“The synodal what?”
Darmok and Jalod . . . if those names aren’t familiar to you, read on. They soon will be. But first, allow me to observe that we live in strange days indeed. For instance, the German bishops seem intent on dismantling the Catholic Church in their homeland. Pope Francis sent them a letter two years ago in which he suggested (I think) that they apply the brakes:
The current challenges as well as the answers we give demand a long maturation process and the cooperation of an entire people over years . . . This stimulates the emergence and continuation of processes that build us as God’s people, rather than seeking immediate results with premature and medial consequences that are fleeting because of lack of deepening and maturation or because they do not correspond to the vocation we are given.
As I said, that’s what I think it means: I admit that there are any number of other possible interpretations. The German bishops themselves, for instance, apparently took it to mean “full speed ahead!” with the project they call “The Synodal Way.”
The Authority is not Their Own
Their persistence has, however, provoked another letter. This missive is a closely reasoned, scripturally and theologically rich refutation of the abdication of apostolic authority that is taking place in Germany. You can’t explain the situation more succinctly than this:
Yet the authority of the apostles and their successors is not their own. It is a share in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Truth (see John 14:6). Every successor of the Apostles must resist the temptation to imitate the “senseless prophets who follow[ed] their own spirit” in Ezekiel’s time, promoting their own opinions and ideas (Ezek. 13:3). Every successor of the Apostles must also resist the temptation to imitate the prophets and priests of Jeremiah’s time, who adjusted their teaching according to the preferences of the people (Jer. 5:30–31).
Yet the authority of the apostles and their successors is not their own. It is a share in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ . . .
“Priest Offering Mass”, Simone Martini, early 14th Century
The interesting thing is that this letter does not come from Rome. Rather, it comes from Denver, Colorado. Its author is Archbishop Aquila, who has absolutely no authority over brother bishops across the Atlantic Ocean. The appropriate authority in Rome is instead occupied with rejecting the proffered resignation of Cardinal Marx of Munich. The good cardinal is one of the chief perpetrators of The Synodal Way.
Bigger Priorities
Another thing distracting the authorities in Rome from the misbehavior north of the Alps, if we are to believe the rumors, is the urgent need to suppress* Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum. That decree freed the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) from restrictions widely imposed in the aftermath of Vatican II.
I intend to discuss the TLM and more traditional expressions of liturgy in greater length soon. Today I’m reposting a revised version of a piece I wrote a few years ago. At the time Cardinal Sarah, then head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, made a strong appeal to bishops and priests to reintroduce the practice of saying the Mass ad orientem (facing the altar). Sadly, his suggestion was quickly squelched. It was a good idea nonetheless (a great idea, really). In the post below I explain why, with the help of Captain Picard, the Starship Enterprise, and some extraterrestrials from the far side of the galaxy. So, let’s boldly go . . .
“Shaka, when the walls fell”
Just about everybody knows something about Star Trek. After all, there have been half a dozen (?) different television series and who knows how many movies. I’ve made profitable use of Star Trek material in my classroom and on my blogs on many occasions. I prefer the original series and The Next Generation. Some other time we can talk about why it’s limited to those two. In any case, one of my all-time favorite episodes is “Darmok” from Star Trek The Next Generation.
In “Darmok” the (mostly human) crew of the starship Enterprise encounters an alien race called Tamarians. Humans have previously had several frustratingly unsuccessful attempts at communication them. It seems that the Earthling’s Universal Translators (ah, the wonders of science fiction!) are able to discover the meaning of the Tamarians’ words, but can’t figure out how the words combine to express meaning. What is one to make, for instance, of utterances such as “Shaka, when the walls fell”, or “The river Tamarc, in winter”? The aliens seem to be talking in metaphors and allusions drawn from stories known to them and to nobody else.
Darmok and Jalod at Tanagra
Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Starship Enterprise experiences the same frustration as his predecessors in his attempts to communicate with the commander of a Tamarian ship. His alien counterpart clearly shares his frustration. Once it becomes clear that their efforts are going nowhere, the Tamarian captain holds up two daggers. He declares “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!” He immediately “beams” Picard and himself (more sci-fi wizardry) to the surface of a planet below. Picard soon learns that the captain is not challenging him to a duel as he at first supposes. What he does intend, however, or what he means by his insistent repetition of “Darmok and Jalod at Tanagra!” remains a mystery.
