Body and Soul

The Harmony in Liturgy

Marina D. Barnes

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observes nineteenth-century Americans’ obsession with reducing the world to bare facts so as to strip away any seemingly superfluous wrappings that hamper the comprehension of truth. He argues that this tendency leads Americans to reject forms in an effort to tear asunder the “veils placed between them and truth.” 1 The rejection of traditional liturgy in many modern American churches is symptomatic of the disdain for forms that Tocqueville noted. By shunning liturgy, these American Christians diminish the symbolism of worship and deny the deeply ceremonial nature of human beings as embodied souls. Rather than veiling the truth, liturgy brings the physical and the spiritual—the outward and the inward—back into harmony, using the rich physicality of this world to point us to the next.

According to Tocqueville, the rejection of forms is rooted in Americans’ philosophic method. Perhaps unconsciously influenced by Descartes’ extreme rationalism, Americans view human reason as the “most visible and closest source of truth.” 2 As Tocqueville writes, Americans “like to see the object that occupies them very clearly; so they take off its wrapping as far as they can; they put to the side all that separates them from it and remove all that hides it from their

1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 404. 2. Ibid.

regard in order to see it more closely and in broad daylight.” 3 Thus, Americans tend to scorn symbols as “puerile artifices that are used to veil or adorn for their eyes truths it would be more natural to show them altogether naked and in broad daylight.” 4 The frenzied restlessness that Tocqueville notices in American society understandably results in a devaluing of ceremony and structure: “the sight of ceremonies leaves them cold, and they are naturally brought to attach only a secondary importance to the details of worship.” 5 Overall, Tocqueville concludes that Americans feel “an instinctive disdain” for forms, which “excite their scorn and often their hatred.” 6

Although Tocqueville primarily aims to offer a description of Americans’ treatment of forms, he briefly expresses his disapproval of the American perspective. Given his Catholic faith, Tocqueville’s disagreement is unsurprising. He states that he “believe[s] firmly in the necessity of forms,” explaining that “they fix the human mind in the contemplation of abstract truths, and by aiding it to grasp them forcefully, they make it embrace them ardently.” 7 Tocqueville goes on to nuance this affirmation of forms in a somewhat unexpected fashion. Because of the growing emphasis on equality in America, Tocqueville argues that forms should be restricted, retaining “only what is absolutely necessary for the perpetuation of the dogma itself, which is the substance of religions, whereas worship is only the form.” 8 While this may simply be a pragmatic acceptance of the minimization of tradition in order to preserve Christianity in America, it is nonetheless surprising to hear a Catholic portray worship as distinct from the substance of religion. This peculiar comment aside, Tocqueville places great value on forms, arguing that we “must have an enlightened and reflective worship of them” and that “[s]everal of the greatest interests of humanity are linked to them.” 9

A cursory examination of Christianity in modern America affirms Tocqueville’s observations on the rejection of forms. Many evangelical churches have eschewed traditional liturgy in favor of “personalized” expressions of prayer and worship. Even within historically high churches, some parishes have gradually shifted away from the traditional liturgical structure in an attempt to appear more modern and to attract young people. For example, on April 25th, 2018, Grace Cathedral—a breathtakingly beautiful Episcopal church in San Francis

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Tocqueville, 404. Ibid., 421. Ibid. Ibid., 669. Ibid., 421. Ibid., 422. Ibid., 669.

co, California—held a “Beyoncè Mass,” with music and a message inspired by the singer. 10 Of course, this example is extreme. However, many other churches choose to trade tradition for relevance in smaller ways. A more typical example could be found in St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church of Purcellville. Every Sunday at 5pm, the parish holds a “Teen Mass,” replacing the traditional hymns with contemporary music and toning down the formality of the “old school” traditional mass. 11

Dilution and rejection of liturgy occurs for other reasons beyond an attempt at relevance. In Evangelical is Not Enough, eventual Roman Catholic convert Thomas Howard portrays the rejection of liturgy in evangelical circles as an elevation of the spiritual at the expense of the physical:

Ah, but those things are of the earth, says the spiritual man. We must set our affections on things above, not on things on the earth. Here we have no continuing city. The world passeth away and the lust thereof. This will all be folded up as a garment. Since this is so, we must tailor our worship and piety accordingly. Textures and colors and smells have no place here. The locale of true spirituality is in the heart. 12

The 21st century stripping away of traditional liturgy in search of “true spirituality” parallels the desire of nineteenth-century Americans to remove the wrappings and unveil the truth that Tocqueville observes. This desire is understandable—admirable, even. Indeed, it reflects a determination to draw nearer to the Truth and remove any unnecessary barriers between man and God. However, well-intentioned though such a desire may be, the pursuit of this end through the rejection of liturgy misunderstands the relationship between the physical and the spiritual and the way in which man was designed to relate to God.

