How does the church’s liturgy express and form the church’s faith and action?

Your
answer should include analysis of the relationship between God’s action and human action
in the church’s sacramental liturgy and the church’s life in the world. Illustrate your
analysis by considering two of the church’s sacraments.

At the core of the discussion on the liturgical life of the church remains relies the basic

conviction that the church is a worshipping community that expresses its own identity as the

church of Christ when it is receptive to the grace of God. This sense of being a community of

grace was already present in some of the early writings of the NT. Addressing to the church in/of

Corinth, Paul opens and closes his letter saying: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of

God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God that is in Corinth, with all the holy ones

throughout Achaia: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” and

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the holy Spirit be

with all of you” (2 Cor 1:1-2; 13:13).

The very definition of liturgy, says something about its communal character. Leitourgia

is nothing else than “the Work of the People.” Christian liturgy is a kind of synergy of God and

the worshipping community. It is a divine gift, not human action, not “my” thing. Liturgy is the

time/space where God and Humanity meet, a divine/human encounter, we can say, a theophany.

Liturgy expresses both church’s faith and action because the liturgical actions reflect in a

particular way that Lex orandi, lex credendi = The Law of prayer, the law of faith (a phrase

probably coined by Prosper of Aquitaine in the 5th century): the Church believes as she prays and

prays as she believes. Thus, liturgy is not something static or accessory to the Church but a

constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition: when the Church celebrates the liturgy, she

confesses the faith received from Christ and the apostles.

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 Furthermore, liturgical action is not reduced to the seven sacraments celebrated in the

liturgical ceremonies: the bishops gathered in Vatican II affirmed that the very nature and

mission of the Church IS sacramental and thus liturgical. They called the church a sacrament of

salvation: “Since the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a

very closely-knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race, it desires now to

unfold more fully to the faithful of the Church and to the whole world its own inner nature and

universal mission.” The ecclesial action, which is expressed in a particular way in the liturgical

salvific events, expresses and makes effective the union and action of God with us and of us with

God. Karl Rahner offered an insight into this relationship between liturgy and church’s faith and

action when saying that the church is the abiding presence of that primal sacramental word of

definitive grace which is given in Christ. For him, the church is a community of faith and charity

that lives as the visible expression of divine self-communication through Word and Spirit.

In the Christian liturgy we as Church celebrate the sacred mysteries, meaning the eternal

wisdom of God that has been revealed in his plan of salvation which was made visible in Christ

for us. In consequence, the whole liturgical dynamic proclaims that we the church (1) believe

that God has acted in our history through the salvation God brought/brings, (2) we confesses

publicly that belief, (3) we offer thanks for what it is we are recalling, and (4) we enter into the

dynamic of anamnesis and thanksgiving, meaning we remember and give thanks for what God

has done and is doing for us and among us and at the same time allow God’s grace to transform

us. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC) already

expresses this: “For the liturgy, "through which the work of our redemption is accomplished,"

most of all in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, is the outstanding means whereby the faithful

may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of

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the true Church” (SC 1). The Church believes that in the liturgy God is active in us individually

and communally: we are build up into a holy temple of God a dwelling place for God in the

Spirit to make us grow and to express that maturity of our Christian life in the world (See SC 2).

Sacrosanctum Concilum teaches that liturgy is as an exercise of the priestly office of

Jesus Christ and that our sanctification is signified by signs perceptible to the senses, and is

effected in a way which corresponds with each of these signs. Because of this, every liturgical

celebration is both an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church (cf. SC 7).

However, the Church also recognizes that the sacred liturgy does not exhaust the entire

activity of the Church because faith and conversion are supposed as a pre-condition for a full

participation in it (Rom. 10:14-15) (cf. SC 9). Thus, liturgical actions are not magical

performances but signs of the realities that they signify that relate to our here and now and that

require a conscious and active actualization.

Liturgy functions as an inclusion of Christian life, in the sense that it is both summit and

font of the entire activity of the Church (cf. SC 10). This already points towards a social

commitment in order to manifest better what the church is, the faithful are called not only to

celebrate in the ritual liturgy the sacred mysteries but also to make them visible with their lives

in the ordinary activities directed towards the common good, which in religious language is

called the sanctification of the world: this sanctification is “to which all other activities of the

Church are directed as toward their end, is achieved in the most efficacious possible way” (SC

10)

The church believes in the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit that acts upon us through

sacramental signs (LG 50). We can see this in two sacraments Baptism and Eucharist.

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 In the baptism, for instance, people participate, literally immersed or “plunged into the

paschal mystery of Christ: they die with Him, are buried with Him, and rise with Him (Rom. 6:4;

Eph. 2:6; Col. 3:1; 2 Tim. 2:11); they receive the spirit of adoption as sons "in which we cry:

Abba, Father" ( Rom. 8 :15), and thus become true adorers whom the Father seeks (John 4:23)”

(cf. SC 6). Baptism also is the door that gives access to a fully, conscious, and active

participation of the faithful in the liturgical life of the church as “a chosen race, a royal

priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people (1 Pet. 2:9; cf. 2:4-5)” (cf. SC 14)

Eucharist also clearly shows God’s action in the life of the world through liturgy. The

agapeic love that God has for us, as the scripture says “God is love, and he who abides in love,

abides in God and God in Him,” (1 John 4:16) and that God constantly pour into our hearts

through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (Rom 5:5), that love is designed to grow and

to be expresses increasingly by people’s action with the help of God’s grace. For the Church, the

example of this agapeic live is Jesus the Christ, who, “manifested His charity by laying down His

life for us, so too no one has greater love than he who lays down his life for Christ and His

brothers (1 Jn. 3:16; Jn. 15:13). The same Christ who now celebrates with us and offers his life

again for us in the Eucharist clearly inspire, models and impulses to the faithful to express this

agapeic love because Eucharist and an eucharistic spirituality is by its very nature an example of

self-abnegation, lively fraternal service and the constant exercise of all the virtues. Eucharist also

shows that charity, as Lumen Gentium says “as the bond of perfection and the fullness of the

law, rules over all the means of attaining holiness and gives life to these same means. It is charity

which guides us to our final end. It is the love of God and the love of one's neighbor which

points out the true disciple of Christ” (LG 42). Indeed, it is the aim of liturgy to move the

faithful, filled with the paschal sacraments, to be one in holiness so that they may hold fast in

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their lives to what they have grasped by their faith. In this way, the renewal in the Eucharist of

the covenant between the Lord and the people draws the faithful into the compelling love of

Christ and sets them on fire (cf. SC 10).

Finally, liturgy also is called to show both God’s and human’s action in the world in a

transformative way. Liturgy clearly has a social dimension and responsibility towards which the

church (we) must always look and work in order to make evident God’s action in the world. The

gospel and the celebration of the liberation brought to us in Christ has to transform the social

structures of sin into structures where the salvific presence of God is manifested: “The Gospel of

Christ constantly renews the life and culture of fallen man, it combats and removes the errors and

evils resulting from the permanent allurement of sin. It never eases to purify and elevate the

morality of peoples. By riches coming from above, it makes fruitful, as it were from within, the

spiritual qualities and traditions of every people of every age. It strengthens, perfects and restores

them in Christ. Thus the Church, in the very fulfillment of her own function, stimulates and

advances human and civic culture; by her action, also by her liturgy, she leads them toward

interior liberty (cf. GS 58). Liturgy then has to look at the integral liberation of everything that

impedes human beings from reaching the original image and likeness of God already present in

them.