THE recitation of the Creed, which is placed after the
Gospel in nearly all great liturgies,1 now covers the break
between the "outer" and "inner" mysteries of Catechumens and Faithful. It is a late, and rather inartistic,
addition to the Roman Mass; apparently introduced as
a test which, in times of heresy, discerned the true initiate
from the false. Here the official faith was reaffirmed
before passing on to the inward experience which it veiled:
for the liturgic drama has now brought the soul to the
frontiers of the "Second Mystic Life" — the real sortinghouse of spirit, the gateway of "the Upper School of
Perfect Self-abandonment."2
According to the original intention of the Mass, the
rules of the Disciplina Arcana, only those capable of communion — i. e. representatives in the exterior Church of
those susceptible of union with God — took part in this
inner mystery; as the "second mystic life" in man is the
privilege of virile souls alone. As that second mystic life
begins by the disestablishment of the state of equilibrium
which has been achieved — by the throw-back of the
illuminated self into the melting-pot, in order that the
elements of character may be re-grouped about the higher
centres of humility and self-surrendered love — so this new
act began with a renewed affirmation, not of the soul's
achievement, but of its lowliness; of the spirit's needs
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and utter dependence on the universal life. It began, as
it were, by a fresh "tuning up" of the collective consciousness, now ready to begin its ascent to new levels of
Reality. This phase in the drama of the spiritual life was
represented by the "Prayers of the Faithful," which were
recited in common after the catechumens were expelled: a
feature still retained in Eastern liturgies, though now lost
in the West.3"Grant, O God, to all who join in our
prayer a growth in life," says the Prayer of the Faithful
in the Orthodox rite;4 expressing in one swift phrase the
mystical impulsion which lies behind this act.
Now it is significant that whilst in the Mass of the
Catechumens, the emphasis is always upon words — on
prayers and lessons recited, on hymns sung — in the Mass
of the Faithful the emphasis is almost wholly on acts. Though some of these acts are now implied rather than
performed, it is still through and by them that the deepest
meanings of the ceremony are conveyed to us: in pantomime its final mysteries are, or were, made plain to men.
The first of these great symbolic acts — once performed by
the whole company of initiates, now done in their name
by the priest alone — is the Offertory; the bringing to the
altar of gifts of bread and wine. From these deliberate
free-will offerings, and from these only, came the elements
susceptible of consecration; the instruments of the
supreme communication of the Divine Life to men. The
Christian brought his obley-loaf, his flask of wine, even
the water which was to be mingled with it, to the
sanctuary;5 he took from that sanctuary the bread of
angels and the wine of life — the common stuff of things
raised to a higher order of Reality. His own free act of
donation it was, his own movement of generosity, of
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surrender — the "pushing Godwards" of these intimate
symbols of his daily life, these simplest necessities of his
existence — which formed the first link in that chain
stretching out to the Eternal, made the first breach in "the ramparts of the world" and conditioned the inflow
of Reality. As Macarius has it, "the perfect operation of
the Spirit is conditioned by the will of man": the interweaving of divine and human is a mutual act, the
deliberate coming together of two loves.
