Letting the Liturgy Make the Supernatural Real on this Late Fall Sunday
Focusing on the Liturgy these past Sundays has, I hope, helped us deepen our understanding and appreciation of what should be the centerpiece of our daily life. Centerpiece? Well, yeah.
But isn't the bulk of the Liturgy left to the clergy? Don't they have more time for this stuff than lay people?
Of course they do.
For cloistered religious, this should go without saying. Their prayer continues from morning until night, interlaced with work. We've seen the Latin phrase for this ora et labora - prayer and work. For religious not enclosed in the cloister, and for other priests and religious who walk amongst us, the Liturgy once also held primacy of place. Then came Vatican II.
At the risk of oversimplifying, time spent on the Liturgy was corralled, sometimes virtually eliminated. But let's not drag ourselves through what's been a really sad and unfortunate chapter - one that still continues. Instead, let's look at how the Liturgy - embraced by both clergy and layfolks - can and should re restored to its once privileged place.
Don't worry, we won't be preaching, convincing, or - heaven forbid - ranting. Rather, we'll just see how a right understanding of the Liturgy can light a fire in us to give the Liturgy a central place in our lives. As we have been these last weeks, we'll get solid guidance from Dom Jean Baptiste Chautard and his great work on the Interior Life: The Soul of the Apostolate.
A good place to start: Look at the combination of the devil, those whom we encounter every day, and our inherent self-love. Not sure about how these potentially combine to our spiritual detriment? Let Dom Chautard explain:
"How hard it is for me, O my God, to base the ordinary run of my actions upon a supernatural motive! Satan and creatures conspire with my self-love to lure my soul and faculties away from their dependence on Jesus within me."
We know that Satan will only harm us. But creatures? It's not that our family, friends, and neighbors want to harm us. The point here is that if they consume all our time, what's left for God? We don't want to ignore them, we want to be charitable at all times. But we need to carve out time for God every day in some fashion. There's always a way to do this, no matter the demands others put on our time - even legitimate demands. Where there's a will there's a way.
As for self-love, that should be self-evident. If not, consider this: We're not talking about the sort of self-love referenced in "Love your neighbor as yourself." Think: Selfishness, self-centeredness.
These three, left to themselves, can form a kind of toxic combination. That combination chains our senses, our minds, our hearts, our very souls to the natural world at the expense of the supernatural. So constrained, our spiritual life simply languishes. It needs the supernatural to grow and flourish. It's incumbent on us to lift our eyes from natural to the supernatural. We must make the effort.
"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."
Grace: We all need it. We need it every day. It's our only hope of living as we should. It's also the only way we can grow close to God - the object of our spiritual life, the reason we struggle to build a healthy and sound spiritual life. But knowing this is one thing; doing it may be a whole other thing. Fortunately, Dom Chautard provides some wise words to help us here.
So we use "two sisters": mental prayer and the liturgical life.
Mental prayer isn't something reserved for monks or mystics. We all should practice praying "mentally." In its simplest form, it's just praying without vocalizing. (You can learn more about if you're unsure what this means, or want to dig deeper. Just choose solid Catholic sources if you want to do some reading/research.)
If you pray/participate in the Liturgy - in its fullness as we've discussed these past Sundays - you might consider yourself living the "liturgical life." Now, for sure, a religious in a monastery will likely be spending more time praying the Liturgy than most of us laymen. But that doesn't preclude us from fashioning the habit of incorporating elements of the Liturgy into our daily lives - even beyond such worthy practices as attending daily Mass. (We've briefly touched on this in past posts.)
These "two sisters" will inculcate the supernatural into our daily lives. We simply have to be persistent and patient in practicing mental prayer and the Liturgy, as makes the most sense for each of us as individuals (perhaps with the advice of a good spiritual director). The presence of the supernatural will lift us out of ourselves, and put a healthy distance between us and the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Make sense? Sound good?
Here's Dom Chautard describing what happens to him, personally, as a result of welcoming the two sisters into his spiritual life:
"Mental prayer, before my Mass and Office, puts me in a supernatural atmosphere. The liturgical life makes it possible to transmit the fruits of my mental prayer to all the actions of the day."
To repeat the key phrase: transmit the fruits of my mental prayer to all the actions of the day.
That's our objective. It's not just something we do to feel good, or to advance our spiritual life (although it is that too). Our spiritual life should inform our every thought, word, and action. In our own way, we join Dom Chautard here. Whether monk or everyday man, the Liturgy can - really must - take it's place in our daily life.
By way of encouragement, here on this Sunday, we should have the time (or, if necessary, make the time) to think about all this and take the measures necessary to assure our progress. I hope you'll give it your consideration.
Happy Sunday!
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