This idea of the New Testament as the between-time, as image between shadow and reality, gives liturgical theology its specific form. It becomes even clearer when we bear in mind the three levels on which Christian worship operates, the three levels that make it what it is. There is the middle level, the strictly liturgical level, which is familiar to us all and is revealed in the words and actions of Jesus at the Last Supper. These words and actions form the core of Christian liturgical celebration, which was further constructed out of the synthesis of the synagogue and Temple liturgies. The sacrificial actions of the Temple have been replaced by the Eucharistic Prayer, which enters into what Jesus did at the Last Supper, and by the distribution of the consecrated gifts. But this properly liturgical level does not stand on its own. It has meaning only in relation to something that really happens, to a reality that is substantially present. Otherwise it would lack real content, like bank notes without funds to cover them. The Lord could say that his Body was “given” only because he had in fact given it; he could present his Blood in the new chalice as shed for many only because he really had shed it. This Body is not the ever-dead corpse of a dead man, nor is the Blood the life-element rendered lifeless. No, sacrifice has become gift, for the Body given in love and the Blood given in love have entered, through the Resurrection, into the eternity of love, which is stronger than death. Without the Cross and Resurrection, Christian worship is null and void, and a theology of liturgy that omitted any reference to them would really just be talking about an empty game.
(Ratzinger, J. (2000). The Spirit of the Liturgy (J. Saward, Trans.; p. 54-55). Ignatius Press.)
- It is interesting to consider the liturgy as the middle of the three levels at which Christian Worship operates. Pope Benedict doesn’t come right out and say what these three levels are, but we can draw them out from what he says. The Liturgy stands upon the reality of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross as its foundation, and turns our attention to the Resurrection. The liturgy must recall and make present again the true sacrifice of Christ on the Cross – the substance, the realness of the liturgy is Christ’s sacrifice which becomes gift, and is received as food. The end, the finality of the liturgy, is the new life of the Resurrection which will only be fully lived out in heaven but begins already here below. So the first level of Christian worship, the foundation, is the Sacrifice of Christ; the second level is the liturgy in which the reality of that sacrifice is made present through the signs, symbols, and words that were entrusted to the Church; the third level is the Resurrection, the new life of the Spirit and of Heaven. The liturgy is therefore what allows us to worship in spirit and in truth.
