It is tempting to say that this third dimension of liturgy, its suspension between the Cross of Christ and our living entry into him who suffered vicariously for us and wants to become “one” with us (cf. Gal 3:13, 28), expresses its moral demands. And without doubt Christian worship does contain a moral demand, but it goes much farther than mere moralism. The Lord has gone before us. He has already done what we have to do. He has opened a way that we ourselves could not have pioneered, because our powers do not extend to building a bridge to God. He himself became that bridge. And now the challenge is to allow ourselves to be taken up into his being “for” mankind, to let ourselves be embraced by his opened arms, which draw us to himself. He, the Holy One, hallows us with the holiness that none of us could ever give ourselves. We are incorporated into the great historical process by which the world moves toward the fulfillment of God being “all in all”. In this sense, what at first seems like the moral dimension is at the same time the eschatological dynamism of the liturgy. The fullness of Christ, of which the Captivity Epistles of St. Paul speak, becomes a reality, and only thus is the Paschal event completed throughout history. The “today” of Christ lasts right to the end (cf. Heb 4:7ff.).
(Ratzinger, J. (2000). The Spirit of the Liturgy (J. Saward, Trans.; p. 59). Ignatius Press.)
- The moral dimension of the liturgy is a configuration with Christ. Baptism is the sacrament whereby we are purified, illuminated, and configured to Christ’s body. One could say that the liturgy, as the offering of the body of Christ, requires the presence of all the baptized. It is both a presence by a personal oneness with Christ (“no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”), and a corporate oneness with our brothers and sisters in that same Body (“the body is one, though it has many members”). The personal configuration to Christ is achieved by living out one’s baptism. The call of baptism is to imitate Christ in an increasingly interior way: doing what Christ does, but progressively doing it for the same reasons and with the same love.
- The reason behind all of Christ’s redemptive life on earth is His love for His Father. Receptivity to that inner motivation – the movement of the Spirit – leads us into a deeper human and divine life, and a deeper knowledge of the Father: The beginning and the end of all things. This too is the goal and aim of the liturgy.
