Finishing the work
The San Francisco Opera is getting ready to open this year’s season with Turandot, the opera by Giacomo Puccini about a cold-hearted Asian princess who lures potential suitors by challenging them to answer three riddles. Puccini was diagnosed with throat cancer at the time he was writing the work and died before he was able to finish it. Having a sense of the seriousness of his condition, he is said to have told his friend and conductor Arturo Toscanini, “Don’t let my Turandot die.” In fact, it was Toscanini who conducted the premiere of Turandot at La Scala in Milan in 1926, more than a year after Puccini’s death. Though the work had been finished by another composer, Toscanini reportedly put down his baton in the middle of Act 3, saying, “Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro died.” And the curtain was lowered. Today, Turandot is one of Puccini’s most-performed operas, keeping the memory of Puccini and his works alive.
The liturgy is one way we keep the memory and the works of Jesus alive. Much like Puccini’s plea to Toscanini to keep Turandot alive, Jesus commanded us to keep his memory and his works alive with the words, “Do this in memory of me.” The “this” Jesus speaks of refers not only to what we do inside the liturgy, but also by how we live outside the liturgy. This is summarized in the new Roman Missal (which we will begin using on the first Sunday of Advent) by two of the newly-translated dismissals spoken by the deacon: “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord,” and “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord with your life.” May these words challenge us with the grace to continue God’s opera of humankind.
O Lord, help us to live what we pray. AMEN
The Art of Interpretation
Thousands of little girls are currently polishing their vocal pipes and their visionary dreams as they audition to be the next “Annie.” The musical will once again grace the Great White Way with a return to Broadway in the fall of 2012. Annie is an adaptation of a comic strip, Little Orphan Annie, which was written by Harold Gray and ran from 1924 until just last year. Gray often used the comic strip to voice his political views, namely that he was not a fan of organized labor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or Roosevelt’s New Deal. Gray’s “Daddy” Warbucks, for example, was portrayed as the ideal capitalist, a tuxedoed millionaire who made a fortune creating munitions for World War I.
But, Warbucks, FDR, and the story of little orphan Annie were reinterpreted when a man named Thomas Meehan adapted the comic strip for Broadway in 1977. In Meehan’s version, “Daddy” Warbucks was a friend to FDR, and in fact, it was FDR who eventually saved Annie from the orphanage enabling Warbucks to adopt her. The musical ends with everyone singing “A New Deal for Christmas,” exalting the plan that the original comic strip writer so criticized.
As the above example illustrates, art often depends on the interpretations of the author, the author’s particular opinions and beliefs, as well as the circumstances and the context of the time in which they live. The art of liturgy is no different. Our liturgical texts have been reinterpreted and changed throughout history, and they are about to change again. Our current prayer-book is based on a loose interpretation of the original Latin translation. The prayer-book which we will begin using on November 27th is based on a closer interpretation of the original Latin translation. Let us pray that this new translation will inspire a “new deal” of peace and justice for the Church and the world.
O Lord, may the words of our prayer lead to action. AMEN
When in the Roman Church... do as the Romans did...
Have you ever looked in the mirror and saw the image of your mother or father?
Or, have you ever thought to yourself, “I’ll never say that to my kids,” referring to something your parents used to say to you, only to hear yourself saying that same thing to your children? You’re not alone. As we journey through life, it’s likely we see more and more of our parents reflected in our bodies, our mannerisms, in the way we think and act. We may have been influenced by many people, by our environment and by our circumstances, yet a part of us will always bear the mark of our parents.
In the same way, the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, though influenced by many cultures, will forever mirror the influence of the city considered the Church’s Matriarch, Rome. The rise of the Roman Empire and the legalization of Christianity in the Church’s early centuries provided the means for the Church to borrow a lot of its liturgical practices from the cultural practices of Rome. Incense, candles, actions like bowing, processing and genuflecting, and gestures like beating the breast all came from Roman Imperial Court Ceremonies. The vestment worn by the priest, the chasuble, was used in Rome as a garment for traveling. The ranking of the clergy reflected the ranking system of the Roman government. Even early church buildings were modeled after basilicas, large civic structures built as monuments to glorify the Roman empire. Liturgical language too was influenced as Greek yielded to Latin in the third to fourth centuries. All of this will be important to keep in mind as we prepare for a new translation of the Church’s liturgical prayerbook , the New Roman Missal, which we will begin using on the first Sunday of Advent in November. The prayers will conform more closely to the original Latin in which they were written, adhering to a more classical Roman Rite.
O Lord, help us as we prepare to pray with new words, AMEN.
Looking through the liturgical lens
I was on an airplane recently near two women who were sitting next to each other but traveling separately. A little into the flight, they began chatting. In the middle of the two hour + trip, one of them opened her purse and pulled out a series of pictures. The pictures were of her family. She brimmed with pride as she showed off her children and grandchildren and shared stories of their lives. The pictures and the stories helped the other woman to know a little about the person sitting next to her. Their mutual exchange began a friendship. But the irony was, the two weren’t originally booked to sit next to one another. One of the women gave up her aisle seat so that a married couple could sit next to each other and therefore ended up sitting in the middle seat in another row.
Like the story above, all kinds of circumstances will seat new faces next to us at our parish on Sundays. Some visitors may be Catholic while others may be from another faith tradition and still others just searching. The liturgy is the church’s way of opening its theological purse, offering pictures of who we are as Catholic Christians. We pray what we believe, and so everything we say and do in the liturgy tells others who we are. Our prayers and our songs, every word, gesture, symbol and ritual gives others a snapshot of what and perhaps more important, who we hold dear. Like the woman on the plane who opened her purse to share the gift of her pictures, let us pray for the grace to open our hearts so that we may share the gifts of our prayer and our faith with others.
O Lord, may our liturgical prayer be deep and passionate. AMEN.
Being in sync
Recently, a group of parishioners at my parish returned from a mission trip to Whitesville, West Virginia. The nearly 100 missionaries spent a week together following a similar rhythm: breakfast, work, lunch, work, dinner, evening activities, bedtime. Their being together and their sharing the same pattern of activities made them more united, unified, in sync with each other. They came home changed.
The scientific word for this is entrainment. Entrainment was first discovered in 1665 by Dutch physicist Christian Huygsen while working on the design of the pendulum clock.
Huygsen placed two clocks, with pendulums swinging at opposite rates, near each other. He found that eventually the pendulums synchronized with each other, swinging at the same rate. Entrainment has been used in everything from astronomy to music. It has helped the scientific world to prove that two opposite oscillating bodies can have enough influence on each other to vibrate in harmony.
We could call the liturgy a ritual entrainment. We come together and follow the same ritual patterns and rhythms: gathering, introductory rites, liturgy of the word, liturgy of the eucharist, communion rite and sending forth, singing, speaking, listening, standing, kneeling, sitting. As well, we follow the same patterns and rhythms of the liturgical year which are guided by the patterns and rhythms of the moon and the sun. The liturgy synchronizes us so that we can be attuned to creation, to each other and to God, whose very breath began to swing the first pendulum of life. As we come together in the liturgy, let us pray that we will be synchronized enough to, like the missionaries to Whitesville, bring God’s message of hope to the world.
O Lord, let us be your instruments of hope. AMEN