Liturgy: Your Taste Doesn't Matter

if you're a well-informed Catholic which is who I'm primarily addressing this video to then you'll start to detect a theme through the narrative of our creation fall and redemption as it's depicted in Scripture and in our theology from the very beginning we were offered a choice which was to either love God and to live in perfect harmony with him and all that is or to prefer ourselves in the hopes of establishing a life and an existence in which all that is is so Oran is organized in such a way that it suits our own individual preferences you could summarize this theme as a choice between submission to God or submission to our own desires and temptations or as a choice between worshipping God or worshipping ourselves because the temptation to worship false gods or idols is really a temptation to worship our own inventions and if we're worshiping our own inventions and we're just worshipping ourselves we're avoiding the difficult but necessary duty to conform ourselves to what God is expecting from us instead preferring to try to conform our religion to our pre-existing preferences and as God painstakingly reintroduces himself to humanity through prophets and covenants we we see this climactic moment in which he reveals the ten commandments to us and the first commandment which is given out a priority addresses this fundamental tension that exists in the drama of salvation he says that he is God and that we shall have no other gods before him and by highlighting this first commandment it's like he's affirming that everything else flows out from this and depends on this and that this is at the heart of human resistance to relationship with God it reads the Sunda mental tension that exists in the human condition to either love and worship God or to love and worship ourselves and sadly we see this dramatic tension alive and well in two very pronounced ways in the church today which is in our beliefs or our doctrines and theology and in how we worship and if you're if you can yourself an Orthodox Catholic that is someone who is trying to faithfully follow the practices and teachings of the faith then you are probably familiar with an approach to the faith that many have derisively described as cafeteria Catholicism it's characterized by an inclination to pick and choose which practices and beliefs a person will adopt in order to identify as a Christian instead of practicing and believing the full range of what it means to follow Jesus and this metaphor the symbol of a cafeteria or a buffet is so fitting because what do you see on the plate of everyone there you see a testament of every persons each individual choices and preferences it's a culinary world made just for them in which everything is organized in such a way that suits their individual preferences in which they don't have to accommodate anyone else or God for that matter but at no point in God's efforts to reconcile us to himself does he say do whatever you want and whatever feels good to you because that's what got us into this mess in the first place instead God tells us what we what is good for us and then commands us to obey it for our own good and if we can continue to draw from this mealtime analogy following God is more like when your parents used to prepare and dish up your food for you and then tell you to eat it because it's good for you even though you would rather eat Lucky Charms for dinner and any rational or pious person should be able to perceive the futility and trying to organize your religious practices and beliefs around your own pre-existing preferences religion is about being conformed to God because we recognize our own inadequacies and inability to live in perfect harmony and happiness with creation and with God but in taking the cafeteria approach you aren't worshiping God you aren't submitting to his wisdom in your life because you're assuming that whatever wisdom is needed you already have it and you can make whatever choices are needed you're making the same mistake that the first humans made and the same mistake that God highlights in the first commandment and the same mistake that is at the heart of our rupture with God and if you don't get this right then you don't get anything right now this is something that with respect to doctrine most Orthodox Catholics they just they understand this but there's a massive blind spot for many of those same Orthodox Catholics that introduces the same peril and that's with how we worship there's an ancient expression in the church which goes Lex or Andy Lex cadet D which translates from Latin as the law of what is to be prayed is the law of what is to be believed in other words how we pray can determine what we believe a modern rendition of this could be drawn from Marshall McLuhan's expression of the medium is the message McCune was trying to point out that how you say something is as or more important than what you say how we express our beliefs through liturgy and worship is arguably more important than what we say we believe and this should be obvious to most Christians because what is central to our Creed is the Incarnation that the word the logos became flesh and dwelt among us our faith is incarnation --all it is made present to us in physical reality it isn't just some abstraction or idea but something that is accessible to our physical senses God became flesh so that we could see him and touch him and listen to listen to him and interact with him and since Jesus isn't still here walking around on the earth well then how do we continue through each generation to experience this incarnation already well the Incarnation persists in the church the body of Christ and how is the church made visible as we gather together in worship and liturgy so when we ask ourselves what should that look and sound like behind that question should be how can I be more conformed to God rather than how can I try to conform God as he has made present as the Incarnation is made present to us in worship to my own personal preferences which is why your own personal preferences and your tastes and likes are completely irrelevant to that question you don't pick and choose your doctors based on what you happen to like and you don't pick and choose your liturgy or your forms of worship for the exact same reason the liturgy the music the atmosphere the art the architecture and the language these are things that incarnate our faith for us and in the competing tension of worshipping ourselves or worshiping God the only question that is relevant is how can we make sure that we are worshipping God if you try to organize your liturgical worship based on what you happen to like or your pre-existing preferences then you're only worshiping yourself and unfortunately we see a lot of this in the church today when we consider what kind of music should accompany our liturgical worship we tend to relay this question to questions of relevance and popular culture when we design our churches through architecture trend and fashion rule the day when we consider how much time things will take we always take the shortest route possible because people don't want to be waiting around right but if we really knew what we were receiving every week we would wait hours forward if we knew what was good for us now this tension between loving and worshipping God and loving and worshipping ourselves I think can be seen portrayed in the tension between preferring traditional liturgy and preferring contemporary liturgy and based on where I've been going with this video I hope you can probably see by now that traditional liturgy is the most compatible with the notion of worshiping God rather than ourselves and here's why first of all tradition comes from without we inherit it and we are conformed to it we don't invent it and it doesn't come from our pre-existing expectations or desires or preferences it's also timeless in the same way that God is timeless God is perfect and therefore doesn't change and neither does tradition and in this way it reflects this aspect of God what is contemporary by contrast is what most resembles ourselves and our fleeting preferences every argument in preference for contemporary literacy always takes the form of because I like it in other words make liturgy most resemble myself and if our liturgy most resembles ourselves then what is this incarnation this incarnate reality that we're worshipping it's ourselves lastly tradition is the mechanism by which God maintained his church every timeless and sacred doctrine and teaching is handed down from one generation to the next in the same form it took before so that the incarnation of Jesus can be made present to every generation if each generation put their own contemporary spin on it then you couldn't trust that it was the real thing that occurred 2,000 years ago tradition is what guarantees this for us and this is why tradition should always be shown preference whenever we are planning or doing the work of liturgy thanks so much for watching guys if you enjoyed that then please consider subscribing and liking and come find me on Facebook and Twitter it's a huge help when you do that it helps us get these videos in front of more and more people and a big thank you goes out to you Catholic for presenting these videos and if you want to support the making of these videos then please consider supporting my work as a digital media and marketing expert my company hold your design specializes in branding web and graphic design marketing social media videography and all that kind of good stuff so if you know of a parish a diocese a ministry or a business that needs help in those areas then please send them our way and I'm sure we can help them out [Music]

