Ratzinger, Joseph. The Spirit of the Liturgy. Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2020. Part One: The Essence of the Liturgy. Chapter 3, ‘From Old Testament to New: The Fundamental Form of Christian Liturgy―Its Determination by Biblical Faith’.
Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy), Promulgated by Paul VI, Rome, 4 December 1963, nn. 21-46.
This chapter has four sections:
Introduction [paragraphs 1 and 2].
Inner insufficiencies of worship in the Old Testament (OT), [paragraphs 3-8].
The core of Christian worship―logikê latreia [9-11].
Conclusion.
One. Introduction.
As we had seen in the previous chapter, the essential intention of worship is peace in the universe (cosmos) through union with God across history.
Due to its intuition about an primordial fall or shortcoming in regards to the divinity, worship is also a struggle for atonement, reconciliation or ‘re-linking’ (re-ligio) with God.
But who can atone for man before God? Throughout history man has looked for a replacement (Erzatz) in animal or crop offerings.
They, however, cannot represent (vertreten) him. This awareness of insufficiency will grow as the OT progresses.
In contrast with other ancient religions, Judaism worships the one God and sees the many ‘gods’ of other religions more and more as demons or subordinated powers.
Nevertheless, even the faith of Israel experiences ‘an inner drama’ due to the insufficiency awareness mentioned before, which is explored in the second section of the chapter.
Two. Insufficiency of worship in the Old Testament.
The Book of Leviticus describes an apparently full cycle of worship that covers all seasons throughout the year.
However chapter 26 outlines the conditions Israel must follow in order to keep its side of the Covenant. Blessings will come upon them if they fulfill God’s commandments. However punishments up to near utter will befall the Chosen People if they disobey.
Other examples are present in Genesis 22 (the sacrifice of Isaac), Exodus 12-13 (lamb sacrificed for the first-born), 1 Sam 15:22 (Saul’s disobedience) and Ps 50:7-15 (on the sacrifice pleasing to God).
The trial of Stephen, though part of the New Testament (NT), eloquently reveals this inner sense of inadequacy in OT worship, its ‘inner drama’.
Stephen is accused of having said that Jesus would destroy the Temple and change the customs (the Law) dictated by Moses.
Stephen draws on a passage where the prophet Amos urges Israel to seek and love God and hate evil so that they may live (5:14-15).
God despises the very sacrifices Moses had commanded if they are only a superficial practice that has lost its essence―obedience to him, the fulfillment of his commandments in their lives.
Stephen points out (Acts 7:44) that the ark of the covenant and the tabernacle, so revered by the Jews with good reason, was however a replica of the pattern Moses had seen at the mountain with God (Ex 25:40; 26:30: 27:8). In other words, they are not the real thing.
God’s throne is heaven. He has made everything, including the materials used to build the Temple (Acts 7:49-50).
The greatest of OT prophets, Moses, who constructs the Temple and outlines worship and the moral law that forms part of it, eventually dies. God promises to raise a prophet like him (Dt 18:15). Stepehen shows that the new prophet will lead Israel from the age of the replica Temple to that of the real one. He will perfect (and in that way, change) the law of Moses to bring it to fulfillment.
Jesus himself shows the insufficiency of the OT worship in his cleansing of the Temple (Jn 2:13-21). He prophesises that the destruction of his earthly body will bring about that of the Temple too.
After three days of his Passion he will resurrect and build the new, definitive and indestructible Temple which will be his living body, in the Eucharist, the place of worship for all men and communion with the living God.
Three. Towards a new kind of worship, ‘in the spirit’.
The third section of the chapter describes a shift in the worship of Israel towards ‘spiritual sacrifice’ forced by the circumstances of the Exile first (around the VIII century BC) and then the persecution under Greek rule (II century BC).
Away from the Temple, fulfilling the worship mandated through Moses becomes impossible. All is left for the Jewish people is an incomplete form of worship without animal or harvest offerings.
A conviction arises that their very sufferings have to count as a sacrifice, though of a different kind (spiritual). Their state of disgrace can be offered to God as worship.
Even after the Maccabees rebuild the temple communities such as Qumran continue spiritual worship. This changing form of worship is patent in Dan 9:4-9 and even more so in Psalm 51.
This Jewish spiritual worship suffers a further transformation in their encounter with Greek culture and its concept of logos, which ties in very well with this spiritual worship that was developing for the Jewish people.
The Greek mysticism (more connected with the Platonic stream of thought), however, is spiritual in detriment of the material, and in the faith of the OT will still remain an insufficient, incomplete form of worship.
Only when a third factor comes into the scene, the advent of Christ, does this kind of worship acquire a new and definitive form which will be called logikê latreia.
The Christian concept of logos, the Word made flesh resolves the previous contradictions and insufficiencies of the OT and indeed of other religions.
In Christ, the Greek logos will not only be meaning but also a Person, a human being with soul and body, present and visible in our world at a point in history.
Christ takes up into himself our sufferings and hopes, all the yearnings of creation and bears it to God. The two conflicting themes of Psalm 51 and indeed of the whole OT now reconcile and converge.
In Jesus’s surrender on the Cross, the Word, Logos, is united with the entire reality of human life and suffering. There is no more replacement cult, Christ truly and appropriately represents us becoming a sacrifice pleasing to God.
His sacrifice takes us into the likeness of God, the transformation into love which is the only true adoration.