The Spiritual Movement through Symbolism in the Mass

I'll confess that one of my pet peeves at Mass is when the responses "Have mercy on us," and "Grant us peace," are repeated in the Litany the Agnus Dei." (On a side note, I'm extremely frustrated that my phone keeps changing Agnus to Angus. That will make for some confusing theology!) I will also confess that I have no valid liturgical principle or historical fact to back up my animosity. It just seems to me that there's no need to repeat "grant us peace" twice, when we only said, "have mercy on us," twice. There's two petitions of, "have mercy on us," and one of, "grant us peace," not two and two, or four and four, etc.

As I said above, I have no principle to support my claim (rather liturgical musical history would actually work against me), but I do have one argument I would like to bring up - that of symbolism. What does this part of the Mass symbolize? What is actually going on here, and why are we saying or singing these words here? Why is the priest doing the actions he is doing at this moment?

This brings me to the point of what I want to discuss in this article. I want to look at the spiritual movements undertaken in liturgical symbolism. I want to preface this discussion by saying that I don't believe there are necessarily any right answers to some of these topics, but there are wrong ones. 

I'll demonstrate what I mean by an example. The question was recently proposed to me why, in the Agnus Dei, we have three petitions, with the last response being different. Now we can research the historical reasons for this, (and I did, see bottom) but I believe that it has endured primarily because the Church has found rich symbolism and spiritual benefit for souls in the threefold petitions. 

The Agnus Dei is said at the point of the Mass in which the priest drops the particle of the Sacred Host into the Precious Blood, which is generally seen as a symbol of the Resurrection (the reunification of the Body and Blood of Christ, which was shed). I like to see this threefold petition as a symbol of the three days in the tomb. On the first day, Christ died and we beg for his mercy. On the second day, He descends to the Land of the Dead to have mercy on the souls of the faithful before Christ, and we beg for His mercy on us again. Then, on the third day, He rises from the dead and grants us the peace which we pray for. 

Now I would not firmly hold that this is the symbolism the Church desires us to see within the recitation of the Agnus Dei, but I believe that we could certainly do so. I have also read that this is an address to, "the Lamb who was slain (Rev. 13:8)." Since the Resurrection has mystically taken place at Mass in the Comingling, Christ has arisen and we address Him now reigning in Heaven. I see no reason this symbol is not also correct, albeit it doesn't address the threefold petitions. There are numerous others I could discuss as well, but that's for the comments section. 

However, to say that the Agnus Dei is a symbol for the Incarnation of Christ, would seem to be rather a stretch; therefore, I would call that idea wrong as there doesn't seem to a supporting argument for it, as we generally don 'to combine the Incarnation with the phrase "Lamb of God," though the two are clearly related, and the threefold petitions do not seem to bear directly upon the Incarnation. 

I would further elaborate upon my original point, in that these sort of questions can be proposed all throughout the Mass. Why does the priest do that? Why do we phrase this, this way? What is the point of this?

Now, in order to clarify what I said before, I am not opposed to using practicality or history to answer these questions. However, I want to promote what I will call the "Spiritual Movement Method." I realize of course that this will now require further explanation, which I shall endeavor to do in the remainder of this article. 

Within this method, we are not primarily concerned with the history of the Liturgy, of course we are also not opposed to such study. We also do not look at the practicality of various aspects of the Liturgy, though we also would of course dismiss the completely impractical. 

Rather we wish to look at the catecesis of the Church and primarily what the Holy Father and bishops say in regard to the Liturgy. In accordance with this, we can then look at the spiritual movements that take place in various souls within the Sacred Liturgy. 

I would also now clarify that not all these movements will take place within every soul. These are vaguely similar to the experiences of the Mystics. While there will of course be similarities in each of them, the foremost being directing the soul closer to God, there is small chance that the experiences will be the same for many Christians, or even the same each time for the one Christian. 

What we want to look at primarily are not the differences in these experiences, but the similarities, and primarily in how they affect the soul. I emphasize soul because we are not interested in dealing with how the emotions are affected by Liturgy, as these feelings are often fleeting. Rather the spiritual movements will generally be more standard, and the soul becomes much more comfortable with these and they may become repetitive, either by simple practice or force of will. 

I will further elaborate upon this method in the future, once there are concrete examples we can use for it. For the moment, I simply wanted to introduce it. 

The history of the Agnus Dei can be found at this website: http://jloughnan.tripod.com/whyagnesdei.htm