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because the Lord makes it act upon us, active because we share in it by a deed of
our own. To the action of God upon us ( opus operatum) responds our cooperation
( opus operantis), carried out through grace from him. (Ibid., 41–42/14)
This means, if we look closely, that the Church is something like a political com-
munity (Casel uses the expression “cultic community”), which is fully accom-
plished only in the performance of a special action, which is the liturgy. Evoking
the originary political meaning of the term leitourgia, Casel affirms that the two terms mystery and liturgy mean the same thing but from two different points of view: “mystery means the heart of the action, that is to say, the redeeming work
of the risen Lord, through the sacred actions he has appointed; liturgy, corre-
sponding to its original sense of ‘people’s work,’ ‘service,’ means rather the action
of the church in conjunction with this saving action of Christ’s” (ibid., 75/40).
In another text he specifies that “mystery means the divine action [ göttliche
Tat] in the Church, namely objective facts [ objektive Tatsachen], which happen in and for a community [ Gemeinschaft] and thus find a supraindividual expression in community service [ Gemeinschaftsdienste]” (Casel 4, 146). This divine
action is effectively present in the liturgical action, which is defined therefore as
“the ritual execution [ Vollzug] of Christ’s redemptive work in and through the
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Church, that is, the presence of the divine action of salvation [ die Gegenwart
göttlicher Heilstat] under the veil of symbol” (ibid., 145).
א The centrality of the liturgical mystery’s pragmatic character is affirmed forcefully
in one of the first texts published by Casel in the Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft, “Actio in liturgischer Verwendung” ( Actio in liturgical use). This text is particularly important because it permits us to pose the problem of the relationship between liturgy and law.
Through the analysis of a formula contained in the oldest sacramentaries and still in the
Roman Missal, Casel shows that the name of the eucharistic celebration was originarily
actio, “action.” At this point Casel mentions the opinion of Baumstark, according to whom the liturgical use of the term derives from Roman law, in which actio designated that eminent form of acting that is the legis actio, the oath (Baumstark, 38–39). Actio here meant the particular performative efficacy of the pronunciation of a ritual formula
(and of the gesture that accompanied it), which in the oldest form of the trial, the legis actio sacramenti, also included the giving of an oath. Although Honorius of Autun had already noted the analogy between the trial and the mass, writing that “the canon is also
called actio, because in it there takes place the case between the people and God [ quia causa populi in eo cum deo agitur]” (c. 577), Casel drops Baumstark’s thesis to suggest that the liturgical use of the term actio is rather to be put in relation with Roman sacrificial terminology, where agere and facere designated the sacrificial praxis. “The designation of the canon as actio proves that, at the time of its origin, the ancient and strictly liturgical conception of the eucharistia as sacrificial offering was already vibrant. It also furnishes an important index for the evaluation of ancient Christian liturgy, whose content was
not an engrossed silence and whose object was not an abstract theological doctrine, but
an action, a deed [ Handlung, Tat]” (Casel 5, 39).
Concerned as always to underline the practical character of the liturgy, Casel does
not notice that the analogy with the legis actio would have allowed him to understand the peculiar nature of the liturgical action. The efficacy ex opere operato that defines it corresponds precisely with the performative efficacy of the pronunciation of the formula
of the actio, which immediately actualized the juridical consequences contained in the declaration ( uti lingua nuncupassit, ita ius esto). In both law and liturgy, what is in question is the peculiar performative regime of the efficacy of an actio, and our task is precisely to define it.
א A similar denegation of the quite evident proximity between liturgical effectiveness
and law is found in Walter Dürig’s essay on the concept of the pledge in Roman liturgy.
The term pignus, which in Roman law designates the object that the debtor hands over to the creditor in full possession as a guarantee of payment, is transposed into the liturgical texts in reference to the cross, to relics of the saints, and in particular to the Eucharist, defined as “pledge of redemption.” Just as the pledge constitutes in the hands of the
creditor a concrete anticipation of the future payment, so also the cross and the Eucharist anticipate the presence of the eschatological reality. The problem is not whether or not
there is a juridical relation at the base of the eucharistic texts on the pignus (which Dürig
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intends precisely to deny: ibid, 398), so much as that of the obvious structural analogy
between the juridical sphere and the liturgical sphere.
5. If the true reality of the Church is the liturgical mystery and if this is de-
fined by means of the effective presence of the divine redemptive action, then
understanding the nature of liturgy will mean understanding the nature and
modes of this presence. To this decisive problem, which appears in filigree in
all his writings, Casel has dedicated a specific essay, which is entitled precisely
Mysteriengegenwart, “Mystery-Presence.”
