Welcome Address to the 49th Annual Southwest Liturgical Conference
“Welcome one and all. You’re most, most welcome, and thanks be to God for your safe journeys. I pray that these days will be filled with many blessings. I’ve been asked to say a few words of welcome by way of responding to the title ‘Liturgy: A Call to Justice.’
“When Timothy gave me this title, I said, ‘That’s strange. What does liturgy have to do with justice?’ I guess I never thought of the liturgy as being part of social justice, per se. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized, ‘Well, yes, that’s a very intriguing meditation point, and a very beautiful one.
“I remember years ago, some years ago now, Raymond Brown, the Sulpician, the famous Scripture scholar, was giving a talk to us priests in San Francisco, and I was looking forward to his talk. He was such a wonderful Scripture scholar, he was just a marvelous man, as you know, and able to present points in a very clear and orderly way.
“I only remember one thing about that talk, however. He said that we celebrate the liturgy to give God glory and praise. Well now, I certainly knew that, but for some reason it hit me like a ton of bricks. Well, of course. We get so caught up in so many wonderful things about the liturgy, but we’re there to give God glory and praise. And then I remembered in the preface dialog ‘It is right to give God thanks and praise.’
“It is right – or did we used to say ‘meet and just’? And so I thought, well, yes, it’s true. Picking up especially on that word ‘right,’ we see that in the Eucharist we are in right relationship with God and with one another. And therefore we are doing justice par excellence. We come into an infinite union with Christ, whose sacrifice on the cross is renewed in a sacramental way at every Mass, and through this action, Christ channels us into that intimacy that he shares with the Father and with the Spirit.
“In reading through the general instruction of the Roman Missal, at the end of paragraph two, it states that the Mass is at once a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, of propitiation and satisfaction. Therefore, justice is truly achieved and all is right with creation, we included. And yet this justice is not simply vertical. It’s also horizontal. It is also, in the liturgy, social justice. We gather together at the Eucharist in a way that is without parallel in any other human gathering.
“As Ronald Knox wrote during the Second World War, ‘How can we be one with Christ and not one in Christ?’ Gathered around Christ’s Word and Christ’s table, we become profoundly aware that we are together in peace, united in our being loved by Christ and in our love for Christ. We are truly in right relationship with each other, living for a few precious moments without competition, rancor, jealousy, hatred or indifference. We are one in our union with and in Jesus Christ.
“Pope Benedict expressed this same reality in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. He said, ‘Here we need to consider yet another aspect: This sacramental mysticism is social in character, for in sacramental communion I become one with the Lord like all the other communicants.’
“And Saint Paul says, ‘Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor.10:17).
“Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become or will become his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become one body, completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbor are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to himself. We can thus understand how agape also becomes a term for the Eucharist: there God’s own agape comes to us bodily, in order to continue his work in us and through us.
“And so as we gather these days, we consider rituals, words and sacred space. All of which conspire to reveal the inherent justice in our liturgies. For example, when we gather for liturgy we are free to sit anywhere we like without regard to status, wealth or power. (As long as you don’t take my seat!) And, actually, I know that the lay faithful have to be careful; if you sit in someone else’s spot you could get hurt! We leave our gift at the foot of the altar during the penitential rite to reconcile ourselves, to make things right with our brothers and sisters. We exercise in the liturgy our unique role in the assembly as ordained ministers, instituted ministers, or those other ministers in service of the worship of the community. This reference to the other’s role is a true sign of justice in allowing the other to function properly in the assembly, and then I doing my part as I function properly in my ministry in the assembly. Our gestures and our postures, then, symbolize our desire to be one with the community, and not simply to do as I please.
“This holds true for our verbal responses as well. Also, we offer gifts that represent all of the community, giving without counting the cost and with no expectation of reward except the love of Christ and membership in his body. At the sign of peace, not knowing who will be standing behind us or in front of us or to the side, we turn and offer others the sign of peace in Christ.
“I remember one time that a lady came up to my first pastor, complaining that she always had to hold her purse for fear that somebody might take it while she was not looking. And the pastor, God rest him, said, ‘Good.’ And she said, ‘I beg your pardon, Monsignor?’ And he replied, ‘Good. Catholic Masses are open to everybody, thieves included. Clutch your purse if you must, but wish him the sign of peace.’
