Why Study the Liturgy?

Someone recently asked me the question “Why study the history of the liturgy?” It is not an uncommon question, although it is perplexing to hear it from Catholics. After all, Vatican II reminded us all that the Eucharist “is the source and summit of the Christian life” (Lumen gentium 11; Catechism of the Catholic Church 1324). Even so, many Catholics – lay and ordained – see the study of the Church’s liturgy as something of a frill, rather than an essential. Even the theology faculties at many Catholic colleges and universities see having a liturgical theologian on their staff as a low priority. One distinguished Catholic university I know has 24 full-time theologians on their staff, but not a single one of them specializes in the liturgy. Rather than speculate as to how we got to where we are in all this, however, I will simply give my own answer to the question asked:Why study the history of the liturgy?

In short, we need to study the historical and theological development of the liturgy in order to understand where we come from, where we are now, and where we might be going. To flesh this out, I will point to one example – the role of the words of institution in the Mass (Christ’s words spoken at the Last Supper – “This is my body…. This is my blood.”). This issue has been important in the history of the Church, and not just to theologians.

A lack of historical knowledge and understanding was a major cause of the Reformation. Martin Luther and other Reformers made a number of false assumptions about the Catholic Mass of the 16th century. They believed that the Catholic Church had radically distorted the ancient liturgy, polluting it with what they believed were all sorts of unbiblical ideas and practices. This led most of the Reformers not only to dismiss very early elements of the Eucharist, such as sacrifice and real presence, but also to gut the structure of the liturgy itself. One such move was Luther’s reduction of the anaphora (also known as, among others, the eucharistic prayer, the canon of the Mass, the Great Thanksgiving) to little more than the words of institution.

Thanks to the work of liturgical scholars, we now know what Luther and the Reformers did not know. The re-discovery of many eucharistic liturgies of the first millennium of the Church’s history has shown us not only that the anaphora was the very heart of the Eucharist rather than some late accretion, as Luther supposed, but that he was even wrong in supposing the words of institution to be the necessary element in the Mass.

This might surprise you. Generations of Catholics have been told something similar to what Luther believed. It has been commonplace in Catholic theology for centuries that Christ’s words of institution, spoken by the priest, are “consecratory,” i.e., they are what change the elements of bread and wine into the sacramental Body and Blood of Christ. Meanwhile, the Eastern Christian traditions (Catholic and Orthodox) have tended to see the epiclesis, i.e., the invocation of the Holy Spirit over the elements, to be consecratory.What change has taken place, and why?

First, liturgical theologians have come to understand the anaphora (which is Greek for “offering”) as consecratory. Typically, the anaphora is an extended, unified prayer containing a number of elements (usually 11) such as the sursum corda (“Lift up your hearts,” etc.), the Sanctus (“Holy, holy, holy….”), the institution narrative (containing Christ’s words on institution), the anamnesis (the remembering of Christ’s death and resurrection), the offering (of the consecrated Gifts back to God), the epiclesis (the invocation of the Spirit on the elements and the assembly), intercessions, and a closing doxology (praise to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). This means that to isolate any one of these pieces as the essential or consecratory element of the anaphora is a mistake. Today, therefore, the Church would say that the whole prayer of the anaphora is consecratory, and has said so in a variety of documents.

Second, as to the identification of the words of institution as consecratory, liturgists have long known that the Liturgy of Addai and Mari, which originated in Edessa (in northeastern Syria) and which is one of the oldest liturgies of the Church (and one that is still in use by some Eastern Christians), does not contain the words of institution. As Fr. Robert F. Taft, S.J., has written, “On what legitimate theological and ecclesiological basis could Rome argue than an apostolic church whose ancient principal anaphora had been in continuous use since time immemorial without ever being condemned by anyone – not by any father of the Church, nor by any local or provincial synod, nor by ecumenical council nor catholicos nor patriarch nor pope – on what basis would one dare to infer that such an ancient apostolic church had never had a valid eucharistic sacrifice?”

The issue of the Liturgy of Addai and Mari was settled by the Church’s magisterium in 2001 by its Guidelines for Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East. The document’s purpose was to “assure Catholics [who] receive Communion consecrated at an Assyrian Eucharist using the Anaphora of Addai and Mari that they are receiving the one true body and blood of Christ.” The document’s authority is beyond question, as it was “approved by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Pope John Paul II himself.”

So has the Church changed its mind about the words of institution being consecratory? Yes and No. Yes in the sense that we no longer see the words spoken by Christ as a formula of consecration to be repeated by the presider at the Mass to “confect” the sacramental body and blood of Christ. But in another sense it has not changed its mind. By re-reading her own tradition, the Church has recovered its earlier thinking on the matter. For when we carefully study what the early writers on this issue had to say, the fourth-century theologians St Ambrose of Milan and St John Chrysostom of Constantinople, we discover that they were not affirming a formula of consecration. What they were saying is that the words of institution are consecratory in that, as Fr. Taft writes, our Lord’s “pronouncing of them at the Last Supper remains efficaciously consecratory for every Eucharist until the end of time.” Thus even in the Liturgy of Addai and Mari, which contains no institution narrative, it is nonetheless the words of Christ spoken at the Last Supper that are consecratory.

So why do we study the history of the liturgy? We do so to better understand how both our practice and theological understanding of the liturgy has developed and changed over time.We do so because a lack of such understanding sows confusion and discord, as it did in the Reformation.We do so in order to understand why we celebrate and teach the way we do about the Mass of today.We do so because the Eucharist is nothing less than “the source and summit of the Christian life.”