The Liturgy as our Militant Catechist
Concerning the long, green season of Sundays after Trinity, the Roman Catholic priest Pius Parsch (1884-1954) observed:
“The Sundays during the Pentecost cycle develop three great themes. The first is Baptism and its graces. We are baptized and grounded in the graces of Baptism. Every Sunday is a reminder of Baptism and a small Easter. The second theme is preparation for the second advent of the Lord. It is treated in detail on the final Sundays of the season. The remaining theme, the burden of the Sundays midway after Pentecost, may be summarized as the conflict between the two camps. Although we are placed in the kingdom of God, we remain surrounded by the kingdom of the world. Our souls are laboring under Adam’s wretched legacy and waver continually to and fro between two allegiances.
By these three great themes the liturgy covers the whole range of Christian life. In Baptism the precious treasure of the Spirit was conferred. Through it we are God’s children and may call God Father. Through it we have become temples of the Holy Spirit, heirs and brothers of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, Baptism has not translated us to a paradise without toil or trouble. Rather we are sent into a troubled world to work and struggle. We must guard the holy land of our souls against costly attack. We must learn to know and conquer the enemy, and such is the task that will continue until we have taken our final breaths.
The Church serves as both the heroine, who teaches us the art of warfare, and our strong fortress and shield in the conflict. Through Holy Communion, she bestows aid that repeatedly frees the soul from the entanglements of temptation. How does she do this? Courage and strength and perseverance flow from the Word of God in the Service of the Word, and they flow in even fuller measure from Holy Communion. Of ourselves we are helpless creatures, wholly unable to withstand the attack, but in Holy Communion, another battles for us. The Mightier, Christ, vanquishes the mighty. By means of Holy Communion, we are enrolled in our Captain’s forces. And thus Christ’s battle becomes our battle and His triumph our triumph, and His wondrous strength renders us invincible.”
What a glorious treasure of catechesis and confession of Jesus and the Christian life the Church Year is! And how impoverished are the megachurches - including those nominally in the Missouri Synod - who have ditched the illustrious riches of the liturgy and its glorious teaching of the Christian faith and life in favor of the threadbare rags of worldly entertainment.
The traditional liturgy reminds us that we are the Church Militant through which the Lord trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, preparing us to make war on the enemy - while entertainment worship just makes for soft, flabby, and infantilized Christians (including neutered and feminized pastors) who are clueless about what is truly happening behind the veil: the great spiritual warfare that rages around us, which will only increase until the return of our Lord.