The Pilgrimage of Liturgy: Insights on Worship and Daily Living with Dr. Tim O'Malley

Can liturgy truly transform our everyday lives? Join us on "In Via" with Dr. Tim O'Malley from the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame as we explore the profound connection between worship and daily existence. Dr. O'Malley shares his rich expertise in theology, liturgy, and education, revealing how the McGrath Institute aims to bridge the gap between academic theology and the Church's practical needs. We delve into the incarnational worldview of Catholicism, emphasizing the significant role material elements play in the practice of the Faith.

How does liturgy accompany the Christian from birth to death? Inspired by Joseph Ratzinger's "Spirit of the Liturgy," we unpack the concept of liturgy as a pilgrimage, the idea of exitus andreditus, and the sacramental accompaniment of liturgy in our various stages of life. Our conversation with Dr. O'Malley highlights how the Eucharist stands as both the source and summit of our spiritual journey, addressing the full spectrum of human experience—joys, sorrows, and burdens alike. We also emphasize the necessity of active participation in liturgy, with reading recommendations to enhance our liturgical appreciation. Don't miss this engaging discussion that invites you to see liturgy not just as a ritual, but as an integral part of your life's narrative.

Meditations before Mass and Sacred Signs by Romano Guardini

Behold, Believe, Become by Timothy O'Malley

More from Dr. O'Malley
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to In Via, the podcast where we're navigating the pilgrimage of life. We are all in via on the way and we are learning a lot as we go. I'm your host, joan Watson. Join me as we listen to stories, discover travel tips and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we'll see that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, rome or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you right there in your car, on your run or in the middle of your workday.

Speaker 1: 0:33

Today I chat with Dr Tim O'Malley, a Catholic theologian, author and teacher. He also serves in the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame as the Director of Education and Academic Director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy. You might be thinking I'm listening to a pilgrimage podcast. What's that have to do with liturgy? Stay tuned to find out. So welcome back listeners. I am excited today to be talking to Dr Tim O'Malley of Notre Dame and, tim, I wondered if you we always have our guests start by introducing themselves. I usually try to restrict people to three sentences because that seems to give you the best of the best, but I'm a pretty generous person, so you want to introduce yourself.

Speaker 2: 1:15

I study theology and liturgy and sacraments. I love writing about material things in Catholicism and culture and I am doing my best to avoid dying from my seven-year-old's intense torture techniques.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Those are three fantastic sentences. I have to admit, when I looked at your title on the Notre Dame website, I was like he has a lot of titles and his titles alone.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Yeah, they have too many titles and they're not all true, it hasn't been adjusted, so I direct research for our institute and then I am the academic director of the Center for Liturgy.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Nice, and the institute is the McGrath Institute. Do you want to speak a little bit about what the mission of McGrath is, because I really love the mission.

Speaker 2: 2:13

Yeah, I mean we were founded by Father Ted Hesburgh from University President, and our mission remains very closely connected to bring Notre Dame to the church and to bring the church to Notre Dame. I think that's our mission. We often refer to ourselves as a bridge builder and that means we want to do research that benefits church life. We want to do education and formation that forms Catholic leaders throughout the United States and the globe and we really want to raise to consciousness some of the major pastoral issues in the life of the church to a lot of faculty and staff at Notre Dame who could think about this in conjunction with the church. So that, I think, is our mission. We have a tagline we form faithful Catholic leaders, but I think that's the exegesis on that tagline.

Speaker 1: 3:06

Yeah, I love the idea of kind of making sure that theology doesn't remain in an ivory tower where it doesn't benefit the people in the pew, but seeing how can the ivory tower meet the people sitting in the pew? And I think that especially comes to forefront when we talk about things like liturgy, where we can sit and talk and argue and it can be all this kind of just conversation and opinion and theological discourse. But how does that really come into our parishes? And I know you've been writing about that especially as Eucharistic revival. How do we become a Eucharistic people? And so liturgy, of course this is a podcast on pilgrimage. We'll get to pilgrimage no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 4:13

You know, I think they view it as a kind of a cookbook sort of approach, right? You know what's the cookbook say and what should be done and why is the cookbook say the things it says? You know, I think getting to the root of the word is the key thing. Right, in the New Testament we don't actually hear a lot of cultic vocabulary like liturgy, words described to describe the church's rights. We actually hear them described upon the body in our lives, right Paul's, romans 12, make of your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to the Lord. So a lot of cultic vocabulary, this sort of worship vocabulary is applied to Christian life, this worship in return.

