OUR TRIUNE JOURNEY HOME, PART TWO
The journey inward, when dissociated from the others, all too easily degenerates into a narcissistic, self-centered exercise. If we look back a century or so, it was precisely this kind of split that preoccupied the writers of the Liturgical Movement [8] — a flow that began in the inside of European monasteries and poured out onto U.S. streets in social action — and that, over the course of the 20th century, invigorated and transformed the Church-on-earth. What worried the Movement’s writers was precisely the widespread penchant among the laity of their time for an interior devotion that was divorced from the Eucharistic liturgy and from social action at a time when the Industrial Revolution was leaving so many prone to exploitation, inequity, and poverty. [9] Within the institutional Church, too, the prevalent practice of an interior-oriented piety that privileged the inward journey at the expense of the journey together in Eucharistic worship and the journey outward in social action had weakened awareness of the bond between individual Christian and corporate body, thus impeding both from undertaking fully the mission of embodying Christ to and for the world. It was a perversion of Christianity.
As Catherine of Siena was keen to make clear centuries earlier, any inward spiritual discipline that remains congealed inside cannot involve a real encounter with the living God, who inevitably propels the soul outward to live out kenotically God's love for the world more visibly, as the soul begins to reflect God's image more clearly and transparently to the world. [10]
Tides inevitably change, of course. We no longer live in a time or ecclesial context in which the journey inward is privileged over the others. In fact, in recent years I have heard it explicitly devalued and dissociated in Anglican settings, especially in relation to the liturgy.
An example: I had the chance to travel to the U.K. in the summer of 2017 for a course on Liturgy & Spirituality, and in that context heard not one but two deeply thoughtful Anglican scholars present contemplative prayer (inward) as being wholly at odds with corporate worship (together). “Contemplation centers on the individual,” said both presenters. One of them added that “contemplation is perhaps a bit self-ish.” By contrast, the liturgy engages the whole corporate body, with the clear implication that it is more generous-spirited. Ergo, they are at odds. Of note, only contemplation and liturgical worship (the inward and together dimensions) were dichotomized and juxtaposed; the speakers saw no need to divorce the liturgy from social action (together and outward) but rather affirmed that relationship.
Of note, both scholars premised their analysis on their understanding that “the singular aim of contemplation is personal sanctification” — as though contemplation did not touch any domain except the individual. But the aim of contemplation is not personal sanctification. It is union with God – union with a God who is intrinsically relational and continually pouring out. The inward journey — if it is real — certainly touches the particular soul deeply but never remains solely individual. [11] To follow the Way home inevitably results in the transcending of the individual self in a willing outpouring of love, in the image of Jesus and of the Father (John 14:9). As a liturgical scholar observed over a century ago,
…it is hardly permissible to play off the spiritual life of the individual… against the spiritual life of the liturgy.… They are not mutually contradictory; they should both combine in active co-operation…. Only a system of life and thought which is truly Catholic — that is to say, actual and universal — is capable of being universally adopted. Yet there is… an element of sacrifice involved in such adoption. Each one is bound to strive within himself, and to rise superior to self. Yet in so doing he is not swallowed up by, and lost in, the majority; on the contrary, he becomes more independent, rich, and versatile.
Both [individual and corporate] methods of prayer must co-operate. They stand together in a vital and reciprocal relationship. The one derives its light and fruitfulness from the other. [12]
Indeed, when divorced from its connection with the interior devotion of congregants — from each person's lived experience of their relationship with God, nurtured and honed through the inward journey — the journey together can constitute nothing more than empty ritual. Although it is of course difficult to know what goes on in the hearts and minds of fellow worshippers, a few encounters over recent years have caused me to wonder if worship-as-empty-ritual may be not uncommon in our midst. Let me give two examples.
A few months after returning to the U.S. from the course on Liturgy & Spirituality, I had the chance to listen to a sermon in which “interiority” was portrayed as “the bourgeois manifestation of a sentimental 19th-century Romantic piety.” The learned preacher may well have had in mind the ecclesial and cultural contexts of that gave rise to the Liturgical Movement. By 2017, however, our own situation was quite different.
The sermon had come on the heels of a few comments about the apparent general absence of interior engagement during worship, which manifested audibly in a monotonous and mechanistic recitation of prayers. In response, the preacher allowed that liturgical leaders and congregants ought to be praying, and then gave instruction on how to pray liturgically: the focus ought to be outside and not on any interior dimension. “After all, our incarnational theology leads us to locate God out there, in the gathered community and in Creation.” Locating God inside the self was said to be at odds with liturgical worship because it places a misguided focus on the individual's own relationship with God, rather than on the communal dimension.