We are embodied souls, occupying a physical world. Every moment of our existence is imbued with a rich physicality. As Howard writes, “None of us is a bare intellect. Our eyes see colors; our nose smell fragrances; our fingers feel textures.” 13 Corrupted though it would become, physicality was no accident of the Fall. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were not disembodied ghosts, dwelling with God in a distinctly spiritual plane. Rather, in Eden, “the web of

10. Malcolm Clemens Young., “About the Beyoncè Mass,” Grace Cathedral, April 20, 2018, https://www.gracecathedral.org/about-the-beyonce-mass/ (accessed April 26, 2018). 11. “Saint Francis de Sales Catholic Church,”, http://www.saintfrancisparish.org/(accessed April 26, 2018). 12. Thomas Howard, Evangelical is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), 25. 13. Ibid., 24.

Creation was seamless.” 14 All of creation existed in harmony, “not in a blur or a confusion, but a continuum, like a musical scale or the spectrum of colors.” 15 There was no rift on any level—man and God, man and woman, man and creature—all lived in perfect peace. In this perfectly harmonious existence, there was no need for liturgy. There was, in fact, “nothing but liturgy.” 16 Thomas Howard explains this purely liturgical state:

We needed no liturgy there—no setting aside of a special hour when we might turn away from the jumble of our activities and compose ourselves and offer to God the sacrifice of praise…‘The work of the people,’ which is what the word liturgy means, included our eating and drinking and resting and loving as well as our work, which we experienced not as drudgery but as freedom since we were perfectly suited to it and perfectly empowered to carry it out…we lived in the fullness of ceaseless adoration to God. Our activity was our oblation. Simply being human—having been made in the image of God—constituted our dignity. 17

In Eden, there was no need to draw near to God through any symbol or ceremony; man simply dwelt with God in perfect peace.

The Fall shattered this peace. The “sacred seamlessness in which every fiber of Creation was knit together in a pattern that blazoned the glory of God” was ripped apart, leaving us with “a torn garment.” 18 With the Fall, sin, strife, and division entered man’s world. Both our physical bodies and our souls are now marred, stained by sin. As Howard writes, “Our bodies, the very statuary of God so to speak, are now torn from our spirits in the ultimate division called death, which yields in the place of the noble creature called man two pitiable horrors, a corpse and a ghost.” 19 Man’s life is now haunted by conflict: man is pitted against man; man is pitted against God; indeed, man is pitted against his very own self. The entire created order trembles from the after-shock: “When the physical is divided from the spiritual, there results the cacophony that brays and clashes in the abyss outside the harmony of the divine order. Division. Hell.” 20

But for the goodness of God, the story would end here. However, the Incarnation offers redemption, knitting back together the created order and wed

14. Howard, 29. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 30. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 31. 20. Ibid.

ding the spiritual and physical once again. Christ is the embodiment of perfect wholeness—the same embodied wholeness to which we are called. Our worship is intended to be deeply incarnational, allowing us to participate in His redemption and restoration. We are not called to worship in a disembodied realm, separate from our humanity. For Christ “did not come to thin out human life; He came to set it free.” 21 Howard describes this vision of incarnational worship:

The worship of God, surely, should be the place where men, angels, and devils may see human flesh once more set free into all that it was created to be…We are creatures who are made to bow, not just spiritually (angels can do that) but with kneebones and neck muscles. We are creatures who cry out to surge in great procession, ‘ad altare Dei,’ not just in our hearts (disembodied spirits can do that) but with our feet, singing great hymns with our tongues, our nostrils full of the smoke of incense. 22

Spiritual connection with God does not require detachment from the physical world. Our worship is made rich by the textures of physical life. Liturgy does not veil our love for God in shadows; it clothes it with flesh.

The physical forms of worship—the symbols, ceremonies, and rituals— are deeply imbued with meaning. The need for physicality and ceremony is not unique to man’s relationship with God. In marriage, declarations of love are symbolized with a ring, celebrated with a ceremony, and sealed with the sexual act. Man is a ceremonial creature. When significant events occur, “we are not content merely to pass through them; we must also do something about them. This seems to be the mark of our humanness, and the thing which we do about these experiences is to ceremonialize them.” 23 Ceremonies marking human occurrences, such as birth, marriage, and death, are the continuation of a timeless tradition. In the same way, traditional liturgy connects Christians throughout the ages. The repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, for example, has a deeper meaning beyond the plain meaning of the text; when we recite it, we tap into a rich heritage that traces back to the prayer’s initial utterance by Christ Himself.