In the Great Entrance of the Orthodox Church, the
Eastern equivalent of the Offertory of the West, the
bread and wine so brought to the altar are treated, by
a beautiful act of trust and anticipation, as already potentially divine. The bringing in of these gifts is the
dramatic centre of the liturgy: they are surrounded by
every circumstance of honour. As they come, the choir,"mystically representing the cherubim" — those spirits
who gaze most deeply into things divine — acclaim "The
King of all things who comes, escorted by unseen armies
of angels":6 since that which is here brought and offered
is freely sacrificed that it may be the medium of Spirit's
emergence, and "where the door is open, He cannot but
come in."7
Ruysbroeck, in a profound and living passage, and in
that personal and Christological language which — difficult
though it may seem to us — has surely here a special
appropriateness, perhaps comes nearer than any other
mystic to suggesting the spiritual situation which is
dramatised in this offertory act. "It is the property of
love," he says, "ever to give, and ever to receive. Now
the love of Jesus is both avid and generous. All that He
has, all that He is, He gives; all that we are, all that
we have, He takes. He demands more than we are able
of ourselves to give, for He has a mighty hunger, that
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would wholly devour us. . . . He makes of us His very
bread, burning up in the fire of His love our vices, defects,
and misdeeds. . . . He would absorb our life, in order to
change it into His own: ours full of sin, His full of grace
and glory, all ready for us, if we will but renounce ourselves. . . . For the love of Jesus is of a noble nature:
where He has devoured all, there it is that He would give
Himself as food."8
The singularly beautiful invocations which accompany
in the Missal the offering of the elements — effecting, as
it were, their transition from the purposes of "nature" to the purposes of "grace" — bring these ideas into greater
prominence; especially perhaps the antique and deeply
mystical prayer which is said when the chalice is mixed
— an ancient image of man's union with the Divine Life.
This prayer is an almost perfect epitome of the essence of
Christian mysticism, the meaning of the ceremony of the
Mass. "God, who hast wonderfully framed man's exalted
nature, and still more wonderfully renewed it, grant us by
the mystery of this wine and water to become partakers of
His divinity, Who vouchsafed to become a partaker of
our humanity."9 Even so St. Bernard says, that as a drop
of water poured into wine loses itself and takes the colour
and savour of wine, so in the saints, by "some unspeakable transmutation," all human affections are merged in
the will of God.10
Finally, the whole offertory action is completed, its
true intention and place in the process of transcendence
made clear, by two paradoxical declarations. The first
is the renewed confession of man's utter poorness and
meekness; his very act of self-donation so wretched and
ineffectual a thing when measured by the standards of
Eternity. "In spiritu humilitatis, et in animo contrito
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suscipiamur a te, Domine." The next — startling in its
sudden transition from abasement to supreme assurance —
is an abrupt and confident appeal to the supernal sphere,
the demand that the Wind of God shall blow upon this
garden, that the spices thereof may flow out; the
passionate invocation of a spiritual Presence whereby "Man's nothing-perfect" shall be transformed, here and
now, into "God's all-complete." "Come! O Sanctifier,
Almighty Eternal God! and bless this sacrifice set forth
in Thy holy Name." "Thou needst not call Him from
a distance," says Meister Eckhart again, "thy opening and
His entering are but one moment."11
From the attitude of donation we move to the attitude
of purification; that final, drastic purification of body, soul
and spirit, which precedes the Unitive State. Here again
the soul's adventure is played out in action; in the ceremonial ablutions of the priest, which take place in all
liturgies at this point. The prayers for purity which now
accompany this act were added during the Middle Ages:
but its interior meaning was realised in much earlier times. "The Hierarch," says Dionysius the Areopagite in his
mystical interpretation of the liturgy, "standing before
the most holy symbols, washes his hands with water,
together with the reverend order of priests: because, as
the Oracles testify, when a man has been washed [i.e., in
baptism] he needs no other washing, save that of his
extremities — that is, of his lowest ( John xiii. 10). Which
last and complete cleansing of the extremities makes man
powerful and free, as being now wholly clothed in the
holy vesture of the Divine Image; and advancing in well
doing in inferior things, yet being always turned uniquely
to the One, he will make his return without spot or
blemish to the Divine Unity, as preserving in himself the
fulness and perfection of the Divine Image."12
The celebrant, symbolically purified, and now the image
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of the purged and surrendered soul which is wholly
adjusted to the purposes of the Universal Life, then
returns to the altar: and sums up in a last prayer the
now completed offering of all man has to bring.13 He
then turns to the people and begs their help; the support
of their collective will, attention, and desire in the mutual
act which he is about to undertake in their name. "Pray,
my brethren! that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable" — the Christian mystic, going forward to his encounter with Reality, goes in the name of the whole race.