The preacher’s statement has merit, yet it dissociates the part from the whole, individual member from corporate Body. Liturgical prayer both embraces and transcends each particular soul that takes part in it. [13] As it turns out, the question of where we metaphorically “locate” God in worship reveals the wholeness and unity-of-being to which we are called.
We are Christians, and our incarnational theology indeed leads us to recognize God's imprint in every created being and thing — yet it does not extend so far as to hold that everything in the created order is God. We are not pantheists. When we address and metaphorically “locate” God in worship, the particular revelation of God’s being that we have received as Christians must shape our orientation. In the course of one liturgy we may find ourselves addressing at various turns: 1) the transcendent, Almighty God, whom I would venture to guess most people “locate” outside; 2) the deeply immanent, indwelling God who abides in us (John 15:4a), and/or 3) the dynamic flow of Love that we call the Holy Spirit. Outside and inside, in deep, loving, flowing (not static or severed) relationship. As ever, the Trinity leads the way. [14]
The other incident came about when a fellow parishioner — a thoughtful, intelligent, educated man who worships regularly and is active in outreach ministries — suggested that we catch up over coffee. When we did, he said that he’d heard that I was commuting to divinity school; it made him wonder if I felt called to the priesthood. “No,” I replied. “I'm there to study liturgy.” “Liturgy??!,” he exclaimed, visibly bewildered. “What’s to study? Isn’t it just ritual?”
This vignette shines a light on another aspect of splitting off the inward dimension from corporate worship: the sense that what “goes on” in the Eucharistic liturgy is wholly external to the people who are gathered, as though worship happens simply because people show up physically in one place and go through some exterior motions.
Taken together, the three vignettes raise the question of whether we Anglicans may suffer from at least one dissociative tendency these days. All three tend in the same direction: they point to a splitting of the journey together from the journey inward and the interior life of congregants. And so we segment and diminish the depth of our loving response to God and create unwitting barriers to wholeness and unity.
In turn, when the journey together is dissociated from the journey outward, it results in an inward-focused narcissistic endeavor at the corporate level: the Church as a body becomes self-referential, serving and existing only for itself. In the 2013 speech before the conclave that would later elect him to the papacy, Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio diagnosed this problem in his own context:
…When the Church does not come out of herself to evangelize, she becomes self-referential and then gets sick…. The evils that, over time, happen in ecclesial institutions have their root in self-referentiality and a kind of theological narcissism. [15]
This theological narcissism is not the predominant malady in the Anglican settings I have known. It is clear, however, that we Anglicans have suffered from this ailment in the past [16] and would be wise to keep historical tendencies in mind, as pendulums inevitably swing and dynamic currents change.
[8] What is often referred to as “the Liturgical Movement”’ was in fact a series of interwoven movements in the 19th and 20th centuries whose unifying feature was a shared sense of the centrality of corporate Eucharistic worship in the Christian journey and the importance of the laity’s full and active participation in it. The Movement began in the Roman Catholic Church and spread well beyond it, including to the Anglican Communion, and played a significant role in the development of ecumenical relations, social-action oriented religious organizations, the Second Vatican Council, and the Episcopal Church’s 1979 Book of Common Prayer.
[9] Pecklers, K.F. (1998). The Unread Vision (pp. 19-26, 81-149). The Liturgical Press.
[10] Catherine of Siena. (1980). The Dialogue. Paulist Press. See also John of the Cross (1991), The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. Institute of Carmelite Studies/ICS Publications.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Guardini, R. (1915), The Spirit of the Liturgy (pp. 25-26). Aeterna Press.
[13] Ibid. See also Underhill, E. (2000). The Principles of Corporate Worship. In D. W. Vogel (Ed.), Primary Sources of Liturgical Theology (pp. 48–50). The Liturgical Press.
[14] Afterward I had the chance to speak in private with the preacher, who very graciously agreed.
[15] Akin, J. (2019, February 20). The 4-minute speech that Got Pope Francis Elected? Catholic Answers. https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-4-minute-speech-that-got-pope-francis-elected.
[16] See, e.g., Dearmer, P. (1894). The Social Work of the Undivided Church. In A. Reid (Ed.), The New Party Described by Some of its Members. Hodder Brothers. See also Dearmer, P. (1910). The Church and Social Questions. A.R. Mowbray & Co.
