A Final Thought About the Liturgy on This Last Sunday of the Liturgical Year

 It's the last Sunday before we begin a new Liturgical Year. In the newfangled calendar, it's the Feast of Christ the King. In the traditional calendar, it's the 25th Sunday after Pentecost. Christ the King was celebrated on the last Sunday of October. Either way, Advent begins next week. 

In tandem with the final days of this Liturgical Year, we'll wrap up our little series on the Liturgy. We've been attempting to show how and why the Liturgy should take a prominent place in our lives. Our guide has been The Soul of the Apostolate by Dom Jean Baptiste Chautard. He'll take us into the home stretch today as we approach the end of this Liturgical Year.

We left off with how the Liturgy helps us to better incorporate the supernatural into our everyday lives. Before we turn to our author, a word about one of the motivating factors for this wonderful spiritual work.

In his book, Dom Chautard expressed concern about the increase in the importance placed on the "active life." A similar concern was expressed in another work we've used extensively in our posts in the past: The Inner Life of the Soul. Both were written in the period of the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. Catholics were becoming more active in trying to influence the world around them, sometimes to the detriment of their spiritual lives. Both works urge us not to neglect our spiritual lives, without undermining the importance of active engagement. In this spirit, Dom Chautard emphasizes the central importance of a strong, vibrant Interior Life. The Liturgy plays a fundamental role in building the Interior Life.

Our Interior Life connects us with the supernatural. It's where we meet God - Who lives within us - every day. The allures of world and the flesh, along with the wiles of the devil, conspire to break our connection with the supernatural. 

"How hard it is for me, O my God, to base the ordinary run of my actions upon a supernatural motive!...Only continual effort will obtain for me, with God's help, the power to ensure that most of my actions may have grace as their vivifying principle, and be directed by grace towards God, as their end."

To have grace as the vivifying principle of our actions, we need to seek God's grace and cooperate with it. The Liturgy assists us here in providing a means to make God's presence more immediate and intimate. And it does this especially by its constant reference to the life of Our Lord.

"The Liturgy is a school of the presence of God; and teaches us to stay in the presence of our God as He was manifested to us in the Incarnation! Call it rather a school of the presence of Jesus and of love!...It keep us permanently in a supernatural and divine atmosphere, by prolonging, so to speak, the life of Our Lord, and by displaying to us, in all His mysteries, how kind and lovable is His Heart."

We all know that Our Lord remains with us in the Blessed Sacrament and the Eucharist. But His Presence can be felt in all of the Church's Liturgy. In our participation in the Liturgy, we participate in His Life. And our participation, over time, helps us to shed our self-centered ways in favor of imitating His self-giving ways.

"To believe that Jesus lives in me; that He wants to work in me if only I do not stand in His way! When prayer has filled me with the conviction of this truth, what a mighty source of strength I possess, in my supernatural life! But when frequently throughout the course of the day, using all the varied and sensible means offered by the Liturgy, I nourish my mind and heart with the dogma of grace, of Christ praying and acting with every one of the members whose life He is supplying for their deficiencies, and hence, for mine; then I am really maintaining myself under the permanent influence of the supernatural, I am getting to live in union with Jesus, and to find an established place in His love."

The more we participate in the Liturgy, the more we stand next to Christ, learn from the example He gives us in the Gospels, through the witness of His Apostles. We have all this before us in the Liturgy.

"How strong and generous the interior life becomes with this method of contemplating Jesus as living and as ever present! And when some act of detachment or abnegation my be required to keep my life supernatural when some difficult task is to be performed, some pain or insult to be endured, how quickly the spiritual battle, the virtue, the trial will lose their repugnant aspect of instead of looking at the bare Cross, I look at you nailed there, O my Savior; and I hear You ask me, as You show me Your wounds, for this sacrifice as a proof of love."

The Real Presence of Our Lord isn't restricted to Holy Communion. He lives in the Liturgy. The prayers and ceremonies, meaningful and moving as they may be, consist of more than words and ritual. They come directly from Christ Himself through His Church. He speaks to us directly in the Liturgy. If we understand this, we cannot help but "see" Him everywhere. Sure, we know that God is everywhere. But it's one thing to intellectually grasp this awesome reality, quite another to live every moment of our lives in it's light.

And as the Presence of Jesus Christ manifests itself more and more in our lives, so too does the presence of the entire Body of Christ - our brothers and sister in the Faith.

"Then, too, the Liturgy gives me strong support in another way by repeatedly reminding me that my love is not an act of isolation. I am not alone in the fight against these natural impulses, that are ever threatening to engulf me. The Church is alive to the fact of my incorporation in Christ and follows me like a mother, giving me a share in all the millions of souls with which I am in communion, and who speak the same official language of love as I do, and she renews my powers of endurance by assuring me that heaven and purgatory are here with me, for my encouragement and assistance."

We pray to God and for each other. Together, in our individual and communal prayer, we seal the connection between Church Triumphant, Church Suffering, and Church Militant. Our earthly existence thus becomes one with Purgatory and Heaven. These are not distant places where people who once lived on earth now live eternally, separate and apart from us here on earth. By participating every day in the Liturgy, their pictures, statues, and memories come alive, become present to us. We can see, hear, touch, and feel their love united with us in the Liturgy. 

"Nothing is so effective as the mindfulness of eternity in keeping the soul directed to God in all its acts."

Our participation in the Liturgy day after day will slowly, steadily, prepare us for eternity. We're headed there, but so many of us ignore this simple but most profound reality. We weren't created by God to die. We were created to spend all of eternity with Him. With the Liturgy, we can be with Him here and now. And as we inevitably meet with difficulties, temptations, and suffering during our stay in this Vale of Tears, the Liturgy will constantly remind us that we will, with God's grace, be eternally happy with the angels and saints, with those we love.

I hope our discussion of Liturgy these last Sundays of the Liturgical Year will encourage all of us to deepen our understanding of and participation in the deep and rich Liturgy of our Holy Catholic Church. We'll likely revisit the Liturgy again in future posts. But, for now, we look forward to Advent. It's only a week away.