Thoughts on Music, Revelation, and Liturgy: Part One

“Embodied Listening” is the theme of the January 2016 issue of Liturgy. The impetus for this focus, as determined by The Liturgical Conference board, was to celebrate the relevance of God’s Word for worship fifty years after the appearance of Dei Verbum.

Joncas’s essay reminds us that we “hear” God’s Word not only in words but also in music. Here he sets up the categories which will inform his conclusions about the revelatory power of music in worship.

In broadest terms, Western Christians up to the so-called Enlightenment took for granted that God had revealed Godself to humanity. Their major debates were about how that revelation occurred, who received it, and what form(s) it took. In addition to these issues, post-Enlightenment Westerners struggle with the very possibility of revelation, however it is understood. Fundamentally, they want to demonstrate that it is possible for limited human beings to encounter God. They want to know how God, the Radically Other, might address human beings in a way that respects their limited capacity, that provides a genuine message from the divine order of existence, and that allows them to recognize this address as precisely divine. 

 The theological tradition from which I come tends to divide revelation into two great categories: general and special or particular. “General” revelation is knowledge of God that a human being can achieve by use of reason. Traditionally, Roman Catholics have posited two areas in which general revelation takes place: reflecting on the world and reflecting on the human person. Reflection on our experience of movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty can lead us to some knowledge of God as origin and end of all that exists. Reflection on human beings’ longing for unconditional love, life, and happiness; openness to truth, goodness, and beauty; experience of freedom; recognition of the voice of conscience; and desires that cannot be fulfilled within this world-system can all lead us to some knowledge of a spiritual component to the human being, an immaterial soul that can only have its origin and resting-place in God. 

 “Special” or “particular” revelation consists of knowledge of God that a human being cannot achieve by reason, but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Traditionally, Roman Catholics have acknowledged “particular” revelation in states of altered consciousness in chosen individuals, such as prophets; in miracles; in the history of God’s interaction with the human race, especially in the covenantal history of the Jewish people and the life of the church; in the scriptures attesting to the faith experiences of individuals and groups, both in Judaism and in Christianity; and most fully in the life, deeds, death, and destiny of Jesus of Nazareth, proclaimed the Christ of God. 

 . . . Perhaps the most important question is how to correlate God’s revelation with human beings’ responses,that is, can a report of altered consciousness, a deed of power, a historical event, a scriptural text be experienced as revelatory without an act of faith? Theologians have suggested many responses to these questions and they continue to generate conversation among believers and unbelievers alike. 

In the next selection from Joncas’s essay (on February 19), he will turn to the ways in which music serves as revelation. Here is a foretaste:

I said above that one of the modes of general revelation is to come to some knowledge of God by means of reason. I think an examination of music. . . can give us information about the world and thus information about the world’s Creator.

Jan Michael Joncas, perhaps best known for his composition “On Eagles’ Wings,” is an associate professor in theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Jan Michael Joncas, “’Ring Out, Ye Crystal Spheres?’: Thoughts on Music Revelation, and Liturgy,” Liturgy 31, no. 1 (2016), 34-41.

What is the Nature of Liturgical Time?

The first issue of Liturgy for 2016 has as its theme for all of the articles what the Guest Editor, David Turnbloom named “Embodied Listening” – listening to God’s Word. The Liturgical Conference chose this theme because we felt the Church has arrived at a point when it is helpful to review the importance of the Vatican’s document, Dei Verbum. We ask what the liturgy does to enable God’s Word to be heard.

John Baldovin addresses this question with regard to how the liturgy evokes a sense of time. How does the liturgy make the future present? What follows here is from the section in his essay on liturgical time itself.

