Worship as a Revelation: The Past, Present and Future of Catholic Liturgy by Laurence Paul Hemming (review)

208 ANTIPHON 12.2 (2008) Laurence Paul Hemming Worship as a Revelation: The Past, Present and Future of Catholic Liturgy New York: Burns and Oates, 2008 192 pages. $19.95 Laurence Hemming's new book, Worship as a Revelation, is a provocative exploration of the interconnections of liturgy, theology, and philosophy . In its scope, it resembles two other books written in recent years, one by the Anglican theologian, Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), and the other by the Canadian Oratorian, Fr Jonathan Robinson, The Mass and Modernity: Walking to Heaven Backward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005). Like Pickstock's book and Robinson's, Hemming's monograph is a deftly interwoven blend of theological and philosophical analysis with liturgical exegesis, although his is a much more compact treatise. In terms of substance, Hemming's book shares in common with these two earlier works a critical analysis of the philosophical ambience inhabited by the liturgical reformers of the twentieth century. The main thesis of Hemming's book is that liturgical reform in the Church from 1903 onward, but especially after the Second Vatican Council in the Pauline reforms, was driven by an underlying Cartesian rationalism. His main thesis may strike the reader initially as negative, but the implicit aim of his book is the positive one of providing a more properly theological understanding of liturgy than that which is either consciously or unconsciously held by many post-conciliar liturgists. He seeks to show a way out of the philosophical straitjacket of modern subjectivism that situates and limits both liturgical reform and theology. In order to carry out this goal, Hemming gives a penetrating exegesis of appropriately chosen liturgical texts and of elements of the symbolic structure of the sacred liturgy. He argues compellingly that the sacred liturgy is essentially a reality instituted by God from the eschatological future, that it is expiatory, and that it is the primary locus of God's continuing self-disclosure or revelation to man. The book comprises fourteen chapters. Each chapter is of manageable length, although of a high theological and philosophical quality. The book makes for challenging reading at times, and it is impossible to summarize each of the chapters here. Hemming's chief contribution remains his discussion of the nature of human understanding and of its liturgical and participatory constitution. He argues that liturgy is the divine institution wherein God continuously makes himself present to man and not a human construction. The author makes a strong case that theology has to be liturgically situated, and that Scripture 209 BOOK REVIEWS itself has its interpretative basis only in liturgy. Other noteworthy features of the book include an intriguing account of the doctrine of transubstantiation, a discussion of the objective bearing of embodied liturgical symbolism, and a strong criticism of twentieth-century reforms to the liturgical calendar and to the divine office. A brief summary of the first chapter of the book may help readers to understand his main argument. Hemming brings out in this chapter the soteriological and eschatological dimensions of the Church's life of prayer. Sacred liturgy, he argues, is a divine institution wherein God makes himself eschatologically present to us for the sake of our salvation. It is not primarily the work of the freely associated congregation , something to be manipulated according to the congregation's fleeting whims. The Church is called together in worship by Christ himself, in order that the members of his Mystical Body may be present to his redemptive act and be made fit to hear his salvific word in prayer. Hemming reminds us later in the book that this is the only true meaning of the expression "active participation." Hemming argues that the source of the Church's life always comes from ahead of it and from beyond. We are not self-establishing beings, either as individuals or as the Mystical Body of Christ. Moreover, the Church's life of prayer is essentially expiatory: in her sacred precinct, the Church manifests and completes globally the Temple in Jerusalem. Drawing on the work of some increasingly important contemporary scriptural exegetes, particularly Margaret Barker, Hemming argues that sacred liturgy is not...

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