Reflection on Spirit of the Liturgy: Personal Freedom and Life

Liturgy would be the rediscovery within us of true childhood, of openness to a greatness still to come, which is still unfulfilled in adult life…the life of freedom, of intimate union with God, of pure openness to our fellowman. (Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 14)

Elaborating upon a profound notion of the relationship between freedom and structure, Ratzinger suggests that the structure of the liturgy itself and its place in daily human life point to the deepest nature of reality, namely, the drawing of all creation into one in Christ for the purpose of worship. Ratzinger points out that cult is liturgy in its proper sense (17), and cult fosters life, which is the vision of God (18). There are two themes that I would like to develop: 1) freedom and structure; and 2) liturgy and life.

Not only in The Spirit of the Liturgy but elsewhere, Ratzinger consistently and emphatically insists on a relationship between authentic freedom and structure. As the Catechism (CCC) defines it, “freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility…. [It] attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude” (§1731). St. Thomas Aquinas said that man is dominus sui actus (Summa Th., 1a2æ.6.2.ad2). The power of choice is not unstructured, random, open to “pure creativity” but a created reflection of the will of God, ordered by a reasoned discourse or logos. Even so-called random choice—without parameter—is itself a discourse, the discourse of anarchy, but all discourse rests on the assertion of an actuality in the Aristotelian-Thomistic sense; i.e. all discourse rests on the affirmation of being itself, and being qua being is intelligible. When the intellect penetrates the intelligibility of being and informs and directs the will, the will acts, and such voluntary action, in line with the discourse of the reasoned cosmos, actualizes and manifests the latent purpose of God’s creation, namely, the glory of God through moral excellence and worship. All things converge in a possessed, determined (but not deterministic) way, which is what Aristotle called quality. The difference between the vicious and virtuous man is quality, and grace too is a quality in the soul (cf. CCC §§1997, 2000). The structure of organized reality “breathes” forth through morally-excellent action (the most excellent of which, according to Aquinas, is the virtue of religion; Summa Th., 2a2æ.81.6). Freedom and structure, therefore, are complements.

But if religion is the most excellent of the moral virtues, then worship, which is the proper setting of religion, is the most excellent action. But moral virtues are not praiseworthy simply because Aristotle or Aquinas say so; such virtues are praiseworthy because they are cultic; they cultivate man. Bede Jarrett wrote strikingly, “Now this is eternal life; it is the accumulation of vital force in the soul through friendship with the sole medium of life to us,” [1] and “Man […] was created to be perfect, […] perfect only as a man should be: all his powers, his passions, his emotions, his intelligence, his will, all are to be perfect, each in its own place, doing its own work, fulfilling its own purpose as—if it is properly in order—it will do.” [2] Moral virtue, in short, perfects life, and therefore, liturgy when done properly as an act of religion perfects life.

Play counterbalances toil in this life, but creation is moving towards the eternal Sabbath, towards being led by the Spirit wherever He wills, and there is something playful in that. True play is not random but structured, not constricting but liberating, not monotonous but vivifying.

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Notes:

1. Bede Jarrett, The Space of Life Between (London: Sheed & Ward, 1944), 28.

2. Bede Jarrett, “The Cultivation of Perfection,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review 34, no. 1 (Oct. 1933): 44.