Worship As The Response Of A Community

Worship is the action of a people made one body in Christ, the source of its life. Ultimately, then, worship is an act of Christ the High Priest.

In the liturgy there is a vertical movement, an out-going of human beings to God. But there is also a horizontal movement. Liturgy is celebrated with others, and the relationships between the members of the worshiping community are of the highest importance. "Private acts of public worship" is a phrase of contradictory terms.

The Pauline teaching on the church as "body" emphasizes at once the closeness of the relationship between Christ and the people—they are members, limbs, of the body—and the horizontal relationships between the members of the body (1 Cor. 12:8–31). In other words, perhaps more strongly than before, it is indicated that the priestly people is also a community, the community of Christ, with which he has a vital relationship. He is the source of all its life; it is totally dependent on him as the branches of a tree are on its trunk (John 15:1ff.). And the relationships of faith and love between its members are in the first instance created by Christ, though they are to be realized and strengthened by Eucharist, which is the sacramental sign of koin?nia, of communion, the union of minds and hearts in faith and love. If the church can be said to "make" the Eucharist, in a much deeper sense the Eucharist makes the church. But the depth and richness of the relationship is best seen in Ephesians 5, where Christ is said to be the head of the church, of which he is also Savior; and this church is his bride (Eph. 5:25–26) which he brought into existence by the "fragrant offering and sacrifice" that he offered to his Father (Eph. 5:2). It is this people, then, the priestly people, the body of Christ and the community of Christ, who are the "subject" of liturgical celebrations. In other words, it is they who celebrate the liturgy, and the form of the liturgy must be of such a sort as to make this possible. The Christian liturgy, by its nature, cannot be the monologue of a single participant. It is the action of a whole community. On the other hand, it is not an unstructured community. Each member, and indeed each group of members (for example, the choir), has a role to fulfill, and by fulfilling these functions all are exercising the priesthood they share with Christ and his ministers. But neither they nor the ministerial priesthood act independently. By reason of their relationship to Christ, and because together they are the body of Christ, the whole liturgical action and every liturgical action is also the action of Christ, who is head and High Priest of the body. The closeness of the union between head and members, and the identity of the action of the church with that of Christ, is best illustrated by the saying "When the church baptizes it is Christ who is baptizing," which is a paraphrase of a statement of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and best known of the early church fathers, who said that the Lord baptizes through his ministers. The ultimate subject of the liturgical celebration, then, is neither the ordained ministry nor the people, nor indeed both together, but Christ, who acts in and through his church. Obviously his action is invisible, but the people of God, his body, is a visible and structured community, which over the whole range of its liturgical action, consisting of both Word and sacrament, manifests Christ's presence, shows forth the nature of his activity, which is redemptive, and by his power makes his redeeming work effectual and available to men and women of today. Liturgy does not lend itself to definition, but if a definition is to be attempted it could be as follows: liturgy is the communal celebration of the paschal mystery by the church, which is Christ's body and in which he with the Holy Spirit is active. Through this celebration, which is by nature sacramental, Christ, the High Priest of the community, makes present and available to men and women of today the reality of his salvation.