Earth’s Water and Baptismal Implications

Again, as with our posting on March 3, we take from Liturgy 31, no. 2 (2016) some of Peter McGrail’s essay on environmental issues related to Christian Initiation. McGrail’s essay deals with Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ on the environment. Here is his analysis of how water, jeopardized by environmental degradation, may be seen through the lens of the incarnation.

As soon as we draw on Pope Francis’ consideration of water, that element’s potential symbolic ambiguity becomes evident. His primary concern is access to fresh drinking water, which he underscores as “a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights. Our world has a grave social debt towards the poor who lack access to drinking water because they are denied the right to a life consistent to their unalienable dignity” (no. 30). The use and misuse of water serves as a potent reality that points up global inequality. . . 

 This reality of exclusion contrasts with the lavish exuberance with which the gift of water is celebrated in the Easter Vigil. For example, the fifth reading opens with the cry of invitation, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters” (Is 55:1, NRSV) and closes with the comparison of the efficaciousness of God’s life-giving word to the life-giving winter rain and snow (Is 55:10–11). Water is portrayed here as a freely given gift from the heavens that satisfies a thirsty humanity and brings fruitfulness to creation. So lavish, so fruitful is it that it serves as an image for God’s word, God’s very will. 

 In the light of Laudato Si’, we are invited to ask what it might mean to proclaim those words in a location of desertification or to hear them as a member of a community with little or no access to clean drinking water. The words may, indeed, express profound hope in such contexts, but perhaps they do so precisely because they also tie into anxieties, evoke painful memories, and reflect present realities. The ambiguities of a symbol soiled by human activity interact subversively with the liturgical proclamation of a scriptural passage such as this. And the tensions thus set up have the potential to generate dissonance on the lips of assemblies in a more affluent part of the world. . . Thus, one of the most joyous sections of the Easter Vigil can plunge us into a discomforting recognition of the meanings that our core symbol of baptism can hold in tension. 

 What, then, does this say to us of baptism itself? Surely there must be more going on here at the level of sign than just an immersion into a compromised symbol of pollution. . . . 

McGrail calls for a careful reading of the Pope’s concern for Earth’s gifts so that we appropriately locate the incarnation of Christ in the midst of both sacraments and creation. We benefit from knowing more deeply the key relationship of the paschal mystery to God-with-us in this finite world and its fulfillment eschatologically.

The renewal of humanity, and indeed the transformation of the whole of creation, is caught up in the dynamism of Christ’s own victory over death and the captivity of the material world to decay and destruction. Baptism is a plunging into Christ’s paschal mystery by which women and men “die with him, are buried with him, and rise with him” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 6). In celebrating baptism, therefore, we are indeed and necessarily acknowledging the extent to which the material world is caught up in systems of death, but are also proclaiming and celebrating union with Christ in his transforming death and resurrection.

Peter McGrail is a priest of the Liverpool Roman Catholic Archdiocese and is head of the Department of Theology, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at Liverpool Hope University, UK.

Peter McGrail, “Initiation and Ecology: Becoming a Christian in the Light of Laudato Si’,” Liturgy 31, no. 2 (2016), 55-62.

Sacraments and Ecology

Liturgy 31, no. 2 (2016) is devoted to issues involving Christian Initiation. Peter McGrail’s essay deals with Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ on the environment. Here is the introduction to McGrail’s analysis of the Pope’s focus on caring for Earth as it addresses liturgical matters.

Fifty years on from Vatican II, the lack of any sustained consideration of the environment in its various constitutions, decrees, and declarations is striking. For example, half of the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World was devoted to detailed consideration of “more urgent problems” – yet the environment was not ranked among them. (See http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html)
 

The Council Fathers were reflecting the preoccupations of their time. In the intervening half-century, global perspectives on the issue have changed; today environmental concerns form an arena for passionate political, economic, and scientific debate.
 

 Not surprisingly, therefore, Pope Francis’s second encyclical letter, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home” (http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html) has provoked strong and disparate responses. Many Catholics have received it as a timely challenge to review their own priorities and practices. From other quarters the complaint is heard that the Pope has overstepped his legitimate remit by pronouncing on highly disputed interpretations of economic science or by closing down debate as to what responsibility (if any) should be assigned to human beings in the processes of global warming. That the letter should have catalyzed such strong, and at times vehement, responses is hardly surprising; it is difficult to avoid the impression that Pope Francis sets out to be challenging.

 

While the challenge posed by Laudato Si’ to politicians, economists, and diocesan sustainability planners is pretty self-evident, the letter addresses wider audiences, including those responsible for catechumens. At first sight the letter provides food for thought to be explored during the catechumenate period; for example, chapters 4 (“Integral Ecology”) and 6 (“Ecological Education and Spirituality”) offer particularly rich possibilities for catechetical use along the journey of conversion. Laudato Si’, however, also implies (rather than directly raises) questions of a more mystagogical nature. In focusing our attention on humanity’s dependence upon “our Sister, Mother Earth” (no. 1) for the sustenance of life, the letter challenges us to recognize that we depend upon the same mother for the material symbols that we use in initiating men and women into the Christian life—the water, oil, bread, and wine that articulate the catechumenal process.
 

