The liturgy: Christian worship as art
Christian worship is beautiful and the most important art. It interacts with the divine love, or eros, that God has for every being. Worship, especially, is playful, symbolic, and festive.¹ These characteristics of beauty take on greater meaning through the works of Cyril of Jerusalem, Gertrude the Great of Helfta, and Romano Guardini. The liturgy cannot be conceptualized. It must be shared in by the worshipper and not just observed. It is an art that transcends time and is an everlasting, universal celebration of His love and goodness.
The liturgy is symbolic through its materiality. Water, for instance, is both purity and chaos, but in the Church, its importance is transformed, often in conjunction with the sign of the cross. When I make the sign over myself in holy water, I experience both “nature set free from sin” and the “light of Christ.”² As I gesture with my hand, I involve my heart, body, and soul in the encounter.
I continue to use my whole self to understand the liturgy’s symbols. They are both unveiled and veiled. The candle is an unveiled symbol — I begin to understand its embodiment of the light of God.³ But it is veiled too — there is more to be seen that cannot be summarized in a few words or appreciated by an aesthete. The unveiling occurs slowly, just as we approach God slowly in our worship: “Or bit by bit the whole sweep of the Mass is revealed, just as from out the vanishing mist the peaks and summits and slopes of a mountain chain stand out in relief, shining and clear…penetrated with awe, we taste the meaning of utter and blissful tranquility, conscious that the final and eternal verities which satisfy all longing have here found their perfect expression.”⁴ The candle slowly reveals itself to me as the light of God as I tend to it.
Symbolism is also evident in baptism. The ascension and descension into the “divine pool” is the “three-day burial of Christ.”⁵ Christ’s burial is not abstract. The immersion into water during baptism is that through which my salvation occurs.⁶ This event creates a memory that I recall throughout my earthly life, grounding my identity as a Christian.
The liturgy as art faces me so that I may try to unveil its work, but it also invites me to participate in it wholly. It is playful, but not as art for its own sake. Many gestures, movements, and sensations involve me. During the Mass, I share in the incense being cast around the basilica through the air. I share in the light of the candle. I share in the Cross as I gesture from the forehead to the chest, from one shoulder to the other. As a child of God, I need that absolute immersion because that is how I delight in Him, with no distance between us. The liturgy’s beauty is playful in a serious manner because the salvation of the human person is at stake.⁷ The liturgy’s play resembles “all the seriousness of the child and the strict conscientiousness of the great artist [and expresses] in a thousand forms the sacred, God-given life of the soul” to no utilitarian end.⁸
Gertrude the Great of Helfta experiences this serious playfulness in her beautiful vision of Christ. She reflects on a quote from the Book of Kings, becoming plant-like. She feels the warmth of eros and fully experiences Christ. She is humble as a small plant in the face of Him. “Her most loving Jesus seemed to draw her toward himself,” nourishing her with even more love through water and blood.⁹ She blossoms into a tree. There is no distance between God’s perfect work of art — Jesus Christ — and Gertrude. Her worship has intention and includes movement as she turns to Him. Particularly special is the phrase “her most loving Jesus.” Jesus is there for her specifically. He devotes attention to each and every one of us as we need. This is so beautiful because it reveals the eros. His one begotten Son never hesitates to come down to be with us and help us — He loves us that much.
Beyond its symbolism and playfulness, the liturgy is a festival, albeit a serious one. It can occur at a certain time and place, but in reality, it transcends all: it is “reminiscent of the stars, of their eternally fixed and even course, of their inflexible order, of their profound silence, and of the infinite space in which they are poised.”¹⁰ It is not a matter of pure aestheticism or escapism; rather, the liturgy is about salvation and the person who conforms herself.¹¹ I ascend the steps, and through the doors I cross over from the “market place” into God’s temple.¹² I leave behind all trivial preoccupations and to-do lists. I come face to face with God. There is no schedule to be had, no appointments to be made. He is available to all of us, at all times. In the Church, I meet with Him more directly, learning and being washed over by His love. This experience of worship I carry with me always. The constant recall of my encounters with Him inside the Church lets me encounter Him further in the mundaneness of the material world, giving beauty to my everyday life.
Cited Works:
[1] As defined by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Josef Pieper.
[2] Romano Guardini, Sacred Signs (Pio Decimo Press, 1956), 29.
[3] Tim O’Malley, PhD, January 11, 2021 lecture.
[4] Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998), 84.
[5] Maxwell E. Johnson, Lectures on the Christian Sacraments: The Procatechesis and the Five Mystagogical Catecheses Ascribed to St. Cyril of Jerusalem (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2017), 99.
[6] Tim O’Malley, PhD, January 12, 2021 lecture.
[7] Tim O’Malley, PhD, January 11, 2021 lecture.
[8] Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 71.
[9] Gertrude of Helfta, The Herald of Divine Love: Book III (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 176.
[10] Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 95.
[11] Tim O’Malley, PhD, January 11, 2021 lecture.
[12] Guardini, Sacred Signs, 22–25.
