The Benedict (XVI) Option
Liturgy and the Church in the teaching of Pope Benedict
Elected to the See of Peter in 2005, Joseph Ratzinger chose a name – Benedict – which conveys a deep consciousness of standing at the end of an age. The name refers in the first place to the sunset of the Roman Empire, when Saint Benedict of Nursia laid the foundations of Christian Europe through his monastic rule. It refers also to the end of the modern project of salvation through reason alone, which was mortally wounded by the tragedy of World War I in the time of Pope Benedict XV. The resonance of this name is especially strong within American Christianity, thanks to the enormous success of Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option” in framing public discourse about the future of the institutional church.
In the midst of the resulting debates over what it means to draw on the spirit of Benedict, surprisingly little attention has been given to the teaching of Pope Benedict on this very question. Even among intellectuals, few Catholics are aware of the two lines from the Rule of Saint Benedict that run through the Pope’s magisterium from the beginning to the end of his pontificate. His insistence on these two points shows that he sees them as the real core of Saint Benedict’s work – and thus essential to the efficacy of any true “Benedict Option” of the 21st century. In this essay, I will briefly explain how the Pope develops the rich implications packed into these dense Latin phrases: Operi Dei nihil praeponatur and Mens concordet voci.
The first principle, that “nothing should be put before the work of God,” is described by the Pope as “the supreme rule” of the Second Vatican Council.1 “Work of God” is Saint Benedict’s name for the system of public worship in the Church, comprised of the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours. At the end of his series of Wednesday catecheses on prayer, Pope Benedict explains what it means for the liturgy to be God’s work:
If we ask ourselves who saves the world and man, the only answer is: Jesus of Nazareth, Lord and Christ, the Crucified and Risen One. And where does the Mystery of the death and Resurrection of Christ that brings salvation become real for us, for me, today? The answer is: in Christ’s action through the Church, in the liturgy, and, especially, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, which makes present the sacrificial offering of the Son of God who has redeemed us2.
The logic is simple and profound. The pre-eminent work of God, which gives meaning to the whole project of the creation of the universe, is the death and resurrection of Jesus. And the liturgy – whose heart is the Eucharist – is this very work, made present here and now so that I can participate in it. In his final address as Pope to the clergy of Rome, Benedict explains that the Second Vatican Council wanted the liturgy to shine forth more clearly as the work of God, by making the centrality of Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection more visible.3 One of the many consequences of this desire in the liturgical reform is the restoration of Sunday as the primordial feast of the Resurrection, with priority over all other liturgical commemorations that might happen to fall on this day of the week. The priority of the Sunday liturgical texts is a concrete expression of contact with the Resurrection as the vital foundation of Christian life for all of the faithful. For the Christian, Sunday should truly be the “first day of the week,” rather than the “weekend,” the source from which all the other activities of the week flow.4 Operi Dei nihil praeponatur thus provides the basis for a solid unity of life: God comes first, and my whole identity is radically reconfigured by participation in His work of salvation. It is this new, supernatural principle of vitality that renews the Church and civilization in every age.
Truly putting the liturgy first – not just as an obligation, but as the first principle of life – is a challenging ideal. This is where the second point from the Rule comes into play: “let the mind agree with the voice.” Saying the words of the liturgy sincerely, in the first person, as a true prayer. In his catechesis on prayer, the Pope starts from this teaching of the saint to sketch the path towards a deeper participation in the work of God: “God has given us the word and the sacred liturgy offers us words; we must enter into the words, into their meaning and receive them within us, we must attune ourselves to these words; in this way we become children of God, we become like God.”5 This is a difficult task in its own right, but at least it is something clear and definite. And the liturgical text itself gives us a specific instruction on how to start, in the dialogue before the preface of the Eucharistic Prayer:
‘Sursum corda,’ let us lift up our hearts above the confusion of our apprehensions, our desires, our narrowness, our distraction. Our hearts, our innermost selves, must open in docility to the word of God and must be recollected in the Church’s prayer, to receive her guidance to God from the very words that we hear and say.6
This recollected inner disposition is the first prerequisite for entering into the text, and it opens up a vast horizon of concrete areas for growth through silent adoration, lectio divina, and meditation on the liturgical prayers.
Even with this disposition, however, the words themselves remain formidable. Translating them into the vernacular does not automatically make them accessible.7 The texts of Scripture and of the liturgy form a thick web of associations and references that cannot be penetrated without a guide – as the Ethiopian eunuch acknowledged at the start of his conversation with Philip in the Acts of the Apostles.8 But the need for explanation is also an opportunity: the whole work of evangelization and catechesis can be organized around the single goal of enabling the faithful to say “Amen” sincerely during the celebration of the sacraments.9 Like the unity of life mentioned above, this unification of the work of formation derives from the centrality of Jesus’ definitive Work. By penetrating more deeply into the meaning of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, and allowing the liturgy to constantly shed new light on the various aspects of the mystery, we are gradually “transformed by the renewal of [our] mind,” able to grasp “what is the will of God, what is holy and pleasing and perfect”10.
Pope Benedict’s teaching on these two phrases from Benedict’s Rule thus lays out a comprehensive vision for the renewal of Christian life in the post-modern age. Just as in the days of the original Benedict, renewal comes from God, and it starts by putting God first. The liturgy is still the work of God, just as it was then – specifically, the work of Christ on the Cross, made present so that we can participate in it. Putting God first means putting the liturgy first, recognizing it as the most important among all our activities, and inserting the whole of life into its logic. This happens concretely for each person when he enters into the meaning of the prayers of the Church, to the point where he can sincerely pronounce them as his own. This is a demanding program, requiring great humility and courage, since the sense of the liturgy contradicts many of our habitual ways of thinking, and requires letting go of the attempt to build our own world of comfort and security.
But it is also a realistic program, because it flows from the permanent center of the Church’s life. In every century and in every part of the Church there have been Christians who truly live from the liturgy, conforming their whole way of thinking and acting to what they celebrate in the Mass. The most dynamic movements and institutions in the Church of our own time are precisely those that are rooted in this ideal. Even in parts of the Church where this vision is not widely known or taught, the Eucharist is still celebrated, and the foundation is therefore already laid. Pope Benedict’s liturgical magisterium provides a powerful means for channeling the best energies of the faithful and the pastors of the Church, embracing every initiative that is genuinely Christian, including but not limited to those that invoke the name of the Patron of Europe. The celebration of the Eucharist provides the necessary focal point for defending against dispersion, subjectivism and fanaticism, integrating all the apostolic activity of the baptized into one work of God.
Ibid.
Ibid.
See question on “integrated pastoral care” in Pope Benedict XVI, Meeting with Priests of the Diocese of Albano, 31 August 2006.