It is of the nature of symbols to combine—sometimes ambiguously—very different fields of meaning. A careful reading of the letter through a liturgical lens can prompt us to expand our awareness of the fields of meaning operative in the symbols of initiation to include the ecological. This, in turn, gives rise to questions. How, for example, can we presume to immerse the elect in the baptismal bath, anoint them with consecrated oil, or invite them to the table of the Eucharist, without recognizing that the natural signs we use can speak also of the poisoning of the natural world, of unequal access to healthy drinking water, and the social impact of consumption? Can we lead our neophytes forward from the Mysteries without having explored these ambiguities with them? Can we ignore sacramental ecology?

  

Peter McGrail is a priest of the Liverpool Roman Catholic Archdiocese and is head of the Department of Theology, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at Liverpool Hope University, UK.

Peter McGrail, “Initiation and Ecology: Becoming a Christian in the Light of Laudato Si’,” Liturgy 31, no. 2 (2016), 55-62.

Singing a neglected song

In any liturgical celebration, the congregation’s song is central to the effective proclamation of the gospel. For this reason, scriptural topics about which there are few congregational songs are nearly impossible to treat well in worship. This becomes obvious every time Jesus’ ministry of casting out demons is depicted in the Gospel lesson for the week, and also when scripture seeks to turn our mind to issues of God’s creation.

In the current issue of Liturgy, Tom Witt offers a survey of congregational songs from the global church to assist worship planners in their work of helping the people of God to celebrate and restore the goodness of the created world.

What seems to be a harmless omission of hymn texts honoring the earth is much more damaging than that. At least part of the function of music in our churches has been to actively sing ourselves off the earth, purposely seeking to escape this home for another. At best, this world-denying repertoire has been a diversion. At worst, it has been a drug numbing us to the importance of God’s work and our work alongside God and the rest of creation.

Is such an era now in the past? Each of the hymns mentioned above, and others like them, were not only adopted into the next Lutheran hymnal (Lutheran Book of Worship, 1978), they have been included into the most recent collection of Lutheran hymnody (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, 2006). Their presence in these recent collections indicates that either they are simply too beloved to be set aside (regardless of their theology) or that we have a long way to go before our congregations learn through music that our faith can be earth-affirming rather than earth-escaping.

Tom Witt (2012): Singing with the Earth and the Global Church, Liturgy, 27:2, 17-30

Tom Witt is a musician and worship leader based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is cofounder of the ensemble Bread for the Journey and leads liturgy workshops with a team from Living Liturgy.

An exciting proposal

The topic of the new issue of Liturgy is the connection between the church’s worship and the church’s proclamation of the essential goodness of the whole created order. This topic is approached in different ways by the five authors, but by far the most ambitious and potentially far-reaching treatment of the subject is taken by Lisa E. Dahill, in "New Creation: The Revised Common Lectionary and the Earth’s Paschal Life". In this article, Dahill invites readers to enter into a discussion about the possibility of updating the Revised Common Lectionary in order to attend more closely to ecological and environmental issues. This conversation has already begun among the members of the Nature & Ecology and the Liturgical Language seminars of the North American Academy of Liturgy and among the members of the Consultation on Common Texts. Now, readers of Liturgy are invited to add their voices.

Because the article’s information regarding methodology is essential to understanding the proposed revisions, your humble blogger will not quote them here. Instead, I leave you with Dahill’s closing questions:

Is the need for more explicit liturgical attention to ecological scriptures best met by bringing in texts not presently heard in the three-year lectionary? Or is working more intentionally with what is already present in the RCL and the Roman Lectionary ... preferable?

Do these proposed Lent and Easter C texts function well within the Lent and Easter seasons? That is, do these lessons work across the two seasons viewed as a whole, moving from Ash Wednesday toward Holy Week, and from Easter toward Ascension=Pentecost? What do these (or other) creation texts contribute, if at all, toward a fuller, communal encounter with the mystery of Christ crucified and risen than the presently appointed texts? Where, if at all, might these newly proposed texts distract from such encounter?

Do these texts work with their respective Psalms and Gospels? What effect do the conjunctions with the Revelation readings create?

How might the selection criteria named above, delineating which peri- copes ‘‘count’’ as creation texts, be modified and=or used to deepen an eco- logical focus in other aspects of worship (such as proclamation, musical selection, and the composition of new prayers)?

This article proposes a conversation, so I invite you to converse in the comments or to propose another venue. Where, and among whom, should this conversation take place?

Lisa E. Dahill (2012): New Creation: The Revised Common Lectionary and the Earth's Paschal Life, Liturgy, 27:2, 11.

Lisa E. Dahill is associate professor of worship and Christian spirituality at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.