ground all around — these are symbols of cosmological reorienta­tion in the Bible. What is the structure of this cosmos? The struc­tures are many, depending upon the diverse treasures of diverse cultures. These treasures all are welcome to express the biblical worldview, as long as they also are ready to be inverted, broken, criticized, reoriented. And, for current culture, such an urgency of critique makes the biblical cosmological reorientation remarkably consonant with experimental science in our time, though not with scientism, not with "science" held as a fully coherent, unbroken system. Only one is holy.

The eighth day, the bath that assembles us with others, the word of the cross, the bread that brings us to see, the meal intended to feed all — these are liturgical forms for the encounter with God, the encounter which is at the heart of the biblical reorientation to the cosmos. The place on which you are standing is holy ground.

Much more needs to be said about what such liturgical reorien­tation means for a dialogue with public symbols, with ecology and even with astronomy. But there is the beginning, at least, of a dis­cussion of liturgy and worldview: in the liturgy the perfect sphere has a hole in it and you are standing on this holy ground.

David A. Stosur

Liturgy and (Post)Modernity: A Narrative Response to Guardinis Challenge1

The question of "modernity" in relation to Roman Catholic liturgi­cal theology and practice is both complex and wide in scope. With no pretense to comprehensiveness, I hope in this article to advance discussion on the topic by accomplishing two things. First, I will

David A. Stosur is academic dean and professor of liturgical studies at Saint Francis Seminary in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1 This article originated as the Ninth Annual Henni Lecture, delivered at Saint Francis Seminary in Milwaukee on 26 August 2001.

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highlight a letter written by one of the foremost figures in the litur­gical movement, shortly after the Second Vatican Council promul­gated its Constitution on the Liturgy. I will interpret the message in Romano Guardinis letter as acknowledging both modern and postmodern liturgical concerns, indicating distinctions between the two along the way. Second, inspired by Guardini, I will offer an initial sketch of an approach to liturgical theology and practice that emerges from the insights of Paul Ricoeur/s narrative theory. I will propose that thinking along narrative lines offers Roman Catholics and others a possible route through many of our present liturgical impasses.

G U A R D I N I S LETTER

Romano Guardini was one of the great pioneers of liturgical re­newal.2 His classic work, The Spirit of the Liturgy, had as much influ­ence on the growth in popularity of the Liturgical Movement as any single writing after World War I.3 In both his work toward liturgical renewal and in his academic posts, he kept an eye to the future of his beloved church in its relationship with the society and culture whence its members came. He believed that the eternal mysteries of the faith, borne by the tradition of the church's liturgy and teaching, must be held in tension with the interpretation of these mysteries in the ever-shifting cultural situation of the post-Holocaust world — a world which, in the midst of unprecedented scientific and technological innovation and an increasing sense of divine abandonment, was in desperate need of the Gospel's wisdom and hope.

In April of 1964, at the age of 79, just four months after the pro­mulgation of the Constitution on the Liturgy, Guardini wrote a letter to the participants in the Third German Liturgical Congress at Mainz, failing health preventing his attendance in person.4 Granting that

2 On Guardinis life and writings, see Robert A. Krieg, Romano Guardini: A Pre­cursor of Vatican II (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press 1997).

3 Vom Geist der Liturgie, (Freiburg: Herder 1918); The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. Ada Lane (London: Sheed & Ward 1930); reprinted with Introduction by Joanne M. Pierce (NewYork: Crossroad Publishing Company 1998).

4 This letter was published in English as "A Letter from Romano Guardini" in Herder Correspondence (August 1964) 237-39,anc* was reprinted in Assembly 12, no. 4 (April 1986) 322-24. Citations in the body of the text are to the latter.

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so much of what the liturgical movement had been seeking to attain had now been ratified by the Council, he reminded the Con­gress that the major work of implementing the reforms was yet to be accomplished, and argued that there were essential questions still to be raised: "A mass of ritual and textual problems will, of course, present themselves. . . . But the central problem seems to me to be something else; the problem of. . . the liturgical act" (322).

Though Guardinis letter raised several questions, for our pur­poses here two main issues are at stake. The first occupied the bulk of his letter, and could be termed the "modern" issue, namely, what were the challenges that must be overcome if the reforms of the liturgy outlined by the Second Vatican Council were to have the desired deep effects on the People of God? A review of some of Guardini's thoughts in this regard is in order before turning to the second issue, that of his "postmodern" challenge (though Guardini himself did not use this term, which was not yet in theological cur­rency).

