The Ethical Dimension of Liturgy according to Paul Ricœur: A Liturgical Reading of “Amour et justice”

In a community of faith called Church, liturgy supposes sacred times and spaces where people of God celebrate the mystery of Christ. But more than a celebration, liturgy is an ethical configuration of the person, who listens the words narratively and perceives the symbols esthetically, with the mystery of Christ‟s life that reveals God and man at the same time. In order to understand liturgy, according to this central subject that is accepted academically in systematic theology and liturgical studies, we propose to consider the ethical dimension of faith as an anthropological mediation of the mystery celebrated in the worship. At the same time, to develop our research, we analyze in liturgical terms the book titled Amour et justice written by Paul Ricœur, considering the place of the Holy Scripture, especially the meaning of narratives of prophetical vocations in the configuration of the person, taking up his previous book Soi-meme comme un autre as a hermeneutical reference to understand the testimony and affirmation of the person, who goes from narratives to action in the praxis, that is to say to “the ontology of action”.


Introduction
Since the etymological meaning of the term λειτουργία is a "public service", or literally, a "work of people" (λάος-έργον) in political life and in favor of the citizens, liturgy had a social impact in the Hellenic world. In the New Testament we can also find in many places the use of the term λειτουργία in that political sense, but also with civil, ritual and spiritual significance in the churches, especially it is related to services for poor people, preaching and the assembly of the congregation to celebrate their faith in Jesus Christ (Luke 1:23; 2 Corinthians 9:12, Philippians 2:17; 2:30; Hebrews 8:6; 9:21).

Liturgy and Ethics
In general we can say that Christian life in the first centuries is a liturgical sacrifice in honor of Jesus Christ and the people of God: "in view of God"s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God -this is your true and proper worship" (Romans 12:1) 1 . In the Second Vatican Council, liturgy has a more profound purpose in the Church: the sanctification of man. In fact, this sanctification is realized in union with Christ in a "public worship" through the liturgical action: "In the liturgy the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and His members" (Sacrosanctum Concilium 7). In this way liturgy is not only a public action of Christians, but a celebration of the whole community of faith called Church.
Even if liturgy is not in itself a moral instruction of the people of God in performance with Christ, it is an ethical configuration of the person in anthropological terms. Certainly liturgy does not have a moral plan to follow during and after the celebration of mysteries, such as commandments or rules stipulated in a deontological code, but it presupposes a "structuration of the conscience" of the believer according to their own Christian being, to their community of faith and to personal convictions through the rituals and especially according to the Word of God 2 . In spite of the liturgical rubrics, the believers who participate in the liturgical celebration can configure their life with Christ freely.
Nevertheless it is necessary to recognize, historically speaking, that in the Church there was a separation between ethics and faith, especially because Christians usually blindly obeyed a moral code or law established by the authority in terms of moral "heteronomy" in order not to commit iniquities; they just wanted to obtain the salvation of the sins. Currently, In fact, here we understand by ethics an autonomous reflection of a person about the practical implications of the Word of God on human life. In this article we don"t want to reduce ethics to liturgy nor liturgy to ethics. In doing so, it is important to remember the difference between theology and philosophy made by Paul Ricoeur with the terms "cryto-théologie" and "crypto-philosophique" 3 . Here we follow this distinction in methodological sense in order to not confuse liturgy and ethics, especially in our liturgical reading of Amour et justice. We just want to rediscover the ethical dimension of liturgy as an anthropological mediation to understand, theologically, the configuration and affirmation of believers with the mystery of Christian faith.
In this sense, we find that the hermeneutics of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005

The Ethical Dimension of Liturgy
Since the Revelation of God is an event in history, the anamnesis made in every liturgical celebration brings the divine action up to date in the community of faith which is temporalized in the present time by the reading of the Bible"s narratives and by rituals that express the essence of that Revelation. Here the anamnesis does not mean a simple memorization of a 3 "If I defend my philosophical writings against the accusation of crypto-theology, I also refrain, with equal vigilance, from assigning to biblical faith a cryptophilosophical function…" -Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 24; Paul Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre (Paris : Seuil, 1990) 37. 4 Letter of Frère Roger to Ricoeur"s family on the occasion of his death: Paul Ricoeur, «Libérer le fond de bonté», Taizé, le 21 mai 2005 : http://www.taize.fr/fr_article879.html past historical event. On the contrary, it is a mémoire which persists throughout history in an active process of remembering by people who constantly update it in the present, precisely in a community that celebrates the faith; in this sense is better to express this aggiornamento by the word commemoration. In this manner, by the process of remembering, this commemoration is extended into the future in an eschatological sense. As such, the Revelation of God is always temporalized in history thanks to the liturgy.
In the process of remembering, the commemoration of the Revelation supposes a personal internalization of the message expressed in the narratives of the Bible, especially by the mediation of the language of rituals and sacraments. Thus the active participation in liturgical celebrations is an act of interpretation of the Scripture according to the existence of human being in which the subject experiences a call that imputes a responsibility: "The liturgical actuant is thus rendered species of what Ricoeur"s "summoned subject" (…) This subject imputes to him-or herself a personal responsibility for what is attested in common -a responsibility that is at once as directed to others as to the Other inasmuch as to take onto one"s lips and into one"s hands the words and gestures of the rite is subtly pass though the veil from observer to witness" 5 . Indeed, the body is also a mediation to receive the liturgical language of the Revelation expressed by rituals and sacraments. But it is especially in the existence of men and women that the biblical message takes its real meaning; in others words: "The place of God"s revelation is the existence of humankind..." 6 . In fact, he is the only one who can receive it as a listener to the Word.
In liturgy, we emphasize, the transmission of the biblical message is always mediated by words. But at the same time it supposes a response from man, who listens carefully, not only by rituals and symbols in a specific

