HOLY CONFIRMATION

EVANGELIUM -- Adults or young people who are over the age of 11 and considering the Sacrament of Confirmation  should contact Fr. Hodgins this month about instruction.  We are planning for the visit of Bishop Lopes to receive people into full communion and administer Holy Confirmation. In preparation for his visit, the EVANGELIUM programme is being offered again this Fall for anyone exploring the Catholic faith with a view to reception and Confirmation.

Real Inclusivity

The following excerpts from an article in Convivium magazine point to the role that the Ordinariates are playing in welcoming people from a variety of backgrounds into the full communion of the Catholic Church.

Daniel Bezalel Richardsen works for the federal government in Ottawa where he lives a life infused with his own Christian faith and deep interest in other religious traditions.

. . . . He is a driving force behind a magazine, Foment, produced for the Ottawa International Writers

. . . . Richardsen has also just launched a reading group on Dante, is organizing another reading group on the works of the great Jewish Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and is currently organizing a book launch for Montreal historian and theologian Douglas Farrow’s latest book, Desiring a Better Country.

. . . . He was born in India but grew up in Brunei. Oh, and he just turned 30 in February.

Daniel (DBR) responded to the following questions:

A lot of people are engaged in multi-faith dialogue. You seem to have been born into it, and raised with it as a raison d’etre.

DBR: My grandmother came from a city in India with a long Jewish history, Cochin, but she was from a Hindu family. In fact, she was a devotee of Krishna before she became a Christian within the Anglican Church. This is perhaps why the Judeophilia in my family runs high.

I really enjoyed my formative years in Brunei—a majority Islamic country— a peaceful oasis in a rather turbulent world. The friendships, family life, and in particular the tiny but incredible Christian community in that country are a priceless possession and will never recede in their influence over me.

Tell us about navigating that faith background.

DBR: There is probably no more religiously diverse country than India. Being born, having roots and spending my first decade there allowed me to meet and form friendships with a variety of people. My family was firmly Christian for at least a few generations by the time I came into the picture, with the majority of them within the venerable Anglican Church of South India, itself a result of ecumenism. Deep familial piety and religious practice gave me an anchor from which I was able to relate to Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Buddhists, Parsees, Jews, and Sikhs whom I met in my neighbourhood and schools.

You came to Canada just over 10 years ago. How does the faith climate in Canada differ from the climate where you were raised? Is it easier to be a person of faith in Canada, or does the emphasis on secularism make it harder to be publicly faithful?

DBR: The relative lack of persecution certainly makes it easier to practice one’s own faith privately and within religious communities. In this Canada is a marvelous safe haven for many. Public expressions of faith still strike me as awkward: viewed as quixotic at best, and polarizing at worst. This too set against a residual post-Christian heritage that seems to emphasize the “post” without adequately grappling with the “Christian.”

Last year, you became part of the Anglican Ordinariate, which means you are now in communion with Rome though still within the Anglican tradition. What moved you that way, and has it affected personal relationships? 

DBR: Saint Edith Stein emphasized the role of the intellect as a means of preparation either before or after a deep, affective spiritual experience towards God. Friendships with faithful Catholics, serious reading of Church history, being part of an ecumenical public theology group all paved the way for a deep mystical experience I had in the beginning of 2015 that elicited my love and loyalty. Being able to preserve my Anglican patrimony made my shift inexorable. I certainly did lose a romantic relationship with someone I loved because of my decision. Apart from that trial, I have mostly experienced solid support and encouragement from friends and family.

You are deeply involved in the cultural scene in Ottawa, music and literature primarily. How is that an expression of your faith? How possible is it to live out your faith in a world that is frequently hostile to faith?

DBR: Having an incarnational faith like Christianity means that the sensual, the liturgical are an integral part of formation and worship. It is as (Comment magazine Editor) James K. A. Smith says aptly in his new book title—echoing St. Augustine—You Are What You Love. I’ve found far less hostility to faith as an individual: the majority of people have a tremendous amount of goodwill. I think more people of faith ought to think that all spheres of life are theirs to participate in and excel at: always in a spirit of charity and enthusiasm.

Rosa Mystica by (Saint) John Henry Newman

Mary, Mystical Rose ~ Cardinal Newman

St. John Henry Newman (as of Oct. 13, 2019) has called the Blessed Virgin Mary the Rosa Mystica or the Mystical Rose. 

