Jean Corbon’s book
entitled The Wellspring of Worship, attempts to demonstrate the unity between
the Liturgy and our Christian lives. He correctly points out that this unity between the
liturgy and life can only be properly understood if we have a proper understanding
of the great gift God gives to us in the liturgy. He achieves this goal by demonstrating to his
audience that the liturgy is the source from which we, like the woman at the
well, draw from the fountain of living water.[1]
Fr. Corbon’s book, The Wellspring of Worship, highlights four
important themes, namely the Trinitarian aspect of the liturgy, the
relationship of our earthly liturgy to the heavenly liturgy, man’s
participation in this eternal Trinitarian liturgy and the situation of the
liturgy in the Church. This short paper intends to address these four
principal themes by expressing their relevance to the liturgy and will conclude
with a short personal analysis of important insights received in reading this
work.
Jean Corbon stresses ad
nauseam, in The Wellspring of Worship, the
Trinitarian dimension of the liturgy. The Trinity, being a community of the Father, Son
and the Holy Spirit is an outpouring of love amongst the three. It is exactly
in this outpouring of love amongst the persons of the Trinity that the work of
salvation is achieved through the passion, death and resurrection of Christ and
through which we are invited to accept Christ and our salvation won by Him for
us.
Since we were created
by God, who desired to create us in his own image, at the heart of every person
is an outpouring of love within the Trinity which leads to a natural desire for
God that we are free to either accept or reject. From the beginning of creation this communion of
love, the Trinity, reveals himself to those created in the image of God. Throughout salvation
history up to today the Trinity has been at work drawing all men back to the
Father.
In the Old Testament the
Holy Spirit prepared for the Word, the only Son of the Father, Jesus Christ,
and the fullness of truth by gathering a community that learned how to accept
and enter into covenants. In the fullness of time the Father sent His only
Son to be born of a woman and the Word became flesh born of the Virgin Mary who
freely accepted the invitation of the Father to be the Godbearer. It is from the
Fiat of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the power of the Holy Spirit that Christ
entered into the world and the union of the Divine and the Human springs forth. In the
incarnation the two worlds the Divine and the Human are united making our
salvation possible. In the Kenosis, the self-emptying of Christ, we
find the unity between the Annunciation and the horrors of the Passion, through
which the gates of heaven are reopened to humanity.
It is in Christ’s
resurrection that we find the first revelation of the wellspring of the liturgy. “On the day of
Easter the river of life becomes liturgy as it spreads out from the tomb to the
Body of Christ.”[2] On Easter, the day that
Jesus conquers His death and thereby bestows His life on mankind, the economy
of salvation takes the form of liturgy. The Resurrection of Jesus is not an event of the
past that happened in one moment of history from which the world has moved on but
rather a death that will never pass away because Jesus did not rise from the
dead only to die again but rather, in rising from the dead, passed through
death.
Through uniting ourselves to the Father in Christ through the Holy Spirit we to
will pass through death to eternal life.
The manifestation of the Resurrection is made
present at the moment of the Ascension. When Jesus ascends to the Father, humanity and
Christ become one, united in the Body of Christ. This union, however will not be completed until all
the members of the Body of Christ are drawn back to the Father.
It is exactly in this return to the Father that the
liturgy finds its essence.
Since Christ’s life is the act of love through which all things return to life,
all men are drawn back to the Father we find at the heart of the liturgy the
Father. Christ is united to the Father and reflects the
glory of God, who is the wellspring which gives life.
The descent of the Holy
Spirit at Pentecost marked a new beginning. The Holy Spirit brought with him the Body of
Christ, the Church, and the eternal liturgy becomes manifest in the world. In the new
community of believers the Holy Spirit, promised by Christ before his Ascension
and sent by the Father comes to draw all people to the Father. Because the
Holy Spirit gives life by drawing all people to communion the liturgy finds its
proper embodiment in the Church. The Church thus truly becomes “the manifestation of
the Spirit of Christ in a new community of men and women who have entered into
life because the Spirit has brought them into communion with the living body of
the Son of God.”[3]
It is exactly in this
manifestation that the liturgy finds its proper place. Understanding
this one realizes that the liturgy is not a creation of the Church but rather
that the Church is the liturgy as it exists in our mortal humanity. The Church is
the instrument through which the heavenly liturgy is brought to humanity. Truly “the
Church is as it were the human face of the heavenly liturgy, the radiant and transforming
presence of the ehavenly liturgy in our present time.”[4]
Fr. Corbon’s
frequent insistence on the Trinitarian nature of the liturgy in his book Wellspring of Worship is useful for
gaining a deeper understanding of who is at work in the liturgy. By
understanding the Trinitarian dimension of the liturgy I have come to a deeper
understanding of my current role in the liturgy as well as the role of the
priest. By understanding the trinity as a communion of love
and my participation in that communion through Christ, the truth of the title The Wellspring of Worship is
demonstrated. By understanding the liturgy being rooted in the
communion of love that is the Trinity I see clearly that the connection between
the liturgy and my life rests in the fact that the liturgy is the wellspring,
the source from which my entire existence springs and is refreshed. It becomes
clear that “when cut off from the source a liturgical celebration becomes
self-contained, as it were without any vital link to before and after.”[5]
While
Corbon’s book Wellspring of Worship is
useful for understanding the liturgy on a contemplative level it is often very
difficult to follow because Fr. Corbon writes in a way that is uncommon to a
western reader. His writing at times appears vague and utilizes
unfamiliar vocabulary. He provides a short dictionary of terms in the
first chapter and frequently footnotes to assist the reader in understanding.
In an era where
Catholics have stopped attending the Church’s liturgies and an era where others
have attempted to the defy the Church by making unauthorized changes to the
liturgy because they fail to see a correlation between their life and the
liturgy this book is a timely reflection for all Catholics. While this work is
difficult to understand at times if the reader is willing to struggle through
the work and overcome his western prejudices Fr. Corbon’s book has much to offer Roman Catholics.
