INTRODUCTION TO THE SPIRIT OF THE LITURGY
Vatican City,
Clergy Conference in Rome
January 6, 2010
A Conference for the Year of the Priest
by Msgr. Guido Marini,
Pontifical Master of Liturgical Ceremonies
"I propose to focus on some topics connected to the spirit of the liturgy
and reflect on them with you; indeed, I intend to broach a subject which
would require me to say much. Not only because it is a demanding and complex
task to talk about the spirit of the liturgy, but also because many
important works treating this subject have already been written by authors
of unquestionably high caliber in theology and the liturgy. I’m thinking of
two people in particular among the many: Romano Guardini and Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger.
On the other hand, it is now all the more necessary to speak about the
spirit of the liturgy, especially for us members of the sacred priesthood.
Moreover, there is an urgent need to reaffirm the “authentic” spirit of the
liturgy, such as it is present in the uninterrupted tradition of the Church,
and attested, in continuity with the past, in the most recent Magisterial
teachings: starting from the second Vatican council up to the present
pontificate. I purposefully used the word continuity, a word very dear to
our present Holy Father. He has made it the only authoritative criterion
whereby one can correctly interpret the life of the Church, and more
specifically, the conciliar documents, including all the proposed reforms
contained in them. How could it be any different? Can one truly speak of a
Church of the past and a Church of the future as if some historical break in
the body of the Church had occurred? Could anyone say that the Bride of
Christ had lived without the assistance of the Holy Spirit in a particular
period of the past, so that its memory should be erased, purposefully
forgotten?
Nevertheless at times it seems that some individuals are truly partisan to a
way of thinking that is justly and properly defined as an ideology, or
rather a preconceived notion applied to the history of the Church which has
nothing to do with the true faith.
An example of the fruit produced by that misleading ideology is the
recurrent distinction between the preconciliar and the post conciliar Church.
Such a manner of speaking can be legitimate, but only on condition that two
Churches are not understood by it: one, the pre Conciliar Church, that has
nothing more to say or to give because it has been surpassed, and a second,
the post conciliar church, a new reality born from the Council and, by its
presumed spirit, not in continuity with its past. This manner of speaking
and more so of thinking must not be our own. Apart from being incorrect, it
is already superseded and outdated, perhaps understandable from a historical
point of view, but nonetheless connected to a season in the church’s life by
now concluded.
Does what we have discussed so far with respect to “continuity” have
anything to do with the topic we have been asked to treat in this lecture?
Yes, absolutely. The authentic spirit of the liturgy does not abide when it
is not approached with serenity, leaving aside all polemics with respect to
the recent or remote past. The liturgy cannot and must not be an opportunity
for conflict between those who find good only in that which came before us,
and those who, on the contrary, almost always find wrong in what came before.
The only disposition which permits us to attain the authentic spirit of the
liturgy, with joy and true spiritual relish, is to regard both the present
and the past liturgy of the Church as one patrimony in continuous
development. A spirit, accordingly, which we must receive from the Church
and is not a fruit of our own making. A spirit, I add, which leads to what
is essential in the liturgy, or, more precisely, to prayer inspired and
guided by the Holy Spirit, in whom Christ continues to become present for us
today, to burst forth into our lives. Truly, the spirit of the liturgy is
the liturgy of the Holy Spirit.
I will not pretend to plumb the depths of the proposed subject matter, nor
to treat all the different aspects necessary for a panoramic and
comprehensive understanding of the question. I will limit myself by
discussing only a few elements essential to the liturgy, specifically with
reference to the celebration of the Eucharist, such as the Church proposes
them, and in the manner I have learned to deepen my knowledge of them these
past two years in service to our Holy Father, Benedict XVI. He is an
authentic master of the spirit of the liturgy, whether by his teaching, or
by the example he gives in the celebration of the sacred rites.
If, during the course of these reflections on the essence of the liturgy, I
will find myself taking note of some behaviours that I do not consider in
complete harmony with the authentic spirit of the liturgy, I will do so only
as a small contribution to making this spirit stand out all the more in all
its beauty and truth.