Newman held that she “is the Queen of spiritual flowers; and therefore she is called the Rose, for the rose is fitly called of all flowers the most beautiful.” Newman writes of this “hidden rose.” whose tomb cannot be found on earth as are the shrines of of the saints and martyrs. 

“Is it conceivable that they [the early Christians] who had been so reverent and careful of the bodies of the Saints and Martyrs should neglect her—[she] who was the Queen of Martyrs and the Queen of Saints, who was the very Mother of our Lord? Why then is Blessed Mary thus the hidden Rose? Plainly because that sacred body is in heaven, not on earth.”

Holy Mary, Mystical Rose, you are the most beautiful flower created by God, in venerating you we praise God for his holiness and beauty.   May 26

Mary is the “Rosa Mystica,” the Mystical Rose.

MARY is the most beautiful flower that ever was seen in the spiritual world. It is by the power of God’s grace that from this barren and desolate earth there have ever sprung up at all flowers of holiness and glory. And Mary is the Queen of them. She is the Queen of spiritual flowers; and therefore she is called the Rose, for the rose is fitly called of all flowers the most beautiful.

But moreover, she is the Mystical, or hidden Rose; for mystical means hidden. How is she now “hidden” from us more than are other saints? What means this singular appellation, which we apply to her specially? The answer to this question introduces us to a third reason for believing in the reunion of her sacred body to her soul, and its assumption into heaven soon after her death, instead of its lingering in the grave until the General Resurrection at the last day.

It is this:—if her body was not taken into heaven, where is it? how comes it that it is hidden from us? why do we not hear of her tomb as being here or there? why are not pilgrimages made to it? why are not relics producible of her, as of the saints in general? Is it not even a natural instinct which makes us reverent towards the places where our dead are buried? 

We bury our great men honourably. St. Peter speaks of the sepulchre of David as known in his day, though he had died many hundred years before. When our Lord’s body was taken down from the Cross, He was placed in an honourable tomb. Such too had been the honour already paid to St. John Baptist, his tomb being spoken of by St. Mark as generally known. Christians from the earliest times went from other countries to Jerusalem to see the holy places. And, when the time of persecution was over, they paid still more attention to the bodies of the Saints, as of St. Stephen, St. Mark, St. Barnabas, St. Peter, St. Paul, and other Apostles and Martyrs. These were transported to great cities, and portions of them sent to this place or that. 

Thus, from the first to this day it has been a great feature and characteristic of the Church to be most tender and reverent towards the bodies of the Saints. Now, if there was anyone who more than all would be preciously taken care of, it would be our Lady. Why then do we hear nothing of the Blessed Virgin’s body and its separate relics? Why is she thus the hidden Rose? Is it conceivable that they who had been so reverent and careful of the bodies of the Saints and Martyrs should neglect her—her who was the Queen of Martyrs and the Queen of Saints, who was the very Mother of our Lord? It is impossible. Why then is she thus the hidden Rose? Plainly because that sacred body is in heaven, not on earth.

Sainte-Marie des Deux-Montagnes: Assumption Homily

The following homily was given at the Latin Missa Cantata for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Abbey Church on August 15, 2019. 

Initially given in English by Fr. John Hodgins, the text was translated into French  for the community which now includes both French and English speaking postulants.  

The homily was translated by Dom Charles Gilman O.S.B., the Abbey Chaplain, and was repeated in French at Mass for the bi-lingual congregation which includes local people who attend the Novus Ordo Latin Mass at Ste-Marie daily.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary 

Abbaye Sainte-Marie des Deux-Montagnes, Quebec, August 15, 2019

“And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?”  Luke 1 

This is the quizzical but hopeful greeting of our Blessed Mother by Elizabeth, her kinswoman. Blessed Mary has come to visit members of her family, Elizabeth and Zechariah, an older couple, who are sharing the joy of expecting a first child.  

Down the ages, expectant Christian mothers are moved by these words about our Blessed Mother, Mary, the chosen vessel for our hope and salvation. Elizabeth’s words are in the form of a question: “Why has the Mother of the Lord come to visit us?”  

This is not simply a query, it is a proclamation, a declaration of underlying hope: words of expectancy in a world of contingency and apprehension, words of faith in the power of God’s love coming to us in the person of the mother of our Lord and in the loving, saving potential of the divine Child she is carrying.

