Collect
Grant, almighty God, through the yearly observance of holy Lent
that we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ
and by worthy conduct pursue their efforts.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ...
Catechumens hearing this prayer for the first time don’t know what they're letting themselves in for. They know that, with the blessing
and support of their godparents, they will later in that Mass walk into the sanctuary
and sign their names in a book.[1] They know that they are then “elect to be initiated
into the sacred mysteries at the next Easter Vigil.”[2] They do not yet know that Lent itself is a great
mystery, a mystery that can only be experienced by being walked through and
that they will not just walk through that period of purification once. They do not know that that Lenten walking will be the way they will peel layer and layer off the mystery that is Christ, a
mystery they can only encounter in the walking.
They don’t know how hard it will be.
I don’t know how rich it will be.
Luckily this was known in the eighth century, and the insights of this
understanding found their way into the collect for the first Sunday of Lent in
the Gelasian Sacramentary[3]
and from there into our current Mass texts.
The collect for the first Sunday of Lent
contains language from two semantic fields that I would like to consider in
this paper: the field of mystery (sacramentum
and arcanum) and the field of
epectesis, or straining forward,[4] (exercitium, proficio and sector). Those two fields are not accidentally joined. The connection between mystery and epectesis
is one which is well-timed to be delivered to the catechumens of the church as
they are elected not just for six weeks of straining into mystery, but a
lifetime thereof. The election, or
enrollment of names, as a stage of preparation for initiation which precedes fasting
and abstinence goes back at least to Egeria’s travels.[5] Since its retrieval and reappearance in the
RCIA, it functions to remind communities of “the distinctive character of Lent”[6] as
“the elect… look to us [the gathered assembly] for an example of Christian
renewal.”[7]
The collect for this day contains a rich
theology of Lent as sacramentum[8] which has unfortunately not been drawn
out by any English translation. The 1973
did not translate this part of the prayer and 1998 and 2010 simply render it
“the holy Season of Lent” and “holy Lent” respectively. The depth and appropriateness of the conception
of Lent as sacramentum may be seen by
momentarily glancing East, to the “Greek Church [which] celebrates today [ie.
on Lent I] one of her greatest solemnities: Orthodoxia…
instituted in memory of the restoration of sacred images in Constantinople and
the eastern empire in the year 842.”[9] As Robert Wilken writes when discussing this
Iconoclast crisis:
We
tire easily of abstractions and crave visible signs. The icon was a tangible pledge that things
could become other than they are. This
was no less true of human beings. For if
wood and paint could depict the living God, then creatures of flesh and blood
could aspire to likeness with God.[10]
If icons can serve to remind us the
physical is capax dei, that while
“dimmed and defiled”[11]
the light of God in the created order cannot be extinguished, a season such as
Lent can similarly serve as a reminder. Christian
praxis of ascesis and charity and time itself can be revelatory. Gregory of Nyssa was keen to point this out,
critiquing an opponent for seeking “the mystery of
godliness… [not] in venerable names, nor in the
distinctive character of customs and sacramental tokens, but in
exactness of doctrine.”[12] If the distinctive customs of Lent can be
revelatory then, taking seriously the insight of Dulles and others than
revelation has a symbolic structure,[13]
Lent must be a symbol. This is why Lent
must be lived. As Sandra Schneiders says
of a related concept, metaphor: “metaphor is not a substitute for a literal
expression that can be restored to the discourse once the metaphor’s meaning is
understood thereby suppressing the need for the metaphor.”[14] Lent, understood as sacramentum, as mystery, as symbol, must be lived: there is no
‘exactness of doctrine’ that can capture what Lent has to communicate such that
we can do away with that icon of time and praxis.
From what has just been said, it follows
that I cannot answer the question of what deeper reality Lent points to, or at
least that I cannot give an answer which is so rich as to obviate the need for
the sacramentum itself. But, it should be possible to say something
about the relationship between the two mysteries named by this collect – the sacramentum of Lent and the arcanum of Christ.[15] Arcanus
is an adjective which comes from the verb arceo
meaning ‘to shut up, enclose.’ It comes
to mean something hidden and hence takes on a similar meaning to the Greek musterion, and although also used by
Christians to mean ‘sanctuary,’[16]
it seems fitting in this collect to view it as parallel to sacramentum. As the Fourth
Gospel puts it, “whoever sees me [Jesus], sees the one who sent me”[17]–
Christ is “the Sacrament of the Encounter with God.”[18]
A key insight in New Testament theology
is that the hidden has in Christ become revealed: “the musterion which was hidden from the ages and from the generations
but now is revealed to his holy ones.”[19] The hiddenness of the arcanum that is Christ is not a hiddenness designed to keep the holy
ones in the dark, but is the reality of the gradual development of profound
communication on the level of person with our God who must be approached in
living relationship. One lives out the sacramentum that is Lent to be drawn
further into relationship with the arcanum
that is Christ, who is hidden not to escape our view but to communicate in
relationship rather than formulae. The
readings of Lent I remind us of Christ’s fasting in the desert.[20] Living out the sacramentum of Lent is to relate in solidarity to the arcanum that is Christ, specifically the
fasting Christ. This is the insight
imparted in the collect’s prayer that through our exercise of the sacramentum of Lent we might grow in our
understanding of the arcanum of Christ.
