In a phrase that she repeats several times in her classic, groundbreaking book She Who Is, Elizabeth Johnson wisely observes that “the image of God functions.”
The language we use to describe God, in other words, has practical implications.
Frustration with liturgical language
This is why I am more and more frustrated by our liturgical language.
This is not just about our present terrible English translation. It’s about the way the liturgy images God.
The main image of God in our liturgy is that of God as a King. A male, surely, but not just any male. The image is of a powerful sovereign, before whom we need to plead, beg, and enlist powerful “God-influencers” to intercede for us.
Sometimes we also seem to need someone—like Mary—to intercede with Christ, so that Christ himself can intercede with his Father. Take, for example, the opening prayer for the Solemnity of the Holy Cross.
O God, who willed that your Only Begotten Son
Should undergo the Cross to save the human race,
Grant, we pray,
That we, who have known his mystery on earth,
May merit the grace of his redemption in heaven.
Through our Lord …
Language that shapes our worship
There are certainly better (or worse) examples of what I am speaking about, but notice the words “willed,” “grant,” “merit.” These are words that image the gathered assembly as a royal court, begging for the strength to be worthy of salvation.
Contrast this prayer with the proposed ICEL translation, sadly rejected by the Vatican in 1998.
You have highly exalted, O God,
The Christ who emptied himself,
Giving the name above every name
To the one who took the form of a slave
And became obedient even to death on a cross.
Beset by danger as we journey
Through this world’s desert
And weakened by our own faithlessness,
We look to the one who was lifted up for our healing.
May we recognize in Jesus crucified
The Savior you sent
And exult to know how you have loved the world.
We ask this …
A different image of God
Yes, there is still some “kingly” atmosphere here, but the image of God is much closer to the God who reveals Godself in self-emptying, becoming flesh, and taking on the very stuff of God’s creation.
If we are serious about our faith in the Incarnation, our liturgy should reflect that, more than the royal images with which it now abounds. Might this image of God function to make us more of a people that continues that Incarnation by our lives together and for the world?
- Stephen B. Bevans, SVD, is a priest in the Roman Catholic missionary congregation of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD). He is the Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD Professor of Mission and Culture, Emeritus, at Catholic Theological Union, Chicago. He has edited or published twenty-one books, the latest of which is Community of Missonary Disciples: The Continuing Creation of the Church (Orbis, 2024)