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Good Morning to all!

I have a question which is confusing me. I will post it now and then later today when I return home maybe someone will have shed some light on this baffling (to me) idea.

A Roman Catholic Liturgy Commission of which I am a member has been given handbooks to study titled PREPARING FOR LITURGY by Austin Fleming (a priest). One of the chapter subheadings startled some of us. It was, "We Do Not Worship Jesus". Our pastoral associate and commission leader said she thought it meant not to burrow into private devotional materials addressed to Christ during the Mass. But in the text it says, "Jesus is not the object of our worship. Rather, Jesus came to show us how to worship. That is why public prayer (with only rare exceptions) is addressed not to Jesus but to the One whose mercy Jesus reveals."

In Orthodox Theology, by Vladimir Lossky, on page 13 I read, "But the Incarnation of the Word has no other goal than to lead us to the Father, in the Spirit."

Thus Lossky seems to confirm Fleming on this issue, at least to some degree, but try as I might, it somehow does not seem correct. This theory almost seems to describe Christ as a utility instead of a divine Savior.

Until the present time I thought Catholics believed the persons of the Trinity were co-equal and co-equally worshiped. This is what I was taught in my early life, and it has seemed to be what I was reading as I encountered theology in my later life.

Now, according to Fleming, we are supposed to separate our idea of Jesus and God the Father into what kind of seems to me like two separate Gods - the alternatives being that Jesus is either a Junior God or no God at all or an ephemera leading us to the real God. All of my life I have worshiped the three in one and find it incomprehensible now to understand how to separate them into "this one" and "that one".

Some of the people on our Liturgy Commission instantly accepted that in modern times we now know we are only supposed to pray to God the Father. One woman said that she thought only Protestants made a fuss about Jesus, and that "after all, he was a human." Still others on the commission were, like me, startled at this notion. There is something about it that either I am not understanding or have yet to grasp.

What do you all think? I thank you in advance for sharing your ideas and expertise!

Friend Judith

Complicated issue with many nuances. Hopefully some of our seminarians on the Forum will take a stab at this.

Daniil

Dear Judith,

The Roman Rite actually had it defined that only prayer to God the Father was to be made at the altar!

The Word does indeed lead us to the Father in the Spirit, in dynamic terms.

But this phrase only indicates the role of each Person of the Trinity, all of Whom are equally worshipped and glorified, as the Nicene Creed we profess teaches us.

The idea that we don't "worship Jesus" MAY reflect the above understanding of prayer in the Roman Rite being addressed "to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit."

But it comes across as sounding rather Nestorian to me, as if Jesus is not truly God and therefore truly to be worshipped and adored along with the Father and the Spirit.

The fact of the matter is that the "Our Father" prayer, as St Maximos the Confessor and others have said, refers to the entire Trinity.

God is not only "our Father" but also the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ through Whom the Spirit has also been sent into the world.

We cannot think of one Person, without remembering the other Two.

The Jesus Prayer also calls to mind the entire Trinity - Lord Jesus Christ (Second Person) Son of God (God the Father that is) have mercy on me a sinner ("Mercy" or Grace recalls the action of the Spirit and we cannot say "Lord Jesus" except in the Spirit).

The Eastern Church's worship has always been directed to the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity at once, as the liturgical prayers indicate.

Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity Who assumed flesh of the Virgin Mary and He is truly worshipped!

Someone once wrote that the Eastern Church's worship of the Trinity is a "social conception of the Deity." And I personally like that characterization.

So this is, at best, a difference in liturgical emphasis between West and East.

At worst, it is Nestorianism . . .

But if one of our Latin Catholic colleagues can explain this passage that our sister, Judith, has raised, then I will withdraw the Nestorian charge.

I don't like the way it was put and leaving Jesus out of the liturgical equation is certainly not how the East worships.

Alex

[ 07-17-2002: Message edited by: Orthodox Catholic ]