The Modern Challenge. Guardini pointed out how the person of the nineteenth century already had been incapable of performing the true liturgical act, and had been "unaware of its existence." Such a person viewed religious conduct as "an individual inward matter which in the 'liturgy' took on the character of an official, public ceremonial," so that the liturgical act "was simply a private and inward act, surrounded by ceremonial and not infrequently accompanied by a feeling that the ceremonial was really a disturbing factor" (322). He noted that, in contrast, the Second Vatican Council's deliberations made it manifestly clear "that the religious act under­lying the liturgy was something singular and important" (322). His letter stated that "the usual discussion generally brings out only the sociological, ethnological aspect: participation by the congre­gation and use of the vernacular" (323). The concern, however, should be for the liturgical act "as a whole," and should penetrate more deeply: "The question is whether the wonderful opportunities now open to the liturgy will achieve their full realization; whether we shall be satisfied with just removing anomalies, taking new situations into account, giving better instruction on the meaning of ceremonies and liturgical vessels or whether we shall relearn a forgotten way of doing things and recapture lost attitudes" (323).

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Guardini argued that many parts of the liturgy of his time were not meaningful to modern sensibilities. He felt that a telling sign would be a "liturgical crisis," brought on "once serious prayer is joined to the action," making apparent "the parts that have no living appeal" (323). His fundamental question was, of what does the integrated liturgical act consist? He offered as an example the sporadic custom of an offertory procession by the entire assembly: "It makes all the difference," he wrote, "whether the faithful look on this procession as a mere means to an end which could have been achieved equally well by someone coming around with the collection-plate, or whether they know that the act of bringing their gifts forward is a 'prayer' in itself, a readiness towards God" (323). The integrated liturgical act could be accomplished by such performative activities or doings but also required a contemplative looking. "[T]he symbol should be 'done' by the celebrant as a reli­gious act and the faithful should 'read' it by an analogous act. . . . [It] is in itself something corporal-spiritual, an expression of the inward through the outward, and must as such be co-performed through the act of looking" (323).

Guardini saw many worshipers as greatly disadvantaged by the effects of modernity's radical individualism: "Of particular impor­tance for the liturgical act is the action and full participation of the congregation as a body. The act is done by every individual, not as an isolated individual, but as a member of a body which is the 'we' of the prayers. Its structure is different from that of any other collection of people meeting for a common purpose. It is that of a corpus, an objective whole. In the liturgical act the celebrating indi­vidual becomes part of this body and he incorporates the circum-stantes in his self-expression. This is not so simple if it is to be genuine and honest. Much that divides men must be overcome; dislikes, indifference to the many who are 'no concern of mine,' but who are really members of the same body, lethargy, etc. In the act the individual becomes conscious of the meaning of the words 'congregation' and'Church'" (324). He felt that considerable "thought and experiment [would] be needed to get modern man to 'perform' the [liturgical] act without being theatrical and fussy." The patience of the reform-minded would need to outlast that of those "inclined towards an individualistic way of devotion, [who] regard these new demands as unreasonable and think in their

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hearts that it is just a question of waiting for the 'fashion' to pass" (324)·

Guardini was both a champion of liturgical renewal and a prophet of its continuing challenges. It seems we have entered well into the period of liturgical crisis he predicted — two of its more recent symptoms being Milwaukee's cathedral renovation controversy,5 and the publication of Liturgiam authenticam, the document by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Disci­pline of the Sacraments, which views translation of liturgical texts as a simple mechanistic substitution of vernacular word for Latin word.6 We still struggle to appropriate the modern developments envisioned by liturgical reformers like Guardini and given shape in the reforms of Vatican II. The cultural factors most pronounced in the modern west that have influenced this struggle — individ­ualism, consumerism, pragmatism, and a mentality that worships technology and entertainment, to name a few — have been well examined by theologians and liturgical commentators, and deserve our continuing attention.7

The Postmodern Challenge. Guardini raised a more complex chal­lenge, however, just before closing his letter. His way of putting things was disturbing to many who had committed themselves to reform, leading some of those gathered at Mainz to wonder if his enthusiasm for liturgical renewal had waned.8 Guardini stated what one might call his postmodern question boldly: "There are plenty of problems and tasks ahead. But perhaps one should, for

5 See, among other newspaper articles, Tom Heinen, "Vatican Orders Cathedral Changes: Weakland Disputes Extent of Renovation Foes'Victory," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Tuesday, 3 July 2001, and Gustave Niebuhr, "Milwaukee Cathedral Plan Draws Ecclesiastical Ire," New York Times, Saturday, 14 July 2001, National Desk section.

6 Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, "Instruction: Liturgiam Authenticam," 28 March 2001, Origins 31, no. 2 (24 May 2001) 17,19-32. See nos. 20-21.

7 See, for example, Regis A. Duffy, An American Emmaus: Faith and Sacrament in the American Culture (New York: Crossroad 1995); Richard R. Gaillardetz, Trans­forming Our Days: Spirituality, Community, and Liturgy in a Technological Culture (NewYork: Crossroad 2000); and Rembert G. Weakland, "Active Participation: How Our Culture Affects Our Liturgy," Church 17, no. 1 (Spring 2001) 5-10.

