The Church is Christ’s body, and He is the head of the body. In this sense, the Church is the “extension” of the incarnation of God. As John Macquarrie writes, “the Church is an ongoing incarnation. It has not yet attained ‘to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.'”1 The Church, in this sense, is still on the way toward, in Walter Hilton’s term, “the likeness of Jhesu”, which he uses throughout his class work, The Scale of Perfection. The Church is on a journey, a journey that is reflected by the catholic doctrine of the threefold Church (militant, expectant, triumphant). Hence the “church’s offering of worship” is itself a growing, a becoming, a journey “on the way” from sinfulness and disorder to sanctification and likeness to Jhesu. This journey is initiated by the ontological action of Christ in the sacrament of Baptism, is affirmed in the sacrament of Confirmation, is fed by the sacrament of Eucharist, navigated by the sacrament of Reconciliation, ordered (for some) by the sacrament of Matrimony, healed by the sacrament of Unction, all of which are made valid by the sacrament of Orders. Indeed modeled by the Eucharist, but in fact through each sacrament, anamnesis occurs: the actually-making-present-again of Christ, who is, as Dix writes, “presently operative”.2
All of this is an outline of the life of the Body in its becoming, through the actual presence, or presences, of Christ, the head of the Body. What gives this outline a living (or more properly, “ascetical”) shape or pattern is the Catholic rule, or regula. This Catholic rule is also threefold: Mass-Office-Devotion. As Martin Thornton writes, “Here is the basic Rule of the Church which, varying in detail, is common to East and West, monastic and secular, to all the individual schools without exception, and which forms the over-all structure of the Book of Common Prayer.”3
That last point, where Thornton reminds us that Catholic ascetical theology underlay the Prayer Book, reveals the means by which sacred space and sacred time serve our journey toward likeness of Jhesu. “Sacred space” refers to the specific environment or environments whereby the regula finds enactment. The parish church (usefully, Thornton refers to the parish as an “organism”) houses the altar and tabernacle, is the gathering place for the local community of the People of God, is the normative location where the Word of God is proclaimed, and where corporate participation in the liturgy — which is “God’s theology”,4 God’s own way of making Himself intelligible — invites growth in the Body of Christ. Hence, “sacred space” is where the People of God are sacramentally and corporately capacitated for our journey.
“Sacred time” refers to the variety of narratives that animate the regula. These narratives are centered around the life of Jesus of Nazareth, how the events and actions of his life reinterpret all of salvation history in the Old Testament, and these narratives detail crucial events and actions of Christ’s Body, the Church, in its early days and years. Further, sacred time animates the lives of the apostles, prophets, martyrs, and the saints. “The saints are the true interpreters of Holy Scripture.”5 Through sacred time, ever-cyclical yet each time through ever-new, we are invited into deeper likeness to Jhesu by walking with Christ’s on his own steps, beginning with his being the expressive agent of all creation as narrated in Genesis, by learning his way: “If any man will come after Me (i.e., will be My disciple), let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me”,6 and by studying saints, whose lives are icons of Christ. Sacred time is the eschatological entirety of the paschal mystery in the slow-motion of time and space.
So, we say in short that the Body of Christ, of which He is the head, is on its way to salvific likeness of Him by means of His sacraments. The Catholic regula gives this journey pattern and shape. Sacred space (normatively the parish) gives this journey its corporate housing for the People of God. And sacred time animates the journey through the variety of narratives — the glorious abundance! — that tell of Christ’s presence, his anamnesis, that invites us to his glory.
1 John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology (London: SCM, 1977), XVII.69.viii. ; Eph 4.13.
2 Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London: Continuum, 2005), 245.
3 Martin Thornton, English Spirituality: An Outline of Ascetical Theology According to the English Pastoral Tradition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cowley, 1986), 76.
4 David Fagerberg, Theologia Prima: What is Liturgical Theology? (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2004), 15.
5 Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 78.
6 Luke 9.23. Cf. Mt 16.24; Mk 8.34