It is in this context of the love of family that we, all of us, receive the gifts of faith and hope.  Throughout scripture we are pointed to the human family as the centre of sustaining faith in an often challenging and hostile world.  Never more than today we need these words of faith and of hope nurtured within the sheltering love of the family whether it be the nuclear family of nature or the spiritual family of those who have chosen to live together in worship and service as in the community of a monastery. 

In the face of the prevalent materialism of our day, we hear again the words of a simple woman of no social standing in the face of the culture of death.  In a culture vying for euthanasia and abortion we see the example of heroic women: images, reflections of Blessed Mary, women who nurture the child in the womb, women who nurture the hope of the world in prayer and in their care for others.

In my work as a hospital chaplain I am daily moved by the profound and bottomless love of mothers for their sick children. I am in awe of the long vigils by the bedside, the holding and caressing of the little heads of their children who suffer from cancer or any of the many diseases which flesh is heir to.
  
I think particularly of an older mother in her early 40’s whom I met recently at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. She is currently sleeping on a cot beside her little nine month old son who has Down’s Syndrome and heart complications. She is often accompanied by her only other child, a 17 year old confident young man who is off to university this Fall but who spends time with his tiny brother and supporting his mother.

The husband and father of the family is away from home for long periods with work.  The mother holds vigil as the little one improves and then has another in a series of setbacks.  The bottomless love of this mother and of other mothers I encounter is a shining example of the love which mirrors that of the blessed Mother who “comes to us” in our weakness and our need, of the blessed Mother who thinks only of our health and our hope, the holy Mother who, like Jesus, has never and will never leave us.

The great English mystic, Julian of Norwich, reflecting on the presence of our Lady wrote these words in her book Revelations of Divine Love, words that she understood to come from Jesus as she contemplated his holy Mother:

“I know well that you wish to see my blessed mother . . . she is what all my blessed creatures most desire to see.”  

Julian continues, speaking of the spiritual vision of our Lady as she is assumed into heaven: 

I was not taught [Julian says] to long to see [our Lady’s] bodily presence while I am here, but the virtues of her blessed soul, her truth, her wisdom, her love, through which I am taught to know myself and reverently to fear God. . . .  
And Jesus . . . showed me a spiritual vision of [Mary] high and noble and glorious and more pleasing to him than all the creatures . . . . now in delight, honour and joy.

Wojtyla Institute 2019 - Shaped by the Liturgy

Shaped by the Liturgy

A presentation to the Wojtyla Institute by Fr. John L. Hodgins, August 2019

Dom Gregory Dix, the great Benedictine scholar in his seminal book, THE SHAPE OF THE LITURGY, defines liturgy as: “the act of taking part in the solemn corporate worship of God by the ‘priestly’ society of Christians, who are the Body of Christ, the Church.”

By looking at the main themes of Dix’s work we may see how the Eucharistic Liturgy or Mass has shaped the people of God and how it continues to shape Catholics as we celebrate the various rites or expressions of the Mass, both Eastern and Western.  

Dom Gregory claimed that all forms of the Mass share the fundamental fourfold shape of the Liturgy: Taking, Blessing, Breaking and Sharing i.e. 

1.   Taking the offered bread and wine

2.  Blessing the elements which become the Body and Precious Blood of Christ;

3.  Breaking the Bread (technically The Fraction)

4.  Sharing in Holy Communion (Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ)

Specifically, today we will look at the Liturgy of the Personal Ordinariates erected under the Apostolic Constitution of 2009 – Anglicanorum Coetibus (AC)

Liturgy for the Ordinariates created under AC is now contained in the various “Divine Worship” (DW) rites approved and published by the Holy See. In 2015 Divine Worship: The Missal (DWM) was first published for use in the Ordinariates by members around the world as well as for all Catholics who choose to attend or fulfill their Sunday and Holy Day Mass obligation in an Ordinariate parish.

We will look at the historical background to this form of the Liturgy and see how DW came to bring the English Catholic or Anglican patrimony back into full communion with the Holy See.  DW is one form of the Liturgy, one expression of the Western Catholic Rite in harmony with the entire Catholic tradition of East and West.

Today, of course, DW is celebrated by only a very small number of Catholics (less than .01% of Catholics worldwide).  