8 Krieg, 8j, citing at n. 76 Hanna Barbara Gerì, Romano Guardini 1885-1968 (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald 1985) 210.

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the sake of clarification, put a preliminary question: Is not the liturgical act and, with it, all that goes under the name of 'liturgy' so bound up with the historical background — antique or me­dieval or baroque — that it would be more honest to give it up altogether? Would it not be better to admit that man in this indus­trial and scientific age, with its new sociological structure, is no longer capable of a liturgical act? And instead of talking of renewal ought we not to consider how best to celebrate the sacred myster­ies so that modern man can grasp their meaning through his own approach to truth? This seems a hard saying. But there are quite a number of people who think this way. We cannot simply dismiss them as people standing aloof, but we must ask how — if liturgy is indeed fundamental — we can best approach them" (324).

Give up attempting to renew and enact the liturgy, because we are not capable of it. A hard saying indeed! Was Guardini sincere in posing this as a possibility? The ambiguity of his approach here is consistent with that of many of his later writings, such as The End of the Modern World and Power and Responsibility,9 in which he surveys the cultural landscape, and concludes that a braver, newer type of Christian is needed to negotiate a world that has left not only Christendom but also modern Christianity behind. Indeed, this ambiguity has even caused some with a neoconservative ap­proach to liturgy to interpret his letter as advocating their cause.

Guardini was certainly sincere in at least two respects. The first was in his forthright acknowledgment of a large number of people who were already in this position of seeing liturgy as irrelevant and therefore impossible, even among those who may, out of habit or fear, nostalgia or a misplaced sense of duty, continue to attend liturgy. He was sincere, secondly, in his characteristic pastoral concern for such people, as well as for those, truly committed to liturgical renewal, who did not take these others into account as seriously or as respectfully as they should have. On both counts, today's pastors, theologians, liturgists, catechists, bishops and

9 Das Ende der Neuzeit (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald 1950), trans. Joseph Theman and Herbert Burke as The End of the Modern World (New York: Sheed and Ward 1956); Die Macht (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald 1951), trans. Elinor C. Briefs as Power and Responsibility (Chicago: Henry Regnery 1961). Both translations are reprinted in one volume as The End of the Modern World (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute 1998).

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curial officials would do well to emulate Guardini's insights and mindfulness.

LITURGY AND " P O S T M O D E R N I T Y "

I have labeled the more provocative but less developed concern in Guardini's letter a "postmodern" one, and the difficulties with this term should be acknowledged. In his 1997 book, Postmodernity: Christianity in a Fragmented Age, Paul Lakeland writes: "Is the 'post' in postmodern(ity). . . sheerly an indication that the postmodern is the cultural/historical epoch that follows the modern, or is the "post" taken to indicate a continuing relationship to modernity? If the latter, is that relationship adversarial, or filial, or both? . . . And how is postmodernity, with its characteristic celebration of pop culture, related to neoconservatism? Is it, as we might initially suspect, anathema to neoconservatism, or might not neoconserva­tism forge an alliance with postmodernity against the common enemy, the critical spirit of modernity?"10

For the sake of convenience, Lakeland reduces the plethora of opinions on postmodernity to five basic forms: 1) "the poststruc-turalist intensification of modernist cultural impulses"; 2) "the eclectic reprise of modern artistic themes and styles, coupled most frequently with a deliberate collapse of the distinction between so-called high culture and popular culture"; 3) "the appropriation of the Enlightenment spirit to move beyond the perceived inhu­manity of late capitalist society"; 4) "the radical rejection of the white male Enlightenment master narrative"; and 5) "a nostalgic postmodernism, really a 'countermodernism' in disguise, which seeks to undo the harm of the modern and — at least in its religious dress — build a series of New Jerusalems or Cities of God within the contemporary world."11 Lakeland concludes: "The Enlighten­ment consolidated a belief in the inviolability of the Cartesian ego, put its faith in human reason as the power of mastery over nature and of fate, and thus created the intellectual conditions for the explosion of science and technology — the individual's application of reason in order to subdue nature. Postmodernism is a frontal

10 Paul Lakeland, Postmodernity: Christian Identity in a Fragmented Age (Minnea­polis: Fortress Press 1997) x.

nIbid.,xii.