Eventually, after the two captains together encounter a deadly creature (which mortally wounds Picard’s Tamarian counterpart), Picard puts the puzzle together. Darmok and Jalod were two heroes. Perhaps they were rivals or enemies. Whatever the case, together they fought a beast on an island called Tanagra, and formed a bond of friendship. The alien captain had hoped that, by putting himself and Picard in a similar situation, they might likewise achieve through shared experience what they couldn’t find through mere words. Understanding too late his counterpart’s intent, Picard is able at least to comfort the dying Tamarian by recounting to him the ancient epic of Gil-Gamesh.
Captain Picard informs the Tamarians of the death of their captain
We Are Formed by Experience
The Tamarians, as is the way with Star Trek aliens, are really humans in disguise (literally, of course, but figuratively as well). In this particular story the creators of the television show have put their finger on something that goes to the very heart of what it is to be human. We are formed by our experiences, not only as individuals but as peoples. The “aliens” they have created here view the world only through the lens of the stories that have been passed down about the history of their people. In their everyday experiences they consciously relive the experiences of their forebears. Their only way to communicate abstractions is through the concrete: people, places, and events.
Often, we quickly forget that the expressions we are using are metaphors at all. I remember an example from the 1992 presidential campaign. Former (and future) California governor Jerry Brown was asked about the “anointed front-runner” Bill Clinton. Brown asked whether he was running for president, or running for pope. Some allusions are even more deeply buried. How many people even know when they use the word “mentor” they are alluding to Homer’s Odyssey? There the goddess Athena, in the guise of a wise old man named Mentor, accompanies Odysseus’s son Telemachus. She guides the inexperienced young man on his journey and, to speak metaphorically, “show him the ropes.”
It’s a Mystery to Me
In fact, the true meaning of the term “mystery” (from the Greek μυστήριον) is not something unknowable. Rather, it is something that can only be known experientially, through doing. Traditional Christianity tells us that God uses these mysteries as a means not only of imparting His Grace, but of revealing himself to us. Once we understand that, we can more easily see why μυστήριον translates into Latin as sacramentum. Sacraments involve not only knowing or thinking, but acting.
There’s even more going on here than the use of language. The Tamarian captain understands that actions, that experiences, can communicate in ways that words cannot. This is of course as true of human beings as much as it is of fictional extraterrestrials. This is a large part of why so many religions rely on ritual and formal rites. The actions communicate to us much more deeply than mere words, because we are actually living out what they convey.
Turning Toward The Lord
Most religions rely, to some degree or other, on mystery. At the very core of Christianity we find the Profoundest Mystery, the Supreme Sacrament. The Infinite God has become Finite Man in order to experience our humanity. He invites us, in turn, to share in His Divinity. We live out this mystery concretely when we receive the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, the “Summit and Source of the Christian Life.” While Catholic Christianity includes countless lesser ways of living out spiritual realities as well, such as the other Sacraments, sacramentals, devotions, and so on, the Eucharist, and the Sacrifice of the Mass in which we receive it, is the most important thing we do.
It can be helpful, I think, to bear these considerations in mind when we look at the following suggestion made by Cardinal Sarah. At the time he was head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Cardinal Sarah suggested that priests start re-introducing the practice of saying the Mass ad orientem, “toward the rising sun.” That is to say, facing the altar rather than the congregation. This was the norm up until 1969.
Lead toward the Lord
The Cardinal made the suggestion in a talk delivered at a liturgical conference in London a few years ago (full text here). Cardinal Sarah asked his fellow shepherds in the episcopate to support him in this matter, saying:
I very humbly and fraternally would like to appeal also to my brother bishops: please lead your priests and people towards the Lord in this way, particularly at large celebrations in your dioceses and in your cathedral. Please form your seminarians in the reality that we are not called to the priesthood to be at the centre of liturgical worship ourselves, but to lead Christ’s faithful to him as fellow worshippers united in the one same act of adoration.
