In his recent apostolic letter, Desiderio desideravi, Pope Francis addresses a fundamental religious problem of modern humanity, especially in the global north: symbols are no longer symbolic.
We could rephrase this in the following different ways:
- Symbols are just symbols – and ignored.
- Symbols no longer speak to us – and we miss what they do in our lives.
- Symbols are just taken as more noise – to which we might listen but which are little more than more words.
This is how the pope explains it in his letter:
Guardini writes, “Here there is outlined the first task of the work of liturgical formation: man must become once again capable of symbols.” This is a responsibility for all, for ordained ministers and the faithful alike. The task is not easy because modern man has become illiterate, no longer able to read symbols; it is almost as if their existence is not even suspected (DD, 44).
Romano Guardini (1885-1968)
Francis takes his starting point from one of the great theologians of the first half of the twentieth century: Romano Guardini.
The Italian-born German priest influenced a whole generation of theologians including Karl Rahner, Hans Küng, and Joseph Ratzinger – now more famous as a retired Bishop of Rome.
Guardini also made an important impact on Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
The Argentine Jesuit, now more famous as the current Bishop of Rome, once intended to write about Guardini and his scholarship on the interface between philosophy and theology.
In the course of his work, Guardini realized that human beings live and die by symbols. We are symbol-using animals.
We live by symbols and we do most of our important thinking and communicating through symbols. Without symbols we would have no culture or religion – indeed, we would not be human.
More than signs
Symbols are far more than just signs. A sign is simply a means of conveying information. A symbol, on the other hand, is something we relate to, value, and consider part of us.
Symbols also embrace far more than “facts”. That a group of people need some sort of organization is obvious, but that we would then call that our “motherland”/”fatherland” is saying far more than that we have a tax-collection/public works administration.
People hate bureaucracy and paying taxes, but wax eloquently about “La Patria”, “Der Vaterland” or “our flag”. One is just a fact; the other is a symbol. And symbols have power over us: people will both kill and be prepared to die for them.
Symbols can bring forth our highest wonders as human beings or be manipulated by tyrants so that we become beasts.
Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Francisco Franco – to name some of the symbols-corruptors of just one decade – were all keenly aware of symbols. Symbols were never “just symbols” to them, because they abused them to the full.
Guardini was one of the first to recognize this potential – and to realize that Christian symbols had been eviscerated. They had their value stolen not just in society but even in the liturgy. Hence his call for liturgical reform from the 1920s onwards.
This need for reforming the liturgy was taken up by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and is now being re-affirmed in Pope Francis’s apostolic letter.
When symbols become mute
Guardini realized – as we see in the pope’s quote – that what was once a means of discovering how God is central to human life, might become no more than a convention. We do not need to look far: the cross was the symbol for Paul:
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor 1:17-8).
But if, for Paul, the cross was “the power of God” – just to think of it was to appreciate the divine love; for many later Christians it just became a religious code, a sign, meaning “religion” or “Christian religion” and could be hi-jacked by people or reduced to a decorative image. The cross had become mute.
The step from a mute symbol to a corrupt symbol is a very short one.
Can we re-discover symbols?
A symbol is never the property of an individual. In this sense, the image of illiteracy is not a good one. There could be a book with much in it but I as an individual am unable to read it – if it is a book in a language I do not understand.
But symbols become mute when they do not convey something precious within a society: the symbol is something shared.
I appreciate it partly because you do – and we are someone united; you appreciate partly because I do. The symbol speaks to me in my depths as an individual, but it is our common property.
We recognize it at once as a family table. It is far more than a bench or a bar or a ledge for food. It is a physical fact – but it is also a symbol. And as a symbol it is real – it could be our table!
If we as Christians are to rediscover symbols as part of our re-discovery of that symbol appointed by the Lord – “do ye this in recollection of me” – which is the Eucharist and which in turn opens up to us the Father’s love – then we need to find basic symbols that speak to our humanity.
One very simple case is that of the dining table, the family table, the kitchen table. This is a very good starting point because we celebrate the Banquet of the Eucharist gathered around a table. The Lord’s table is our table; our table is the Lord’s table.
But do we really experience this?
The table as symbol
“What is on the table?” is the question before a meeting. We want contesting parties to be invited to “roundtable talks”. We dream of a happy family table for Christmas, a birthday, or for Thanksgiving. The banquet is deep in our humanity and our longing.
The table is also the place of welcome – we each want to have a place there – and it is our destiny: “People will come from east and west and north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God” (Lk 13:29).
So, part of liturgical renewal is that each of us as individuals needs to rediscover the table as a sacred place – there we become a family, a company of friends, a tiny Church of the baptized, and there we thank God for the creation and our sustenance (saying “grace before meals”) and thank God for the enjoyment of the food and the joy of the company at table (saying “grace after meals”).
Another part of this renewal is at the level of the community. In our church buildings we need to make our common tables into tables that speak to us as such. Tables we can really gather around and do gather around.
It is not enough to sit or stand and watch the table – in a building or on zoom – and what one of us does there. We have to become table companions.
If the only person actually at the table is the presider (or a few men in Holy Orders) then we are witnessing clericalism expressed by physical location.
Giving good example
Perhaps Pope Francis having given us a letter on symbols, needs now to dispense with his purple-soutaned attendants at some public celebrations of the Eucharist and be seen to be gathered with other members of the baptized – famuli famulaeque – standing beside him at their common table?
If such a celebration happened, it would be great to see a photograph of it.
Such a picture would convey far more insight to far more people about an “ecclesiology of baptism” than many papal letters! One of the basic qualities of symbols is that they are worth more than many thousands of words – and convey what no words can!
This is a table we can gather around. Nothing eviscerates a symbol like talking about doing something (such as ‘being gathered at the Lord’s table’) but then not having it pan-out in an actual deed!
Liturgical renewal must take place where I live – I must value my table. It must also take place where the church to which I belong meets – we must value our table.
Renewal has to be done simultaneously in our homes and in our religious buildings. Then a teeny little bit of the liturgical formation, for which the pope is calling, will take place.
Thomas O’Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
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