Philia Love and the Liturgy
In my essay Ordering Freedom and the Four Loves, I described anew the four loves handed down to us from the ancient Greeks. Two of these loves, storge and philia, were contrasted in the following way: while storgic love is a love of family, intimacy, and deep friendship, philia is a corporate kind of love; philia is the love of sons in the one Son under the Father. Most importantly, storgic love is best taught by the mother and is most easily expressed by women while philia is taught by the father in order to bring his sons into the broader protective male group. A great model of these two loves is the storgic love embodied by Mary around whom the apostles gathered in protective and unitive philia to receive the Holy Spirit (and an outpouring of agape, the love of God) at Pentecost. Another model of this love is a nation’s military, a group of men united by a willingness to sacrifice themselves in order to protect the nation, the home, and the places of worship.
Given this understanding of love, the liturgical life of the Church has always adopted a philia form of love for worship. The name of this blog, Orate Fratres, comes from the Latin of the Mass which translates not as “Pray brothers and sisters…” but rather as “Pray brethren…” This masculine terminology is used because our identity is in Christ in whom we have been re-born as the sons of God. This is why St. Paul says for those baptized into Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, free nor slave (see Galatians 3:26-27). It's not that he has broken down distinctions but rather that the members of Jesus’ body are just as much partakers of his status as a free, male Jew as they are "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). We could say that while John Paul II's Theology of the Body, dealing with sexuality, has helped us understand the feminine aspect of the Church as the bride of Christ, a Theology of the Corporate Body will help us understand the masculine aspect of the Church as the body of Christ.
Such a theology would not only renew the bond between a bishop and his priests but it would also renew the bond between a priest and his lay men. Imagine the bishop washing the feet of his priests as a sign that he will cast out any evil among them (just as Christ cast out Judas when he washed the feet of the Apostles). And think what would happen if a priest gathered his lay men, looked together at map of the parish, and then planned block by block how they would evangelize and bring their neighborhoods to Christ. In a society of weak men, grace would build on nature once more to end the priest crisis and build up a nation under God. But such a theology would bring a renewed understanding of the liturgy and sacraments as well. It would probably mean a return to traditional hymns and instruments and the proverbial axing of “polka Masses”, rock bands, and praise and worship music. This is particularly true of praise and worship music since it tends to take on a more personal, intimate, and individualistic feel. This is not wrong, but it appeals more to storgic love (see above) rather than philia. Given the place of philia in the liturgy and sacraments, praise and worship becomes more appropriate for small groups outside of Mass.
Men today need to be drawn into the higher love of philia which is shaped by agape (the love of God). This was manifested by Christ with his twelve Apostles, and by maintaining this apostolic fraternity the Church conquered the Roman Empire and spread throughout the world. Oddly enough, Protestantism helped the Church realize this masculine love is expressed by the Church in spiritual warfare while the nations are called to do this in a their way by creating a space wherein worship can take place and families are protected. Protestants, who once understood the nation, are now failing because they rejected the male priesthood and lost the great icon of the masculine philia. As Catholics, we must adopt a deep understanding of the nation and the church in terms of philia. Rather than attempting to “out-Protestant” the Protestants by adopting their praise and worship songs as our form of sacred music, let us call our young male population into the love manifested by Christ and his Apostles. United around the sacrificial blood oath of the Mass, let our young men enter into a higher form of love which focuses not on intimacy but on doing the will of the Father, even to the point of laying down their lives. That’s how God builds the Church. That’s how God builds the nation.
Given this understanding of love, the liturgical life of the Church has always adopted a philia form of love for worship. The name of this blog, Orate Fratres, comes from the Latin of the Mass which translates not as “Pray brothers and sisters…” but rather as “Pray brethren…” This masculine terminology is used because our identity is in Christ in whom we have been re-born as the sons of God. This is why St. Paul says for those baptized into Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, free nor slave (see Galatians 3:26-27). It's not that he has broken down distinctions but rather that the members of Jesus’ body are just as much partakers of his status as a free, male Jew as they are "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). We could say that while John Paul II's Theology of the Body, dealing with sexuality, has helped us understand the feminine aspect of the Church as the bride of Christ, a Theology of the Corporate Body will help us understand the masculine aspect of the Church as the body of Christ.
Such a theology would not only renew the bond between a bishop and his priests but it would also renew the bond between a priest and his lay men. Imagine the bishop washing the feet of his priests as a sign that he will cast out any evil among them (just as Christ cast out Judas when he washed the feet of the Apostles). And think what would happen if a priest gathered his lay men, looked together at map of the parish, and then planned block by block how they would evangelize and bring their neighborhoods to Christ. In a society of weak men, grace would build on nature once more to end the priest crisis and build up a nation under God. But such a theology would bring a renewed understanding of the liturgy and sacraments as well. It would probably mean a return to traditional hymns and instruments and the proverbial axing of “polka Masses”, rock bands, and praise and worship music. This is particularly true of praise and worship music since it tends to take on a more personal, intimate, and individualistic feel. This is not wrong, but it appeals more to storgic love (see above) rather than philia. Given the place of philia in the liturgy and sacraments, praise and worship becomes more appropriate for small groups outside of Mass.
Men today need to be drawn into the higher love of philia which is shaped by agape (the love of God). This was manifested by Christ with his twelve Apostles, and by maintaining this apostolic fraternity the Church conquered the Roman Empire and spread throughout the world. Oddly enough, Protestantism helped the Church realize this masculine love is expressed by the Church in spiritual warfare while the nations are called to do this in a their way by creating a space wherein worship can take place and families are protected. Protestants, who once understood the nation, are now failing because they rejected the male priesthood and lost the great icon of the masculine philia. As Catholics, we must adopt a deep understanding of the nation and the church in terms of philia. Rather than attempting to “out-Protestant” the Protestants by adopting their praise and worship songs as our form of sacred music, let us call our young male population into the love manifested by Christ and his Apostles. United around the sacrificial blood oath of the Mass, let our young men enter into a higher form of love which focuses not on intimacy but on doing the will of the Father, even to the point of laying down their lives. That’s how God builds the Church. That’s how God builds the nation.