The Western (Latin) Rite

The Western Rite for Holy Mass is the most widely celebrated in the Ordinary Form (OF) or in the Extraordinary Form (EF) sometimes called the Tridentine or Latin Mass.  The Ordinary Form (with which we are all familiar) is often referred to as the Novus Ordoor of the "New Mass" following Vatican II.  The normative language for this Mass is also Latin. In Canada the Novus Ordo is most often celebrated in modern English, in French or in one of the many modern languages that Catholics speak in Canada.

The Extraordinary Form (EF), i.e. the Usus Antiquior (the more ancient usage) is the traditional Latin Mass with its particular ceremonial including the priest ad orientem i.e. facing liturgical East and the ‘silent canon’ along with various developments and modifications up to the pontificate of Pope St. Paul VI. 

DWM has elements of both the OF and the EF forms of the Roman Rite Mass. It is set in traditional English. A simple way to describe the English of DW is to refer people to the popular English form of the Our Father or the Hail Mary e.g. Our Father who art in heaven.  Hallowed be thy name . . . Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Dom Gregory Dix may help us understand how the OF and the EF forms of the Mass, along with DW, share a common structure or “shape”.  A recounting of the early history of the shape of the Mass will help us understand why and where DW fits into the history of the Church.

All Mass rites have two fundamental parts i.e. the ‘Liturgy of the Word’ followed by the ‘Liturgy of the Eucharist’.  

Dom Gregory points out that all forms of the Mass share the four-fold shape. This shape goes back to Mass as first celebrated in the churches both East and West in the first century and even before the New Testament canon was settled.  The fact that the Mass predates the New Testament of the Bible is often a surprise to Catholics as well as Protestants.

We are dealing with worship and sacrificial offering that has shaped the Church from its very foundations.  You will be familiar, perhaps, with the maxim Lex orandi, Lex Credendi often translated as: The law of worship is the law of belief. 

Nowhere does this maxim apply more so than in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist or Mass where what we say, sing and do, shapes what the Church believes, teaches and confesses, as Jaroslav Pelikan the Orthodox scholar would put it. (The Christian Tradition, J. Pelikan). 

The first of the two ‘parts’ or sections of the Mass is the Synaxis (Greek for “meeting”). The second part is the Eucharist proper (Greek meaning “Thanksgiving”). 

The Synaxis derives from the Jewish synagogue service of the Word and follows that pattern:

A.    Greeting and Response
B.     Lections interspersed with 
C.    Psalmody (usually chanted) 
D.   Bishop’s Sermon: a charismatic function of the Bishop.
E.    Dismissal of the Catechumens -- those not yet initiated into the
        Body of Christ – the Church.
         Note the ‘Judas Walk’ hymn – a vestige of the dismissal of catechumens.
F.    The Intercessory Prayers of the Faithful
G.   Dismissal of the Faithful (when only the Synaxis is celebrated.)

Then follows the Eucharistic Sacrifice:

A.   Greeting and Response
B.      The exchange of the of Peace
C.       Offertory (Offering of Bread and Wine with other Gifts)
D.   The Eucharistic Prayer of Thanksgiving
E.       The Fraction or Breaking of the Bread
F.        Holy Communion
G.    The Dismissal of all with the exhortation to live eucharistically. 

Traditionally those who were not confirmed (anointed with the oil of chrism) were not allowed to participate in the second half of the Liturgy – the Eucharistic Sacrifice. 

In the Eastern Rites children were, and are today, chrismated (anointed) in infancy at the time of the water rite of Baptism and so share in Holy Communion from infancy forward. 

DW, in line with Western Catholic practice, presumes a separation of the rite of Confirmation from the water rites of Baptism. The timing for Confirmation has varied over the centuries as well as the age for those admitted to Holy Communion.  We won’t get into that discussion today other than to say that Ordinariate parishes tend to follow local custom.

Texts and accompanying ceremonial developed into a variety of medieval Western rites (small ‘r’) of the Eucharist.  These various texts with ritual rubrics (red lettered directions) for the Mass included the Roman (followed across central Europe), Mozarabic in Spain, the Ambrosian Rite in Milan, Italy, the Sarum (from Salisbury in England) and other variations which had papal approval such as the Dominican rite which is still celebrated today in Dominican communities as are the Mozarabic, Ambrosian and a few other rites of historically small communities.

