Thoughts about the Feast of the Dedication of a Church: “It is not the same thing to pray in private, or to pray in the sacred sanctuary and to take part in the rites of Catholic Liturgy.”

Today at Mass for this Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica I was struck by the beauty of the orations and imagery.  First, there was the collect, which I mention elsewhere.  The first reading is from the Book of Revelation that has the line which, transposed in Gibson’s movie of the Passion at the moment in the Via Crucis the Lord meets His mother never fails to close my throat.  The The Gospel reading initially seems odd, but winds up being apt with a profound celebrant’s “of course!”

Turning for insights to Schuster, the late, great Blessed Ildefonso, liturgist, Benedictine and Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, I found rich veins of sacred ore.  I’ll share some.

Schuster (1890-1954) had a deep liturgical sensibility.  As a result he lamented the modernist trend in worship, architecture, matters liturgical.  The essence of modernism after all is the reduce the supernatural to the natural.   What Schuster would have said about the Novus Ordo… I can imagine.

Getting back to the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran, here is something of what Schuster had to say.  Edited.

My emphases and comments.  First, consider how some will say that is is enough to pray privately.  Hence…

It is not the same thing to pray in private, or to pray in the sacred sanctuary and to take part in the rites of Catholic Liturgy. By reason of its consecration the Church is the throne of God’s mercy, the place chosen by him, and where he chiefly condescends to work our salvation. [Similarly, isn’t it enough just to tell God you are sorry?  It’s a good start.  However, He gave us a sacrament precisely for this, which means that use of that sacrament is God’s own will, His desire for us, that we use it for forgiveness of sins.] Here we know he listens to our prayers ; here Jesus is pleased to receive from the assembly of believers that solemn, public, and united adoration which is due to him.  [This has to do with the virtue of Religion.  In Justice we give to human beings what is due.  But God, though a Person, is a qualitatively different Person.  Hence, there is a different virtue, like Justice, for God.]

[…]

As a lightning-conductor by attracting the lightning protects the inhabitants of a building, so the Church, through the efficacy of the consecration of a sanctuary, raises up in every place an altar of propitiation where the anger of God is placated, where his heart is ever present, and the power of his adorable name is felt. [Did you get that?  And altar of propitiation.   It isn’t mainly a table for the “meal” and of “welcoming” and that stuff.  It is for propitiatory sacrifice. The concept of propitiation was contentiously edited out of the orations of the Novus Ordo.] For this reason, our ancestors never failed to consecrate an altar, and to dedicate solemnly every church or oratory, no matter how small. We know that St Charles Borromeo consecrated fifteen churches within less than three weeks, and Pope Benedict XIII, who consecrated many hundreds of altars both in Rome and elsewhere, exhorted the bishops to consecrate at least all the parish churches in their dioceses.

At the present time, through an exaggerated desire to simplify everything, old altar stones are inserted into new altars, and modern buildings dedicated to the worship of God are often opened after having been merely blessed by a priest. [Let’s not even get into what they look like.] This seems to denote want of faith and of religious enthusiasm, and many do not realize that it is not altogether desirable that the same edifice should serve as a place of worship and a parish hall. All this is not in keeping with the spirit of the Church. It not only deprives the people of the special graces and efficacy attached to consecrated buildings and altars, but causes them to lose the sense of devotion due to the house of God.

The office for the consecration of a church is not only magnificent, but very instructive. [Remember how I rant that “liturgy is doctrine!”?  Look at this…] If, in our day, the populace ignores the sacredness of the holy place, it is that it no longer hears the voice of the Liturgy which in former years expounded the catechism. Legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi. We have travelled a long way since the days of faith when veneration for sacred things was so great that the cloths which covered the altar were used as relics.

[..]

The name given to the church or house of prayer, domus orationis, should help us to understand the theological importance of the Liturgy, the public prayer of the Church. Besides the private prayer which each of us in cubiculo, clauso ostio, makes to his heavenly Father, there exists another prayer, public and collective, which Christian society as a public body raises to God. This public prayer so often recommended by Christ and his apostles, is of so much importance and is so sacred that it pervades with its sanctity the place where it is celebrated, and therefore the house of God is called domus orationis, the house of prayer.  [We are our rites.  Our rites shape our beliefs and actions.  The design arrangement and decoration of a church, reflects and then shapes those who enter.]

Post-Communion : ” We beseech thee, almighty God, to lend the ears of thy lovingkindness to all who pray to thee in this place which we, all unworthy, have dedicated to thy name.”

It is well to consider attentively the classic conception of the dedicatio.

We moderns, absorbed by the idea of practical utility, erect places of worship chiefly because the needs of the population require it. They are inaugurated with a religious rite, suggested by the ritual, but this is often regarded as a secondary matter, and though it is not omitted is certainly not the primary consideration. [This is great…] The Church—we are apt to think—exists for the people. In the eyes of the ancients the position was quite different. The Church existed for God. [!] Without any thought of public utility, the altar and the temple were votive gifts offered to the divinity through a sacred and official rite which dedicated them to him—Dedicatio.  [Hence, buildings were the best they could offer!]

In many classical temples the people did not enter into the sanctuary inhabited by the divinity, and the altar of sacrifice stood outside at the top of a flight of steps. In the early Middle Ages at Rome, Ravenna, Milan and Bologna, several basilicas were grouped together or at a short distance one from another, as was especially the case in Benedictine Abbeys. The number of these holy places did not arise from any need on the part of the population, they merely had a votive character. The Lombards multiplied churches and oratories all over the country, and to this day there are to be found in the ancient cities of Italy a quantity of religious buildings which were certainly not erected for the convenience of the population, for the limited proportions of some of these chapels did not admit of the presence of many worshippers.

The founders of these oratories could only have had one object in view. This was the ancient intention of making an offering, a dedicatio. All those sacred buildings, altars and chapels represent munera, monuments or votive gifts presented to the majesty of God in thanksgiving for his benefits, or in memory of some saint. [munera… so richly laden a word!]

[…]

Soooo much going on in there.

Have you ever heard some modernist-trained liturgist or other say that “liturgy” comes from the Greek for “the work of the people”?  Therefore, El Pueblo has to be brought into doing physically active things in “the liturgy” (never call it “Mass”, because that’s sacrificial sounding).