According to Casel, the term mystery-presence is a tautology because “presence
belongs to the essence of mystery” (Casel 4, 145). This defines “the most proper
nucleus of Christian liturgy,” which is nothing other than the presentification
( repraesentatio in the literal sense of “rendering newly present”) of the Heilstat, of Christ’s salvific action and therefore first of all of Christ himself. Casel cites in
this connection the passage from Ambrose’s De mysteriis in which this presence
is affirmed as such: “Believe, therefore, that the presence of the Divinity is there
[in the sacrament]. If you believe the working, do you not believe the presence?
Where would the working come from, if the presence did not precede it?” ( On
the Mysteries 8.159–60/48).
The presence that is in question in the mystery is not, however, the historical
presence of Jesus on Golgotha but a presence of a particular type, which solely
applies to the redemptive action of Christ (and therefore Christ insofar as he is
redeemer). Christ has in fact appeared to the Church in a twofold figure: “as the
historical man Jesus, whose divinity was still veiled . . . and as kyrios Christos, who through his passion has been eternally transfigured at the right hand of
the Father” (Casel 4, 155). In the liturgical mystery “only the actions that Christ
achieved as redeemer” are present, “not the mere historical circumstances, which
are devoid of value for the oikonomia” (ibid., 174). This means that in the eu-
charistic sacrifice, “Christ does not die anew in a historical-real sense; rather his
salvific action becomes sacramentally, in mysterio, in sacramento, present and in this way accessible to those who are seeking salvation” (ibid).
It remains the case that, for Casel, this presence is, however, effective
( wirklich) and not simply efficacious ( wirksam) (ibid., 159). Commenting on Augustine’s saying Semel immolatus est in semetipso Christus, et tamen quotidie
immolatur in sacramento (Christ was sacrificed once in himself, a
nd yet he is
sacrificed daily in the Sacrament [qtd. in Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica III,
q. 83, art. 1]), he writes that if the immolatio that takes place on the altar is not real, but sacramental, nevertheless and precisely for that reason “it is not a mere
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representation [ Darstellung]—in that case it would not be a sacrament—but an
effectiveness under the sign [ Wirklichkeit unter dem Zeichen]. In a word: sacramentum, mysterium” (ibid., 182).
For this reason, according to Casel, Protestantism, which denies that Christ’s
sacrifice is effectively present in the Eucharist, destroys “the most proper force
of the Catholic liturgy, which is that of being the objective mystery, full of effec-
tiveness [ wirklichkeitserfülltes], of Christ’s salvific action” (ibid., 200).
6. To explain the singular modality of presence that he defines as Mysterienge-
genwart, Casel refers in his essay to a tradition of the Greek Fathers, from Cyril of Jerusalem to John Chrysostom, who interpret this presence in a pneumatic sense.
What is present in the mysteries is “the Pneuma of Christ, or more precisely, the
pneumatic Lord,” who constantly acts through them in the Church (ibid., 162). A
similar spiritual terminology, which has its place and its proper sense in trinitarian
theology, nevertheless does not say anything as to the mode of this mystical pres-
ence, to what we can define as an “ontology of the mystery.” The Latin Fathers and
the scholastics had given terminological expression to this problem by means of a
peculiar vocabulary, which designated the mode of the presence and operativity of
Christ in the sacraments. I have in mind the term effectus. It is with the semantic history of this term in Christian liturgy that we must therefore contend.
At the end of the essay on the Mysteriengegenwart, the term effectus makes its appearance at a crucial point, which has to do with the interpretation of
Aquinas’s eucharistic doctrine. With regard to the immolatio that takes place
in the Eucharist, Aquinas in fact distinguishes two modes or senses in which
this term is said. In the first sense it is a matter of an image that represents the
passion of Christ ( imago quaedam . . . repraesentativa passionis Christi, quae est
vera eius immolatio); in the second, by contrast, the term designates the effectus of Christ’s passion, “because, to wit, by this sacrament, we are made partakers
of the fruit of our Lord’s Passion” ( Summa theologica III, q. 83, art. 1; cf. Casel 4, 181). Casel cites other passages from the Summa in which the term effectus
designates the effective reality of the sacrament, considered either with respect to
representation ( id ex quo habet effectum, scilicet et ipse Christus contentus et passio eius repraesentata) or else with respect to the use and goal of the sacrament ( id per quod habet effectum, scilicet usus sacramenti) (ibid., 184). According to Casel, the term effectus names this effective unity of image and presence in the liturgical mystery, in which the presence is real in its operativity, that is, as Heilstat, salvific action: “mystery-presence means a real presence, but a reality of a special type. A
reality, to the extent to which it corresponds solely to the goal of the sacrament,
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which is that of permitting the faithful to participate, for their salvation, in the
life of Christ as savior” (Casel 4, 191).