The Ordinariate or Divine Worship (DW) form of the Mass is then, just one expression of the Latin or Western Catholic Rite and, of course DW shares, the twofold aspects of Synaxis and Eucharist along with the universal fourfold shape of the Liturgy.

Distinctive forms of celebrating Holy Mass developed from the early first century rites of the Eucharist. These settled into three modes of celebration in the West by the 6^th century A.D. and these modes remained virtually unchanged for over 1,000 years before the Reformation and Counter-Reformation of the 16^th century.  

Three Modes of the Mass

The three modes of the Mass in the West are: 

A. The Pontifical Mass, is highly structured with elaborate ritual and ceremonial recognizably derived from the pre-Nicene Church presided over by a bishop with each person taking their own role according to order in the Eucharist.

B. The Missa Cantata, High (Sung) Mass is an eighth-ninth century simplification of the Pontifical Mass which retained much of the old corporate character, being sung and allowing for the fulfillment of the separate “liturgies” of all the “orders”: the Priest (or Presbyter) delegated by the bishop, the Deacon, the Subdeacon, the Acolyte/s, the Lector/s along with all the laity. This was the official form of the rite in the Middle Ages that was presented in well-equipped parish churches on all Sundays and holy days. This is the form of Mass that we celebrate on Sundays in the Ordinariates.

C.  Finally, there was the Low Mass which was said by the priest so that he might be able to fulfill his obligations to celebrate the Mass with regularity. This mode of the Mass is customarily spoken in a low voice; hence the name. This form of the Mass is brief and allows the working laity opportunity to be present at the Eucharist daily. 

As we look at the development of the DW Mass alongside the other Western Catholic rites we must consider the theological impact of the Low Mass and how it has shaped the piety and practice of faithful.  

This development of the Mass form meant that the corporate worship of the Eucharist was telescoped into a focus for the subjective devotion of each separate worshiper in the isolation of his or her own mind. 

To many, this third “low” mode for celebration of the Mass began to seem, in many settings, more important than the corporate act. The part the individual lay person played in the corporate action was largely reduced from “doing” to “seeing” and “hearing‟.  The individual was allowed, or even encouraged, to retreat within to “thinking” and “feeling.”  A focus on “seeing” (ceremonial) and “hearing” (music) over time led those caught up in the individualistic spirit to see the corporate nature of the Eucharist as detrimental to proper “thinking” and “feeling” – the modern hallmarks of the human condition. 

Dix maintains that the shift of emphasis from a corporate to an individual focus grew rapidly in the fifteenth century Western Church, and reached its full development in the sixteenth century. Some have even called it “the Protestant conception of the Eucharist.” 

Dom Gregory considered the Protestant Reformers both victims and products of a sacramental minimalism. They tried to retain the Eucharist as central to worship but could not carry their followers with them since Protestant devotion was so individualistic.  In the end, most Protestant churches embraced, as their centrepiece, the Synaxis, the Word-based worship derived from the synagogue.

The Liturgy of the Word had been considered essential but not exclusive in the early Church.  Early Christians allowed non-Christians and catechumens in for this part of the liturgy.  Dix sums it up in these terms: What happened was that Protestantism, in the main, embraced the synagogue, and rejected the temple i.e. rejected the corporate worship of sacrifice. 

Even before the sixteenth century the Eucharist had begun to pass from an objective rite of communal action, as witnessed to in Scripture, into a more subjective rite of feeling. The Reformers' insistence on the internal and subjective doctrine of "justification by faith alone" corresponds completely with the simple said service which, in the words of Dix was: ‟performed by a single minister, at which the people had only to look and listen and silently pray.” 

Rather than rediscovering the spirit of Christian worship in the early church, the habits of people had gradually grown inward due to the habituation of centuries, the shaping of the people of God by the normative Low Mass. 

Dix gives various examples as evidence that show the link between the subjectivity of mediaeval Eucharistic devotions and the reformed liturgies. Both are based on inner subjective and meditative personal reflections on the Passion of our Lord as a merely historical event.

By the 14^th century the idea of the Eucharist as a corporate action binding heaven and earth, past and future with the present, and binding believers of all time into unity, was, for most lay people, lost.  

This emphasis on the sacrament as the focus of personal religion was maintained without much change by the Protestant reformers and the Catholic counter-Reformation alike. Over time, both parties sought to replace personal adoration with personal reception of the sacrament, as the central point of lay Eucharistic devotion. 