Speaker 2: 4:57

And so what is liturgy? Right as it develops? Liturgy is God's work, a remembering of God's work, a making presence of God's work today and our return, gift and response of our lives in light of that. And that's why, liturgy, you don't have to like connect liturgy and life, right, as if you're like, okay, there's liturgy and then there's living. Liturgy is the worship that is meant to become the whole life of the believer. That is the worship, that's the reasonable sacrifice that all of us are to offer. So we do it at mass, we do it in what's called the liturgy, the hours or daily prayer right, the morning prayer and evening prayer of the church. The sacraments do this and, of course, and to a certain extent, our entire devotional life is this sort of return gift, including, as you noted, pilgrimage right. Pilgrimage is linked closely to this return gift. So that's my rough and ready definition of liturgy that hopes to avoid some of the conflicts that seem endless in the church over precisely this topic.

Speaker 1: 6:03

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important just even that we describe it as God's work, because people get it confused and think that it's something we're doing, but that we're actually just participating. We have the honor of participating with our very lives in what is the work of God, and if we get liturgy wrong a lot of times we get that mixed up that it's something that I'm bringing to the table.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Oh, you're honored to bring that to the table, but it's because you're participating in God's work. Yeah, that's well said. Yeah, but so I want to go back to what you mentioned in one of your first three sentences about the material writing, about the material things of Catholicism. We actually talk a lot about on this podcast, about kind of the incarnational worldview and the stuff, because that's what comes to the forefront when you're on pilgrimage. Is this stuff? And so what? How? I mean, how is that connected to liturgy? Is this material? You said you like to write about the material stuff and so again, I think sometimes liturgy in people's minds is like this, like prayer, and it's hard to to grasp onto. So how would you connect the two?

Speaker 2: 7:06

Yeah, I mean, we got bodies, we do stuff with our bodies and we need, you know, we communicate with our bodies, and so you can describe the liturgy right through a history of textual development, but you can also describe it through the materiality of our relationships with the world. Right, we kneel, we stand, there's water and there's wine, there's bread, there's oil, there's the light that shines into a stained glass window. There's the fact that those liturgies are celebrated in places and you know, spaces that people have inhabited over time, and so, you know, one of the ways to refer to this is kind of material culture in the church and I'm very interested in like, well, what is this culture and where to alter pieces come from and what do they do and how do they shape us? And what about kneeling? How does that shape us or change us? So I guess that's the stuff I'm interested in embodiments and all the ways that we use our bodies in worship, not just hearing words.

Speaker 2: 8:05

Right, I think there was a kind of presumption that the liturgy certain times, you know, could become nothing more than a communication of information from worship the church to the person. Right, the church has to say something about God. So we wrote a Eucharistic prayer. I think that the embodied experience is different and it's actually, as I think about often, the lay experience of prayer, as you are bringing embodied creatures like my seven-year-old child to mass and engaging with the materiality of the liturgy, not just what the church, what the texts say.

Speaker 1: 8:42

Yeah, and in some ways it's so Catholic, because if Hollywood wants to depict a Catholic, what do they depict? But these smells and bells and the stained glass windows and the kneeling and the. You watch a movie that tries to depict mass and the people are randomly kneeling and standing. That makes no sense, right? But there's this idea that Catholicism, liturgy, worship, is this material stuff and that's what Hollywood knows about us, right?

Speaker 2: 9:07

Yeah, and that's what we need. Right, we need stuff to express ourselves to people. We don't think just abstractly as persons, right, we we do things with our bodies. We don't say like, well, I love you, like in my head I'm thinking about loving you, but I don't. Actually I haven't done anything to show that or manifest that with my body, and so that's what it is. And, of course, there's a rich history of stuff, from relics to spaces to, you know, architectural church histories. So these are all things that interest me.

Speaker 1: 9:40

Yeah, and pilgrimage I guess we would put in there, because pilgrimage is a sacramental, something that leads us to the sacraments as a material thing. I've asked a lot of people on this podcast why are people attracted to pilgrimage? Why is pilgrimage part of every major religion, not just Catholicism, and everybody has said it goes back to this material stuff that we need to worship with our bodies, we need our bodies to be involved.

Speaker 2: 10:05

Absolutely, we're on a journey and everyone knows that right. The journey of our lives are from birth to death and we need these kind of pilgrimages to enact in our bodies that fact that we begin somewhere and we end somewhere and where do we go in between? And you know there's a reason. They're kind of rare. Well, except for people who work in pilgrimage ministry they're more common. But you know they're not happening every week. They're kind of these occasional remarkable moments where we move from one space to the other, not just again in our heads but in our bodies.