1. The Sacred Liturgy, God’s great gift to the Church.
We are all well aware how the second Vatican Council dedicated the entirety
of its first document to the liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium. It was labeled
as the Constitution on the sacred liturgy.
I wish to underline the term sacred in its application to the liturgy,
because of its importance. As a matter of fact, the council Fathers intended
in this way to reinforce the sacred character of the liturgy.
What, then, do we mean by the sacred liturgy? The East would in this case
speak of the divine dimension in the Liturgy, or, to be more precise, of
that dimension which is not left to the arbitrary will of man, because it is
a gift which comes from on high. It refers, in other words, to the mystery
of salvation in Christ, entrusted to the Church in order to make it
available in every moment and in every place by means of the objective
nature of the liturgical and sacramental rites. This is a reality surpassing
us, which is to be received as gift, and which must be allowed to transform
us. Indeed, the second Vatican Council affirms: “...every liturgical
celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body
which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others...” (Sacrosanctum
concilium, n.7)
From this perspective it is not difficult to realise how far distant some
modes of conduct are from the authentic spirit of the liturgy. In fact, some
individuals have managed to upset the liturgy of the church in various ways
under the pretext of a wrongly devised creativity. This was done on the
grounds of adapting to the local situation and the needs of the community,
thus appropriating the right to remove from, add to, or modify the
liturgical rite in pursuit of subjective and emotional ends. For this, we
priests are largely responsible.
For this reason, already back in 2001, the former Cardinal Ratzinger
asserted: “There is need of, at the very least, of a new liturgical
awareness that might put a stop to the tendency to treat the liturgy as if
it were an object open to manipulation. We have reached the point where
liturgical groups stitch together the Sunday liturgy on their own authority.
The result is certainly the imaginative product of a group of able and
skilled individuals. But in this way the space where one may encounter the
“totally other” is reduced, in which the holy offers Himself as gift; what I
come upon is only the skill of a group of people. It is then that we realise
that we are looking for something else. It is too little, and at the same
time, something different. The most important thing today is to acquire anew
a respect for the liturgy, and an awareness that it is not open to
manipulation. To learn once again to recognise in its nature a living
creation that grows and has been given as gift, through which we participate
in the heavenly liturgy. To renounce seeking in it our own self-realisation
in order to see a gift instead. This, I believe, is of primary importance:
to overcome the temptation of a despotic behaviour, which conceives the
liturgy as an object, the property of man, and to re-awaken the interior
sense of the holy.” (from ‘God and the World’; translation from the Italian)
To affirm, therefore, that the liturgy is sacred presupposes the fact that
the liturgy does not exist subject to the sporadic modifications and
arbitrary inventions of one individual or group. The liturgy is not a closed
circle in which we decide to meet, perhaps to encourage one another, to feel
we are the protagonists of some feast. The liturgy is God’s summons to his
people to be in His presence; it is the advent of God among us; it is God
encountering us in this world.
A certain adaptation to particular local situations is foreseen and rightly
so. The Missal itself indicates where adaptations may be made in some of its
sections, yet only in these and not arbitrarily in others. The reason for
this is important and it is good to reassert it: the liturgy is a gift which
precedes us, a precious treasure which has been delivered by the age-old
prayer of the Church, the place in which the faith has found its form in
time and its expression in prayer. It is not made available to us in order
to be subjected to our personal interpretation; rather, the liturgy is made
available so as to be fully at the disposal of all, yesterday just as today
and also tomorrow. “Our time, too,” wrote Pope John Paul II in his
Encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, “calls for a renewed awareness
and appreciation of liturgical norms as a reflection of, and a witness to,
the one universal Church made present in every celebration of the Eucharist.”
(n. 52)
In the brilliant Encyclical Mediator Dei, which is so often quoted in the
constitution on the sacred Liturgy, Pope Pius XII defines the liturgy as
“...the public worship... the worship rendered by the Mystical Body of
Christ in the entirety of its Head and members.” (n. 20) As if to say, among
other things, that in the liturgy, the Church “officially” identifies
herself in the mystery of her union with Christ as spouse, and where she
“officially” reveals herself. What casual folly it is indeed, to claim for
ourselves the right to change in a subjective way the holy signs which time
has sifted, through which the Church speaks about herself, her identity and
her faith!
