The Experience: A New Pentecost
The rediscovery of the Church's charismatic dimension was, as we have seen, a rediscovery of the biblical doctrine of "charisms," however, that is not all. One aspect of charisms is that, although they primarily benefit those who are served by them, they also benefit the person using the God-given gift. One of those benefits is broadly called "religious experience."
Jesus told his disciples not to leave Jerusalem until they had been "clothed with power from on high," "baptized with the Holy Spirit," "received the promise of [His] Father." He presumes that they will know when this happens because they will experience the grace. Saint Paul also wanted his converts to have religious experience. This is why he writes to the Corinthians, "my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God (2 Cor. 4-5). This is also clear when he scold's the "foolish Galatians," appealing to the great works of the Spirit in their midst as a solid basis for them to remain "in the Spirit."
Every "Encounter" involves "Experience" at some level
Prior to Pope Saint John Paul II you will seldom find the word "encounter" in papal writing. Ever since Pope John Paul II the word is employed prolifically by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, in articles and books, documents. Now, everywhere, people are saying that the faith must be an "encounter."
"Experience" is not a bad word
Reading some apologists (people who defend the Catholic faith), one could get the impression that if a person were to desire any "experience" of God it would be a bad thing. They would much prefer grace to be conferred amidst sublime beauty appreciated deep within (and only within). In this Church there is no need for St. Paul's admonitions about "manifestations" of the Spirit because any experience must be wholly interior if perceived at all. Even though Vatican II proposed experience of the Christian mysteries as one of the ways that the faith is transmitted, some would prefer a transmission that would bypass human, religious experience. The authors of Dei Verbum had a problem getting the word experience into the text.
Since the Council of Trent, care has been taken not to impede the efficacy of the sacraments by requiring any necessary experience, visible manifestation, or fruitfulness. Sacraments are efficacious signs whose visibility is in the rite itself, which makes present the grace proper to that sacrament. The sacrament acts ex opere operato.[1] Since grace belongs to the supernatural order, “it escapes our experience.”[2]
Our reticence toward experience has definitely limited the prospectus for what can be expected at Confirmation - which is supposed to be an encounter with the grace of Pentecost - which was definitely experienced by those who wrote about it. Now, we pray for only seven gifts. Because the seven Gifts, according to the classic articulation, are infused along with sanctifying grace in the sacraments of initiation, they too can be present as habits that render a person docile, at least potentially, to inspirations from the Spirit but remain beyond subjective experience. Consequently, as we shall see, the neo-Scholastic expectation that the seven-Gifts are “either latent and quite frequent . . . or manifest but rare” set the catechetical program for receiving the sevenfold gift up to the Second Vatican Council.[3] In this program charisms were largely out of the question and seen in a negative light.
The certainty that Christians each receive charisms was restored at Vatican II and its catechism: CCC 2003.
[1] CCC, 1128.
[2] CCC, 2005.
[3] Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, vol.1, translated by Sister M. Timothea Doyle (Rockford, Illinois: Tan, 1989), 81-82.
What Jesus called "Baptized in the Holy Spirit" named an event that brought a new awareness. It was an experience.
Renewal is about being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Pope Benedict expressed this reality as a recovery of awareness when he wrote:
In my Message for the next World Youth Day 2008, I have proposed to the young people that they rediscover the Holy Spirit's presence in their lives and thus the importance of these Sacraments. Today I would like to extend the invitation to all: let us rediscover, dear brothers and sisters, the beauty of being baptized in the Holy Spirit; let us recover awareness of our Baptism and our Confirmation, ever timely sources of grace.
$3.
Charismatic Catholic Liturgy
Just search "charismatic Mass" on the web and you will see, not a few, posts strenuously opposing the very idea of a Charismatic Mass. Why the disdain?
