Theology of the Body and Liturgy

The Preface of Called to Love (Anderson and Granados) is written by Livio Melina, President of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. The Preface itself does a fine job of situating the work in it proper context, saying of the volume: “much more than a superficial show of enthusiasm for the novelty of the theology of the body, it sheds light on its anthropological foundations with a language at once simple, poetic, and profound” (Called to Love, viii).

Instead of presenting a gloss on the Preface or the work itself, I wanted to draw a parallel between what might at first seem like two unrelated areas of Catholic theology: the theology of the body and the theology of liturgy. I begin by quoting at length the words of Melina:

“We are coming out of centuries in which, due to the influence of a dualistic mentality colored by Manichaeism and Puritanism, the human body has been despised or at least insufficiently valued. It was viewed with suspicion and apprehension, as if it were a threat to man’s spiritual nature and destiny. It was neglected or denied in its affective and sexual dimension, as though it were unavoidably fraught with temptations and dangers. Today, the pendulum seems to have swung to the opposite extreme with the worship of the body, exalting it so long as it is young, beautiful, and pleasurable, but then rejecting it when it testifies to its inevitable decline, illness, and death. Beyond the apparent contradiction, in reality these two positions share the same anthropological reductionism that is unable to integrate the body into the reality of the person and hence incapable of adequately appreciating the body’s subjectivity. The body thus ends up losing its mystery and is made a banality” (Called to Love, vii-viii).

The common error on both sides of the proverbial pendulum is the dualism that would separate the body from the person. On one side, the body is seen as a source of evil and hence must be shed (in practice if not in reality) to allow the person to attain perfection. On the other side, the body is seen as meaningless matter and hence is allowed to be exploited and abused. In neither case is the body a sign of the person, and hence inseparable form it. (We speak here of sign here in the von Balthasarian sense, not as a symbol that represents the underlying reality, but instead as that which re-presents the reality which it signifies.) Pope John Paul II was relentless in proclaiming the body as a prophet, so to speak: a prophet of the human person of whom it is a part, and a prophet of the love and goodness of its Creator. In this sense, we come to understand better the imago Dei, or the image of God in which we were made in the likeness of. (In fact, image and sign are for all intents and purposes interchangeable.)

I wonder if a parallel cannot be made with the prevailing yet mistaken attitudes regarding the Sacred Liturgy. Liturgical words and actions are to serve as a sign (in the above sense) of a greater reality, that of our participation in the heavenly worship of God and His mysteries and, in a certain way, in the very inner life of the Trinity. Because this reality is external to ourselves and must therefore be received (and not created), it follows that the liturgical words and actions must also be received and not arbitrarily created and re-created with the whims of changing culture. In a similar manner, we note the obvious fact that both the ontological reality of the human person, i.e., the soul, and the outward sign of this reality, i.e. the body, are both received and not created. It is no surprise, however, that a society that seeks to re-create the body (plastic surgery, etc.) is also a society that seeks to re-create liturgical words and actions. It is also no surprise that when a society thinks it can re-create the sign (the body in the case of the person and the words and actions in the case of the liturgy), it naturally comes to see the underlying reality as something that is self-created (the soul in the case of the person and the worship of God and participation in heavenly realities in the case of the liturgy). Of course I use the words re-create and self-create as if this were an authentic act of creation, paralleling the creative act of God. Perhaps pseudo-create would be more appropriate in this context.

Diving further into this comparison let us look as both sides of the observed pendulum. Of the one side (Puritanism) we have a philosophy that sees the human body, and consequently human experience, as something that is “a threat to man’s spiritual nature and destiny.” When it comes to the liturgy, there are those that want to reject outright all “externals”, be they actions, vestments, rote prayers, or even glorious architecture. It is said that these “externals” are a hindrance to proper worship, that they detract the mind from what it is supposed to be doing: praising God. Those who would support such a view would have us build simple white boxes for churches, have priest and people dress in common garb, and replace all liturgical prayers with extemporaneous dialog. At the very extreme of this position we find those who insist that any time or place set aside for worship is unnecessary, that simply being a “spiritual person” is enough, and in fact better than those who are caught up in the silliness of a rite.

On the other side we have a philosophy that worships the sign as the reality in and of itself. When the body is seen as a separate reality, it is exalted “so long as it is young, beautiful, and pleasurable” and rejected when it “testifies to its inevitable decline, illness, and death.” (Though with the “progress” of technology, we more often find people attempting to reshape the body before they reject it.) In this thinking, pleasure is prioritized to authentic representation of reality (in this case the person). Likewise, we find those who would seek to re-create liturgical words and actions (and it seems that music takes the brunt of this) to suit the preferences of the people. These are the individuals that, when asked why praise and worship music is appropriate for Mass, respond, “Because it helps me to pray better,” or worse yet, “Because it makes me feel closer to God.” There is no concern for how accurately the liturgy re-presents the reality of heavenly worship of God. This camp will often support their position with Vatican II’s call for active participation in the liturgy. However, the very concept of participation is that the participants are so as part of a greater pre-existing reality. Vatican II’s call was for the faithful to change the way they approach the sacred mysteries of the Mass so as to become authentic participants. In other words, it is a call to form the faithful in order to better prepare them for participation in the Mass. It is antithetical to the Council to see active participation as a call to form the liturgy to better suit the people; such a mistaken view would have people as creators not as participants and would have the liturgy participating the in lives of the people instead of the other way around.

In terms of the relationship between the person and the body, the two sides of the pendulum “share the same anthropological reductionism that is unable to integrate the body into the reality of the person.” We can also say that the two erroneous views of the liturgy share a similar reductionism. Both are unable to integrate the liturgy properly speaking (its words and actions) into the reality of heavenly worship and mysteries of God. In each case, we have an inability to integrate the sign into the reality. The result, in the case of the human person, is that the “body thus ends up losing its mystery and is made a banality.” Certainly the same can be said for the Sacred Liturgy.

These parallels should not surprise us. For, while John Paul II’s theology of the body dealt for the most part with the human body, perhaps we can think of the theology of the liturgy as another Theology of the Body, the Mystical Body of Christ.