Liturgy — The What

A glimpse into my world, and the world of the Church

Feb 05, 2024

Hey, everybody. Welcome (back) to the Collect, my weekly newsletter where I write lots of words about lots of different things, some of which I’m qualified to talk about and some of which… less so.

Today, you get a very special glimpse into something that I am quite passionate about — Liturgy and teaching. See, a couple of weeks ago I was asked to give a lecture to our RCIA1 class about “The Celebration of the Christian Mystery,” aka the Liturgy. The typical RCIA class walks the participants through the first and second pillars of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and with the new semester just started, the class at my parish was ready to jump into pillar two, which is all about the Liturgy.

The deacon who’s in charge of the class asked me to introduce the topic because, well, if there’s anything in this world that I would call “my bread and butter,” it’s the Liturgy. I’ve been involved with liturgical ministry since before I knew what the word meant, first in high school as a lector and EMHC, then in college as Head Sacristan and liaison to the priests of the Archdiocese of Denver, then in religious life for a year, then as Head of Liturgy at the school where I was also a math teacher, and now today as Director of Liturgy at my local Catholic parish. I’m also a whole semester into grad school where I’m studying for a MA in Liturgy, which is wild to think about sometimes, because that just shows me that I still have so much more to learn.

In addition to my passion and honest knowledge on the subject, though, I also agreed to teach the class because I love to teach. See, I was a high school math teacher for two years and I absolutely adored it. Being in a classroom with a whiteboard, an expo marker, ~~and open minds waiting for knowledge~~ has got to be one of the most rewarding (and sometimes the most difficult) experiences of my life. I would have stayed on as a teacher if my current position hadn’t opened up at the perfect place and time, and I still love taking every opportunity I can to teach what I know, for the benefit of those around me.

So that particular Wednesday, I ended up giving an hour-long lecture on the Liturgy which I broke into three main parts — What is Liturgy, Why do we do Liturgy, and How do we do Liturgy. Since this Substack is all about me rambling about things I think about, I figured I could take the opportunity to convert my lecture into an essay, and maybe share some insights that you haven’t had before. Like my lecture, I’ve got three main parts, and I’m going to break them into three separate essays so that hopefully you still like me by the end of it.

(N.B. This information is given with the presumption that I’m talking to people who have gone over the first pillar of the Catechism, the Creed. If there’s anything that I say that you don’t understand, feel free to ask me about it in the comments!)

What is Liturgy?

Who knows where the word ‘Liturgy’ comes from? What language does it come from?

…

(Note to self: asking questions of the class is far more difficult to do over newsletter than it is in the classroom)

The Etymology

The word ‘Liturgy’ comes to us from Greek λειτουργία (leitourgia) which, you may be surprised to discover, predates Christianity by about six centuries. A common translation today is “work of the people” which does a good job of incorporating the word’s two roots (λαός (laos), “people” and ἔργο (ergon), “work”) but that’s actually not entirely correct. A better translation of the term would be “work on behalf of the people.”

See, in ancient Greece, when the word Liturgy was invented, it was used to describe some sort of public work undertaken by a (usually) wealthy benefactor, on behalf of the people of the city that the benefactor was looking to support (most liturgies that we know of come from Athens, but there are plenty of other examples from other Greek city-states as well).

For example, a wealthy member of Athenian high society may decide one day that he (or she) wants to fund a new amphitheater (perhaps in a part of town that does not yet have one, or to replace a run-down theater in need of major repairs). That person would be doing a liturgy — performing a work on behalf of some group of people. People who did liturgy were called λειτουργός (leitourgos). Though the system was not well practiced after the end of Athenian democracy (c. 300 BC) the terms remained in use throughout the Greek-speaking world (which was most of the Mediterranean, even after the rise of Rome).

That’s not to say that there was no religious significance to the term — a lot of pagan Greek religious ceremonies involved leitourgos who helped fund new vestments, or a new statue, or a fancy choir, or lots of other things. But the term was not strictly religious — the general definition of ‘work on behalf of people’ could apply to all of those liturgies and more.

It’s also important to note that the term was not equivalent to ‘financier.’ While there was often (practically always) a financial component to being a leitourgos, you were also expected to do the work as a leitourgos. If your project was construction, you were on the site; if religious, you were involved in the cermony.

The term ‘Liturgy’ entered the Judeo-Christian tradition in the mid-200s BC, when the Hebrew Scriptures were translated by a group of seventy (or seventy-two) Israelites living in Alexandria. According to legend, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, then-Pharaoh of Egypt, asked the translators (six from each of the twelve tribes) to make a copy of the scriptures for his library — and there are lots of reasons why that account is considered legend rather than historical fact. Still, the Koine Greek scriptures (what we now call the Septuagint, or LXX) are attested to as early as 200 BC, so at least the dates are pretty reliable.