Why the disdain? Those opposed to a charismatic Mass have usually been formed by the default setting, which is still the norm in much of our Church, namely, that grace is manifested almost exclusively through the sacramental signs assigned to each sacrament. Many Catholics don't expect to "encounter God," they just go to Mass. Attempting a remedy, some worked very hard in the 60s and 70s to make the litugical signs more relevant, but often they employed tools that were humanistic, symbolic, and psychological rather than spiritual and they wound up with what so many decry today ..... Liturgical abuses ... oh my!!! In reaction, a new breed has emerged that guards against these abuses. Their expectation is that the grace of the sacrament celebrated liturgically will be manifested in a wholly interior manner, and perhaps without the person having any awareness of it. Experience of grace is desired, but only in a "reverent," interior perception of beauty. Sublime beauty, it is thought, will lead to goodness, and goodness will lead to truth. Any outward manifestation of grace, it is thought, interrupts the reverence of the liturgy. Neither model has much time for charismatic Masses.
O.K. kids, go outside or in the basement if you want to horse around. Any grace to be manifested outwardly should, in this later ideology, only be allowed in evangelistic events and prayer groups outside of the liturgy. Free praise, prophecy, claps, healing, sighs, groans and jubilations are not allowed, with the exception of a highly routinized, chanted jubilus. I have heard this recently in several places around the world, and watched congregations drop their books in exasperation with complicated chants filled with ego, not Spirit. (These can hardly be recognized as the traditional descriptions of jubilation found in the fathers of the Church, which sound much more spontaneous). (see Eddie Ensley, Sounds of Wonder. Tau: 2014).
Who gets to define "reverence?" Attempts to open ourselves to God's grace with the help of modern music, instruments, rhythm, free spoken praise, postures of receptivity like open hands (orans), technology, or charismatic expression are pejoratively deemed "mere entertainmnet" and banal. In contrast, incense, precious metals, fine vestments, pipe organ, chant, polyphony, eurocentric music, silence, and strict rubrical adherence are deemed "reverence." One problem with any narrow view of reverence is that such views are tied to environments that human beings create. in history, using various tools. There will always exist the temptation to idolize the environment that we enjoy over God. True reverence is not based on whether you like Palestrina or Matt Maher (a contemporary worship leader). Reverence is responding to what God wants and abandoning ourselves to the Holy Spirit. The environments we create can be just a comfort zone, a mask for fear, a need to control, or a context for familiarity and apathy. Much worse, Co-opters of reverence dictate that much of what the Holy Spirit does, at least if you use the bible as a norm, should be forbidden at Mass. The sign in their parish should read, "please do not abandon yourself to the Holy Spirit in this Mass in any way that might make you seem like that is what you are doing. Don't give anyone else some idea that people are abandoning themselves to the Holy Spirit at our parish - because here we are seriously reverent, not into banal entertainment." This was not the attitude of Pope John Paul II who wrote on the 40th anniversary of Vatican II's, Constitution on the Liturgy, that pastors should keep careful watch over the liturgy without, however, having an
uncompromising attitude that is incompatible with the need of Christian souls to abandon themselves to the action of God’s Spirit, who intercedes in us and ‘for us with sighs too deep for words.’ Spiritus et Sponsa #15
Liturgy as Encounter: Our Catholic Catechism, 1091-2 uses the word "encounter" to describe what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit desire to convey through the Sacred Liturgy. Our Lord wants to encounter us, and he wants for us to encounter him. Encounter can only be said to occur when there is some awareness of the objectively present grace of the Body and Blood of our Lord within those who participate. This awareness only happens through faith. Whenever we talk about awareness, and awakening, we are approaching grace that is described by the Church as "charismatic," which is distinguished from (but not opposed to) grace that is "sacramental" (CCC, 2003).
I only want "reverence" if it is part of a Liturgical Spirituality: Many today turn to forms of the Mass that they deem more "reverent" than the Masses that they disdain. Often they did not grow up with the traditional Mass and don't know Latin, but they have great nostalgia for it if that is possible. If Catholic, they are embarrassed about enjoying a "lifeteen" mass in their youthful, naive years. If a "convert" from Protestantism, they have a story about a church that only entertained. Most have never read the words of the the young theologian destined to become pope. Pope Benedict XVI, then Fr. Ratzinger, once wrote of the Mass that followed the Council of Trent remarking that it had become
a rigid, fixed and firmly encrusted system; the more out of touch with genuine piety, the more attention was paid to its prescribed forms. We can see this if we remember that none of the saints of the Catholic Reformation drew their spirituality from the liturgy. Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross developed their religious life solely from personal encounter with God and from individual experience of the Church, quite apart from the liturgy and any deep involvement with it. (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II. New York: Paulist, 1966, 86.)
