Homo Liturgicus: On the Necessity of Liturgy for Men

It has been noted by many Catholic commentators over the years that in a world that seeks to silence the sound of church bells on Sunday mornings and disrobe from itself the vestiges of an ordered Christian past, among the many things on display during “pride month” is an inextinguishable desire to create in sight and song, sign and symbol, a liturgy to acknowledge what we believe to be absolute. Indeed, “pride” comes around every year on the secular liturgical calendar as cowardly men who would, in private, acknowledge the obvious truth that boys cannot be girls, and that men and women are ordered to one another exclusively, sit silently.

To write an article here that argues that “real men are needed” while true, would border on pastiche. Instead, I believe it more worth your time to simply point out that if the cultural problem of “pride” is that it is a month where God’s radiant signs and symbols are used to confuse and overturn what is true about God’s world, then the proper response of every man is to make his person, his life, his actions, his rituals, signs and symbols of the resurrected Christ. To be a man is to bear the responsibility of making one’s whole being a liturgy communicating the truth of the Christian life. In part one, I’d like to lay out a richer understanding of what we mean by liturgy. In the second part, we will speak about why men in particular bear the responsibility of calling others to liturgical action. In the last part, I would like to give practical suggestions for building a liturgical life that communicates to others the truth of the world.

Part I

What exactly do we mean by the word liturgy? Theologian David Fagerberg tells us that “liturgy is the perichoresis of the Trinity kenotically extended to invite our synergistic ascent into deification.”¹ While that is certainly a mouthful, we can break that down by starting with the basics. St. Bonaventure tells us that with any consideration about God, whether we are attempting to listen to his voice, discern our next moves, or theologize about him, we need to keep one principle straight: the good is diffusive of itself.² That means that the tendency of all good things is to give themselves for the sake of others. It isn’t good enough to have collected enough money to pay for diapers. A man becomes good when he spends his money to actually buy them for his son or daughter. A good man desires to make other men good by his sacrifice. This is even more true of God because God doesn’t have goodness. He is goodness, infinite goodness.

Because God’s goodness is infinite and unending, it is kenotic, it empties itself happily, never counting the cost or tiring of its efforts, independent of whether the receiver happily receives them. And this is important for our understanding of what it means to be God, especially if we understand him to be a Trinity of Persons. Between each member of the Trinity, there is what theologians call a perichoresis, a mutual indwelling, a delight of lovers that “I am part of you, and you are part of me.” Spouses experience their own perichoresis, but because we are bound by the limits of our bodies and our own sinful tendencies, we tire even of the people we love most. The Trinity has no such limitations. They never tire of giving or receiving because each is as infinite and good as the other. Why is this all important? Because every time God chooses to create anything, is a kenotic act of love, an invitation to the perichoresis that he experiences eternally and unendingly. Every lily of the field, every moonlit night, every beautiful crashing wave upon the shore, every spindle of silk, every cup of hot coffee on a cold winter night, every loving moment between spouses, every hair on our children’s heads has been loved into existence with an invitation to the perichoresis, the joyful indwelling of the Trinity.

Well and good, you might say. But are we really saying that flowers and coffee participate in the Trinity? Aren’t these just inanimate and insentient objects? To understand how these objects are invited, it is important to understand the very thing God loves most, man. St. Maximus the Confessor teaches that to be human is to be the only thing in the image and likeness of God.³ Man alone bears in his person the unity of all the visible and invisible realities that God has loved into existence. With plants and animals, he shares his material bodiliness, his ability to feel, see, and delight. With God and his angels, he shares rationality, that ability to see not just the physical but the absolute truth and meaning of things, the purposes for which each thing has been loved into existence. He is a union of body and soul.

Bees and flowers know virtually nothing about one another. A flower can at best feel that it might be advantageous to produce pollen when the sun is particularly strong in the spring. A bee knows only that pollen is good for food and the survival of the hive. Only the human is capable of delighting in the sweetness of honey, that it both delights the tongue and soothes the throat when one is sick. Only humans are capable of giving thanks for the little master workers. The bees do not know that the wax they produce to hide the honey illumines the dinner of two lovers escaping the drudgery of life with a quiet fancy meal. The flowers are not capable of knowing that their sacrifice each year produces the beeswax which produces the candles snuffed out on Good Friday or made radiant by Easter fire on Holy Saturday. Only humans do. Only humans can participate with the world synergistically, both willfully taking and giving to it for the glory of God. Only humans are capable of this liturgy, the ordering of the objects around us by sign and symbol to acknowledge that all things have been kenotically loved into existence by God and are invited to share in his joy of loving and being loved eternally, our becoming God-like, or as the theologians say, deified.