When the Hebrew scriptures were translated, the translators made the really quite fascinating decision to use the term leitourgia to refer to the actions of priests commanded by God in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; and they used the term leitourgos to refer to the priesthood. כהן (kohen, Hebrew for priest) became leitourgos, and כהן (kahan, Hebrew for ‘priestly service’) became leitourgia.

(Note: I realize now that Kohen and Kahan are technically spelled exactly the same in Hebrew, since I don’t use diacritical marks. Just remember that Hebrew has no vowels, so the pronunciation of words (and at times their definition) is based on context.)

The one thing I would like to point out before we take a break is that leitourgos is only used in the LXX for Aaronic priests; the term is not used for Levites.

Okay, let’s take a step back. In a real lecture, this is when I would pause and check in with everyone. How are we doing? Any questions?

What’s the point?

So, I am going somewhere with this, because one of my primary jobs whenever I teach anything is to combat common misconceptions; and in the Liturgy, there are a lot of those. The biggest one comes from the definition thing that I already addressed: most Catholics, stopped in the parking lot after Mass, would say that Liturgy means ‘work of the people’ and they’d be wrong. The Liturgy is not the work of the people; it’s the work of a person, a leitourgos, AKA a priest. The letter to the Hebrews makes it very clear that the High Priest is Christ himself; the ultimate leitourgos is the Son of God. In Catholic tradition, the ordained priest acts in persona Christi (in the person of Christ) to perform the Liturgy; so that at every Catholic Mass, it is Christ himself who is performing the work of his sacrifice, the same sacrifice that occurred at Golgotha two millenia ago and now pierces through all time like a needle through a veil.

The point, of course, is that the Mass is done by the priest, acting in the person of Christ. I cannot say Mass (I am not an ordained priest) and my presence or absence at Mass has no effect on whether or not the Liturgy (the work) gets done.

This is not to say that my presence is meaningless; I’ll get to that in just a second. The point I’m trying to make is that fundamental to the practice of Liturgy (from the earliest of the early Church) is that Liturgy is done by the priest, not the people.

Still with me?

So I don’t have to go to Mass?

That’s not what I said.

The fact that Liturgy is done by the priest, not the people, does not mean my presence (or your presence, or Miss Betty’s presence, or little Timmy’s presence) is meaningless. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

The Second Vatican Council, and the 20th century Liturgical Movement leading up to the Second Vatican Council, spent a lot of word count on the idea of ‘active participation’ of the faithful gathered at Mass. Unfortunately, although the Second Vatican Council wrote some really beautiful and good stuff about it in Sacrosanctum Concilium, the percentage of Catholics who have read SC or the other documents is woefully low, and the percentage of liturgists who have read SC is frighteningly low. This has led to ‘active participation’ becoming more of a buzzword than an actual concept that we understand and pursue.

“Active Participation”? What’s that about?

“But Mr. Link,” you say. “If the Liturgy is done by the priest, why is it so important that we participate? Didn’t you just say that it doesn’t matter if we’re there or not?”

Excellent question, unnamed student! Why does it matter at all that people other than the priest participate, if we’re not leitourgos?

Well, point number two that I outlined above is that Liturgy is done for some group of people. In Ancient Greece, a leitourgos would decide to build a gymnasium, for example, and they would do it with the intention of people training at the gym. You small business owners can confirm for me that building something is pretty pointless if no one ever shows up.

The Mass (and the other liturgies of the Church) is the same way. Yes, the work is done by the priest; but the work is done for us. If we don’t show up, well, that’s kind of not the point (the Mass is still effective because it is for the benefit of the Universal Church and therefore cannot be ineffective, but there’s a reason that Canon Law forbids priests from saying Mass without a congregation except in cases of need).2

See, the misconception of active participation is that it’s mostly done through our action; by making the responses, or standing at the right time, or making the right motion. And those things are important, don’t get me wrong — for plenty of reasons that I’ll address in a later post probably — but that’s not actually how we participate in Liturgy, because if they were then we would all be leitourgos.

Rather, active participation is done by reception. The priest does the work; we reap the benefits. The Liturgy is a channel by which Grace is poured out upon the world, and out participation in it is not about opening up that channel — that’s what Christ, through the priest, does. Rather, our part in the Liturgy is to receive the Grace that God is trying to give us — and then to carry it out into the world.

That’s the point.

Conclusion

So, there’s your primer on the What of Liturgy. I’ll sum it up for you:

Liturgy is a work.
Liturgy is done by a priest (leitourgos).
Liturgy is done for us.
We participate in Liturgy by reception.

Questions? Comments? Words of praise, or words of condemnation? Hit me with it!