Liturgy of the body

With the popularity these days of a “theology of the body,” I am spurred to think of a “liturgy of the body.” With my body, I thee worship, Lord.

I venture the opinion that when we say “liturgical” the first things to reach our minds are texts, music, and Sunday morning pews.  Thus when we want to do liturgy better, which is a laudable goal, we improve the texts, rewrite the music, and wax the pews. But when we do our double-take, we remember that liturgy includes the daily Hours, the Church Year (which is this year’s Notre Dame Center for Liturgy conference topic), sacraments and sacramentals, and, I hasten to add, some liturgical disciplines.

Christ shared his three offices with the Church (prophet, priest, king), and when she exercises them it is for our redemption. The Church imposes a liturgical fast, and I must not think that the Church is being more truly herself when teaching and sanctifying than when disciplining.

Everyone who has sat through the opening lectures on ritual studies in a liturgical program knows that they ought to overcome the divide between spirit and matter, soul and body. Christ saves the whole person, and liturgy should involve the whole person. Well, the season is soon upon us when we can sharpen our liturgy of the body: the Lenten fast looms.  It will be an opportunity for liturgical reform to make our fasting a more full, active and conscious participation in Christ’s retreat to the desert.

As a word of encouragement, I offer a favorite paragraph from John Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent, rung 14.

To fast is to do violence to nature. It is to do away with whatever pleases the palate. Fasting ends lust, roots out bad thoughts, frees one from evil dreams. Fasting makes for purity of prayer, an enlightened soul, a watchful mind, a deliverance from blindness. Fasting is the door of compunction, humble sighing, joyful contrition, and end to chatter, an occasion for silence, a custodian of obedience, a lightening of sleep, health of the body, an agent of dispassion, a remission of sins, the gate, indeed, the delight of Paradise.

And if you tire of reflecting on the spirit-body question, you can move on to a second mystery about works and grace. Gregory Palamas says in his Homilies, “We know that fasting, psalmody and prayer by themselves cannot save us, but carrying them out before God can.”