Dix would not have us think that one’s personal feelings toward God in the rite were not of importance in the primitive Church. What he is saying is that by making this individualist focus central, the original intent of the Eucharist i.e. to bind the Church of God into a unity of time and eternity, is undermined. 

Subjectivity breeds individualism. Who we are as Christians cannot be solely based on feelings and experiences that may vary from one to another. 

The principal thing that our Lord instituted to bind individuals together as one in Him is the sacrificial action of the Eucharist.  Tragically the Church had come to be divided over the gift Christ has given for her unity. This brings us to the Reformation, Counter-Reformation and for our purposes to the Liturgy, in English, that succeeded centuries of liturgy almost exclusively in Latin or Greek.

The Reformation and Counter-Reformation 

Some have said that Protestantism does not know what to do with the Eucharist. With its emphasis on inner experience, the logical end would be rejection of all external forms, and exclusive concentration on the “inner light” of Quakerism. This would be hard to explain given the importance of the Eucharist in the Bible, which historically has been considered the final authority by most Protestants. 

The difficulty arises precisely out of the only meaning which Protestantism could assign to the Eucharist which did not contradict its own basic principle of “justification by faith alone” – viz. that the liturgy is a very specifically solemn and moving reminder to all who attend with faith in the passion and atonement of Christ.  

So, the Eucharist is seen as a valuable means of eliciting devout feelings of gratitude, love, confidence and union with Christ in those who make use of His ordinance. To partake of the Ordinance of the Lord’s Supper is then simply a pledge of re-dedication to God’s service given by His followers. 

The problem with this is that the Lord’s Supper is, for Protestants, not any different from other forms of worship such as a non-Eucharistic service of the Word or private devotions. 

Many of the Reformers who (especially in England) retained a sense of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist were appalled by the downplaying of the sacrificial offering of the Mass. 

Many others had been seduced by the individualist degeneration of the understanding of the Eucharistic offering, mentioned above, which led to a loss of form – the Shape of the Liturgy was obscured.  The communal and transcendent meaning of the Eucharist, as originally conceived, reflected the unity of the Church Militant, the Church Expectant and the Church Triumphant in Heaven. 

The Liturgy had, for many, become focussed on the Passion with little understanding of the eschatological orientation i.e. the return of Christ following the Resurrection and Ascension. The Eucharist, in this understanding, was stalled in the past and the problem was reduced to simply making the past present. 

A popular view, which was never official Catholic doctrine but was widely embraced, interpreted the Mass as Christ re-sacrificed at every Mass.  Protestants rightly rejected this popular misconception as blatantly unbiblical. Their limitation, though, opted to bring the past into the present by means of mere memory and reflection. It did not occur to either group that they had both missed the original intent of the Eucharistic rite which was communal and transcendent participation in the eternal “now” of Christ’s Sacrifice offered once for all. 

These concerns were, of course, reflected in the liturgical revisions both of the Council of Trent and in the various English liturgies that were published, especially the Book of Common Prayer in its original 1549 version followed by a more Protestant version in 1552 and finally the normative edition for the Church of England over a century later in 1662. 

Anglicanae Traditiones

The task of Anglicanae Traditiones, the Interdicasterial Commission set up to develop the DW liturgy, was to look to the sources both pre- and post- Reformation and to decide which were to be included in the DW ritual books of the Ordinariates including rites for Baptism, Marriage, Confirmation, Funeral, etc. and approved by the Holy See.

The largest task was the assembling of DW: The Missal – a truly monumental task which sifted and measured mountains of material into a Catholic rite in conformity with the teaching of the Church while retaining the traditional English forms so much of which had been set to patrimonial music.

The Commission recognized eight principles upon which it would conduct its task.  We will not look at all of these. However, the first, according to Bishop Lopes, Ordinary of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter (North America),  was generally  acknowledge as central:  to preserve for Catholic worship the worthy Anglican liturgical patrimony, understood as that which has nourished the Catholic faith throughout the history of the Anglican tradition and prompted aspirations towards ecclesial unity.

DIVINE WORSHIP texts and rubrics seek to engage people in the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice through actions, shared prayers, music and ceremonial ad orientem (eastward facing to the horizon of the eschaton). 

This expression of the liturgy along with traditional hieratic English focuses worship on the transcendence of God through the mediation of Christ which shapes us.