Implicit in the part of the quote I have put in bold type above is the idea that what we do and what the priest does during the Mass is a part of the message.
I first came across a similar suggestion in regard to ad orientem worship some years ago. This was in an article by Fr. Joseph Fessio called “The Mass of Vatican II”. In his essay Fr. Fessio explains what the documents of Vatican II actually say about the Mass. For instance, that it should remain mostly in Latin. Also, that Gregorian Chant “should be given pride of place in liturgical services.” He also cited various other directives that appear not to have much influenced the post-conciliar revision of the liturgy.
Towards the Rising Sun
Fr. Fessio points out that one thing that was done does not appear, anywhere, in the Council’s documents. It had never been part of the tradition of the Church over the previous 18 centuries. That is, turning the priest at Mass around to face the congregation, rather than having him face the altar, the liturgical East, along with the people he is leading in prayer. In defending the traditional practice Fr. Fessio more explicitly makes some of the same points that Cardinal Sarah does in his London talk:
It’s true that when the priest faces the people for the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, there may be a sense of greater unity as a community. But there is also a danger of the priest being the performer and you being the spectator – precisely what the Council did not want: priest performers and congregational spectators.
But there is something more problematic. You can see it, perhaps, by contrasting Mass facing the people with Mass facing East or facing the Lord. I don’t say Mass “with my back to the people” any more than Patton went through Germany with his “back to the soldiers.” Patton led the Third Army across Germany and they followed him to achieve a goal. The Mass is part of the Pilgrim Church on the way to our goal, our heavenly homeland. This world is not our heavenly homeland. We don’t sit around in a circle and look at each other. We want to look with each other and with the priest towards the rising sun, the rays of grace, where the Son will come again in glory on the clouds.
The Medium is the Message
Marshall McLuhan famously said of television that “the medium is the message”. The same can be said of all media, including sacred media. How we celebrate the Mass sends a message. The symbolic “message” of the ad orientem Mass is clear. All of us together, priest and people, are making an offering to God; we all face our Lord together. When priest and people face each other, who is offering what to whom? The message seems to be that we are there to see each other, not to turn to Our Lord. The little cartoon to the left (which, I confess, I stole from Fr. Z’s blog) gives a good illustration of the problem. Cardinal Sarah himself recently made the same point in a talk delivered to the bishops of Sri Lanka,
In recent decades in some countries the Sacred Liturgy has become too anthropocentric; man not Almighty God has often become its focus.
But that’s not how it’s supposed to be. Instead,
In every Catholic liturgy, the Church, made up of both minister and faithful, gives her complete focus – body, heart and mind – to God who is the centre of our lives and the origin of every blessing and grace.
That’s the beauty of the traditional ad orientem celebration of the Mass. We don’t merely read or hear it. We experience for ourselves the Truth that God is the center of our lives, and we all turn to Him together in our worship.
It’s Greek to Me
Which brings me to one of my few real quibbles with “Darmok”. In the final scene of the episode we see Captain Picard reading a book when his first officer, Commander Riker, enters the room. Riker looks at the book curiously, and says, “Greek, sir?” Did I mention that Captain Picard is the consummate Renaissance man? Starship captain, interstellar warrior, student of Latin and Greek, etc. In any case, this exchange follows:
PICARD: Oh, the Homeric Hymns. One of the root metaphors of our own culture.
RIKER: For the next time we encounter the Tamarians?
PICARD: More familiarity with our own mythology might help us to relate to theirs. The Tamarian was willing to risk all of us just for the hope of communication, connection. Now the door is open between our peoples. That commitment meant more to him than his own life. Thank you, Number One.
Now, the Homeric Hymns is not a bad place to start, as far as it goes, but if Picard really wants to get at the “root” of what it is to be human, I have a better suggestion for him, one that goes like this:
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος
In the beginning was The Word, and The Word was with God, and The Word was God (John 1:1)
*The pope did suppress (more or less) Summorum Pontificum and placed severe restrictions on the TLM later that summer. See here and here.
Featured image top of page: Captain Picard and Tamarian Captain from Star Trek TNG episode “Darmok.”