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attack on all of this. It abandons the idea of ordered progress toward some goal, in which the autonomous human subject exer­cises the power of reason to subdue and arrange previously intractable nature toward that end. It is deeply suspicious of notions of universal reason, and it rejects all metaphysical or reli­gious foundations, all 'grand theory,' all theoretical systems."12

Rosemary Haughton, in her 1997 book, Images for Change, de­scribes postmodernity and its tangible effects in a way that accords with Lakeland's analysis. It used to be that "Class, family, property, belief, were there, they had'always'been there; the expectations, and the sanctions, were clear. Even in the breach, the rules provided a way to know where one stood. Now most of that has gone."13 She points to the past century's sweeping changes in the global political and economic spheres, along with the shift in scientific worldview from Newtonian to quantum mechanics, through which we now perceive a universe "in which energy and matter are interchangeable, and in which reality can be something created by our observations and by decisions we make. . . . How do we deal with this? How do we vote? How do we make sensible decisions? Where do we look for salvation (if any)?"14 It is not just the quantity of change, but also the accelerated pace of change in contemporary western culture has altered the quality of our experi­ence, negatively affecting our sense of personal and communal stability: "The human mind, accustomed to the effort to adjust to change by using familiar, though sharpened, tools of imagery and analysis, finds itself increasingly out of touch with the nature of the experience of change itself. This can lead to a kind of imagina­tive shut-down: for survival, the human mind screens out the excess of information it cannot deal with and tries to focus on what is immediate and familiar."15

12Ibid.,xii. "Rosemary Luling Haughton, Images for Change: The Transformation of Society

(NewYork/Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press 1997) 3-4. 14 Ibid., 4. The address on which this article was based was delivered before the

terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001. The deep questions that face the United States and the world community following these events and the ensuing responses would surely need to be added to Haughton's list.

15 Ibid., j-8, emphasis added.

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Haughton identifies the two extreme reactions that delimit the borders of this postmodern landscape. One is fundamentalism, which "affirms that the structures of society, religious and secular, have but one right and eternal form, and if they have been damaged by the forces of evil they must be mended and rebuilt in exactly the same way as before." This is an "essentially a-historical reaction," problematic because "the psycho-social materials that built the structures of the past are no longer available."16 The other extreme, seen in the end of the master narratives and in decon-struction's view of signification as entirely arbitrary, is a radical contextualizing of all human cultural experience that considers all structure to be an ever-changing illusion, so that "the only honest attitude is one that simply acknowledges the usefulness of the illusory structure, always aware that it has no final reality."17

This brief overview of postmodernity provided by Lakeland and Haughton can be succinctly brought to bear on liturgy by consid­ering Jesus' teaching: "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath."18 Understanding this statement as a commentary about the proper positioning of liturgy in the Judeo-Christian tradition, we could say, "The liturgy was made for humanity, not humanity for the liturgy." A modern version would alter the traditional: "The liturgy was made for humanity by humanity (as evidenced by the historical-critical method), and humanity has the freedom to accept it or to reject it as authoritar­ian, and if accepting it (as with Vatican II), the rationality to critique and reform it." A postmodern version (there would need to be several) might read: "The liturgy was made ostensibly for humanity but really by humans, probably to deceive or control other humans, most of whom for centuries were expected or forced to take it. Now individuals can take it or leave it, submit to it completely or remain indifferent to it, critique it or remake it in any or all of its aspects. In any event, the liturgy means different things to differ­ent persons, and its power to signify is an illusion if our notion of signification assumes any stability in the reality signified."

With this broad depiction of a postmodern view of liturgy in mind, Guardini's question could be rephrased: Is not the liturgical

16 Ibid., 36. 17 Ibid., 37-38. 18 Mark 2:27 (NRSV).

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act and, with it, all that goes under the name of ''liturgy" so hound up with the historical background — antique or medieval or baroque, pre-modern or modern — that it would be more honest to give it up altogether? Would it not be better to admit that the individual in this advanced technological and scientific age, with its rapidly emerging global, capitalist, socio-economic structure, is no longer capable of the liturgical act presupposed by the Roman Rite? And instead of talking of renewal ought we not to consider how best to celebrate "the sacred mys­teries" (this time in quotation marks, presuming as the term does a "grand narrative") so that the postmodern individual can grasp their meaning through her or his own approach to truth?

REFORM AND RENEWAL:

FORMATION, TRANSFORMATION AND S I G N I F I C A T I O N

There has been in recent years extensive and growing argumenta­tion over what constitutes the proper stance to the liturgical reforms of Vatican II. There are those who renounce it and seek a return to the "golden age" of the Tridentine Mass. Others who lived through and have appropriated the liturgical renewal seek to hand it on to those too young to have experienced directly this particular awakening of the Spirit. Still others feel things have "gone too far" and seek to "reform the reform."19 By and large, all of these stances operate under the assumption that the "modern" questions still rule the day, and Guardini's "postmodern" chal­lenge remains essentially unanswered.

It is, of course, one thing to notice that many people have be­come estranged from the liturgy's attitudes and rhythms, or seem incapable of participating in its action, regardless of whether one shows concern for these people or chooses to write them off. It is another to consider whether, in fact, such a group constitutes a sig­nificant minority, if not even the majority, of practicing Christians, and to ponder, if such is the case, what is to be done about it. Have we not reached a point where we must recognize that the "modern" liturgical issues with which Vatican II was dealing are

19 For one outline of the various approaches to liturgical reform, see M. Francis Mannion, "The Catholicity of the Liturgy: Shaping a New Agenda," in Beyond the Prosaic: Renewing the Liturgical Movement, ed. Stratford Caldecott (Edinburgh: Τ &T Clark 1998) 11-48. See also Kevin W. Irwin, "Critiquing Recent Liturgical Critics/' Worship 74 0anuary 2000) 2-19.

