Whoever asks questions like these touches on a crucial dimension of the Christian understanding of worship but overlooks something essential about the permanent limits of human existence in this world, overlooks the ‘‘not yet’’ that is part of Christian existence and talks as if the New Heaven and New Earth had already come. The Christ-event and the growth of the Church out of all the nations, the transition from Temple sacrifice to universal worship ‘‘in spirit and truth,’’ is the first important step across the frontier, a step toward the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament. But it is obvious that hope has not yet fully attained its goal. The New Jerusalem needs no Temple because Almighty God and the Lamb are themselves its Temple. In this City, instead of sun and moon, it is the glory of God and its lamp, the Lamb, that shed their brilliance (cf. Rev 21:22f.). But this City is not yet here. That is why the Church Fathers described the various stages of fulfillment, not just as a contrast between Old and New Testaments, but as the three steps of shadow, image, and reality. In the Church of the New Testament, the shadow has been scattered by the image: ‘‘[T]he night is far gone, the day is at hand’’ (Rom 13:12). But, as Saint Gregory the Great puts it, it is still only the time of dawn, when darkness and light are intermingled. The sun is rising, but it has still not reached its zenith. Thus the time of the New Testament is a peculiar kind of ‘‘in-between,’’ a mixture of ‘‘already and not yet.’’ The empirical conditions of life in this world are still in force, but they have been burst open, and must be more and more burst open, in preparation for the final fulfillment already inaugurated in Christ.
This idea of the New Testament as the between-time as image between shadow and reality, gives liturgical theology its specific form. It becomes even clearer when we bear in mind the three levels on which Christian worship operates, the three levels that make it what it is. There is the middle level, the strictly liturgical level, which is familiar to us all and is revealed in the words and actions of Jesus at the Last Supper. These words and actions form the core of Christian liturgical celebration, which was further constructed out of the synthesis of the synagogue and Temple liturgies. The sacrificial actions of the Temple have been replaced by the Eucharistic Prayer, which enters into what Jesus did at the Last Supper, and by the distribution of the consecrated gifts. But this properly liturgical level does not stand on its own. It has meaning only in relation to something that really happens, to a reality that is substantially present. Otherwise, it would lack real content, like bank notes without funds to cover them. The Lord could say that his Body was ‘‘given’’ only because he had in fact given it; he could present his Blood in the new chalice as shed for many only because he really had shed it. This Body is not the ever-dead corpse of a dead man, nor is the Blood the life-element rendered lifeless. No, sacrifice has be- come gift, for the Body given in love and the Blood given in love have entered, through the Resurrection, into the eternity of love, which is stronger than death. Without the Cross and Resurrection, Christian worship is null and void, and a theology of liturgy that omitted any reference to them would really just be talking about an empty game.
In considering this foundation of reality that undergirds Christian liturgy, we need to take account of another important matter. The Crucifixion of Christ, his death on the Cross, and, in another way, the act of his Resurrection from the grave, which bestows incorruptibility on the corruptible, are historical events that happen just once and as such belong to the past. The word semel (ephapax), ‘‘once for all,’’ which the epistle to the Hebrews emphasizes so vigorously in contrast to the multitude of repeated sacrifices in the Old Covenant, is strictly applicable to them. But if they were no more than facts in the past, like all the dates we learn in history books, then there could be nothing contemporary about them. In the end, they would remain beyond our reach. However, the exterior act of being crucified is accompanied by an interior act of self-giving (the Body is ‘‘given for you’’). ‘‘No one takes [my life] from me,’’ says the Lord in Saint John’s Gospel, ‘‘but I lay it down of my own accord’’ (10:18). This act of giving is in no way just a spiritual occurrence. It is a spiritual act that takes up the bodily into itself, that embraces the whole man; indeed, it is at the same time an act of the Son. As Saint Maximus the Confessor showed so splendidly, the obedience of Jesus’ human will is inserted into the everlasting Yes of the Son to the Father. This ‘‘giving’’ on the part of the Lord, in the passivity of his being crucified, draws the passion of human existence into the action of love, and so it embraces all the dimensions of reality—Body, Soul, Spirit, Logos. Just as the pain of the body is drawn into the pathos of the mind and becomes the Yes of obedience, so time is drawn into what reaches beyond time. The real interior act, though it does not exist without the exterior, transcends time, but since it comes from time, time can again and again be brought into it. That is how we can become contemporary with the past events of salvation. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux has this in mind when he says that the true semel (‘‘once’’) bears within itself the semper (‘‘always’’). What is perpetual takes place in what happens only once. In the Bible, the Once for All is emphasized most vigorously in the epistle to the Hebrews, but the careful reader will discover that the point made by Saint Bernard expresses its true meaning. The ephapax (‘‘once for all’’) is bound up with the aionios (‘’everlasting’’). ‘‘Today’’ embraces the whole time of the Church. And so in the Christian liturgy, we not only receive something from the past but become contemporaries with what lies at the foundation of that liturgy. Here is the real heart and true grandeur of the celebration of the Eucharist, which is more, much more than a meal. In the Eucharist, we are caught up and made contemporary with the Paschal Mystery of Christ, in his passing from the tabernacle of the transitory to the presence and sight of God.
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