The Spirit of Worship: The Liturgical Tradition (review)

The Spirit of Worship: The Liturgical Tradition. By Susan J. White. New York: Orbis, 1999. 159 pp. $13.00.

Speaking of the concept of time, St. Augustine once commented, "If no one asks me I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asks, I know not" (Confessions, XI:xiv). This phrase seems very appropriate to the study of spirituality, and Susan White begins her book by asking this question with regard to liturgical spirituality. In 1988, Peter Fink, S.J., raised a similar question during a conference entitled "Liturgy and Spirituality in Dialogue." In his keynote address he noted that the term spirituality is large and elusive, yet the topic of spirituality today is "hot" and definitely "in." White acknowledges the initial difficulty in pinning down a precise meaning for the term. One normally studies "traditions" of spirituality, for example the Franciscan or the Dominican traditions. To speak, therefore of a "liturgical tradition" of spirituality raises the problem of whose liturgical tradition, a problem with which White successfully grapples by means of an ecumenical and eclectic approach. Her book constitutes a cento of texts that span history, representing eastern and western liturgical traditions alike. She announces that the sources for her work will be drawn from "clergy and lay people alike from both East and West; they are Protestants and Roman Catholics; they are Cistercians and Benedictines, Dominicans and Franciscans; they are Presbyterians, Anglicans, Lutherans and Quakers" (14-15). As a result, The Spirit of Worship reads like a spiritual text itself, and thus fits well into the Orbis series on Traditions of Christian Spirituality.

Employing a complementary approach via negativa, White also attempts to establish what liturgical spirituality is not. Rather than being preoccupied with functional questions of how the liturgy works or what it means, she is interested in how liturgy nourishes and sustains the Christian life both individually and collectively. I think this is a crucial insight that should give liturgists cause for thought. One can easily lose sight of the primary goal of liturgy, namely prayer and spiritual formation. Beginning with the Constitution on the Divine Liturgy from the Second Vatican Council, liturgy is presented as "fons et culmine"--as source and summit of the Christian life--to emphasize its importance in shaping the spiritual life of the Church and its members. However, to the list of things that spirituality is not should be added "a psychological state of mind." A psychological paradigm has been employed in recent year using tools such as Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram, resulting in "spirituality" being defined quasi-therapeutically, rather than as true spiritual growth. This theoretical tendency manifests itself in liturgies that tend toward feel-good, warm-fuzzy rituals. The invitation to "full, conscious and active participation" in the liturgy must take us beyond the "feel good," beyond letters and numbers, beyond self-fascination and self-fulfillment, and into the mystery of God, where the Incarnation remains the foundational principle of the liturgical celebration. The Constitution on the Liturgy states it succinctly: "It is through the liturgy, especially, that the faithful are enabled to express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church" (SC 2).

The book is divided by chapters into six categories: life and death, community and ethics, and time and space. Each chapter presents a comprehensive synthesis of liturgical studies. Beginning with baptism and Eucharist, a Christian identity is established. This identity is lived out through the sacraments and reinforced through the prayer of the church, the liturgical year and liturgical space. Ethics becomes the arena in which one acts on this identity, an identity, finally, that is celebrated in rituals surrounding dying and death. From birth to death, therefore, liturgical ritual and prayer shape the Christian both as an individual and within a community. In light of the latter, one of the most important chapters is...