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not the only ones affecting most liturgical participants in the western world today? Granted that the full, conscious and active participation of all the faithful, which is called for by the very nature of the liturgy, and is their right and duty by reason of their baptism (cf. SC 14), is hereafter a perennial concern, do we not need in the present day to hear this same call in a different, "postmodern" key?

Most commentators who intensely probe this question emphasize the liturgy itself as, in many respects, "the answer." Their strategy is to show the many ways in which liturgical participation provides an essential formative Christian experience. The liturgy is viewed from this perspective as a primary theology that helps the individ­ual and the community to deepen their baptismal commitment of conversion to Christ, thereby overcoming the detrimental effects of society's influence on them. The approach is captured in the re­covery of the "significando causant" principle, which recognizes not only that the sacramental rituals signify and effect God's grace, but also that they have the effect precisely because of the way they signify God's gracious activity. In 1967 Haughton described this ritual re­orientation toward conversion, or "formation for transformation," as well as anyone to date: "[T]he sphere of ritual, or religious ob­servance,. . . frames the sacred. . . .The use of a language which is Christian is the way to create a ritual which expresses a Chris­tian notion of the relation between formation and transformation. Christian language is both formative and transformative, it describes secular concerns and focuses all of them on the sacred as their meaning and justification. And the point at which it explicitly changes the one into the other is a ritual one. . . .Transformation can and usually does occur accidentally, in all sorts of odd ways. But if a whole community is dedicated to transformation it can't leave the occurrence to chance. The whole community is, in principle, involved, and therefore must create deliberately the encounter which is at least potentially transforming."20

The liturgy symbolically mediates the work of God, through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit, continually converting us individu­ally and communally to live out our baptismal call. We are

20 Rosemary Haughton, The Transformation of Man (Springfield, 111.: Templegate 1967,1980) 248-49.

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strengthened to live this call not only within the isolated protection of the church walls, but as those sent forth with a mission to be church to the whole wide world. This line of thinking is legitimate, proper and essential. It probes beneath the surface level of liturgi­cal understanding, which focuses solely on the expressive dimen­sion of ritual.21 The more shallow approach is typified by rubricists or aesthetes on the one hand, who, though their criteria differ, insist on some perfect liturgical expression as the only adequate one. It is also exemplified, on the other hand, by the trendy or under-informed, who lack patience for or understanding of the genuine demands of ritual and, displaying the banner of "local adaptation," impose on the assembly "the latest thing" in liturgical action, prayer, or music. (One is reminded on both sides of Guardini's warning about "being theatrical and fussy.")

For all its strengths, however, the formative approach does not offer a complete solution. Following Guardini, it does not suffice simply to label certain cultural trends as opposed to the values and attitudes presumed by the Roman Rite, and then to propose that devout participation in the liturgy will eventually stem the cultural tide. Leaving it at that places severe limits on the types of people who can truly be transformed by the Spirit through the liturgy's forma­tive influence. Apart from those for whom this may be "preaching to the choir," there are those who, however sincere in their piety, are actually protected from the most penetrating effects of the liturgi­cal act by a veneer of individualistic devotionalism. Others among those gathered display the kind of lethargy Guardini recognized — today we might call them "pew potatoes," dulled by the combined effects of rote ritualism and a spectator-mentality tuned primarily to televised amusement. We are all, in fact, so influenced already by cultural and sociological forces that we unconsciously distance ourselves from many of the liturgy's most profound participative

21 Cf. Don Saliers' remarks in his analysis of a 1987 study conducted on parishes that had consciously attempted to embrace the liturgical principles of Vatican II: "The overwhelming impression is that these communities have focused on the 'expressive' dimensions of participation rather than the inner relations between the formative and expressive power of primary symbol." "Symbol in Liturgy, Liturgy as Symbol: The Domestication of Liturgical Experience," in The Awakening Church: 25 Years of Liturgical Renewal, ed. Lawrence J. Madden (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press 1992) 69-82, at 71.

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demands and possible transforming effects. Besides our own pro­clivity to avoid the pain of conversion, many of these forces come not only from the so-called "secular" culture, but also from the culture of the contemporary church, whose official embrace of the principles of liturgical renewal has cooled in recent years.