The 1549 English BCP, a source for DW, had retained the four-fold shape of the Liturgy and though it was modified in 1552, Queen Mary restored the Catholic faith and Liturgy to the English-speaking world during her reign. The four-fold shape of the liturgy as anciently conceived survived then into the reign of Elizabeth I and was in the process of being revived again under King James II at the end of the 17^th century before the revolution which installed the Protestant William of Orange on the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland.

It can be argued that the Catholic shape of the liturgy was never fully lost in the years before Catholic emancipation in the British Isles and across the English-speaking world in the 19^th century.

The offering or “taking”, and “thanking” (eucharistia),  along with the anamnesis of the person and work of Christ, followed by the Breaking of the Bread and Holy Communion, were retained in the Mass in many places as recusants survived until full Catholic emancipation and the “Second Spring” as Cardinal Newman called the Catholic revival celebrating the re-establishment of a Catholic hierarchy in England.

Pope Benedict, is a great student of Blessed John Henry Newman who had been received into the full communion of the Catholic Church in 1845 and is to be canonized this October. Pope Benedict insisted that various elements and prayers in the BCP be included in DW: The Missal and other Ordinariate rites. So, there is much to commend the original Book of Common Prayer, especially the beautiful translations into hieratic English of the old Latin prayers e.g. the so-called Collect for Purity (with which we opened our session today.)  This collect is prayed at the beginning of the traditional English Eucharist:

ALMIGHTY GOD, unto Whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from Whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love Thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name. Through Christ our Lord.  AMEN. 

Through the 19^th and 20^th centuries the Anglican liturgy continued to accommodate those who held traditional beliefs about Eucharist, especially belief that the consecrated bread and wine are the real Body and Blood of Christ. 

For others, to restore the theology of ancient corporate four-fold action of the ancient Eucharist is, by definition, a negation of the basic Protestant idea. The idea that result of which is the fragmentation into thousands of denominations that continue to proliferate to this day. They remain divided; victims of subjective piety and Protestant individualism. 

The ancient piety expressed in corporate liturgy and the corporate action of the Eucharist was simply no longer a part of their world-view. 

A synopsis of the period can be made with this quote by DIX: 

The old conception had been of the Church in its hierarchic unity entering into Christ’s action, by the co-operation of all its various “orders” (each having its own “office”, as St. Paul conceived it), and so in His action “becoming what is” eternally – His Body. 

The new conception is of worship as a strictly personal mental reflection upon Christ’s action in the past. This conception held that we cannot enter into Christ’s life and Passion, since as a matter of history the Passion is unique and finished. 

This way of thinking continues to insist that the real Eucharistic action consists in the individual’s own personal mental remembrance of the Passion; and is not an act of the universal Body of Christ throughout time and space. Hence, they believe, there is no more need for a priest ordained to act in persona Christi for the whole Body, or indeed even the possibility of such a priesthood. 

In this view, there is no possibility of pleading the Eucharist for another, or for the dead in Christ, though we may pray together at worship just as we intercede at other times.  Since the individual action is purely mental, the external means to the action – the bread and wine – need only be a “token”.  

DW: The Missal explicitly teaches the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ: Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.  A prayer reflecting this view from the BCP is explicitly included in DW: The Missal at the direction of Pope Benedict. The so-called Prayer of Humble Accessis placed just after the Agnus Dei:

WE DO NOT PRESUME to come to this Thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in Thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Thy Table. But Thou art the same Lord, Whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink His Blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood, and that we may evermore dwell in Him, and He in us. Amen. 

Conclusion

What DOM GREGORY DIX has to say carries the weight of extensive scholarship. With lucidity he describes the historical development of Western attitudes towards the liturgy. The forces of subjectivism, as we have seen, have been at work in our Western culture for the past millenium. In fact, subjectivism contributed to the Reformation’s virtually exclusive emphasis on the interior and individual response to God by faith alone. 

Much of the historical material necessary for the interpretation of the primitive Eucharist was unknown or not understood as late as 1900.  Christians continue to re-evaluate their understanding of the Eucharist in light of the participatory shape of the Liturgy.  

DW: The Missal seeks to draw together the transcendent and corporeal elements of the Eucharist. This is a contribution to unity among Christians. As this unity grows, it happens as we are together shaped by the Eucharist, the very means our Lord instituted to draw us together in Him: “that they all may be one.”