The elect are also known as illuminandi and competentes:[21] illuminandi because the arcanum of Christ will not remain hidden
in darkness for them, but they, in it, will be brought to light; competentes because they (together with
the whole church) are seekers. We pray
for growth (proficio) in
understanding, not understanding simpliciter;
that we might pursue (sector) effects,
not attain them; and we promise our exercise (exercitia) or participation in training, not our accomplished
execution. This is necessary, because of
the symbolic structure of revelation.
Lent and Christ himself do reveal, so these are things we can aspire
to. However, all symbols also conceal,
they are arcana. The power of their meaning is found in their
tensive ‘is’ and ‘is-not.’ As in
physical exercise, remaining in participation in that tension both requires
effort and straining and will never result in a fait accompli which renders us ‘done.’ If we think ourselves ‘done,’ we, with the
Corinthians, will hear Paul’s mocking words: “Already you have been
glutted? Already you have become
rich? Without us you became kings? I would that you had really become kings that
even we might become kings with you!”[22]
(1 Cor 4:8). The Christian life is not
one whose fruits may be packaged and enjoyed outside of the economy of tensive
exercise:
Not
that I already obtained this or have already been brought to completion, but I
press on that even I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by
Christ Jesus. Brothers and sisters, I do
not consider myself to have laid hold, but mark this one thing: forgetting all
that is behind me and straining forward to the things before me, toward the
goal I hasten on to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.[23]
This passage is used by Gregory of Nyssa
in a programmatic definition of method near the beginning of his Life of Moses.[24] He writes his Life to call people to take on the “long and exacting training
Moses had.”[25] Through this participation in the epectesis,
we may draw closer and closer to “becoming God’s friend – the only thing worthy
of honor and desire.”[26] We will not in this life ‘mature’ beyond the
need for symbols – God’s face is not to be seen,[27]
but “to follow God wherever He might lead is to behold God.”[28] Through striving such as in the sacramentum of Lent, we can enter deeper
into the mystery God and deepen that friendship, without ever exhausting it.
[1] RCIA 132. See “RCIA” The Rites (I). (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press,
199): 15-358.
[2] RCIA 133.
[3] Matias Augé,
“The Liturgical Year in the Roman Rite” in Anscar Chupungco, ed. Handbook for Liturgical Studies: Liturgical
Time and Space. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press): 193.
[4] See Phil 3:13.
[5] Robert Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003):
37-8.
[6] RCIA 126.
[7] RCIA 134.
[8] Reading the
genitive quadragesimalis as
epexegetical.
[9] Guéranger,
trans. Laurence Sheperd. The Liturgical Year: Lent. (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1949):
127.
[10] Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought:
261.
[11] Puebla, 1142.
[12] Gregory of
Nyssa, Against Eunomius 11.5. Trans. W. Moore, H.A. Wilson and H.C.
Ogle. Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 5. (Buffalo, NY:
Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.)
[13] Avery Dulles,
“The Symbolic Structure of Revelation,” Theological
Studies 41/1 (1980): 51-73.
[14] Sandra
Schneiders, The Revelatory Text:
Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1999):
29.
[15] As for quadragesimalis, I read Christi as epexegetical.
[16] See Vulgate
Exod 7:11.
[17] John
12:45. Unless otherwise stated, all
translations from the New Testament are my own.
[18] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with
God. (Bilthoven, H. Nelissen: Sheed
and Ward, 1963).
[19] Col 1:26
[20] Year A, Matt
4:1-11; Year B, Mark 1:12-15; Year C, Luke 4:1-13.
[21] RCIA 124.
[22] 1 Cor 4:8.
[23] Phil 3:12-14.
[24] Gregory of
Nyssa, Life of Moses Pro.5. Trans. Abraham Malherbe, Everett
Ferguson. Gregory of Nyssa – The Life of Moses. (Mahwah, NY: Paulist Press, 1978).
[25] Ibid., 2.55.
[26] Ibid., 2.320.
[27] Ibid., 2. 233;
Exod 33.20
[28] Ibid., 2.252.
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