It was the way that reverence was constructed that left these Saint's hungry for encounter. Is this what we want from Mass, that people have to go elsewhere to encounter God? The renewal of a liturgical spirituality has yet to incorporate the simultaneous renewal of awareness regarding charismatic graces. These two renewals occurred at the same time.
At this point we should ask whether charisms (and charismatic expressions) were ever exercised in within the liturgy. If they were, the re-emergence of teaching on charisms at the Second Vatican Council may constitute an initiative of the Holy Spirit to renew the liturgy by reconsidering its charismatic dimension. If we consider Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians we can see that the Christians in Corinth would gather together. In Paul’s first letter, the section on the Lord’s supper, they are told that if they were so hungry that they would eat all the food while others had none “they should eat something at home.” In the section on spiritual gifts regarding prophecy women who had questions were instructed to “ask their husband when they got home.” The simple point is that, for both the eucharist and some service of sharing spiritual gifts, they were not at home. They were together. May we presume that this togetherness happened either at the same service, which locates the exercise of charisms within the Eucharistic service, or in some other service in proximity to the eucharist where charisms where shared to build up the body? Why would Paul correct meetings for the Lord’s supper in 1 Corinthians 11, and spiritual gifts in chapter 12-14 if the meetings were not either the same meeting or at least in close proximity? Similarly, why would Didache need to give special instructions to prophets who celebrate the Eucharist, distinct from bishops?
Given the proximity of charisms to Eucharist in 1st Corinthians, we must ask ourselves - why are they now so far divided. Additionally, if it is true that the Easter Vigil is the locus classicus of liturgical norms then we do know that some congregations of the early Church accepted the manifestation of charisms in the Eucharistic Liturgy itself. Tertullian (160-225), writing from the African continent in the second century (before his Montanist period), gives one of the finest testimonies to the expectation of the charisms in Christian initiation. In On Baptism, written in the early third century, he exhorts those who have just received baptism as they enter the area where they will celebrate the Eucharist:
Therefore, you blessed ones, for whom the grace of God is waiting, when you come up from the most sacred bath of the new birth, when you spread out your hands for the first time in your mother’s house (the church) with your brethren, ask your Father, ask your Lord, for the special gift of his inheritance, the distribution of charisms, which form an additional, underlying feature (of baptism). “Ask,” he says “and you shall receive.” In fact, you have sought and it has been added to you.[2]
We can almost picture the neophytes rising from the waters of baptism, spreading out their hands as a song begins, and being filled with charismatic graces that can be exercised immediately in the liturgy – praise, tongues, inspired songs, words from the Lord. This is a picture that we will not see in most modern Easter Vigil’s because such manifestations are not expected, encouraged, or even allowed.
Of this time in the Church, the third century, Fr. Cantalamessa wrote: The charisms that were chiefly exercised in worship and in the assembly were the ones that disappeared almost completely: the inspired or prophetic word and praise in tongues. Prophecy came to be seen as exclusively the charism attached to the teaching office of the Church, the magisterium, to ensure infallible and authoritative interpretation of revealed truth. (Cantalamessa, Come Creator Spirit, p. 182). At this point we should make a pastoral observation: In the liturgy of the church today, rarely will one find the close proximity of charism to sacrament that existed in the first three centuries (not even in Confirmation). Unlike Tertullian's and Cyril of Jerusalem's [3] catechumens, people today are not ordinarily encouraged to expect any immediate manifestation of grace at Mass.
This is why I was delightfully surprised when I read Pope John Paul II's, Spiritus et Sponsam, on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Vatican II's, Constitution on the Liturgy. What Pope John Paul II wrote evoked little to no reaction because, I suspect, it is so far off the radar of possibilities as to go unnoticed. Or, his comments were easily dismissed as a proviso for undeveloped cultures who don't yet "get it" when it comes to what makes liturgy transcendent and beautiful. In stern tones the Pope admonished pastors demanding liturgical decorum, but then he added:
This should not be seen as an uncompromising attitude that is incompatible with the need of Christian souls to abandon themselves to the action of God’s Spirit, who intercedes in us and ‘for us with sighs too deep for words.’ Spiritus et Sponsa #15.