The action has now reached the supreme point, both
mystical and sacramental, of the rite: the great dramatic
prayer of the Canon, or act of consecration itself. Such
an act as this — and I include in it the further completing
act of communion, for these, though liturgically distinct,
are mystically two aspects of a movement which is one —
is not matter for the explorations of the psychologist.
Still the living symbol — often, the living medium — of
the highest experience which is possible to the spirit of
man, its deepest meanings are not amenable to the dissecting-knife of intellect; they yield their secret only to the
humble intuition of the heart. Here, we are but concerned to remark the presence, within that ritual form
which "veils and reveals" the climax of the mystical
drama, the presence of all the chief factors, all the
emotional equivalents, of that New Life which we have
traced from its emergence on the shores of Jordan to its
perpetual exhibition at the altars of the Christian Church.
The bringing of the Eternal into Time, the lifting up
of man into the kingdom of Reality, was, we said, that
life's supreme objective: the adding of that "top storey"
to human nature which should make humanity an intermediary between two worlds. The new, completed manhood thus achieved we found to be supremely human:
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the whole personality, not some "spiritual" part of it,
was the matter of this Great Work. Its note was no thin
and abstract transcendentalism, but rather the glad and
bold acceptance of the common stuff of things, as being
implicitly susceptible of God. Founded in the deeply
natural processes of birth and growth, it planted the free,
transfigured spirit firmly within the framework of the
Here-and-Now. Nor was the life achieved by that transfigured spirit concentrated on any one narrow aspect of
Reality. At once theocentric and social, it flowed out
not alone in adoration to God, but also in charity to men.
We found that, like great music, it compassed and
harmonised the extremes of joy and pain: that "seeing
that here there is true perfect manhood, so there is a perfect perceiving and feeling of pleasure and pain, liking
and disliking, sweetness and bitterness, joy and sorrow,
and all that can be perceived and felt within and without."14 Possessing its life under the two orders of active work and
eternal peace, rejecting nothing of the "given" world of
sense, it found in that "given" world a sacrament of the
Divine Nature, discovering God alike in the travail of
Becoming, and in that changeless Being to which life tends
as its Eternal Home.
Take then the great Eucharistic prayer of the Roman
Missal, from its opening in the Preface15 to the closing
Doxology, and ask of it what witness it brings to the
character of man's spiritual life. First we observe that
the priest who recites it, and those whom he represents,
must enter on this supreme adventure in a special and
appropriate mood. A fresh "tuning up" is here asked
of them: and the mood demanded is to be governed by
the characteristically mystical emotion of joy. The call
to joy, which runs like music through the Mass, is now
heard at its clearest. "Sursum Corda!" The growing
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creature is to try its wings. Not awe and abasement, but
sweet gladness of spirit, exaltation of heart, is the feeling-state proper to that encounter of love which "raises the
spirit from the sphere of reverence to one of rapture and
dalliance."16"Lift up thine heart unto God," says The
Cloud of Unknowing, "with a meek stirring of love;
and mean Himself and none of His goods. And thereto
look thee loath to think on aught but Himself. So that
nought work in thy wit nor in thy will, but only Himself.
. . . This is the work of the soul that most pleaseth God.
All saints and angels have joy of this work, and hasten
them to help it in all their might. All fiends be furious
when thou thus dost, and try for to defeat it in all that
they can. All men living on earth be wonderfully holpen
of this work, thou wottest not how. Yea, the souls in
purgatory be eased of their pain by virtue of this work.
Thyself art cleansed and made virtuous by no work so
much."17 It is by the glad and grateful laying hold on
his inheritance of joy, that the purified spirit of man
enters most deeply into the heart of Reality.