In his very influential book, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, the late Russian Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann deals with the relation between past and future in the celebration of the Eucharist in particular. He has this to say: “The event which is ‘actualized’ in the Eucharist is an event of the past when viewed within the categories of time, but by virtue of its eschatological, determining, completing, significance it is also an event which is taking place eternally.” [p. 57]
 Schmemann is highlighting here the traditional theme of the heavenly liturgy initiated in the Old Testament Book of Daniel and then employed in the Letter to the Hebrews and especially the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. The real liturgy is in a sense being celebrated in heaven and what we do on earth is brought into it.
 In his posthumously published book, The Eucharist, Schmemann employs the same idea of the eschatological heavenly liturgy to counter what he considers the Western preoccupation and obsession with the exact moment of consecration at the Eucharist. For him the fact that the liturgy transcends our normal experience of time obviates the necessity of pinpointing such moments. [pp.128-131] 

This idea is mirrored in the traditional Canon of the Roman Mass by the words: “[C]ommand that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son, may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.” [pp. 67-78]
 To confine this notion to the premodern three-story universe would be a mistake. The heaven to which Schmemann is referring is not a place but a dimension of reality. Perhaps it could be compared to the parallel worlds constructed by writers like C. S. Lewis in The Chronicles of Narnia or Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials, in which, as if through a veil, we get a glimpse of an alternative world. The use of the icon screen with its openings and multiple appearances (epiphanies) in the Byzantine Divine Liturgy lends itself to this idea. 

Thus the opposition between an eschatological and historical understanding of time divided by the “Constantinian Revolution” of the fourth century and supported by Gregory Dix in his classic Shape of the Liturgy needs to be discarded. Christian liturgy has always also been concerned with the “time of this world,” to use Schmemann’s vocabulary. The earliest celebration of a yearly Pascha—the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ—was celebrated on a specific calendar day, the fourteenth of Nisan according to Jewish reckoning. The annual anniversaries of the deaths of martyrs were kept carefully and observed with the celebration of the Eucharist at their graves. [See Thomas Talley in Worship 47 (1973)] On the other hand, even the addition to the liturgical calendar of a number of feasts like Christmas, Epiphany, and the Ascension never completely eclipsed the eschatological dimension of the liturgy. . .

John F. Baldovin, S.J., teaches at Boston College School of Theology & Ministry, Boston, Massachusetts.

John F. Baldovin, S.J., “The Future Present: The Liturgy, Time, and Revelation,” Liturgy 31, no. 1 (2016), 19-25.

Introduction to “Embodied Listening”

On November 18, 1965, Pope Paul VI promulgated the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, also known as Dei Verbum. This issue of Liturgy takes the fiftieth anniversary of Dei Verbum as an occasion to reflect on the relationship between liturgical worship and divine revelation.

In these pages, the reader will find essays that examine liturgical worship as a privileged location for experiencing divine revelation. Specifically, by highlighting the unity between the deeds of liturgy and the words of scripture, these essays will help the reader better attend to liturgical worship as an activity in which worshipers both embody and respond to God’s unending gift of divine friendship. . .

I argue that Dei Verbum offers Christians a way to understand liturgical worship as an act of embodied listening in response to God’s revelation. Through the lens of Dei Verbum’s theology, liturgical worship can be seen simultaneously as the visible speech of God and the communal listening of Christians. . . .

Karen B. Westerfield Tucker’s reflection on posture and gesture focuses on the intimate relationship between embodiment and scripture.

John F. Baldovin examines how the use of time in liturgical worship provides personal encounters with God’s past and future actions.

Teva Regule’s essay on iconography describes iconic encounters as moments in which Christians both see and are seen by God.

In his essay on liturgical music, Jan Michael Joncas emphasizes the fact that music can bear divine revelation into our hearts as a source of healing, education, fellowship, or confrontation.

Richard S. Vosko offers a meditation on how sacred space can be designed to foment a community’s encounter with God.

Finally, Matthew Sigler discusses the significance of how communities structure their liturgical worship. Specifically, Sigler highlights the risk that stems from too narrowly focusing on the sermon. . . .

The essays in this issue are meant to help the reader discover the various liturgical media through which they might experience the verbosity of God. It is easy to take for granted the space, time, music, gesture, art, and even the structures of our worship. However, by intentionally engaging these visible words of Divine Revelation, we learn to liturgically listen to the word of God so that we might be transformed by the fellowship God offers to us. While these essays are meant to be a path toward liturgical listening, they cannot be a substitute for it. It is my hope that this issue of Liturgy will encourage readers to engage God’s verbosity with their own bodies by daring to encounter God in diverse liturgical worship. 

by David Turnbloom, Guest Editor, Liturgy 31, no. 1 (Spring 2016).