Reflection on Spirit of the Liturgy: Theological Virtues as a Paradigm

This new openness is only mediated by the signs of salvation. [… Liturgy] expresses the “between-ness” of the time of images, in which we now find ourselves. The theology of the liturgy is […] a theology of symbols, which connects us to what is present but hidden (Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 60).

Ratzinger elaborates upon two processes that are made up of three elements: the first process describes salvation history through the concepts of “shadow, image, reality” (54); the shadow corresponds to night; the image, to dawn; and the reality, to day. The second process elaborates the semiotic nature of liturgy, connecting past, present, and future through the sacred symbols and actions; hence Ratzinger calls liturgical theology “a theology of symbols” (60). I want to add a third process—the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love—and then I would like simply to sketch some possible consequences of this additional schema.

Just as shadows cannot exist without images, and images without realities; and just as night, dawn, and day are relative to the sun; and just as the past cannot exist without a present that is moving into the future; so too does faith set before us the One in whom we hope and whom we love, for as St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out, “Every act of knowledge is followed by an act of the appetite,” and “of all appetitive acts love is the principle.”[1] Therefore charity follows from the act of faith. Within these processes, notice their interrelations and dependency on a guiding principle: reality is the principle from which we derive images and shadows; the sun is the principle from which we derive day, dawn, and night; the present is the principle from which we derive past and future; and charity is the principle from which faith and hope flow. Faith, by drawing us into the reality of God through participatory grace, gives us “access” to God’s promises and strength, which leads to hope; to God’s goodness and essence, which leads to charity. Yet in this life we know God only obscurely and hence faith takes on the “in-between” quality that Ratzinger speaks of, “a mixture of ‘already and not yet’" (54), which is close to how St. Thomas describes faith as “a habit of mind, whereby eternal life is begun in us,”[2] and grace, which is the principle of faith, is “a beginning of glory in us.”[3]

In the liturgy, we exercise all three virtues, and charity is the key that opens the supernatural realm to us, drawing our hearts up in union with God, to Whom it is right and just that we give thanks and praise. Faith reveals the sins we commit; hope begs for pardon; and charity gives thanks to God. Faith perceives the Real Presence; hope dares to draw near; and charity adores and binds us totally to the One we have received. These interior acts are receptive and responsive to the supernatural and historical realities re-presented in the liturgy through its sacred signs and symbols. Just as we shall arrive at perfect day where night and dawn exist no more, just as the reality shall remain while the shadow and image pass away, just as we shall be drawn into the eternal now of the Beatific Vision while the tears of the past are wiped away (cf. Rev. 21:4) and the future eschaton is achieved, so too faith and hope shall fall away as charity comes to possess perfectly its object, God in His infinite splendor (1 Cor. 13:10-13).

The liturgy reveals to us something fundamental in reality, namely, the relationality of being. Being is simultaneously esse in (being in) and esse ad (being for/towards). The cenoscopic gives rise to the ideoscopic (e.g. eyes, air and light, and objects of perception give rise to the sensation of sight), and grace perfecting nature,[4] our esse in, like the Trinity, leads to esse ad: the Father is for the Son, the Son for the Father, while the Spirit is the relation; so we too witness through “infinitely small signs” of love.[5] In the liturgy, the signs and realities of love converge, which is the essence of true Communion.

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Notes:

1. De rationibus fidei, trans. John Deely, in S. Thomæ Aquinatis Opera Omnia, ed. R. Busa (1980), ch. 4, 509.

2. Aquinas, Summa Th., 2a2æ.4.1.

3. Ibid., 24.3.ad 2.

4. Ibid., 1a.1.8.ad 2.

5. Cf. Jacques Maritain, “À Propos de la Vocation des Petites Freres de Jesus,” 16-17.