Scripture attests to this liturgical inclination of man, to repeat in sign and symbol the truth of the world. We see that Adam does the same things every day in the garden, ordering each plant and animal so that their ordering reflects the great care and love that God has for the world. This is liturgy. When God brings the Hebrews out of Egypt, Moses slaughters a bull and sprinkles its blood, the life-giving substance, on the horn of an altar and then sprinkles it on the Hebrews to symbolize the blood ties and faithfulness which both parties owe each other. This is liturgy. When King Solomon greeted his mother Bathsheba in front of the court, he bowed to her and brought a beautiful throne to be placed at his right side to symbolize the honor due to his mother and her place in the kingdom. This is liturgy. At the last supper, Our Lord used the crushed and fermented grapes and wheat to communicate his own death and resurrection in the Eucharist. This is liturgy. Liturgy is not just scriptural or for the Church to do.

Every conjugal union between spouses is a liturgical act which shows by the sign of the spouses’ bodies the goodness and perichoresis of the spouses. How many times have we gone through the ritual of a birthday party, taking wax from bees and making them into candles that highlight and illumine the exact age of a birthday girl or boy? We place these candles on a cake that represents the sweetness and appreciation of the life of the child while singing (never in a unanimous key) the same birthday song that adults sang for us as children. How many Fourths of July included sparklers and fireworks as radiant expressions of our patriotism? How many dads took charge of the grill in New Balance shoes, shorts too long to be stylish, and a Budweiser in hand as a display of fatherly love and providing meat? How many boys anxiously hoped that this year their fathers would ask them to man the grill for a second as a rite of masculine passage? How many times have we angrily awoken on a Saturday morning to parents clanging about in the kitchen or mowing the lawn too early, or the children turning on the television for Saturday morning cartoons which they never seem to miss?

The question here is not whether to be human is to be liturgical. It is only whether our liturgies, the willing, or synergistic, habits and rituals we choose every day, reflect the truth of the world that God has brought into existence. It is the very world in which there was something so lovable about you and I, that God would rather have been crucified than spend an eternity of perichoresis without us.

So, we come back to the question, “What is liturgy?” A liturgy is a willful synergistic and ritual action which orders the things around us to communicate that our existence is a kenotic invitation by God to join in the everlasting goodness and happiness that he is.

In a world where “pride month” turns all of God’s signs and symbols and places them on their heads, it is the responsibility of men to reorder the world by insisting on real liturgical expression.

Part II

I would briefly like to explain that while all humans are called to liturgy, it is the principal role of men because men have a particular way of imaging Christ as priest, prophet, and king, and thus headship in both family and the Church.

As a small Catholic business owner selling refinished axes with Catholic reminders on them, I am often lucky enough to be asked to sell at men’s conferences and Catholic craft fairs around the country. I am always excited by how intuitive the appeal of a brand-new polished axe with “ITE AD IOSEPH” or “MEMENTO MORI” engraved on the side is for young boys and old men alike. It is a profound joy to see fathers bring their boys to check out and hold the axes as all eyes light up. I am always equally struck by how unintuitive the item is for women. (There isn’t anything wrong with that. I am just always amazed at how different men and women are.)

Recently, a boy of about sixteen was walking around with his mom and happened upon our booth. He struck up a pleasant conversation with me about how I made them, whether they could actually cut wood, and what the Latin inscriptions on the side meant. As he clearly was working up the courage to ask his mom to purchase the axe dedicated to St. Joseph, it was clear that his mother didn’t really understand his enthusiasm for the item. “Mom, can I please have this one? I would love to have it.” Mom didn’t bite. “What could you possibly need this for?” “I don’t know Mom, as a symbol,” he replied sheepishly. “A symbol for what?” she replied, still confused. Mom was clearly busy with other thoughts, very hurriedly told her son no, and informed him that they had to leave to go pick up a younger sibling from practice. The boy wanted a physical reminder of the type of life he is called to, one in which he is called to use the tool to protect, serve, and offer himself as a sacrifice for those he loves. He wanted that axe as a symbol and tool of that call. As a young man, he needed the reminder.