Channel: Brian Holdsworth

Views: 25,302

Rating: 4.884058 out of 5

Keywords: Brian Holdsworth, Novus Ordo, Traditional Catholicism, Traditional Latin Mass, Catholic Liturgy, Liturgical Movement, Spirit of the Liturgy, Rad Trad, Catholic, Catechism, Catholicism, religion, faith, god

Id: rRlpY2IzsSk

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ThaShitPostAccount]

What a load of beans. Contemporary liturgy doesn't exist because "we like it". It takes the form it does because we can understand it. Why did the Church Fathers preach in Latin and Greek and not in Aramaic or Hebrew? Because if they did, no one would understand them. What good is a liturgy that doesn't communicate its message? Is there any greater support for this than God's miracle of Pentecost? He struck the apostles with power to speak in tongues so that each man and woman heard them in his or her own language. Couldn't' God just have made all the people understand Galilean Aramaic just as easily? Or the Eucharist; Did the Lord tell us to remember him by praying or Fasting together? No. He told us to share bread and wine and our peace.

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If all these gatekeeping types want to stare at the back of three guys' heads while they holler mumbo jumbo at the wall, that's their preference. As for me, I hope the Priesthood continues to speak our language and help us connect the Word of the Lord with our own lives as God showed them to when he gave them their ministry.

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But it is true... I also would prefer if the Gather hymnal were no longer used...😜