The Nature of the Liturgy

Father Schmemann is spot on - Western theology and praxis have through the course of scholastical ages tended to reduce sacramental economy and efficacy to matters of validity, a rather mechanistic and formalistic view of grace and of the sacramental order. Although the Eastern perspective Father Alexander represents is certainly not Donatist, it is very Cyprianic and insists on the personal nature of the sacramental life, for celebrant and recipients, within the communion of the visible and sacramental Church. The Eastern (and ancient) view is organic, corporate and personalised; it sees the Church as a corporate personality, a living Body, the totus Christus, Head and Members, and the priest-celebrant as much paterfamilias as in persona Christi. This personal emphasis on the paternal role and example of the priesthood, on the priesthood as the moral and spiritual exemplar as well as the sacramental organ and functionary of the Church, is sometimes missing from Western theological discourse. As heirs of the nominalism and scholasticism of the Middle Ages, Anglicans are in this respect almost entirely like their Roman Catholic counterparts: Anglicans have been positively obsessed with the question of 'validity' of Orders, as opposed to efficacy and effectiveness in the sacramental system, since the nineteenth century, thanks mostly to Apostolicae Curae and endless debates about the bare minimalistic requirements for what makes sacraments 'valid.' 'Validity,' it should always be remembered, is not a spiritual but a legal term - any sacrament is valid for the community that celebrates it. Disputes over validity only occur when one church seeks to enter into communion with another.

In the Western approach the validity of the sacraments, as a result of the teaching of Saint Augustine, is often divorced in an unintended and unnatural way from the communion, the koinonia of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ and the Great Sacrament. For the Orthodox this is unthinkable - sacraments and sanctity of life cannot be separated from the organic life of the Church as a whole. For the Orthodox, the sacraments are valid because the Church, through the priesthood, administers them, not because an individual priest possesses certain 'powers' not shared by other Christians. It is all the action of the Holy Ghost through appointed means in the communion of the Orthodox Church. For them, it is the Orthodox Church which makes the sacraments 'valid,' for she alone is the mean, sphere and source of grace, the abode of the Holy Ghost. The Orthodox have never attempted to divorce sacrament from Church or to dogmatise the mystery.

As Bishop Kallistos Ware says so perfectly, Apostolic Succession of Order is meaningless and futile without consideration at the same time of the Apostolic Succession of Saints, of holiness, of divinisation and transformed human life and experience by grace. In our effort to insist on the validity of the sacraments administered by unworthy and unholy men, a concern which in itself is necessary for the sacramental assurance of the People of God, we have all too often forgotten that the true purpose of the sacraments and of the priesthood is to make men holy and to raise us into the mystery of theosis, which entails moral conversion, perfection, transformation, a death to sin and a resurrection to new life in the Spirit.

We can so emphasise the cultic and official role of the priesthood, which is assuredly true in itself, that we ignore the priesthood's familial, paternal, catechetical, moral and spiritual role as the nurturer and provider of the Lord's Flock. In Anglicanism, the Ordinal serves as a wonderful corrective to the typical overemphasis in Western Christendom on the individual powers and prerogatives of the ordained priest as a sacrificer and liturgiser, which again are true in themselves, and restores the urgently-needed balance of the priest as sacerdos, minister of the Sacraments, yes, but also as the Pastor, Teacher, and Shepherd of the Church, whose primarily responsibility is the pastoral care, theological instruction and moral edification of those to whom he is sent.

The Orthodox, holding to antiquity, also have not slipped into the later Western penchant for making the liturgy a collection of individuals, each at prayer in his own private sphere of personal devotion, because of their insistence on the fact that the liturgy is a uniquely corporate action of the whole Church in which each person fulfils an indispensable and necessary role. In that setting the priest is not only the celebrant, but the father, president and enabler of the congregation. In the ancient tradition the priest is not seen as one separated or cut-off from the people, 'doing his own thing' at the Altar. Rather, he personifies and expresses in his unique and irreplaceable liturgical role the prayer and action of the whole body. He is in persona ecclesiae, in the person of the Church, as well as in persona Christi. He unites and empowers the laity, as each worshipper brings his own liturgical office to the movement of the whole.

Saint Clement of Rome says every Christian performs his own proper 'liturgy' within the Liturgy of the whole Assembly.

The Eastern Churches have never forgotten this intrinsically corporate and organic nature of liturgical worship: clericalisation therefore never affected the Eastern Rite quite as much as it had the medieval Western. The Eastern Rite has always been in the vernacular or in a sacral version thereof, with hymns sung corporately by the whole congregation, the action of the liturgy taking place before the people, with the exception of the Anaphora behind the icon screen. The liturgy is definitely 'active participation' and therefore always ad orientem, facing East, facing the Lord - as it should be. But the priest continually moves back and forth from the congregation to the Altar, uniting the action of the people in his own ministry and liturgical service.

Anglicanism has done much, through liturgical renewal and revision since 1549, to correct the late medieval clericalised form of the Eucharist and has recovered much of the ancient conception of worship in our own time through the Eastward Position, vestments, Altars, lights, incense, vernacular, hymns and congregational responses. The Anglican Rite simply is the restored and preserved ancient and orthodox Western Rite in all its fulness, as demonstrated by its embrace by the canonical Orthodox Churches. But the medieval mentality remains in some areas of traditional Anglicanism where the priest and his independent cultic role are concerned. After all, Anglicanism is but a special flavour of the Catholic Church of the West; she is ancient Western Catholicism, and has thus inherited the whole history of Western Christianity. I think it is fair to say that we still struggle at times and in places with that individualisation and clericalisation of the Church that arose in the Middle Ages and which actually impoverishes the true significance and meaning of the ordained priest, the sacerdos, in the action of the Mass - and in his life and ministry to the people entrusted to him.

Liturgy is life, and thus how we worship and what attitudes we bring to the liturgy and priesthood affect every aspect of the Church's practical witness, living and experience. If we get the liturgy wrong, we get the Church wrong. And so we must endeavour to get it right!