The logic of the Cross, the logic of the Liturgy 

My song is love unknown,
my Savior’s love to me,
love to the loveless shown
that they might lovely be.
Oh, who am I,
that for my sake
my Lord should take
frail flesh and die?
–”My Song is Love Unknown”, by Samuel Crossman, 1664

Ave verum corpus, natum
de Maria Virgine,
vere passum, immolatum
in cruce pro homine
cuius latus perforatum
fluxit aqua et sanguine
esto nobis prægustatum
in mortis examine.
–Ave Verum Corpus, Eucharistic chant attributed to Pope Innocent III

A few weeks ago, during a Eucharistic holy hour at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, where I serve, I had the blessing of hearing an excellent homily on the “logic of the Cross.” The homily was preached by Fr. Cyril Whitaker, S.J., a seminary spiritual director. In this article, I would like to offer a few thoughts about how this logic applies to the Sacred Liturgy, and more specifically to our Eucharistic worship.

I have begun with two sacred music texts that are favorites of mine. They both express with the utmost eloquence the power of the Passion of the Lord, from which all graces flow. They also express the response of Sacred Worship Christ’s Paschal Mystery demands and deserves.

It is important for us to stir up such sentiments in our hearts as we draw closer to the celebration of the Paschal Mystery during the Sacred Triduum and Easter. The approach of our highest holy days and most solemn liturgies calls forth from us our most ardent worship. And by “ardent” we should understand not mere emotional enthusiasm, but the kind of sincerity of heart of which St. Thomas writes.

The lifting up of our hearts to which the Sacred Liturgy calls us requires hearts filled with understanding, hearts aligned with God’s will and free from the corrupting influence of sin, and hearts set on our heavenly homeland. Hearts like the Sacred Heart of Jesus, out of which flowed the Blood and water of which we sing in the Ave Verum Corpus.

In his homily, Father Whitaker articulated three dimensions of the logic of the Cross: alterity (or “other-centeredness”), humility, and charity. These same virtues apply to the logic of the Sacred Liturgy, the λογικὴν λατρεία, or “spiritual worship,” to which St. Paul refers in Romans 12:1.

Alterity: Considering the “otherness” of our worship brings us immediately to the heart of the matter. On its own, a person’s self-offering to God might represent considerable personal piety. But our sacrificial worship is only redemptive because we offer ourselves in union with the Sacrifice of the Son of God, Who first offered His own life on the altar of the Cross.

He Who is most fundamentally “other” than us has become one of us, and in our humanity has offered Himself as the one pleasing Sacrifice to His heavenly Father. To offer our bodies in logike latreia, in true worship, is only possible because Christ has offered His Body, and because that one Sacrifice is sacramentally represented each time we celebrate Mass.

The very idea of worship always turns us outward and upward, towards the God Who created us, sustains us, and calls us to Himself. But our God is also our Great High Priest, the altar, and the Sacrifice offered and received–the Sacrifice that saves us. And in drawing us to Himself, He draws us to the “others” with whom we share communion in the Mystical Body of Christ, those physically present and those with whom we are bound in the communion of saints. And God sends us to the “others” outside of this communion, to those with whom we must share the Good News of His saving love.

The Sacred Liturgy, of all of our acts in this world, is the last to welcome a “me first” attitude.

Humility: In The Spirit of the Liturgy, Romano Guardini writes, “The requirements of the liturgy can be summed up in one word, humility. Humility by renunciation; that is to say, by the abdication of self-rule and self-sufficiency. And humility by positive action; that is to say, by the acceptance of the spiritual principles which the liturgy offers and which far transcend the little world of individual spiritual existence.”

How do we begin the Holy Sacrifice? By admitting we are sinners and begging for mercy. “Kyrie eleison.”

Of what does our immediate preparation for Holy Communion consist? “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.” “Domine, non sum dignus.”

Yet our humility in the Liturgy is about more than knowing we are sinners and stand in desperate need of God’s mercy. We worship to glorify God and to save souls, including but not limited to our own. And we worship in the manner, not of our own choosing, but that approved by God, in and through His Church and her divine authority.

Here I am not entering into debates about liturgical forms or history. Rather, our purpose here is to consider a truth that must inform all holy discussion of such matters, and, much more importantly, inform the attitude of our hearts as we go up to the altar of God.

Again, Guardini writes:

“The primary and exclusive aim of the liturgy is not the expression of the individual’s reverence and worship for God. It is not even concerned with the awakening, formation, and sanctification of the individual soul as such. Nor does the onus of liturgical action and prayer rest with the individual. It does not even rest with the collective groups, composed of numerous individuals, who periodically achieve a limited and intermittent unity in their capacity as the congregation of a church. The liturgical entity consists rather of the united body of the faithful as such– the Church–a body which infinitely outnumbers the mere congregation. The liturgy is the Church’s public and lawful act of worship, and it is performed and conducted by the officials whom the Church herself has designated for the post–her priests. In the liturgy God is to be honored by the body of the faithful, and the latter is in its turn to derive sanctification from this act of worship.”

Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, who as Archbishop of Warsaw witnessed and suffered so heroically under the Communist regime in Poland, wrote during his imprisonment, “How very unworthy I feel I am, of this grace of the altar, which I used to approach so boldly.” That is liturgical humility.

Charity: The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a gift given out of Christ’s love for His disciples. As St. Thomas teaches so clearly, the Mass makes present here and now the love than which there is none greater: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13).”

The Eucharist is the Real Presence of the God Who is love (1 John 4:8). It binds us together with Christ and each other in the communion of Christ’s charity. And this union with Christ, as St. Augustine and others teach, both calls and equips us to perform the works of charity. “The love of Christ impels us” (2 Corinthians 5:14). We read from St. Leo the Great on Tuesday in the Office of Readings, “If (the faithful) would increase their capacity to receive so great a guest (as God, dwelling within), they should practice greater generosity in doing good, with persevering charity.”

Pope Benedict XVI wrote a 2007 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist entitled Sacramentum Caritatis, the Sacrament of Charity. He writes, “In the sacrament of the Eucharist, Jesus shows us in particular the truth about the love which is the very essence of God. It is this evangelical truth which challenges each of us and our whole being.”

Here and elsewhere, Pope Benedict considered the truth of sacred worship, logike latreia. It is “reasonable” worship, not in the way of sterile, absolute rationalism. Rather, it is reasonable because it is suffused with the wisdom of the Cross.

The Sacred Liturgy, especially the Mass, is true, spiritual worship precisely because it originates in the greatest act–the Passion of Christ–of the greatest virtue–charity, it binds us in the greatest union and equips us to become like Him Who is not merely the greatest being, but Who in fact is being itself. And Who is love. And Who in our Eucharistic worship offers His love to us and through us to the whole world.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul
What wondrous love is this, O my soul
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb, I will sing, I will sing
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing
To God and to the Lamb, who is the great I Am
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

–What Wondrous Love Is This (c. 1811, attributed variously to an anonymous author and to the Methodist pastor Alexander Means)