Though implicitly addressed throughout, the objection of the nineteenth-century Americans (as relayed by Tocqueville) that forms obscure truth merits a more direct response. Rather than obscuring truth, forms help man to grasp it more fully. As Howard explains,

21. Howard, 36. 22. Ibid., 37. 23. Ibid., 97.

Ceremony assists us to cope with the otherwise unmanageable. Far from erecting a barrier between us and the truth, it ushers us closer in to the truth. It dramatizes the truth for us. Ceremony does what words alone can never do. It carries us beyond the merely explicit, the expository, the verbal, the propositional, the cerebral, to the center where the Dance goes on. 24

Through participation in the sacraments, man can directly encounter the Truth both physically and spiritually. Whether in the silence of a dimly lit chapel or the grandeur of a sweeping chorus, the engagement of our senses inspires us with a proper sense of reverence and awe, teaching us the proper response to the Truth.

Others might object that, even if forms can point us to the Truth, they are too rigid and hamper our ability to worship freely. However, forms, as well as the order and structure they provide, are not opposed to a spirit of freedom. Howard addresses this objection:

Those who kept insisting that ‘the liberty of the Spirit’ stood over against such forms were forgetting the architecture of the universe. The liberating Spirit who brooded over chaos brought an exact, elegant, and mathematical order out of that chaos, and it was good. It was beautiful and free and ample…Clearly, to pit the liberty of the Spirit against set forms is to insist on a false distinction. 25

Freedom and order are not mutually exclusive. To the contrary, they are designed to go hand-in-hand. Indeed, true liberty is only possible when operating within an established order. Such a principle applies to religious practice as much as the functioning of society. We certainly can—and should—approach God individually in both prayer and praise. The form of liturgy in no way hampers our ability to do so; rather, it roots us in tradition and reminds us to maintain a proper reverence in attitude when approaching God.

Another significant objection to liturgy and forms in worship is that individuals can conform externally while internally rebelling. In this way, the critic would argue, liturgy becomes an empty repetition devoid of meaning, as the participant’s heart remains detached. This argument has merit. Indeed, only God can truly know the depths of a man’s heart. However, the phenomenon of inward rebellion paired with outward participation is not unique to liturgical worship. Howard writes: “Exalted feelings by no means guarantee that real worship is going on in the heart. Chances to fool oneself lie all about. The minute we see

24. Howard, 98. 25. Ibid., 47.

this, we also realize that these chances are as likely in a simple meeting hall or at a kitchen table as they are at the Chartres.” 26 Insincerity can be present in all forms of worship, liturgical or otherwise.

Sincerity in the hearts of worshippers cannot be manufactured. However, by embracing our physicality, liturgy is able to uniquely direct our emotions to God, helping us to align our emotions with the Truth. Howard directly addresses the prior objection:

The question is not merely one of outward gestures and postures that express something interior. It works the other way around as well. The outward posture actually helps to create the inner attitude…Baron von Hügel remarked that he kissed his son because he loved him but that he also kissed his son in order that he might love him. The act dragooned his somewhat untrustworthy and wayward feelings and helped to bundle them along toward their true object. 27

We cannot control our emotions merely through an act of the will. Nevertheless, we can choose to participate in the liturgy in spite of a disconnect in our emotions. God honors our desire to honor Him, even when our fallen emotions are not properly aligned. Choosing to overcome our initial emotions and act rightly helps to shape our inner attitudes as well.

A final objection—and arguably the most important objection to address— is that traditional liturgy actually separates man from God by encouraging idolatry. Indeed, the beauty of the liturgy can be a distraction if not approached from the proper perspective. It is certainly possible to cling onto the forms too tightly, valuing symbols and ceremonies for the aesthetic they create rather than the Truth they represent. However, this is not a fault of the liturgy itself. It is man’s disordering of loves that causes this elevation of the form of worship over the object of worship. Sinful man can abuse or misuse liturgy—but when approached properly, liturgy points us towards God.

The observations that Alexis de Tocqueville made about nineteenth-century Americans’ disdain for forms appear to be accurate today as well. Churches across America—both inside and outside of the broader evangelical movement— continue to reject liturgical worship, instead crafting their services to appeal to a more modern audience. However, to excise the symbols, ceremonies, and rituals from worship is to, in the words of Thomas Howard, “suggest that the gospel beckons us away from our humanity into a disembodied realm…[and] to turn the

26. Howard, 27-28. 27. Ibid., 43-44.

Incarnation into a mere doctrine.” 28 Liturgy is no more a wrapping for the Truth than our bodies are mere wrappings for our souls. The rejection of traditional liturgy brings men no closer to the Truth. The liturgy allows us to step into divine redemption by participating in the reunification of the physical and the spiritual that will be made perfect in the new heavens and new earth. It is truly a foretaste of glory divine.

28. Howard, 36.

Bibliogra phy

Howard, Thomas. Evangelical is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984.

“Saint Francis de Sales Catholic Church.” http://www.saintfrancisparish. org/ (accessed April 26, 2018).

Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. Translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Young, Malcolm Clemens. “About the Beyoncè Mass.” Grace Cathedral. April 20, 2018. https://www.gracecathedral.org/about-the-beyonce-mass/ (accessed April 26, 2018).