“We come forward to receive the bread of life, and the cup of salvation, patiently waiting while our sisters and brothers are nourished, and then we in our turn. And then we go forth to live what we celebrate, to become what we have received, which for Augustine is the second great miracle of the Eucharist.
“And so the liturgy bespeaks this justice, this social justice. Again and again we hear the word of God forming us, reminding us of how Israel was called to live in right relationship with others and especially with widows and orphans and aliens and the poor. And the New Testament confirms this, reminding us that these same people are incarnations of the Christ, and that the way we deal with them will constitute our judgment before the throne of God. Hence, gathered around the Eucharistic table we remember – and see made present – God’s acts of justice, his setting everyone right with each other and with himself.
“Recall Ronald Knox once more, who, during the Second World War, challenged his people to be disposed to look at the Eucharist as the mandate of justice, albeit a difficult mandate to achieve. He said, and I quote, ‘The bread and wine which the priest will be offering a moment from now are gifts of unity and peace, making us one with all our fellow Catholics in Poland, in France, yes, in Italy and Germany too. The Blessed Sacrament, the Jerusalem of our souls, stands apart from and above all the ebb and flow of world politics, its citizenship that common fellowship between us and those who are estranged from us, those who at the moment are our enemies. Our friends yesterday, our friends tomorrow -- in the timeless existence to which that altar introduces us, they are our friends today.’
This justice of the liturgy, and the justice that the liturgy calls us to, can be seen then as service. As you know, in John’s gospel we do not find the synoptic version of the Last Supper. Rather, John would have us reflect on Christ’s washing of the disciples’ feet – his ultimate service and giving of himself as a symbol of what he did for us on the cross. Giving himself with total humility, the transitus domini, that would lead to the scandal of the cross.
“Now we will affirm the liturgy as a service. Notice how some will even say, ‘Nice service, Father.’ And truly, it is a service, not just a ritual service but also a service, meaning that in the liturgy and beyond the liturgy we treat others with love and justice and respect, giving completely of ourselves and doing for them. When we live what we celebrate, we are bringing justice to the world through our selfless service of others, washing their feet in imitation of the divine master. The Church is the living body of Christ, that same body that put on an apron – the first liturgical vestment – and stooped in humility to wash the disciples’ feet. And so the two come together: what we do at liturgy and what the liturgy sends us to do. Liturgy is all about justice and right relationships.
“I remember one day when I was praying quietly in the church where I lived. A homeless man came up. His name was Carnation Charley. He wanted a donation. And I said to him, ‘Charley, can’t you see I’m praying right now?’ ‘Oh, sorry, Father,’ he said, and walked out.
“I turned back to the altar and I said, ‘Darn. I think I made a mistake.’ And sure enough I did. I went afterwards to see Charley and when I found him I said, ‘Charley, I’m sorry. You’re always welcome and I shouldn’t have said that to you. You needed something and that’s fine.’
“The two come together: what we do in Church and how that time in Church impels us to action outside of Church, the temple and the marketplace, the justice of the liturgy and the social justice of our day-to-day lives.
“One final point pertaining to our conference. The new Roman Missal will be the focus of our attention. It’s important to look at this missal, I think, also in terms of justice. It’s a little bit ironic, I believe, that the Eucharist, the very source of peace we so desperately need in the midst of all the turmoil and problems in our world, is itself causing a bit of tension in our Church. Now I’m not going to rehearse that tension right now. I’m just going to make two little points for our reflection in terms of this topic of justice.
“First of all, it was decided that there was to be one English translation of the missal for the entire English-speaking world. This in itself is a somewhat controversial decision; not done, for example, in regard to translations of the Bible. And it’s one source of the tension and debates surrounding the new translation. But it also means that all English-speaking Catholics will be praying in the same words, which does bear witness to a unity of faith, a unity that promotes right relationships and therefore, justice.
“Secondly, 2,000 years of history teach us that there has never been a perfect liturgy, in one sense. The Mass of the Roman Rite has maintained its integral core, but it has been through many permutations. It is an organic reality, and living organisms change. Our attempts will always be deficient, probably because people are different and no two people or groups of people will always find the same words equally pleasing. But this deficiency also lies in the fact that we’re attempting to express, with the very imperfect tool of speech, our worship and our relation to God. We will always fall short. So we should approach the liturgy with humility and not let its defects – real or apparent – distract us from the deeper reality of what we are doing.”
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