What Are You Looking For? Part 2: The Liturgy and the Sacraments

The Liturgy: The Father in the Liturgy

The Father in the Liturgy

            The Holy Trinity is active in the Liturgy.  In fact, the liturgy couldn’t exist without them.  Not in the Catholic Christian world at any rate.  Each plays a specific role when it comes to the liturgy.  Because the Father is first, we’ll look at his role first.

            Throughout both the Old and New Testaments, we constantly find the Father being praised as being the source of all blessings.  It is who he is.  When he created male and female and looked at the world and saw that it was very good, he bestowed his first blessings on mankind and on creation.  He hasn’t changed in that.  It is the very nature of his great love for us to pour out his blessings on us.  The greatest blessing he has provided for us is the path of salvation.  It doesn’t matter if you start with the Old Testament, the Gospels or the rest of the New Testament.  No matter where you begin, you will find the way of salvation presented.  In the Old Testament it’s presented through people like Noah, Abraham and Isaac, the prophets, and even as early as the third chapter of Genesis, where God promises the serpent that the seed of the woman would one day crush his head.

            In the New Testament, the path of salvation is clearly defined by Jesus in the Gospels.  In Acts, with the birth of the church, we see that path explained.  Through the rest of the New Testament we find both further explanations as well as a developing teaching (catechesis) on how the blessing applies to our lives and what that means.  And all of this comes from the Father.

            So the question becomes, how does that apply to liturgy?  “In the Church’s liturgy the divine blessing is fully revealed and communicated.  The Father is acknowledged and adored as the source and the end of all the blessings of creation and salvation.” (CCC 1082)  That is just one of the reasons for the liturgy (or why we go to church).  The liturgy isn’t just a one-way relationship with the Father.  Yes, through the liturgy we worship and adore the Father and express our thanksgiving for his abundant blessings, but there is more to it than that. 

            Through the liturgy the Father also pours out even more blessings into our lives.  Sometimes the greatest blessings are the simplest, like food and drink.  In the liturgy the Church presents these blessings back to the Father in the form of bread and wine.  We also pray for the Father to send the Holy Spirit to come upon them.  We also ask the Father to send his Holy Spirit to come upon the entire Church and us as individuals.  And the Father, who loves to give gifts to his children and bless them, does just that. 

            Nothing with the Father is a one-way relationship.  It’s always him to us and us to him.  He gives; through the liturgy we thank (and ask for more) and he gives even more.  That’s the way the Father works both through the liturgy and in our lives.