Attracted by the beauty of the liturgy

Young people appreciate a faith announced without packaging, without endless preambles and “trick” of pre-evangelization. They are open to those who witness the Christian faith to them in freedom, without trying to convince them by putting pressure on their freedom. They’re like the small birds that land in curiosity on the windowsill. One shouldn’t try to catch them

Interview with cardinal Godfried Danneels by Gianni Valente

Cardinal Godfried Danneels, Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussel

In his speech to the Synod Cardinal Godfried Danneels, Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussel, described the religious condition of modern Western society where secularization and subjectivism converged in the thousand rites of the new consumer do-it-yourself religiosity. At the end of the Synod we had a friendly talk with the primate of Belgium.

Which useful memory will remain with you of the Synod on the Eucharist?
GODFRIED DANNEELS: The more useful and concrete notion that came out of the Synod seems to me the recommendation to celebrate the mass well. It’s not a new thing. But highlights the fact that the first work of evangelization is the liturgy itself. If the liturgy is well celebrated, it exerts a force of attraction, it’s evangelistic in itself, and there’s nothing else to add. When you offer truth you can give rise to a reaction of scepticism. What is the truth? At bottom we’re all little Pilates. When you insist on preaching moral perfection, you can demoralize: God is good and perfect, but I know I’m not, and it’s useless trying. Whereas what is beautiful disarms. Many African and Asian bishops have spoken to me about “threshold proselytes…”
Who are they?
DANNEELS: They’re the polygamists, the non-baptized, even Moslems who look in through the door of the Church attracted by the beauty of the liturgy. They feel there’s something going on…
What else struck you during the Synod?
DANNEELS: The underlining of the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, which to tell the truth had never been denied. But that at a certain moment, after the Council, had been confined to the shade, and the stress was put on the Eucharist as banquet. But the Last Supper was not a simple group meal. It was a ceremonial and at the same time sacrificial banquet. The apostles and Jesus did not meet in the cenacle only to eat together like all the other times. But to remember the paschal meal of the Hebrews, and commemorate the work of salvation performed by God in Egypt. And then, the underlining of the Eucharistic worship also seemed to me to contain a new accent…
Worship is also a very traditional practice.
DANNEELS: I notice that many young people discover it as a new thing. One saw that in Cologne also. Or in the silent adoration of the First Communion children, in Saint Peter’s square, on October 15. Young people appreciate a faith announced without packaging, without endless preambles and “trick” of pre-evangelization. They are open to those who witness the Christian faith to them in freedom, without trying to convince them by putting pressure on their freedom. They’re like the small birds that land in curiosity on the windowsill. One shouldn’t try to catch them.
The sacraments themselves are a visible fact.
DANNEELS: The sacraments are concrete gestures, that make use of materials signs. The sign is always visible, but is always a sign of something of not visible: the res sacramenti that is communicated through the sign. There lies the force of the liturgy. This res is not perceptible when the liturgy becomes theater, self-celebration constructed by us. And precisely when that happens the liturgy becomes something of a burden. There’s no sense in going to the same piece of theater each Sunday.
What connection is there between the visibility of the sacraments and the public visibility of the Church?
DANNEELS: The sacramental signs present themselves with the features of humility. They are simple, ordinary, poor: water, bread, wine, oil. It’s not a matter of making an impression, of staging with special effects. The liturgy with its repeated and discreet gestures suggests, is the suggestion of invisible reality of which the effects are seen. And the subject of the liturgical and sacramental action is Christ himself. The liturgical and sacramental action is not an advertising technique to influence, hypnotize, overawe. Analogously, the public presence of the Church by nature cannot be likened to a display of power, or to a technique for putting pressure on society.
The words of Péguy come to mind, that Jesus came to save the world, not to change it.
DANNEELS: First comes being saved. And then the change comes. The change is not the premise, but the visible effect of inner conversion. And every urge to change the world in Christian fashion can turn out to be violent if it doesn’t let the tenderness of the Lord toward us transpire. It’s not us who works the change of ourselves.
What did you think of the participation of Joseph Ratzinger in his first Synod as pope?
DANNEELS: He was always present at the hour of free discussion. He intervened in the Synod not to determine the question, but to offer his own contribution, like one synodal father among the others. That is exceptional. John Paul II never did it. The charisma of the current pope is not that of the great actor in front of a million people, but that of knowing how to speak to individuals, in a calm personal conversation.
There was much talk in this Synod of the Church in China, abetted by the absence of the Chinese bishops whom the pope had invited. You were in China when John Paul II died.
DANNEELS: I got the impression that many Chinese political leaders want to normalize relations with the Holy See. It can’t be the union of the bishops with the Roman apostolic See that creates the problem. It needs to be explained that the bond between the pope and the bishops is not of a political order. It is a communion of faith and charity, that cannot be misunderstood as if it were political interference in the internal affairs of the country. The concrete problem, now, seems to me that of the diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Taiwan. q