That Reality is there at his door, once consciousness has
been lifted up to the level at which communion with it
becomes possible. Therefore the Eucharistic act begins
not so much by a prayer, a demand for new life, as by a
thankful remembrance of the very essence of life; present
in the Here-and-Now, and known in its richness and
beauty to the transfigured consciousness. For this it is "meet and right" to give thanks.18 The supreme act of
communion to which the drama is moving means the
doing away of that flame of separation which keeps finite
and infinite life apart; the glad participation of the separated creature in the whole, deep mighty torrent of the life
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of God, shining in the spiritual universe, energising the
world, of men. "Therefore with angels and archangels,
with Thrones and Dominations, with all the army of
heaven", the forward-moving soul now dares to associate
itself, in acts of love and praise:19 and the one song by
which the people express their own participation in this
mystery is the awful cry of the Sanctus, which cherubim
and seraphim, the emblems of purest wisdom and most
ardent love "cease not daily to cry out — that wonderful
hymn to a Divine Perfection, transcendent and immanent, "filling heaven and earth."
"Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory . . . therefore, most merciful Father, we pray that Thou wouldst
accept and bless these gifts."20 Whether intentionally
devised or not, the petition, as we have it now, is immediately dependent on the declaration: on the fact that the
natural things of earth — the wheat, the vine, all growing
living creatures — are already entinctured with Spirit,
radiant of the divine loveliness, "full of Thy glory," and
hence may be lifted up into a higher order of Reality, may
become lenses that focus and distribute the flashes of the
Uncreated Light. This last offering up of the unconsecrated elements is the completion of that solemn and
significant act of donation and sacrifice which began with
the Offertory, and is implied in each subsequent movement of the rite. It is an act of donation made, not by
and for one special soul, lifted out of the ruck of humanity,
that he may achieve a private union with God: but in
the name of the whole nation of the twice-born, the sons
of Divine Reality.
1. In most Eastern rites it is said at the Kiss of Peace. Fortescue, The
Mass, p. 290.
2. Suso, Leben, cap. 21.
3. At this point in the Roman Mass the priest still says, "Let us pray,"
but no prayer follows! A curious example of the "vestigial relic."
4. Fortescue, Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, p. 64.
5. Good description in Frere Principles of Religious Ceremonial, p. 77.
In the ninth-century frescoes of S. Clemente at Rome we may still see
this ceremony taking place.
6. The "Cherubic Hymn." See Fortescue, The Mass, p. 298, and
Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, p. 86.
7. Meister Eckhart, Pred. III.
8. De Contemplatione ( Hello, pp. 152-153).
9. Originally the Collect for Dec. 24, and so given in the Leonine
Sacramentary. Cf. Fortescue, op. cit., p. 25.
10. De diligendo Deo, cap. 10. For the rest of this passage, vide supra,
p. 324.
11. Pred. III.
12. De Eccles. Hier., cap. 3, iii. § 9.
13. "Suspice, sancta Trinitas, hanc oblationem, etc." Fortescue insists
that this prayer and the ablutions which precede it are all part of the
offertory act.
14. Theo. Ger., cap. 24.
15. The Preface, though now printed as a separate prayer, is an integral
part of the Canon. Cf. Fortescue, The Mass, p. 316.
16. Coventry Patmore, The Rod, the Root and the Flower, "Aurea Dicta,"
xxxix.
17. The Cloud of Unknowing, cap. 3.
18. "Vere dignum et justum est, æquum et salutare, nos tibi semper et
ubique gratias agere"--the invariable opening phrase of the Preface.
19. Some ancient rites here practically commemorate and give thanks for
the whole creation as manifesting the goodness of God. A fine example
is in the Liturgy of St. Clement ( Neale and Littledale, pp. 76-82).
20. "Pleni sunt cœli et terra gloria tua. Te igitur, clementissime Pater, . . .
supplices rogamus ac petimus, uti accepta habeas, et benedicas, hæc dona."
(Sanctus and Te igitur; or first section of the Canon. The Eucharistic
prayer is generally divided into twelve such sections, each known by its
opening words.)
