A liturgical classic needing to be revisited

Liturgy and Personality
Dietrich Von Hildebrand
Helicon Press
1960 (reprinted 2016)
131 pages

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Dietrich Von Hildebrand was a prominent German, Catholic philosopher of the twentieth century who was held in high esteem by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. His philosophical interests were wide ranging and he left an impressive output of published work. Liturgy and Personality, a profound reflection on the liturgy of the Church, particularly the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass where “we participate in the prayer of Christ himself”, was published in 1960. For Von Hildebrand, it is where our “fully expressed and fully developed” personality unfolds.

Von Hildebrand emphasises how this unfolding is the entirely gratuitous result of our self-forgetting in the great act of worship, praise and thanksgiving to the Father through and with his divine Son who shares our humanity. This self-forgetting opens us to “the bestowal of redeeming grace (upon men)”. We do not deliberately seek “deepest, truest formation of personality” from the liturgy or approach it as a “means of preparing the way for grace.” Instead we lose ourselves in glorifying God, “the primary purpose of liturgy”, and through self-surrender find our true selves in unity with Christ within his mystical body. Von Hildebrand offers the analogy of falling in love. Loving changes us from within simply through the act of loving. The change effected by loving and worshipping God is far more radically transformative. It draws us into the life of Christ himself as we make our offering with Him to the Father. “The unique design of God is fully and ultimately realised in a man when he is transformed into Christ.”

For Von Hildebrand, “it is the saint alone who is the true and complete man and the true personality”. The saints have, he says, reached a point of “genius”, “inflamed by the glow” of divine radiance. Quoting St Augustine, Hildebrand asks, “if them, why not us”? We are all called to this same fullness of life through redeeming grace. “Our task”, Von Hildebrand writes, “is only a free-cooperation with grace”. It is not a failure of humility to aspire to spiritual perfection because it is God, not us, who accomplishes the transformation.

Von Hildebrand analyses the various ways in which the liturgy moulds us as personalities and draws us into the life of Christ. While the invitation to follow Christ is made to each of us as individuals, the liturgy makes clear that it is as members of his mystical body that we enter the promised fullness of life. When we offer praise, thanksgiving and petition to God, it is as “we” not “I”. “The soul can only be bound to God by becoming a member of his mystical body.” The liturgy has, Von Hildebrand writes, “a communion forming power”. The kiss of peace – or post Vatican Council “the sign” of peace – as we prepare to receive the body and blood of Christ “dissolves” all that separates us. Von Hildebrand makes an analogy with the bonding that takes place between members of an audience “caught up together in the joy of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony” when the “barriers that see others as competitors and adversaries fall away”. We can relate in our own way to the point he is making here. We see all the time the unifying, community building effect of great sporting events though in these instances the “we” is defined against a “them”. A more apposite example is the annual experience of hearing Handel’s Messiah in a packed church at Christmas time when everybody stands together with hearts uplifted for the great “Hallelujah Chorus”. For Von Hildebrand, this experience of unity should be a mark of our liturgy. He reminds us of the words of Jesus, “by this shall all men know you are my disciples, by your love, one for another” (John 13:35) and the words of the psalm (psalm 133) “how good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity”.

Von Hildebrand emphasises that each and every member of the faith community has the same standing before God and warns of the tendency to fracture into “smug groups” of the like-minded. We are, each one, the temple of the Holy Spirit. Among our “neighbours” in the community of faith there is no hierarchy before God. He warns too that every attempt to achieve a “we” which does not pass through the “thou” of Christ, “the God-man” fails to achieve the conquest of egocentricity and leads to what he describes as the “humanitarian ideal” of mass-egoism. The fullness of life develops within us by living theo-centrically, not ego-centrically, whatever form that may take. “He that loses his life shall find it” (Luke 17:33) sums up the paradox at the heart of Christian faith.

Von Hildebrand draws our attention to the objective elements of reverence that are part of the “architecture” of the liturgy. The kissing of the altar by the celebrant and other gestures, the use of incense and candles, the ritual cleansing of liturgical  vessels, our standing to greet and hear the Gospel and to raise our voices in prayer together. However, liturgical celebrations can be tainted by worldly elements. Even though Von Hildebrand’s book was written in 1960, he describes and deplores some of the unedifying accretions we have become all too familiar with since the Second Vatican Council. He describes “sentimental, trashy hymns” as “a falsification of the spirit of Christ”. It is not, he says, a matter of taste and aesthetics, “it is whether hymns reflect the spirit of Christ, whether or not they are penetrated with a truly sacred atmosphere.” Von Hildebrand also takes issue with the addition of personal prayers to liturgical celebrations even if they were written by saints. They do not belong in “the supra-individual prayer” of the liturgy, which “reflects God’s face in a unique adequateness” and “envelops us in an atmosphere of eternity which soars above the limitations of particular times and places”.