Did Pope John Paul II really consider that, in some liturgies, compromise would need to me made for the occasion when the Spirit takes over and the people begin to sigh and groan? The magisterium of the Church already acknowledges that such things can occur (see the Instruction of Prayers for Healing issued by the CDF in 2000), and therefore must be carefully received with thanksgiving. Receiving the charismatic dimension of God's action into the Mass is simply allowing the Holy Spirit to re-appropriate the more ancient of traditions.
[2] McDonnell, Christian Initiation, 346. The authors have summarized their work in a more popular presentation: Fanning the Flame: What does Baptism in the Holy Spirit Have to Do with Christian Initiation? (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1991).
[3] Cyril of Jerusalem, Lecture 17, 37. Translated by Edwin Hamilton Gifford. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 7. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310117.htm>. (accessed 10/13/2008).
Ossified Aptitudes: Praise and Jubilation
When you go to Rome it is fascinating to see how emotional the statues are, fat little angels with upraised hands, saints clutching their hearts, mouths aghast in wonder at the great glory of God - But - ironically - their emotions are frozen in fresco and marble. It's like a snapshot of the emotion, not the emotion itself.
Similarly, there are traditions in the Church which used to be alive, which began in movements of the heart and soul but which, over grace and time, became acclimated to structures that contain but also perhaps diminish their dynamism. I say grace because in some way God wills traditions to develop, but he also wills to revive their reality from time to time. No tradition has undergone this morphology more than the psalter (the psalms). And this is especially true of the psalms of praise. This is not a critique of the development of doctrine or tradition. The years of my seminary training in a Benedictine monastery taught me a love of the chant modes and the power of the communal singing as with one voice. However, the simple point is this - when you take a psalm or text that says "shout," "clap," "dance," "rejoice as at festivals," "blow a trumpet," "break forth" - and render the text in chant mode three or six, you are one step removed from its original reality. You are chanting about clapping, not clapping. Over time we can actually loose the aptitude (in St. Thomas - habilitas) to praise God from the heart. This is unfortunate in light of a comment from St Bernard of Clairvaux (1113) who wrote, “nothing more imitates the states of heavenly glory than praises to God spontaneously sung.”
No one has issued the invitation to reacquire the ability to praise more convincingly than Pope Francis. Homilizing on the text of Samuel when David dances with abandon before the ark the pope says,
David's prayer of praise, "led him to move beyond all composure," adding, "this was precisely a prayer of praise." Of the various types of prayer Pope Francis said that it is easy to understand a prayer of petition - asking something of the Lord - and prayer of thanksgiving, as well. Even prayer of adoration, he said, "is not so difficult," to understand. Prayer of praise, however, "We leave aside - it does not come to us so easily [Italian - Non ci viene così spontanea]." Anticipating objections he understood what the major ones will be: "But, Father! This is for the [Charismatic Renewal] folks, not for all Christians!' No: prayer of praise is a Christian prayer, for all of us. In the Mass, every day, when we sing the Holy, Holy, Holy ... This is a prayer of praise: we praise God for his greatness, because He is great. We say beautiful things to Him, because we happy for His greatness [Italian. perché ci piace che sia così]. 'But, Father! I am not able - I have to- ...' Well, you're able to shout when your team scores a goal, and you are not able to sing praises to the Lord? To come out of your shell, ever so slightly, to sing His praise? Praising God is completely gratis. In it we do not ask Him to give us anything: we do not express gratitude for anything He has given; we praise Him!" We need to pray "whole-heartedly," he said. "It is also an act of justice, because He is great! He is our God." David, Pope Francis went on to observe, "was so happy, because the ark was returning, the Lord was returning: his body, too, prayed with that dance.": "Here is a good question for us to pose to ourselves today: 'But how am I doing vis à vis prayer of praise? Do I know how to praise the Lord? Do I know how to praise the Lord when I pray the Gloria or the Sanctus? Is my whole heart really in it, or do I merely mouth [the words]. What does David dancing here say to me, and Sarah, dancing for joy? When David enters the city there begins another thing: a party!" Pope Francis Calls Catholics To Learn and Practice the Prayer of Praise, By Deacon Keith Fournier, 1/30/2014, Catholic Online (www.catholic.org), accessed 2/20/2014