The Mediation of the Scripture
According to Paul Ricoeur in "The Self in the Mirror of Scriptures", what really happened with men and women is firstly an affirmation and secondly a configuration of human existence with the Word of God. That is to say that the biblical message does not reduce humanity to the recipient of a communication. On the contrary, in the "mirror of the Scriptures" we find an anthropological exaltation of the human condition that prepares man to be capable of naming God ("nommer Dieu"). In other words, this Homo capax Dei is able to understand the language of the Bible, and God is also able to understand human language in exchange.
The biblical texts are just an invitation to name God. As a word addressed to men and women, the Scripture invites him/her to respond by naming God because the text precedes the existence: "The self, informed by 7 «La responsabilité éthique du chrétien et de sa communauté, conçue comme réponse à l"appel du Dieu de Jésus-Christ, passe par l"union de la symbolique et du réalisme de l"agir» -René Simon, Éthique de la responsabilité, 316.
Fronteiras, Recife, v. 3, n. 1, p. 222-234, jan./jun., 2020 Scripture, may be, as we say, a responding self, because in a certain way, the text precedes life. If I can name God, however imperfectly, it is because the texts preached to me already had named Him" 8 . In this case, the Bible not only transmits an experience of faith by human language that is, in a Christian sense, a "kerygmatic language", but also it transmits in the "polyphony of texts" the essence of the Revelation which is God himself, for example in conscience. According to Ricoeur, in other words, it is the "organ of the reception of the kerygma" 9 .
However, this knowledge between God and humans is not completely closed within the conscience, but it is open to the world, following the interpretation of the German protestant theologian Gerhard Ebeling: "Only where God is encountered as a question of conscience are man and the world perceived to be a question of conscience" 10 . In this way, when God is encountered in this world questions of the conscience become an imperative for men and women.

"La Règle d'Or" -"The Golden Rule"
Amour et justice, the book we follow here mainly, is a continuation of his previous book called Soi-même comme un autre (1990). The articulation between the two books is the "ontology of action" ("ontologie de l"agir") that The result of this analysis is "practical wisdom", that is to say the capacity to make wise decisions after a previous reflection, not only from a personal 9 «L"organe de la réception du kérygme» -Ibid. 94. 10 Gerhard Ebeling, Word and Faith (London: SCM Press, 1963) 412. Quoted by Ricoeur,Amour et justice,[96][97] Paul Ricoeur,. 12  This "practical wisdom" finds a special place and time to be accomplished in liturgy because one can be reconciled with others through the mediation of the Scriptures. At the heart of the Bible, Ricoeur introduces the analysis of the "Golden Rule" of the Old Testament and the "Commandment of Love" in the New Testament, and then he discovered similitudes and differences. On the one hand, the "Golden Rule" asks for justice in terms of equivalence and reciprocity between people, like the lex talionis. On the other hand, the "Commandment of Love" (Luke 6:27-31) asks for love in terms of self-sacrifice and benevolence between enemies. The "Golden Rule" means here: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" or "Doing unto others" "as oneself". But the "Commandment of Love" is a self-demand that calls for new relationships of generosity and mercy for those who can harm themselves and others.
However the question is how the Christian could integrate both paradoxical elements of justice and love in our current circumstances.
According to Ricoeur, it is possible to think that the "Commandment of Love" reinterprets the "Golden Rule" in terms of generosity, like Saint Francis of Assisi, Gandhi or Martin Luther King. In this way of life, the Commandment can transcend the social utilitarian sense of the Rule because it changes the reciprocity for benevolence, saving the Rule from a perverted interpretation against human life. Actually "Ricoeur argues that posing the Golden Rule and love command along the lines of dynamic encounter, rather than static opposition, offers a profound solution to these dual tendencies" 14 . Love Fronteiras, Recife, v. 3, n. 1, p. 222-234, jan./jun., 2020 corrects justice from an excess of strictness and justice puts love in the right place in human relationships.

Final considerations
Paul Ricoeur received an award from the Catholic Church thanks to his hermeneutics and his ecumenical collaboration in understanding the Bible philosophically and theologically at the same time, in our contemporary culture 15 . Indeed, throughout his philosophical itinerary, many of the sources he used to elaborate his hermeneutics have a Christian foundation in theologians like Augustin, Luther, Barth, Tillich, Bultmann, Pannenberg, Ebeling, Moltmann, Jüngel and Rahner. Contrary to the theologians who use philosophy to elaborate systematic theology -more than the Scripture -Ricoeur used to read the Bible and this generation of theologians as mediation for philosophy, but at the same time he gave back to theology a hermeneutical theory of actions capable of understanding the Bible nowadays in a different way. In this sense, the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur is not only a constant detour though the mediations in the field of theology, but it also takes into account philosophical mediations for theology, especially concerning the theology of liturgy 16 . In this sense, "the work of Paul Ricoeur is a call for modernizing many forms of expounding Christian theology" 17 .