Bound in Love

Lex orandi lex credendi.

The rule of praying is the rule of believing. This is an ancient Latin maxim attributed to St. Prosper of Aquitaine that speaks to the intrinsic linkage between how we worship and what we believe. It’s another way of stressing the importance of orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is the English version of a Greek word that means right praise. The Orthodox are the ones who pray correctly. From their correct praise they can be confident of correct belief. In AA meetings, one will sometimes hear these words of encouragement: bring the feet and the head will follow. The same thought might be said in this way: do first, understand later.

This rule of lex orandi lex credendi is a warning for those who claim to be true Catholics. It warns us that if we are not attentive to proper worship, we might stop believing what the Church teaches. There was great confusion after the Second Vatican Council about what Catholics had to believe, and we are so grateful for the ongoing renewal that we presently see in the church. St. Prosper would not have been surprised because how we pray informs what we believe. Wholesale changes in the liturgy should have been expected to lead to great confusion about what the Church teaches. The young people renewing the Church are demanding apostolic teaching and reverent liturgies because you cannot believe seriously and yet pray casually.

One of the beliefs that Catholics are supposed to have is a belief in the real presence of Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity, in the consecrated host. We just celebrated the feast of Corpus Christi, which is the Latin for Body of Christ. We believe that Christ gave his body and his blood for our salvation. He gave it once on the cross at Calvary, and he gives it a sacramental form at every Mass.

Liturgy is the public prayer duty of the church, and the rule of praying is extremely important. If our liturgy becomes too focused on the community rather than on the object of worship, then the community may begin to lose its understanding of what they’re really doing. What is a true re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross can begin to look like a communal meal and celebration of the community. Celebrating the Christian community is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not what the Mass is about. We pray in the nave of the Church, and we socialize in the narthex. The Knights who serve as ushers do a great job of keeping the doors closed so that the praying area and the social area are clearly separated.

So if we want to believe what the historical Catholic Church has always believed, we need to make sure that our liturgy reflects that belief. The Catholic Church has always believed that the Mass in a mysterious way stands out of time, for it connects us back to that day at Golgotha and it connects us to every Mass going on around the world, and it connects us to the souls in heaven and the banquet that goes on eternally in heaven. So one mark of a faithful liturgy is that it is not in a hurry. There is time and we do not need to rush. There is no canon law that Mass must be done in an hour or less.

The Catholic Church has always understood that it doesn’t have sufficient vocabulary to completely describe what it does and what it believes, so it has always relied on predefined words that have been established by the church with specific meaning. When we use the phrase “real presence,” we don’t need to unpack all the ecumenical councils and dogmatic pronouncements over the centuries to confirm our intellectual understanding every time we use that phrase.

So the Mass isn’t an explanatory transfer of intellectual knowledge from the priest to the people in the pews. It’s not a class and it’s not a seminar. It remains an act of worship. So it is not important that it be in a language that I completely understand. It is okay to use a sacred language, one that isn’t used in everyday settings. In our Mass, those languages are Hebrew and Greek and Latin. And it’s okay if I don’t really know Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, because the purpose of Mass is not my intellectual apprehension but it is my spiritual devotion. I can be devoted to something and not be able to fully explain it. I can sing the Salve Regina in Latin without knowing enough Latin to translate it. 

The law of praying at Mass is most clearly seen in how we approach the altar. If we really believe that that is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, then we will approach with trepidation. Sauntering down the aisle in our flip-flops and athleisure outfit conveys a casual attitude and indicates that we don’t really know what’s going on at Mass. Being reverent as we receive the Eucharist, perhaps even having the humility to kneel or stand and let the minister put the host in our mouth like a little child, can be a tremendous witness to others and confirmation to ourselves that we know that God is our father and we are his children.

As Knights, we are always trying to be better Catholics. We’re the spiritual athletes that St. Paul wrote about. The good athletes get really good because they focus on good form. It’s the maintenance of good form that lets them run faster longer and win the race. We should always be trying to improve our liturgical form, our lex orandi, so we can grow in devotion to the God who saves us.