This June 29, with the evangelical zeal of St Paul, the successor of St Peter gifted the Church with a masterpiece on the heart of the Christian life. The apostolic letter Desiderio desideravi: “On the liturgical formation of the People of God”, is sophisticated ‘doctrine’ for the small flock of Roman rite Catholics.
To atheists, people of other religions, Christians of other traditions or Catholics of other rites, the moral-cultic feuds being addressed in this letter might seem inconsequential. Instead, not only can anyone baptised, rooted in apostolic tradition, who cares about witnessing Christ today, find a deep well to drink from; every person of goodwill can discover an existential lesson or two.
The pope is not merely addressing the pettiness that divides post-Conciliar Catholicism. He is addressing the vacuity that feeds culture wars (e.g. pro-life vs pro-choice); the despair that threatens to overwhelm us as the ground shifts in this change of epochs. He is addressing a problem psychiatrist C.G. Jung lamented: why is ritual no longer serving its necessary function of elevating ‘soul’ to knit the person into one whole self? As Buber would add – as the “I” encountering “Thou”?
Over centuries, a darkness shrivelled our souls and a sickness pervades us. Like a good physician, Pope Francis diagnosed the problem in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’. While begging the world to not succumb to the death of ecological degradation, Francis lamented that we are giving up our true human way of being for the logic of technocracy. Centuries of instrumentalism, of shifting maddeningly between materialism and idealism, of being – as the pope repeats again to his little Roman Catholic flock – plagued by the heresies of Pelagianism and Gnosticism – we have paralysed ourselves, gazing at our navels, unable to be swept to transcendence. We have lost the meaning of “symbol”… or rather, we have lost “meaning” in exchanging symbol for simulation. From the Greek “to throw together”, where what ‘is’ and ‘is not’ are grasped as whole that is real and concrete while mysterious and beyond, it is no coincidence that the Christian faith is grasped in “the Symbol” (Creed) and enacted in the Liturgy, since sacraments are essential symbols for a full humanity.
As bodies and spirit who mediate the invisible through the visible, rising our collective created soul to encounter its Creator, humanity exists with this inherent power to symbolise: to grasp the unseen in what is seen, to seek transcendence in immanence, to experience infinity-and-eternity in the encounter with the Other in the here-and-now. One does not need to be a Christian to be grasped by the Other. As the pope beautifully puts it: the Lamb invites everyone to his feast. But no matter the rubrics, moralising, or celebrity priesthood that displays the “me” (instead of Christ), one cannot be a Christian when symbols become simulations, mystery becomes theatre, liturgy becomes spectacle.
No matter the rubrics, moralising, or celebrity priesthood that displays the “me” (instead of Christ), one cannot be a Christian when symbols become simulations, mystery becomes theatre, liturgy becomes spectacle
“I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Lk 22:15). Christ desires us before we awake to his (our) desire. But from that barely conscious desire to encounter the Thou, we are swept to the eternal song of the universe: death to life, suffering to joy, fear and trembling to peace.
Nadia Delicata is episcopal delegate for evangelisation of the Malta archdiocese.
nadia.delicata@maltadiocese.org