If, in fact, those who genuinely give themselves over to the liturgy in the way Guardini hopes for constitute the minority in attendance at a typical Sunday Eucharist, then we are up against an even greater roadblock to full, conscious and active participa­tion than we may be willing to admit. The barrier to be overcome is the implicit tension between those who attempt earnestly to engage the liturgy and those who for whatever reason do not. Whereas scholastic theology spoke of "not placing an obstacle" (non ponens obicem) as the minimum qualification for an individ­ual's being properly disposed to receive sacramental grace, this tension within the assembly becomes an analogously communal "obstacle" to transformation. In other words, if a few in the con­gregation are seeking genuinely to participate in the liturgy, and many others are not, then the signifying power of the rite is betrayed: instead of the sign helping to effect the saving reality offered by the living God, the sign working in opposition to the reality becomes a tacit operating principle.

The approach to liturgy typical of that between the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council thought of liturgical signifi­cation and sacramental grace as more or less extrinsically related. The modern conciliar approach has correctly viewed the signifier and the signified — the liturgical-sacramental sign and the reality of divine presence and action — as intrinsically related. A contem­porary view must discover how this can be meaningful in a post­modern world that is suspicious of any type of signification, and is disinclined, even where it is willing to engage signs, to expect that any real signified lies beneath the surface signifier. How, in other words, can the contemporary church expect to draw persons with such a broad spectrum of attitudes into an authentic engagement with the liturgy so as to invite them beneath its surface? A kind of liturgical apologetics is needed,22 and perhaps part of what exem-

22 Cf. the concluding section, "A Postmodern Apologetics," in Paul Lakeland, 87ff.

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plifies this precisely as a "postmodern" concern is the suggestion that such an apologetics needs to be directed not primarily to those unassociated with the church. It must rather be intended predominantly for the church's own members, who can no longer be presumed to work from the pre-modern assumptions of the classical world from which the liturgy was born, nor even solely from the modern assumptions on which the twentieth-century reforms were based.23

A NARRATIVE RESPONSE

Without pretending that the complex question posed by Guardini can be simply addressed, and without necessarily granting the validity of every postmodern presupposition, I want to propose that a narrative approach may prove a fruitful point of entry in re­sponding to Guardini's challenge and to the crisis of contemporary liturgical signification. When I speak of a narrative approach to liturgy, I certainly recognize that this includes several possible routes of investigation: the lectionary cycle's use of scripture stories throughout the liturgical year; the various narratives found within the Gospel readings, Eucharistie Prayers, or collects; or the use of storytelling in liturgical preaching and in mystagogical catechesis. Among all the possibilities, I want to stress an often-neglected one, namely, the narrative aspect of the rites themselves. Thus, how the various "parts of the Mass" are arranged so as to evoke a narrative that unfolds as the entire ritual is celebrated, and how the scrutinies relate in their narrative trajectories to baptism, are more the type of thing under consideration than the other, not unrelated, examples just mentioned.

Narrative theory, as a remedy to the kind of "imaginative shut­down" diagnosed by Haughton, offers numerous inroads to the question of contemporary liturgy. Particularly worthy of attention

23 The "New Evangelization" called for by John Paul II is one such form of post­modern apologetics, but one that, in the estimation of some, reflects a certain "countermodernist" trend. See Claude Geffre and Jean-Pierre Jossua, eds., The Debate on Modernity, Concilium 1992/6 (London: SCM Press 1992), especially the essays by Giovanni Turbanti, "The Attitude of the Church to the Modern World at and after Vatican II," 87-96, and Jean-Louis Schlegel, "The Strategies of Recon-quest in the New Europe and the Impossibility of Getting Past Secularization," 97-106.

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is the narrative approach to literary texts and to human action laid out by Paul Ricoeur in his more recent writings.24 In his typically dialectic manner, Ricoeur holds in tension two aspects of human understanding: on the more general (Kantian/modern) side, the claim that human understanding itself is and always has been fundamentally narrative in its very make-up; and on the more particular (postmodern) side, the acknowledgment given to each human person's individual identity, filtered in part through familial, communal and cultural identities, and understood in its unique­ness precisely because of our narrative competence. I attempt here only to indicate a few of the more salient features of Ricoeur's narrative strategy, and to suggest how these might be applied to our concern for meaningful liturgy in a postmodern world.

The first thing to note is that Ricoeur's dialectic of universal narrative understanding and particular human identity relates directly to a key modern and postmodern concern influencing one's competence for the liturgical act. Guardini himself pointed this out: "The [liturgical] act is done by every individual, not as an isolated individual, but as a member of a body which is the 'we' of the prayers. Its structure is . . . that of a corpus, an objective whole. In the liturgical act the celebrating individual becomes part of this body and he incorporates the circumstantes in his self-expression" (324). A pre-modern approach never questioned the "objectivity" of the communal act, as evidenced in the scholastic ex opere operato principle. The modern approach has tended to view the communal agent as a mere collectivity of "subjectivities," with a lot of individ­uals doing the same individual thing simultaneously. One type of modern-to-postmodern critique questions the desirability of such collective agency as erasing individuality in favor of a kind of liturgical totalitarianism (what Star Trek fans might call "the liturgy of the Borg").

