Liturgical Obedience, the Imitation of Christ, and the Seductions of Autonomy

Why it is right and just for liturgy to be precisely determinate in its words and actions

The following lecture was given in Manassas, Virginia, on October 16, 2023. The video from the occasion (together with the Q&A) may be found here at my YouTube channel; the full text below is for paid subscribers.

Detail from a stained window, c.1170-80 in the Victoria & Albert Museum, photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew OP (source)

What does it mean to live a “liturgical life” (vita liturgica) in the midst of the modern wasteland? The holy rites are our lifeline, our umbilical cord, to Holy Mother Church; they keep us nourished and safe in the valley of the shadow of death. The original Death Valley is not in California, but in hell. Hell is truly the valley of death, because one who lives there, or rather continuously dies there, is stuck down in the depths and cannot get up to the high places, up to Mount Sion and the city of the living God. Scripture calls the fallen world in which we men are living “the valley of the shadow of death” because it is under the power—limited and destined to fail, but nonetheless real—of the Evil One. Hence, when we examine what is the case in Satan’s kingdom, we will also acquire a better understanding of how he is attempting to undermine us here in this world.

No vita liturgica in hell

Hell has no liturgy. The fallen angels have no common work of charity, no common work of divine worship. When the devil appeared to the desert father Abba Apollo, he had no knees, as if to say: he is incapable of kneeling. His mentality is non serviam, and all the demons think the same way: you could call it “mindful conformism.” For this reason, there is no proper hierarchy in hell.¹ They are more like bandits who stick together out of self-interest. Contrary to the prevailing democratic way of thinking, liturgy is essentially connected with hierarchy: Christ the High Priest is the one who leads the worship, and He deigns to allow the participation of the priest, the deacon, the subdeacon, the ministers, the cantors, the choir, the laity, each in his or their own place and function. One cannot demand or create a liturgical role; one rather receives it and enters into it. To be liturgical is to submit freely to an external rule, an order not of our own making, a complex whole of which we are humble parts.

Liturgy takes us beyond ourselves into roles that are not simply inborn or inherited or fashioned; into realms that are off limits for mere creatures; into actions and passions that are supernatural in both their source and their goal.² When we chant the liturgy, we are standing outside ourselves, in the heavenly places: “Our feet were standing in thy courts, O Jerusalem” (Ps 121:1). Given how intimately bound up are human nature, rationality, and language, our very action of placing on our lips words originated by another is a reformation of our humanity, a putting on of Christ, a renunciation of the ambitions of Babel, and a quiet welcoming of the Spirit of Pentecost.

For all these reasons, the devil has and can have no liturgy. Although he is compelled to submit to the rule of the Almighty, he does not wish to submit, and therefore cannot enter into the joy of his lord; he recognizes no rule but his own will, which is why there is no peace in hell; he has not the humility to allow himself to be placed as a part in a larger whole, and to take for his own the words of another. He has no desire to suffer the ecstasy of love. As Our Lord says in St. John’s Gospel: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof” (John 8:44). Jesus speaks here with metaphysical and psychological precision. The devil is a murderer because he envies God’s life and takes it away from those who have it, rather than receiving God’s life as a gift and promoting the reception of the same gift in others. He stands not in the truth, because truth, for a creature, is always the harmony between the intellect and its object (adequatio rei et intellectus), such that the intellect is measured by the reality outside itself. The created intellect has truth, it contains truth, but it cannot be the truth—for that is God’s prerogative alone. In this sense, truth can only be in us, but never of us, as if we were its origin or measure.³

Hence, the person who rejects the truth of God ends up evicting truth from his mind, and begins a career of falsification, both in the form of self-deception (we see how the devil throughout the Gospels and indeed across all of history acts as if he could actually defeat Jesus!) and in the form of deception of others (we see how the father of lies whips people into a frenzy of lying, manipulation, and conformism). The devil, and any of his imitators, “speaketh of his own.” He will speak only the shallow “worldly wisdom” that is his mental content; he will spout sophistry, banality, and cynicism. This is what comes of not being willing to take for his own the wiser, deeper, brighter, truer words of another—His Creator. Lucifer, as his very name implies (bearer of light), was created to mirror the Word and in this way to be resplendently beautiful in his own nature. He abandoned the Word and thus became ugly in spite of his wondrous nature. A lake when still can take on the form of mountains against an evening sky, and in this way go beyond its nature of water to partake of the natures of earth, air, and fire. In contrast, a lake when turbulent and muddy seems in some way to lose the better virtues of water itself—its purity, transparency, ability to wash, ability to slake thirst. The clear lake in its reflection becomes more than itself; the muddy lake in its turbidity becomes less than itself. A Dominican theologian once remarked: “That is the theology behind the story of the Garden of Eden. There was no way that human beings could be simply human. They had to be either superhuman or inhuman.”⁴