Liturgical Mysticism by David Fagerberg

Abstract

Reviewed by: Liturgical Mysticism by David Fagerberg James Keating Liturgical Mysticism by David Fagerberg (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2019), 200 pp. In this compelling book, David Fagerberg urges Christians to have their thinking arise from their worship. To worship the triune God is to have one's being penetrated with the truths and symbols of the Paschal mystery. Slowly, developmentally, relationally, these truths inhabit the mind and rebirth it with a true metanoia. Such a change of thinking is analogical to a man moving from a bachelor mind in order to welcome a new and other-encompassing spousal mind. The Eucharistic [End Page 991] liturgy is mind-altering. A person's vulnerable and regular participation in the liturgy is life changing. Within the Eucharistic liturgy, theologians and mystics are born and sustained, their identities and mission deepened and secured (ix). Such a view of liturgy is never possessed by all in the Church, due to the weight and drag of sin and human finitude. Those who do embrace such a view long to have the liturgy transform them into icons of Christ (x). Such icons become living windows through which the secular culture can view divine love affecting a person. Even though such personal transformation is being accomplished within a liturgical life, most of what happens in each liturgy is, at levels, imperceptible to sensation or consciousness. Divine life is being communicated to the soul akin to how bodily nutrition enters the bloodstream—silently, inexorably, but vitally. No, we do not "feel" the Mass in a dramatic way, no matter how we tinker with music, preaching, and architecture. We benefit from the Mass as one benefits from food: It keeps us living. The Mass keeps us safe unto eternal life. The liturgy is like a huge iceberg where what we see "isn't the half of it." What Fagerberg wants to know in this powerful work of theology that he has written is simple: How are individual believers affected by what is happening beneath the waterline? (83). What is happening inside of a person while he or she participates in the liturgy? This book is an exploration of liturgical mysticism. If we were to read Fagerberg prayerfully and with pastoral hearts, a new appreciation of what ecclesial formation is would be embraced. Fagerberg's work is a meditation on how Catholics are being saved by Christ, on how one is formed into salvation. Fagerberg breathes the liturgy, theology, and pastoral life with both lungs. His mind is oxygenated in a unique way. It is a mind that nourishes others and forms others to be formators themselves. With this current text and his previous two—On Liturgical Asceticism (2013) and Consecrating the World (2016)—we have a formation library for mystical (sacramental) Catholicism. What is happening beneath the waterline of the liturgical iceberg is this: "Liturgy is the perichoresis of the Trinity kenotically extended to invite our synergistic ascent into deification" (30). We are used to Fagerberg being in harmony with the Eastern masters and his beloved Alexander Schmemann, Aidan Kavanagh, and Jean Corbon; but here he is dancing more fully with the West (Louis Bouyer, Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Blessed Dom Marmion, Jean Daniélou) and inviting us all to listen to the full orchestra that captivates him. And the music enchanting him is the melody of life rising from within the liturgy, from Christ's own ongoing vim and vigor shared as grace. This life is purifying, securing a clearer sense of the Christian faith as mystical. The mystic is a person who seeks the face of Jesus and beholds his mysteries unto a change [End Page 992] of heart. Paradoxically, we become mystics by allowing the Holy Spirit to lift us up and abduct us by his own descent at the liturgy. The mystic is one who is "ascending" all through his or her own mundane life. The mystic himself is a "presence in the mundane of supernatural things" (37), because his life is the life of the liturgy. The mystic lives life as a liturgical being, as one formed in the ways of Christ in and through liturgical worship. To be a mystic is to travel...