It is impossible to say to a woman “You’re not a real woman” with any gravitas. No sooner than you have said it, her body will remind her that independent of whether she feels like it, nature has deemed her a woman. If she is wise, she will give thanks for it. But it is quite easy to destroy an honest man by telling him he isn’t a real man or a good man. Why is that? It is because, unlike femininity, which is a given, masculinity, true manhood, is fought for, suffered for, bestowed upon men by other men, and requires rites of passage, symbols to declare the truth of his masculinity. Every man with a good relationship with his own father waited until his father gave him a confirmation of his approval. Sometimes it is as simple as a dad handing a young son a beer for a hard day’s work. Sometimes it’s a grandfather holding his grandchild, telling his son that he is proud of the man he has become. Whatever the case, all things being equal, being a real man isn’t a mere fact of genitalia; it is something to be done.

Cardinal Scola tells us that one of the key differences between men and women can be boiled down to a difference between donation and receptivity, two ways of embodying humanity.⁴ Men are holy by their donation. Women are holy by their reception. But what does a man donate? St. Paul in Ephesians 5 rightly tells wives to submit to their husbands. But it is only because the husband bears the responsibility of donating his whole self to his wife as Christ did for the Church during his crucifixion. Every husband donates what Christ does, his very self as priest, prophet, and king.

But don’t women by their baptisms also live their lives as priest, prophet, and king? Emphatically, yes. But as a practical matter, women do that very differently from men. In general, women prepare themselves body and soul to receive other persons as a communication of love. Men, on the other hand, prepare themselves body and soul to do and arrange things for the ones they love. This is what we mean when we call someone a real man. We mean that someone has demonstrated that they are willing to suffer for the sake of others or some state of affairs which will help others. When a father hands that son a beer, he confirms the value of his son’s work and suffering for the sake of the family. When the grandfather tells his son that he is proud of who he has become, he is confirming the responsibility of the new father to suffer and teach his children the truth as he did. More to the point, since one of the first aims of masculinity is the donation of the man as priest, prophet, and king of his home by the arrangement of things for the sake of others, his liturgies, the ritual actions by which his home abides, are his responsibility primarily.

But what does it mean to offer yourself liturgically as priest, prophet, and king? Recall that above, we defined liturgy as willful ritual action that arranges objects around us to communicate that our very being is an invitation to the love of God. Our job as men is to arrange our habits as priests, prophets, and kings to proclaim the truth of God’s love for the world. St. John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio explains that the principal job of a priest is to offer sacrifice pleasing to God. The task of each man is to make sure that his rituals, the way he arranges his life, is an offering of sacrifice to God and speaks of Jesus’ sacrifice for many.⁵

To be a prophet is to proclaim the truth, stand unflinchingly in the statutes of the Lord, and speak only what is true. A man’s rituals, his arrangement of life, should reflect the truth of God’s saving love. They should proclaim boldly that he believes that he and his family have been “bought with a great price” as St. Paul says, the blood of the Lamb. To be a king is to bear responsibility for others. It is to willingly have on one’s shoulders the weight of their joy and suffering and to make judgments and laws for the good of the many in one’s charge. Every man’s rituals, his liturgies, should be at the service of the good of the whole, especially concerning his own family.

A real man’s joy (not fleeting happiness) is the law of the Lord. He arranges his prayers, his home, his wealth, his clothing, his time, his health, his family to proclaim the glory of the invitation that God gives each of us to enjoy the peace of soul that comes with the knowledge of having been loved into existence. Every “liturgy” a man chooses has meaning. The only question is whether what we choose displays what is most excellent or most foul about masculinity. Either his rituals will display his serious commitment to be priest, prophet, and king to others or they will serve his own subjective satisfactions and lead to the ruin of others. The world is topsy-turvy because weak men have allowed even weaker men to use the natural symbolism of the world to communicate liturgically, in song, sign, and rainbow color, something deeply untrue. Will we be man enough to insist on a proper liturgical life? Only real men can.