Speaker 1: 10:39

Yeah, you said something intriguing in the email when we talked about this podcast episode and you said that you could see, because I said could we talk about liturgy as pilgrimage? And I think there's something there. But you said something about pilgrimage that liturgy prepares us to see life as a pilgrimage. Can you speak about that and that idea?

Speaker 2: 11:00

Yeah, it's actually fairly common, Like one of my favorite texts in the liturgy. Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Ratzinger refers to, right, what is liturgy? But God's exodus, god's going out, the exodus is in Latin, so God's going out, and then our return, the retitudes. So it's God's going out and the return. And you know, in some sense that's what Christian life is. Christian life in the liturgy is this, right, we come from God, we go back to God. That's what human life is, from birth and to death.

Speaker 2: 11:36

The liturgy accompanies us along this pilgrimage. Right, I just am gotten done teaching a graduate course on the sacraments and you know, the sacraments do align up also with our. You know our lives, right, and to you know, we're born as little babes and perhaps baptized. We grow up, we mature, we're fed and nourished by the Eucharist, we receive the sacraments of the anointing and the liturgy of the anointing of the sick, as we prepare to give our lives as a gift. And so you know, I think in some sense liturgy is always a pilgrimage, an entrance into God's life, the return into God's life and then the going back out into the cosmos and the world to make that space into a consequence of what's received, but to do that, of course, throughout your life. So liturgy is a pilgrimage, not just in a metaphorical sense, but in a real theological sense. It's the movement of us into God's life and the return back into God that is our destiny.

Speaker 1: 12:39

Even just thinking about kind of our actual movement to, you know the priest going up the steps, you know, and then us, like the fact that the mass is named.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Actually the mass is that reminder that we're called to go out into the world and so that idea that we're going to come back on Sunday and be nourished but really, ultimately, we're only here to then take the Eucharist.

Speaker 1: 12:59

The Eucharist is the source, but it's also the summit and we go back out and take the fruits of what we've been given out. So there's all that movement in in Catholicism and in our mission and so, yeah, just that, facilitate that encounter with Christ that happens, and then we should be taking that out, um, in self-gift, um, yeah, and we've talked a lot on the podcast as well about this idea that pilgrimage, their whole life is a pilgrimage and sometimes we're on the right road and sometimes we're on the wrong road and we need to get back on the right road and we accompany people and all this pilgrimage imagery. But that the liturgy helps us see our lives in that movement, I think is really important. For those of us who might just go to mass every Sunday and not really think much deeper of that, then I'm checking that box off my list.

Speaker 2: 13:55

Yeah, I mean, I think that it connects back to something we said earlier, which is that the liturgy isn't some sort of escapism from the world, and actually nor is pilgrimage right. I mean, those you take on pilgrimage, I presume, are bringing along with them all their joys and their sorrows, their frustrations, their, their, their gratitude and their gifts, and they're bringing it along with them. It doesn't get left behind. It's not some escapism, it's a real sort of walking of self and all of that particularity. It's why films, you know, you know movies on pilgrimage involve people bringing their whole lives along with them. You don't just all their narratives, however messy they are, come along with you. You don't just all their narratives, however messy they are, come along with you.

Speaker 1: 14:39

Yeah, the baggage. Like we tell people to pack lightly but also bring the baggage, because the Lord wants the baggage, he wants you to give it all.

Speaker 1: 14:50

And that reminds me of even the offertory procession, of the fact that you're called to like mentally put all your baggage there on the patent and on the gifts, like you're bringing it all to him in the offertory right, like, yeah, I'm throwing in five dollars in the in the collection plate, but what else am I bringing to the sacrifice? I need to bring something to the sacrifice, or why am I there? And so what he wants is your baggage, your joys and your griefs and your sorrows. Put it on the altar and give it to him. He wants you to the total person there.

Speaker 2: 15:22

Yeah, that's, that's, yeah, that's. Those are these sort of miniature pilgrimage moments, I suppose, that take place in every Eucharistic liturgy and every moment we give thanks when we awake, and every moment we give thanks and confess our sins as we go to sleep. These are the moments of living in this in-between space.

Speaker 1: 15:41

Yeah, what would you recommend to somebody? I guess we're in the middle of this Eucharistic revival and what would you? I'm going to give you also a chance to shamelessly plug the books that you have, but what would you recommend to somebody who maybe needs to be revived in their love for liturgy? Maybe they haven't really thought about much about liturgy. They're just going to Mass on Sunday, and so they may be at the moment in their own pilgrimage of life where they need kind of a revival. What would you? What are some things you'd recommend?