A narrative approach values the dynamics of intersubjectivity and understands that each individual's story incorporates

24 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 3 vols., vols. 1-2 trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, vol. 3 trans. Kathleen Blarney and David Pellauer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1984-1988); idem, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blarney (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1992); idem, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, trans. David Pellauer, ed. Mark I. Wallace (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1995).

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uniquely personal and various communal histories, including the history and tradition of the actual celebrating assembly. While it is impossible for any two persons to understand their relationship to the community and to the community's liturgical act in precisely the same way, neither should this be the goal. Members of the assembly are not, literally, of one mind, but are "single-mindedly," together, sharers in the tradition that claims for its primary narra­tive the story of the paschal mystery, of Christ's life, death and resurrection. In this they strive together to have the narrative competence that Paul called "the mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16b), promised wherever two or three are gathered in his name (Matt 18:20). For the sake of genuine liturgical participation and effective evangelization, we must disabuse ourselves and others of the notion that such participation is somehow an annihilation of indi­vidual personality. It is rather, as signified in baptism's calling us each by name, the deepest confirmation and affirmation that one's true identity — one's real life — can be found only in living for and with others, "refiguring" our stories in the power of the Spirit along the lines of narrative transformation "configured" in the story of Christ's paschal mystery.

To exemplify this principle: a cathedral's altar-table should be located in the midst of the assembly, so that the faces of the circum-stantes — the others gathered around — can be seen. Placed at a focal point outside of the assembly, only the presider's and perhaps some other liturgical ministers' faces can be viewed. "Reading" the whole liturgical symbolic action, to continue Guardini's image, means being able visually to engage the whole body celebrating, not just the presiding priest. Ricoeur emphasizes the ''mediating role of others" between our capacities for judging and doing good and the realizations of these capacities,25 and the irreducible role of the "body among bodies" in anchoring personal identity socially and in relation to the physical world.26 Our hospitable responsive­ness to the faces of others gathered, faces that embody their stories, help mutually to secure our own identity and the identity of the entire body.

Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 181. Ibid., 319-29, at 326.

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Another significant feature of Ricoeur's narrative thought is the emphasis on temporality. Ricoeur picks up with narrative where his earlier work on metaphor left off, noting that narrative produces new meaning in a way similar to metaphor. He describes the "semantic innovation" effected by metaphor and narrative.27 In metaphor, new meaning-effects are created by the joining or even collision of literally distinct elements of meaning. In a plot, seem­ingly incongruent events are similarly fused, and this conjunction creates analogously new effects of meaning, this time displaying a temporal organization of events. Another dialectic thus comes to the fore: that between our qualitative human experience of time as past, present and future, and the quantitative scientific or cosmo­logical time of physical nature, measured pragmatically in units.

This dimension of temporality inherent in narrative emplotment has significant ramifications for liturgical understanding. For example, many liturgical scholars have taken their cue from ritual anthropologists such as Victor Turner and Mary Douglas, who in turn were influenced strongly by structuralists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss.28 Attention on the structures of the liturgy has borne much fruit both for liturgical historians like Robert Taft and for theologians like Aidan Kavanagh.29 Nonetheless, a potential pitfall to this approach (which Taft and Kavanagh largely avoid) is that the conceptualization of liturgy as structure can conceal the inher­ent dynamism of liturgical action, and the event nature of the liturgical activity gets downplayed. By contrast, the temporality inherent in the "semantic innovation" of narrative offers a kind of flexibility and even reflexivity that is essential to the critical dynamics of conversion. Ricoeur's notion of emplotment, borrow­ing from Aristotle's definition of myth as "the imitation of action" (mimesis praxeos), can be brought to bear on liturgical reflection so

27 Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, ix. 28 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books 1963);

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1966); Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Struc­ture and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine 1969).

29 Robert Taft, "The Structural Analysis of Liturgical Units: An Essay in Methodology," in Beyond East & West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding (Wash­ington, D.C.: Pastoral Press 1984) 151-64; Aidan Kavanagh, The Shape of Baptism: The Rite of Christian Initiation (New York: Pueblo 1978) esp. ch. 2.

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that the structures are seen in temporal relationship, closer to the genuine action over time that liturgical celebration as event truly is. Such an approach, for example, illumines the fact that our Eng­lish noun "Eucharist" originates from a Greek verb (eucharistein, "to give thanks''). It helps to explain why eucharistie adoration, which focuses attention on a static post-consecratorial moment between the events of breaking and sharing, must be subordinate to the story of the action of taking, blessing, breaking and sharing that unfolds with our participation in the liturgy of the Eucharist.30