Many spiritual writers like St. Augustine write of a time in the Church, within and outside of the liturgy, when a spontaneous form of praise called jubilation was normal in Church life. Like marbleized emotions in statues, jubilation became enshrined in the pristine jubilus of Gregorian chant. The Gregorian jubilus is beautiful, but it is a structured beauty, no longer a response necessitated by the movement of the heart. A wonderful book by Dcn. Eddie Ensley (recently republished, 2014) )called, Sounds of Wonder: Speaking in Tongues in The Catholic Tradition. New York: Paulist, 1977. It is not really about "tongue speaking." It is really about the Catholic tradition of jubilation which, at least initially, was a spontaneous type of singing that figured largely in the development of the sung liturgy of the Church (especially the gradual and the sequence). Jubilation is an important tradition which recalls a long period when Catholic Christians were able to enter into a spontaneous form of sung prayer. The question we could ask each of these witnesses from the tradition is, "where might this possibly happen today?" Here are a few quotes from the fathers and other saints that Eddie Ensley dug up.
Augustine Bishop of Hippo (354 - 430) : “He who sings a jubilus does not utter words; he pronounces a wordless sound of joy; the voice of his soul pours forth happiness as intensely as possible, expressing what he feels without reflecting on any particular meaning; to manifest his joy, the man does not use words that can be pronounced and understoood, but he simply lets his joy burst forth without words; his voice then appears to express a happiness so intense that he cannot formulate it. [Sounds of Wonder (SW) fn. 13]
“You already know what it is to jubilate. Rejoice and speak. If you cannot express your joy, jubilate: Jubilation expresses your joy, if you cannot speak; it cannot be a silent joy; If the heart is not silent to its God, it shall not be silent to its reward.” [SW fn 12]
Cassiodorus, (West) (490-583): “the jubilation is called an exaltation of the heart, which, because it is such an infinite joy, cannot be explained in words.” In his massive commentary on psalms: Jubilation “helps” “those for whom the exultation of words was not able to be sufficient, so they might leap forth into the most overflowing and unexplainable joy… At the same time it teaches the believer to give thanks. Part of the purpose of jubilation is “teaching rejoicing souls that they ought to give thanks to the Lord, not to sing confused by some anxiety.” (SW, 10)
Pope St. Gregory, late 6th C (West): “What we mean by the term jubilation is when we conceive such a great joy in the heart that we cannot express it in words; yet despite this the heart vents what it is feeling by means of the voice what it cannot express by discursive speech.” He says, “ let the angels therefore praise because they know such brightness; but let men who are limited by speech, jubilate.”
St. Thomas Aquinas, 1255: “jubilation is an unspeakable joy, which one cannot keep silent; yet neither can it be expressed (in words). The reason that (this joy) cannot be expressed in words is that it its beyond comprehension… Such is the goodness of God that it cannot be expressed (in words), and even if it could be expressed (in words), it could only imperfectly be expressed.”
For St Thomas jubilation is only a foretaste of heaven. He writes of two types of praise at Jesus’ ascension – the praise of angels and the praise of the apostles. The angels who had full comprehension, full knowledge of God could praise perfectly. But human beings, whose knowledge of God was imperfect, could only jubilate. Jubilation, therefore, even though it was incomplete, even though it was only a foretaste, seems to have been the best way that men could enter into the praise of God.” (SW, 53-54)
Teresa of Avila, 1572: Many words are spoken during this state, in praise of God, but, unless the Lord himself puts order into them, they have no orderly form. The understanding, at any rate, counts for nothing here; the soul would like to shout praises aloud, for it is in such a state that it cannot contain itself… It utters a thousand follies, striving ever to please him who thus possesses it. (SW, 95)
The New Evangelization begins, as Pope John Paul II instructed, in the ardor of Pentecost, and like those early apostles and others in the upper room, the New Pentecost will transform everything, even the Mass.