Speaker 2: 16:12

Yeah, I mean, the invitation for a shameless plug is very tempting and I'm appreciative of it. You know, to me I will actually make one recommendation. Ave Maria Press is coming out with a reissued book on Romana Guardini's Meditations Before Mass and Sacred Signs, a book that slows down and to start to see the gift of every dimension of the liturgy, from the way we hold our hands and the way that we kneel, the way that we look at bread and wine on the patent right. So it's a sort of act of beholding and of course, our own sort of meditations as we prepare ourselves for the Eucharistic liturgy. Both of those works, I think, are life-changing.

Speaker 2: 16:59

I've written a lot of books with Ave Maria Press on the Eucharist now, including one coming out at the end of May May 31st, I think, is its official drop date, as they say and this book titled and I always forget the titles because Ave Maria changes whatever I suggested, so then I have to remember it it is Behold, believe, become is intended to sort of update Guardini's approach to our own age. So it's a little bit more contemporary than Guardini's, but I still. For those of you who are lovers of slow meditation, romano Guardini's works are where I would start.

Speaker 1: 17:43

Yeah, and that's what we need the busyness and the loudness of our life. That's why we always encourage people to go on pilgrimage is that we need to be separated out. We need to be stretched out of our comfort zone, we need to be quieted, to hear the Lord speak. We talk a lot about facilitating encounters with Christ on pilgrimage, but you can facilitate an encounter with Christ with anybody by bringing them to mass, so we don't have to travel internationally.

Speaker 2: 18:09

No, it's yeah, and I think that's isn't that the roots of all sorts of really important devotional life in the church, of course, course, the uh stations of the cross are find their roots here. There is the pilgrimage itself of the rosary. Right, you can go on a pilgrimage with the Lord um from his, his uh birth to his death and the birth of the church and into heaven, all in your mind, right Through meditation and the beads. And so, yeah, for folks who can't travel, you know, and I think this is important, the Eucharistic Congress is this summer and, of course, pilgrimages are going all over the United States and I think it's a great way. You know, if you want to join with one of those pilgrimages around the Blessed Sacrament for at least a while in those processions, if you want to make it to Indy, but if you can't do any of those things, just go to your local parish and you've already made that pilgrimage, in essence, the same pilgrimage that those folks will make you make in just going to Mass.

Speaker 1: 19:12

Yeah, yeah, sometimes we make it more complicated in our heads than it needs to be, and the Lord's asking us to slow down, to enter into slow meditative prayer with him, that he's given us the stuff of prayer, that we can enter into that relationship. Is there anything else I think to? Just to wrap up, to think about the liturgy as pilgrimage or pilgrimage leading us to liturgy, vice versa. Is there anything else you'd like to add that?

Speaker 2: 19:40

we haven't covered. Sure, yeah, I mean, I always think that we're only one person. I think it's really important to recognize that sometimes we think about the liturgical person and then the rest of our devotional prayer life right as a sort of separate entities, and I always think, if you, everything that we do as praying persons, uh all come in the same pot right Of ourselves, and so you know, the the pilgrimage you go on will shape the way you pray at the mass, at mass, the mass you celebrate is going to shape the kind of dispositions you have on pilgrimage, because we're just one coherent person, at least ideally. You have on pilgrimage because we're just one coherent person, at least ideally. So, yeah, I think this is an important thing to remember. Yes, the pilgrimage is a sacramental right, but it contributes to your worship and vice versa. Right In the liturgy you move into a state of pilgrimage. So it's okay to have a robust spiritual life that involves the liturgy but also involves lots of other things.

Speaker 1: 20:42

Yeah, and it's a reminder of what you said at the beginning, that you know we um that it's not liturgy in life, but that that we are the person that, as we're praying, as we're bringing that into the life, um, we're the same person on Sunday and Monday, and so how can we um to to bring that in, that it's not like this is a work I do over here, um, but this is my life and this is the Catholic way of life. Um, I think too often we we separate them out, um for good or, you know, for a variety of reasons.

Speaker 2: 21:13

Yeah, no, that's well said yeah. So that's what I would say. That's the one thing I'd want to leave everyone with.

Speaker 1: 21:18

Yeah, I love it Well. Thanks, tim, thanks for the brief conversation and thanks, listeners, for listening. Don't forget to share this with a friend, and we'll, of course, put all the links in the show notes of where you can find more about Dr O'Malley's work and his books, especially his newest one. God bless,