Part III

So, what kind of “liturgical actions” can the every-man engage in? I would like to list several here for both the individual and family which will help communicate to the world the truth of the Gospel. Much like the birth of Christ, the actions are small in the eyes of the world, but profound and have eternal consequences for those who encounter them. I will mention works that have been a profound help to me in his pursuit, but I am not affiliated financially with any of them.

Let us begin with a suggestion that should be obvious. Go to the one liturgy that matters more than any other one. Go to Mass. Do not do so begrudgingly. No one has ever made it to heaven kicking and screaming or wishing that they could watch the game instead of being present to the Eucharist where angels veil their faces to what you receive on your tongue. The daily movements of the Church and the profound gift that God gives of himself is the most transformative thing a culture can have. Our culture is only unchanged for lack of awareness and understanding.

Pray the Liturgy of Hours with the Church. One of the greatest gifts that the Second Vatican Council gave lay people was access to the Liturgy of the Hours, the same prayer that all priests, deacons, and religious say throughout the day. Just choosing one portion, either morning or evening, to say every day can deeply change the way that you think and act. You will be consecrating your time to the Lord. If you do this publicly, it will have a profound impact on the people around you. If I could suggest, the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter has just published a copy of their Liturgy of the Hours, which contains the most beautiful translation of the Psalms that I know. It is worth its weight in gold to be able to memorize and recite those translations.

Lastly, before we get to personal liturgical actions, pray the Rosary. After the Mass and Hours, it is the most powerful prayer the Church has. The Ark of the Covenant was kept away, never to be seen because of its power. It contained in itself the very presence of God and was feared by all because it was Israel’s secret weapon. How much more should evil fear Mary who is the new Ark, who like the Burning Bush was aflame and yet never burned? Every Rosary is a wallop to the face of the Devil.

As far as personal liturgical acts, I would like to propose that men say the Angelus at least at 12 PM and 6 PM with the corresponding kneeling. The witness of a Catholic man touching his knees to the ground at “the world was made flesh and dwelt among us” will be profound for anyone unfamiliar with the traditions of the Church. It is also important that Catholic men noticeably bow their heads at the name of Jesus Christ. Not only is this mandated in the Instruction of the Roman Missal, but I have been very impressed by non-religious friends ceasing to take the Lord’s name in vain around me because they know that I will bow my head in front of them to make amends for their negative usage of his name.

When your friends invite you out for drinks after work, order a cocktail that is modeled after the saint of the day. Michael P. Foley’s book “Drinking with the Saints” is a great companion piece to the liturgical calendar. Bring one of the recipes to the bar and ask if the bartender can make it. Do you know how many old fashions, mojitos, and whiskey sours they get asked to make daily? Give them a little fun. When your friends ask you what you have, tell them whose feast day it is. I knew of a man who did this so often that his completely secular friends were horrified when he only ordered a beer. They were compelled to ask whose feast day it was and were put at ease when he responded that it was Saint Brigid of Ireland who had a vision of heaven that included rivers of ale.

Don’t eat meat on Fridays. In the U.S. it is common to think that we only have to abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent. This is not the case. Every Friday is a meatless Friday unless you are doing some alternative form of penance. Giving up meat every Friday is a profound witness of the seriousness with which the crucifixion of Our Lord ought to be taken.

Whenever you wash your hands, say out loud the prayer that the priest says at mass while washing his hands: “Lord wash me of my iniquity, and cleanse me of my sin. This will be a reminder both of your own baptismal waters which regenerated your soul and of the need to confess.

Type up a short liturgy for leaving and coming back home. Pick a short psalm or phrase from scripture about the home and say it every day before you leave and when you come home. This is important because you will be sanctifying your experience outside the home and eventually will say it so often that it becomes a part of your memory and who you are. I have been deeply moved when I have had nothing to say to the Lord because of great sadness and the only words which come are the words of a psalm that I have rehearsed over and over with my own children.

