Secret of faith

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Mystery of Faith ( Latin: mysterium fidei ) is an acclamation (a shout) in the celebration of mass of the Roman Catholic Church . They have also adopted several of the new Old Catholic and Lutheran orders of worship as a possible design element. It is the exclamation of the deacon or (if it is missing) the priest (Protestant: the liturgist) immediately after the words of change or consecration . The assembled congregation replies Christ-centrically with the (spoken or sung) acclamation: "We proclaim your death, O Lord, and we praise your resurrection until you come in glory" (cf. 1 Cor 11 : 23-26  EU ).

This insertion in the Eucharistic Prayer is one of the most recent parts of the liturgy . In the course of the liturgical reform of the 20th century, it was rewritten as a call in the measurement order of the Latin rite , after which it was optionally adopted in other liturgies. However, it takes on the oldest formulations of belief. It is committed to priestly action in persona Christi and is at the same time an expression of the general participation of the community in the office of Christ, the high priest of the new covenant ( Heb 4 : 14-16  EU ).

In the missal for the dioceses of the German-speaking area , two further answers to the acclamation are provided, but are almost uncommon in the German-speaking communities :

  • "O Savior of the world, give us your salvation, for through death and resurrection you have redeemed us."
  • "As often as we eat this bread and drink from this cup, we proclaim your death, O Lord, until you come in glory."

There are similar regulations in other regions; in Ireland there is also a fourth acclamation approved by the Vatican.

Origin and scope of the term

The Latin mysterium fidei is based on the Greek μυςτήριον τῆς πίστεως mystērion tēs písteōs (so 1 Tim 3,9  EU ; 3,16 EU : τῆς εὐσεβείας μυςτήριον tēs eusebeías mystērion ).

Μυστήριον Mystērion was a religious secret in ancient Greek - not in the sense of withheld information , but in the sense of a visualization of the deity that reaches deeper and higher than words can pronounce. It meant spiritual reality and cult activity at the same time, inextricably linked; so in Mithraism and other cults surrounding early Christianity.

The Old Church took up the term and applied it to their acts of worship , v. a. the Eucharist, as in response to the reality celebrated and made present in it, redemption through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ ; so today in the Orthodox Church.

During the transition to the Latin-speaking area, the two aspects fell apart. The term sacramentum was chosen for the liturgical act, and the Greek term was adopted as a loan word for the content of faith: mysterium . Martin Luther chose the German word “ mystery ” as the translation of the biblical term μυστήριον / mysterium . Later it became a secret of faith . In technical terms, the term “secret of faith” is also used synonymously with “content of faith”.

In the Catholic Mass liturgy, however, the fullness of the Greek term is meant: sacramental act and religious secret in one. When the priest in the assembly of the Church speaks over bread and wine the anamnesis of God's saving acts and the transforming words of Christ, they become His crucified and risen body and take the celebrants and communicators into the Paschal mystery “so that it may our whole life shapes and transforms ". The believers profess this with the acclamation.

From a systematic-theological point of view, a “secret of faith” can be understood as a state of affairs that is not based on the world itself and therefore cannot be recognized with natural reason. It must be said to the world in the “Word of God”. This quality is meant by the "supernatural" belief. The fundamental secret of faith, to which all other statements of faith can be traced back, is that God gives fellowship with himself: the world is absorbed into the eternal love of God for God, that of the Father for the Son, which as the Holy Spirit is himself God. This becomes evident through the Incarnation of the Son in Jesus of Nazareth. Faith is about sharing in Jesus' relationship with God. Although this state of affairs cannot be recognized as existing with mere reason, precisely because God's love for the world is not measured in the world, but only in God and is therefore infinite, a secret of faith is nevertheless not unreasonable: it does not succeed in unifying it To prove objection. All rational objections to belief are to be refuted with rational arguments. But belief cannot be justified with arguments of reason because it exceeds all reason.

The individual statements of faith are not in an additive relationship to one another, but explain and unfold only one and the same basic secret of God's self-communication, which can only be expressed in a trinitarian and christological way (reductio in unum mysterium) . The “hierarchy of truths” emphasized in Catholic theology does not mean that some statements of faith are more important than others, but that certain statements of belief logically presuppose others (e.g. the mariological statements presuppose the christological ones).

literature

  • Annibale Bugnini : The liturgical reform. Freiburg u. a. 1987.
  • Odo Casel OSB: The liturgy as a celebration of mysteries. (Ecclesia orans, 9th volume), Herder & Co., Freiburg 1923.
  • Odo Casel OSB: Faith, Gnosis, Mystery. Aschendorf, Münster 1941.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. P. Edward McNamara, Secret of Faith - Relation to Real Presence or Whole Secret of Salvation? In: http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/the-mystery-of-faith
  2. ↑ Elke Kruitschnitt / Guido Vergauwen: Secret . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 4 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1995, Sp. 344 .
  3. ↑ Daily prayer on the 6th Sunday of Easter
  4. ↑ Peter Knauer: knauer20. Retrieved August 10, 2018 .