Paul as Liturgist
We come to the end of the Year of St. Paul, and are looking for a summary. What was Paul, finally? A preacher, a missionary, an apostle, a church-founder, a martyr? Yes, all these. But more. Paul tells us his own mind in his letter to the Romans.
Every other epistle Paul wrote was to a Church he had founded. The letter to the Romans was to a Church he was coming to visit for the first time. In every other epistle, he is looking backward. In the book of Romans he is looking forward.
He tells the Roman Christians that he has long been “asking in my prayers that somehow by God's will I may at last find my way clear to come to you” (Romans 1:10). The Church already exists, and Paul wants to come to visit it, so he writes a letter in advance. And at the end of this letter he describes himself.
By the grace given him by God, he is “a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in performing the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering up of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:16).
That word “minister” could use some clarification, and Pope Benedict XVI gives it to us. He explains its meaning in his homily in 2008 which inaugurated the year.
The Greek word for minister is leitourgos - one who serves the liturgy. And the Greek word for priestly service is hierourgein - one who serves as a priest. So the Holy Father summarizes. “Only in this passage does Paul use the word "hierourgein" - serving as a priest - together with "leitourgos" - liturgist: he speaks of the cosmic liturgy, in which the world of men itself must become worship of God, an offering in the Holy Spirit.”
Paul has spent his life in Christ as someone who does Christ’s work. And what is Christ’s work? To make an acceptable offering to the Father. Paul has been apostle to the Gentiles so that not only Israel is presented as an offering to the Father, but the Gentiles, too. The whole inhabited world is included in the offering.
The second Eucharistic prayer expresses the same sentiment. “From East to West you gather a people to yourself so that a perfect offering may be made to the glory of your name.” In the Bible, ‘perfect’ means complete, finished, whole. The offering will be perfect when all of humanity, and all the cosmos, is included in it.
The word for liturgy comes from laos and ergeia. It means a work done for a people. It means the work of a few on behalf of the many.
The Christian liturgy is the work of Christ done on behalf of the human race. His work is reconciliation. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. When we are initiated into Christ’s ergeia then we become liturgical persons. We make the whole world into worship of God.
The Holy Father sees the essence of Paul’s mission as doing liturgy. At the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy, we concur. We seek to understand liturgy as the life of the Church in motion. We hope you might consider joining us June 15-17 at the summer conference when we will say more about Paul as Liturgical Theologian. See liturgy.nd.edu for details.