Perhaps more importantly, create a family liturgy done every night, the same way, day-in and day-out, with a little variation for solemnities. Our children are small but the sequence follows something like this:

1. Kids light candles or incense on coals
2. LOTH Intro
3. Dad reads Psalm 130
4. pray for others
5. Nunc Dimittis together
6. Marian Antiphon for the liturgical season
7. Saint Michael Payer
8. Litany to the saints on our wall

The whole thing takes 5 minutes. Obviously, as the children get older the prayers will change with more rosaries and litanies. But it has been a joy to have people over for dinner and show them that little ones are capable of great silence and wonder when you involve them, and they know the routine. If you are not sure how to create your own liturgy or a consistent prayer corner, I strongly recommend “The Little Oratory” by David Clayton and Leila Marie Lawler. I stumbled upon this book at a Catholic bookstore and it quite providentially changed my entire outlook on our home as a liturgical space.

Sing the Asperges Me every time you put your kids in the bathtub. Not only will they learn this beautiful Gregorian chant from the sprinkling rite at the beginning of Mass, but they will also eventually make the connection between the sprinkling rite and their own washing.

Make a small prayer corner on your office desk and actually use it. Buy some 5-inch icons and a small crucifix stand. There’s no need to have anything baroque in a cubicle (unless that is your jam). A small simple prayer corner which is regularly used before meetings or emails is a profound liturgical act.

Make liturgical arts and crafts with your kids. I knew of one mom and dad who encouraged their kid to share his icon of the Sacred Heart for show and tell (in California, school goes well into June) and made Sacred Heart cupcakes for the whole class. That kid felt like a superhero for providing the class with cookies and all the kids wanted to see his icon. Get the kids prepared for liturgical feasts. Enthrone the Sacred Heart in your home in front of the kids and offer incense before the image every Friday.

When you write a memo or leave a sticky note for someone in the office, write “JMJ” (Jesus, May, and Joseph) or “AMDG” (to the greater glory of God) on the top of your papers or in the signature. Make sure it is known that everything you do is offered to our Lord. It will probably stop you from sending a spicy email even if Janice from accounting deserves it.

Make a liturgy out of every meal that never changes. All of us are probably saying the “Bless us oh Lord” prayer very quickly and without due reverence before our meals. Communicate to people that the meal is really being prayed for and that you are giving serious thanks. The “St. Gregory Prayer Book” from Ignatius Press has a great prayer for meals:

Dad: The eyes of all wait upon thee, O Lord

Family: And thou givest them their meat in due season

Dad: Thou openest thine hand

Family: And fillest all things living with plenteousness

All: Bless us O Lord…

Whether that prayer is with family, or you are eating at a bar with friends, that prayer has the ability to generate questions. It isn’t a quick prayer uttered so that you can get on with your business. It is a consecration of time using the Church’s tradition to give thanks for the gift in front of us. Any man can amend this, add more, and insert prayers for the dead, or liturgical season. For those with a wife and children, serve the meals liturgically. In our home, Dad’s plate is always served first before the children. If dad is cooking, mom is served first. While Dad is served first, he will not get another serving until everyone else has had their fill and gotten their own seconds. Doing this every night is a profound witness to the marriage covenant and the role of man to woman, especially when there are others over.

As priest of the house, it is the man’s job to lead prayer every night. Any man who does this will quickly find out that it is tiresome. Some nights it is easier to have your wife lead, and she is oftentimes more capable than you. Resist the temptation. You are the priest of the household. Your wife should not have to remind you to pray with her and yours. It should be understood that you will pray and call everyone to yourself.

Make a liturgy out of the way you speak to and greet your beloved. Saint John Chrysostom remarked in his homilies to married couples that a husband should almost consider it a sin to call his wife by her name. Rather, he should always address her with a name of affection. Memorize a passage from scripture about a wonderful woman and speak it to her regularly, every night and in front of others, to show how much you enjoy her. In our home, I regularly tell my wife, “My excellent wife is the crown of her husband” (Prov. 12:4). It is a joy to see her light up and the brownie points go through the roof.

Lastly, when you enter your home after a long day, it is easy to need a second and want some quiet before everyone has some need of you. Make a liturgy of gathering every member of the family to yourself, actively searching for them, and giving them a blessing. Your family shouldn’t just know that you love them, but that you actively delight in their presence.

Real men, as fake men use the symbols of the world to proclaim a lie, stand up and insist that these symbols find their proper place and order in the homes of Christian men. Be a Homo Liturgicus, a liturgical man.