spiritualism’ fostered by post-modernity, ‘without references of any sort, lacking in values because they have become indifferent’ (DD 28).

On the other hand, the celebration of the liturgy, properly and with the right intention and approach, ‘frees us from the prison of a self-referencing nourished by one’s own reasoning and one’s own feeling’ (DD 19). This celebration is not ours to offer, but given by Christ.

A call to liturgical formation

The Letter’s very title (drawn from Luke 22) gives a strong hint of the positive thrust of its argument. As Pope Francis observes, Peter and John were sent to make preparations for the Passover. We all need to make preparations and to be properly disposed to receive the sacraments. ‘Every gift, to be gift, must have someone disposed to receive it’ (DD 3). Everyone is welcome to the supper of the Lamb, provided that they have ‘the wedding garment of faith’ (DD 5). By that open invitation, all are called to liturgical formation.

Francis notes that there are two different kinds of liturgical formation: formation by the liturgy, and formation for the liturgy. Neither can ever be finished for any one of us, because the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ surpasses the finite. Formation by the liturgy comes first: the post-resurrection appearances of Christ remind us that the Eucharist itself can transform. ‘That gesture of breaking the bread opens their eyes.’ Even if the Eucharist is very familiar to us, we must retain a wonder at the beauty of the celebration – and not be complacent in perpetuating banality. Formation by the liturgy is never finished. The symbols may be finite but they point to a reality that is beyond the finite. He continues:

The continual rediscovery of the beauty of the Liturgy is not the search for a ritual aesthetic which is content by only a careful exterior observance of a rite or is satisfied by a scrupulous observance of the rubrics. Obviously, what I am saying here does not wish in any way to approve the opposite attitude, which confuses simplicity with a careless banality, or what is essential with an ignorant superficiality, or the concreteness of ritual action with an exasperating practical functionalism. (DD 22)

It is argued that the liturgical formation of clergy, and their preparation to aid the liturgical formation of the laity, must take place in an academic sphere so that they can be properly instructed and learn the principles (DD 35). But formation must also, importantly, take place in the parish, and outside the boundaries of ministerial training (DD 35). The liturgical formation of the laity is essential for their full and active participation in the liturgy.

Rediscovery of the symbolic

Francis calls for a rediscovery of the symbolic, in spite of a postmodern environment that sees no place or function for either worship or other kinds of ritual. This reluctance to embrace the idea of ritual and symbolism can even be seen within the Church, where some engage only apologetically, or with embarrassment, with liturgical tradition. Instead, he calls for a rediscovery of ‘amazement’. This is not the oft-mentioned vague ‘sense of mystery’ that is often accused of being absent in modern liturgies (and present in the 1962 Missal). It is ‘not some sort of being overcome in the face of an obscure reality or a mysterious rite’. Yet ‘if the astonishment is of the right kind, then there is no risk that the otherness of God’s presence will not be perceived’. One principle of liturgical formation, then, is the rediscovery and embrace of the symbolic, and the realities to which symbols point. If the symbolism of the liturgy does not allow us to sense or partake in the external objective reality to which the sacraments point, then only external, sentimental engagement will be possible. And since the modern world eschews symbolism and evades embracing the symbolic, they must be built on something solid.

With Guardini, Francis wants Christians to be able to discern symbols once again. He reflects on the value of being shown symbols (for instance, the sign of the cross) by an older generation, and handing them on. There is more here than ‘a preoccupation with the exterior [outcomes of a liturgical act]’. Rubrics are to be seen not as the end but as a means to an end.

The ars celebrandi

A further significant danger for clergy and congregation alike is the intrusion of distracting personal subjectivity into the celebration of the Eucharist. It is desirable that the celebration be ‘free from the subjectivisms that are the fruit of individual tastes dominating. Only in this way will it be free from the invasion of cultural elements that are taken on without discernment’ (DD 49). Otherwise, there are risks of:

rigid austerity or an exasperating creativity, a spiritualizing mysticism or a practical functionalism, a rushed briskness or an overemphasized slowness, a sloppy carelessness or an excessive finickiness, a superabundant friendliness or priestly impassibility. Granted the wide range of these examples, I think that the inadequacy of these models of presiding have a common root: a heightened personalism of the celebrating style which at times expresses a poorly concealed mania to be the centre of attention. (DD 54)

The Catholic tradition sees the priest at Mass in persona Christi capitis. Francis’s desire is for nothing to stand in the way of encountering Christ in the Eucharist. There is a consequent need for uniformity of celebration ‘that not only does not deaden, but, on the contrary, educates individual believers to discover the authentic uniqueness of their personalities … in the awareness of being one body’ (DD 51).

Conclusion and questions for consideration

As this article illustrates, Desiderio desideravi was conceived in relation to a particular set of circumstances within the Catholic Church which may not map precisely onto the eucharistic life of every church. But many issues will be shared. In addition to lay formation in a local context, liturgical formation in ministerial training can be nearly non-existent or inadequately self-reflective. Ordained ministers can become complacent or hidebound. Based on the desiderata of Desiderio desideravi, I offer here some questions for consideration by all who lead or plan worship, for those who share in that worship, and for those who evaluate those in training, in the spirit of Mark Earey’s approach to ‘worship audit’: evaluation that is corporate, deliberate, and open to change. ⁷ Frank, honest and searching answers to these questions are to be desired:

In what ways does our worship show that it is a work of the whole People of God, ‘performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and His members’?