To take another seemingly innocent example from common practice: the hosts used in the celebration of Mass, it is often noted, bear such little resemblance to ordinary bread that the symbolism here is greatly idealized and threatened. Ricoeur's approach helps to explain why the use of individualized hosts is problematic. The practice ignores the "plot" presumed in the breaking of the bread. In the fraction rite, one loaf is broken — it undergoes the physical transformation of fragmentation — after first having been "eucharistized" or prayed over in thanksgiving, to be transformed yet again in communion, being shared and eaten by each of the body's members. The message communicated when pre-individualized hosts are presented, prayed over, and distributed without sufficient emphasis on the fraction of a single loaf runs counter to a "one bread-one Body" configuration liturgi-cally narrated through a series of transformations. The liturgy loses much of its effective potential to transform us when the symbolic action no longer includes all of the appropriate transformations. From the narrative perspective, the use of hosts capitulates to a modern and postmodern pragmatic and consumerist view of time and liturgy, and reinforces individualism. A significant opportu­nity for the poetic and critical interplay of fragmentation and wholeness, which is likely to resonate very strongly with the inhabitants of our postmodern culture, is simply lost, thanks to this practice.

A brief list of further points in Ricoeur's narrative strategy that might provide insight for liturgical theology and practice includes:

30 Cf. Nathan Mitchell's perceptive analysis of this dynamic in Cult and Contro­versy: The Worship of the Eucharist Outside of Mass (New York: Pueblo 1982) 343-51.

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ι) the interplay between action and suffering, doing and under­going, that is intrinsic to the Aristotelian and Ricoeurean notion of emplotment as "the imitation of an action" (mimesis praxeos), with specific attention to the different resonance this may have when it is ritual participation (and not simply the reading of a story or the observing of a drama) that is at stake;

2) the depiction of mimesis as threefold: préfiguration as the prac­tical, temporal and cultural order of human action constituting the precondition that makes narrative possible (mimesis); configuration as the narrative emplotment offered by the work (mimesis); and refiguration as the transformation of human understanding and acting made possible through engagement with the narrative (mimesis),31 thus offering a mimetic structure that can illuminate the individual's and the community's ongoing appropriation of the living liturgical tradition;

3) the concept of "narrative intelligence" as practical wisdom or phronesis, and the possibilities this may have for understanding liturgy as "primary theology" (theologia prima), highlighting the role of liturgy in connecting the various orders of theological discourse with the lived experience and stories of all the church's members;

4) the consideration of the "fictional" features of history and the "historical" features of fiction, offering possibilities for a postmod­ern approach to "liturgical truth," wherein the liturgical past as tradition/salvation history and the liturgical future as fiction/ eschatological utopia is mediated through the liturgical present in anamnesis I epiclesis;

5) the distinction in Ricoeur's conception of narrative identity between Sameness, or idem-identity, and Selfhood, or ipse-identity (which entails relations to others), and the implications this dis­tinction has for connecting liturgical identity with ethical Christian responsibility, and also for an approach to culture that can lead us from the norms of modern liturgical inculturation to those of post­modern liturgical "interculturation."

31A helpful overview of Ricoeur's threefold mimesis is offered by William Schweiker, Mimetic Reflections: A Study in Hermeneutics, Theology, and Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press 1990) 100-18.

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This listing of narrative possibilities for liturgical theology and practice leaves much unstated and much still to be explored.32

I have attempted only to present for renewed attention Guardini's challenging question, and to suggest that a promising response may stem from Ricoeur: "[I]t is possible to apply the play of sedi­mentation and innovation, which we recognized in the works of every tradition, to our understanding of ourselves. In the same manner we do not cease to re-interpret the narrative identity that constitutes us in the light of stories handed down to us by our culture. In this sense our self-understanding presents the same traits of traditionality as the understanding of a literary work does. In this way we learn to become the narrator of our own story without completely becoming the author of our life."33

For the Christian community, the sacred scriptures constitute the preeminent literary works. But it is in a fundamentally perfor­mative sense the liturgy, wherein the scriptures are proclaimed, the prayers are prayed and the actions undertaken, which hands down to us the living stories of our tradition for our appropriation and deepened transformation. More consciously (and self­consciously) and more rapidly than in ages gone by, we have altered the rites as they were received from previous generations, but no less clearly than in the past does the liturgy tell forth its challenge and comfort. Nor will it cease to be reformed in the future, as those who hear it authentically seek to tell it authentically again, for authenticity demands that both tellers and hearers mutually rec­ognize each other's narrative identities. Between the "once upon a time" of the Gardens of Eden and Gethsemane and the "happily ever after" of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in the New Jerusalem, we will continue to find in the liturgical here-and-now the Author of our life, if only we have the courage honestly to narrate and implicate ourselves in the Story through which we discover our living and true identity.

32 A partial list of theologians already utilizing narrative strategies in liturgical study would include Louis-Marie Chauvet, David Power, Joyce Ann Zimmerman, Kathleen Hughes, Bruce Morrill, the late Mark Searle, and the late Edward Kilmartin.

33 Paul Ricoeur, "Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator," in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valdés (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press 1991) 425-37, quotation at 437.

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