The sacred texts of the liturgy are “pervaded with the rhythm of the liturgical year”. There is continuity alongside change within this movement. We continue to pray the penitential rite, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed as liturgical seasons unfold. This experience of continuity and repetition within movement “prepares us for the eternal now”. It cultivates a healthy attitude of personality to life itself. We understand the value of continuity as “new things take place” and find their value in the context of “what is already there”. We see life and liturgy in “conspectu Dei” and in union with Christ who is the same “yesterday, today and forever”.

Reverence in worship, however, is not its own end. First, it disposes us to reverence for our neighbour, even the “least of my brethren” with whom Christ explicitly identifies, and for all creation. “The charm of the world of vital values”, the world of plants and animals, sea, stars and mountains, art, “the earnestness of knowledge” take added depth and delight within the awakening of spirit the liturgy cultivates within us. The value of the elemental things like bread, water, oil and salt is enhanced because of what they signify in the liturgy. It is, however, not creation but God and his justice we seek first. Then “all these things shall be added” writes Von Hildebrand, quoting St Matthew’s Gospel (Matt. 6:33). Reverence is a “fundamental component of a true relationship with the world of values, perception and response”. Von Hildebrand tells us “without reverence, there is no religion”.

So reverence is more than an attitude. It demands a response in all our dealings with the world and not just “a response of appreciation and reverence”. It requires us to “discover our own freedom”, “to act morally, to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’, to be alert and awake like the dutiful virgins of the parable, rather than ‘blunt and obtuse’, taking gifts for granted. Von Hildebrand reminds us of the repeated liturgical commands to “be awake” and watchful and that our “now” is also the timeless “hodie” of Scripture.

Von Hildebrand offers an interesting analogy between the liturgy and “the dramatic structure of being”. Both follow “inner laws of development” and “(pass) through objectively presented stages”. “Liturgy is organically linked to our nature and leads us by organic degrees of transformation towards the supernatural.” It forms a community from within. Von Hildebrand finds an analogous organic unfolding in Christian marriage. In a statement that might grate with feminists of all stripes today, he says, “It is out of love for the husband that the longing for a child organically arises, as the longing for the highest symbol of unity between husband and wife.” Why, one might ask, is the corollary not equally true?

Liturgy not only teaches us to honour life’s rhythms and seasons but also cultivates the “discretio” of recognising a hierarchy among them, of putting greater things ahead of lesser, of giving both their due in their proper order and place. The liturgy notably “recognises gradations of value” as the liturgical year unfolds. Obviously, the Mass, the source and summit of the liturgy and the Christian life, stands apart from all other prayer forms and devotions, including the Church’s official prayer, the Hours. But there is a hierarchy of feasts within the celebration of the Mass itself though its essential significance and value is unchanging of course. The greater feasts are marked by octaves and vigils, the Gloria and the Creed and more elaborate displays of candles and incense.

Our lives as followers of Christ should reflect this pattern of setting greater things ahead of lesser to the point of being ready to give up “all our possessions” when confronted by a greater good or value. We should be ready to let go of “habitual, lesser goods” when higher values claim a response. In our personal family and working lives, Von Hildebrand offers, as an instance, “happiness dispensing goods (should) come before pleasure dispensing goods”. Spiritual values are not confined to the times spent in prayer or liturgical celebration. They permeate everything in our lives and orient our personalities towards God and the fullest possible realisation of our true selves. This is what transforms us into the “normal man” which Von Hildebrand distinguishes from “the average man”. The “normal man”, he says, is rare. Only the saints fully meet its definition. It means, “living in truth, in tune through will, with the objective logos, in service and sacrifice to the world of values.” The more our lives are marked by the spiritual awareness the liturgy engenders, the more they are “directed towards the world of values”, the closer we come to Von Hildebrand’s “normal man”.

Reading this book, which was written so long ago, I was struck most of all by its pertinence to our time with its less than edifying evolutions in liturgical practice and observance. Perhaps, its themes could be explored anew, perhaps as part of the synodal path of renewal? Renewal, if it is to be of

 real and lasting value must start within the heart of the life of faith, which is our relationship with Christ himself whom we encounter most intimately within the fold of his mystical body and the liturgy that gives it form and purpose. Without that centering, our community is “bound only by peripheral ties” in a “pseudo-communion”.