Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest

The Classical Roman Rite and its meaning for the Church

By Msgr. R. Michael Schmitz

(continued)

d. Transcendent Universality

The Roman Rite is universal. It has always had a global dimension in time and space. First of all, it has never been accepted on the basis of being a purely human invention. Nothing in the church is venerated or kept    simply because it is old. The Church relates always first to the present and not foremost to the past or the    future. The presence we relate to is the presence of Christ and His Redemption. It is a meta-historical        presence, meaning that the Lord and His grace do not depend on time or history, but reach out to the everlasting eternity of God. The God-Man Jesus Christ does not belong to any time period, but time belongs to Him. Though having lived as a true man in a certain historical moment in which he has operated out Redemption, His Godhead has made Himself and His actions present to all times which through Him are forever changed. This timeless presence of Christ is the very Mystery of the Church which she celebrates on Her altars. For this reason, the Rite of Her celebrations, initially formed by the Lord and his first disciples, and then further      developed under the guidance of the Holy Ghost by the “sensus fidelium,” the harmonic sense of faith of the entire Church, does reveal the timelessness of Her Spouse. Through His timeless action, the Church can make Him present at all times on Her altars. Her Rite is like a window to eternity.

The Rite is celebrated in a historical moment which is transcended by the very Rite itself. Likewise, the Rite has a dimension of space because its celebration depends on the local circumstances. Again, however, the   local is transcended, like time, since the space itself is sacred because consecrated by the Presence of Christ through His Church and Her Rite. The supreme act of obedience to the will of the Father on the Cross with which the Lord willed to operate our Salvation is placed out of time and space by Divine power. Therefore, this act will be present to any time and space, consecrated to Christ through the Rite instituted by Him and celebrated by the Church.

Accordingly, the Rite itself, though rich of single elements from various times and spaces, on the whole      exhales the Divine breath of everlasting presence. Having preserved in a long organic development only the shapes most adapted to contain the Divine in human signs and gestures, the visible structure of the Rite was transformed in one unique instrument of the Divine Presence in this world. The “otherworldliness” of the Classical Roman Rite - noticed also by the inexperienced and perhaps estranged observer - comes from the fact that the Rite is molded not after fashions and tastes of certain times and spaces, but after what it realizes and celebrates, the Sacrifice of Redemption, celebrated on the Cross by the One-Who-is-Priest-and-Victim, Jesus Christ, the Apocalyptic Lamb of God.

e. Supernatural Beauty

The aforementioned elements create an atmosphere of intimate communication between the human and the Divine. The mystery of Incarnation is thus prolonged into the ritual Christ Himself has left His Church as a legacy of salvation to be perpetuated unto the end of history. The human nature of Christ is the “organon    divinitatis,” the instrument of the Divinity, as Cyril of Alexandria formulates in the fourth century and       Thomas Aquinas explains nearly eight centuries later. Not an instrument, though, exterior to the agent, like a mere tool, a hammer for instance, but an instrument united with the agent through divine grace, the grace of union, which let the human nature of Christ totally be penetrated by the Godhead, even more than oil moistens a cloth or fire glows forth in a red-hot iron, to use the examples of the Greek Fathers of the Church. In Christ, everything human is divine, for which reason His earthly life is the continuous revelation of divine truth, the sacrifice of the Cross the random price of our salvation, His bodily resurrection, the triumph of everlasting life and His very heart, the altar of Redemption.

(to be continued in future bulletins)