In a brief but dense essay on the Roman Prayers published in the “Jahrbuch”
three years later, Casel returns to the concept of effectus to confirm that it does not mean efficacy ( Wirkung) but effectiveness ( Wirklichkeit). From this perspective he analyzes a series of texts, among which he singles out a passage from a
sermon of Leo the Great that furnishes him with the essential documentation
for his argument: “it was necessary that what had been promised in a figurative
mystery [ figurato promissa mysterio] be fulfilled in a manifest effectiveness [ manifesto implerentur effectu], that the true lamb take away the signified lamb [ ovem significativam ovis vera removeret], and that the variety of the victims be brought to completion through one sole sacrifice. . . . In order that the shadows may
cede place to the body and the images pass away with the presence of truth, the
ancient observance is abolished by the new sacrament, the sacrifice is sacrificed,
and the legal holiday is fulfilled in the very instant in which it is transformed”
(Casel 6, 38).
It seems difficult to deny that in this passage effectus does not designate sim-
ply the Wirkung, the effects of grace produced by the sacramental rite, but even
and above all the Wirklichkeit, the reality in its effective fullness. “Effectus,” concludes Casel, “does not mean here the effect [ Wirkung], but the full effectiveness
[ die volle Wirklichkeit], in opposition to the incomplete and exterior appearance”
(ibid., 38). This is what corresponds invisibly to the exterior action, in which
“all that was here represented symbolically becomes a reality, but a reality of an
invisible and pneumatic type, which can thus also become productive of the
effects of grace” (ibid., 45).
Let us reflect, however, on the peculiar character of this mystery “reality,”
which coincides neither with the presence of the historical Christ in flesh and
bone ( sicut corpus in loco) nor with his simple symbolic representation, as in
a theater. The liturgical mystery is not limited to representing the passion of
Christ, but in representing it, it realizes its effects, so that one can say that the
presence of Christ in the liturgy coincides totally with its effectiveness. But this
implies, as we will see, a transformation of ontology, in which substantiality and
effectiveness will seem to be identified.
א By defining the effectiveness of the Christian sacrifice in this way, Casel takes up
the scholastic doctrine of the difference between the sacraments of the vetus lex (old law), which had a purely ceremonial and prophetic character and did not produce a salvific
effect, and those instituted by Christ, which by bringing to completion what the Judaic
sacra were limited to announcing, performatively achieve what they figure ( efficiunt quod
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figurant). In this connection Casel speaks of an “image full of effectiveness” ( wirklichkeit-gefülltes Bild). In this sense his labors on the liturgy can be set alongside the studies on the image as living reality or Pathosformel charged with effectiveness that Ludwig Klages and Aby Warburg were carrying out in different circles in those same years.
7. Walter Diezinger has dedicated a monograph to the term effectus in Cath-
olic liturgy. While presenting itself as an investigation of historical semantics, it
announces in the preface “an Auseinandersetzung with Odo Casel’s doctrine of
the mysteries” (Diezinger, 9), which has to do precisely with the article just cited.
Diezinger goes back over the texts cited by Casel and reads, alongside these, a
vast number of liturgical documents. His goal is to show that if in some, as in the
passage cited from Leo the Great, the meaning of Wirklichkeit seems indubita-
ble, in others what seems to be in question is instead something like a Wirkung.
Diezinger’s monograph shows in any case that the term effectus—whatever
its exact meaning may be—develops an absolutely central function in liturgical
texts, which is precisely what we must understand. The de
bate over the polysemy
of the term effectus actually leaves in the shadows an otherwise decisive question, and that is whether a transformation might not by chance be hidden precisely
in the semantic oscillation between “effect” and “effectiveness”—a transforma-
tion that, beyond the semantic history of the term, instead has to do with the
history of ontology, the very modality of being that the term seeks to name.
The opposition between Wirkung and Wirklichkeit, effect and effectiveness, is in fact not semantic (the two terms share the same root and the same etymology)
so much as ontological. Rather, it is perhaps not an opposition that is at stake
but an indetermination, which corresponds to a decisive mutation of the very
conceptuality of ontology. While in the vocabulary of classical ontology being
and substance are considered independently of the effects that they can produce,
in effectiveness being is inseparable from its effects; it names being insofar as it is
effective, produces certain effects, and at the same time is determined by them.
Effectiveness is, that is to say, the new ontological dimension that is affirmed first
in the liturgical sphere and is then to be extended progressively until in moder-
nity it coincides with being as such.
Understanding the meaning of effectus in liturgical texts will thus mean
being confronted with a transformation in the conception of being that inti-
mately concerns us. It is perhaps the case that we do not have any representation
of being today other than effectiveness, and it is this dimension that is in ques-
tion in terms like Wirklichkeit, realitas, “reality,” as much as in the definition of Dasein in §9 of Being and Time as that entity whose essence “lies [ liegt] in its existence” (Heidegger 4, 42/67).
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8. An examination of the occurrences of the term effectus in the Thesaurus
linguae latinae proves particularly instructive from this perspective. In contrast with the verb efficio, from which it derives etymologically, the term effectus appears in Latin relatively late (around ad 45). But after the first occurrences (in Cicero
and Varro), it is precisely the semantic oscillation between effect and effectiveness