June 21-27, 2009 Issue |
Posted 6/12/09 at 10:14 AM
When Jesus
was asked which of the commandments was most important, he replied that we
should love God and love our neighbor. He added that on these two commandments
hang all the Law and the prophets. He might have added that on these two things
hang everything that matters to everyone everywhere.
Most importantly, it is the love of
God and the love of our neighbor that matters if we take our Christian faith
seriously. All the rules and regulations and rubrics, all the debates and
doctrines and dogmas are meaningless if we do not have the love of God and the
love of our neighbor.
It is a quirk of human nature,
however, that most of us fall into one of two categories. We are either “God
lovers” or “people lovers.” If you like, all of us have a natural preference or
a built-in instinct to focus on one or the other.
Those who are God lovers are more
interested in the vertical than the horizontal. They focus on the other world
rather than this world. They concentrate on liturgy, spirituality, prayer,
adoration, consecrated life, vocation, religion and worship. They see the
Church as the fellowship of saints and angels gathered around the throne of
God. God lovers tend to be more cerebral, traditional, conservative and
concerned with right worship, right behavior and right belief.
Those who are people lovers are more
interested in the horizontal. They focus on this world more than the next
world. They concentrate on peace and justice and ministering to others. They
see the Church as the people of God here on earth, making their pilgrimage to
heaven. The people lovers tend to be more relational, intuitive, progressive
and innovative. The sit lightly regarding rules and dogmas and are more
concerned with expressing God’s love through compassionate relationships with
their brothers and sisters.
The God lovers see the Mass as a
solemn sacrifice that lifts mankind to the very threshold of heaven. They want
fine liturgy and esoteric, magnificent and otherworldly worship. For the God
lovers, worship transports us from this vale of tears to the worship of the
cosmic spheres. For them, the Mass is the great sacrifice that applies the
eternal act of redemption to souls in need of salvation.
The people lovers see the Mass as
the fellowship meal of the people of God. The worship is warm and comforting.
It is designed to make everyone experience the love of God here and now. The
Church is a place of welcome for all. Worship is a healing, inspiring action
designed to make everyone feel forgiven and feel good about themselves and each
other. The Church is in this world and is of this world and needs to adapt to
this world so that more and more people can be helped.
As you read this, you are probably
already instinctively choosing which of these two models you like best. You
will believe that yours is the best, and that, at best, the other one is
faulty, and, at worst, it is heretical and damaging to the Church and should be
stopped.
But we need both, don’t we? We’re
called to love God and love our neighbor. There is certainly a divide within
Catholicism, and if it can be analyzed in this way, why does such a divide
exist?
The divide between the God lovers
and the people lovers exists not because one is right and the other is wrong.
The divide exists because we have not prioritized properly.
The lovers of people may not like to
hear this, but the love of God is the first priority. Love of neighbor comes
after the love of God and is dependent on the love of God. We cannot love our
neighbor if we do not love God first. Why? Because we have no motive, no power
and no grace to love our neighbor if we have not loved God first.
Therefore, the love of God is the
Catholic priority. Loving our neighbor is mandatory and cannot be overlooked,
but it comes after the love of God. If this is true, then we must ask ourselves
where we properly love God and where we properly love our neighbor. The answer
is that we love God primarily within the life of prayer and worship: within and
through the liturgy.
If we love God in church, then we
love our neighbor outside of church. Most of the problems with modernist
liturgy and worship are that progressive Catholics have brought into the Church
what rightly belongs outside of the Church. In other words, the fellowship, the
peace and justice, the social activism, the missionary enterprise, the
education and health care and family concern — all of this is the proper
activity of the people of God outside of the liturgy, and we have brought it
into the liturgy.
As a result, the liturgy has become
all about loving people instead of loving God. Why is this? Because too many
Catholics have actually replaced the love of God with the love of people.
Clever theologians thought that the supernatural, otherworldly aspect of
worship seemed too much of a stretch for ordinary, modern, scientific people,
and they made the liturgy folksy and people-centered in order to adapt the
faith for modern man.
The result has been a disaster.
Catholics, therefore, love people, but many have lost the language for loving
God; and the greatest sadness is that once you no longer love God, it is not
very long before you are no longer able to love people either, for what do you
find to love in people if you have not loved God first? For the only thing I
truly love in my neighbor is the image of God in him, and the only way I can
discern this is by first learning to love God.
The final result of all this is that
we have been left with the only remaining remnant: the love of ourselves. Thus,
in too much of Catholic worship what was once the glorious worship of Almighty
God has become a jumble of comfort hymns and self-help therapy.
The only remedy is to return to
Christ’s priorities: to learn once more how to put the love of God first in our
lives so that we may eventually learn again how to love our neighbor.
Father Dwight Longenecker is chaplain to
St.
Joseph’s Catholic School in Greenville, South Carolina.
Visit his website and
blog at DwightLongenecker.com
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