The people of God has a right that can never be ignored, in virtue of which,
all must be allowed to approach what is not merely the poor fruit of human
effort, but the work of God, and precisely because it is God’s work, a
saving font of new life.
I wish to prolong my reflection a moment longer on this point, which, I can
testify, is very dear to the Holy Father, by sharing with you a passage from
Sacramentum Caritatis, the Apostolic Exhortation of His Holiness, Benedict
XVI, written after the Synod on the Holy Eucharist. “Emphasising the
importance of the ars celebrandi,” the Holy Father writes, “also leads to an
appreciation of the value of the liturgical norms... The eucharistic
celebration is enhanced when priests and liturgical leaders are committed to
making known the current liturgical texts and norms... Perhaps we take it
for granted that our ecclesial communities already know and appreciate these
resources, but this is not always the case. These texts contain riches which
have preserved and expressed the faith and experience of the People of God
over its two-thousand-year history.” (n. 40)
2. The orientation of liturgical prayer.
Over and above the changes which have characterised, during the course of
time, the architecture of churches and the places where the liturgy takes
place, one conviction has always remained clear within the Christian
community, almost down to the present day. I am referring to praying facing
east, a tradition which goes back to the origins of Christianity.
What is understood by “praying facing east”? It refers to the orientation of
the praying heart towards Christ, from whom comes salvation, and to whom it
is directed as in the beginning so at the end of history. The sun rises in
the east, and the sun is a symbol of Christ, the light rising in the Orient.
The messianic passage in the Benedictus canticle comes readily to mind:
“Through the tender mercy of our God; * whereby the Orient from on high hath
visited us”
Very reliable and recent studies have by now proven effectively that, in
every age of its past, the Christian community has found the way to express
even in the external and visible liturgical sign, this fundamental
orientation for the life of faith. This is why we find churches built in
such a way that the apse was turned to the east. When such an orientation of
the sacred space was no longer possible, the Church had recourse to the
Crucifix placed upon the altar, on which everyone could focus. In the same
vein many apses were decorated with resplendent representations of the Lord.
All were invited to contemplate these images during the celebration of the
Eucharistic liturgy.
Without recourse to a detailed historical analysis of the development of
Christian art, we would like to reaffirm that prayer facing east, more
specifically, facing the Lord, is a characteristic expression of the
authentic spirit of the liturgy. It is according to this sense that we are
invited to turn our hearts to the Lord during the celebration of the
Eucharistic Liturgy, as the introductory dialogue to the Preface well
reminds us. Sursum corda “Lift up your hearts,” exhorts the priest, and all
respond: Habemus ad Dominum “We lift them up unto the Lord.” Now if such an
orientation must always be adopted interiorly by the entire Christian
community when it gathers in prayer, it should be possible to find this
orientation expressed externally by means of signs as well. The external
sign, moreover, cannot but be true, in such a way that through it the
correct spiritual attitude is rendered visible.
Hence the reason for the proposal made by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, and
presently reaffirmed during the course of his pontificate, to place the
Crucifix on the center of the altar, in order that all, during the
celebration of the liturgy, may concretely face and look upon Lord, in such
a way as to orient also their prayer and hearts. Let us listen to the words
of his Holiness, Benedict XVI, directly, who in the preface to the first
book of his Complete Works, dedicated to the liturgy, writes the following:
“The idea that the priest and people should stare at one another during
prayer was born only in modern Christianity, and is completely alien to the
ancient Church. The priest and people most certainly do not pray one to the
other, but to the one Lord. Therefore, they stare in the same direction
during prayer: either towards the east as a cosmic symbol of the Lord who
comes, or, where this is not possible, towards the image of Christ in the
apse, towards a crucifix, or simply towards the heavens, as our Lord Himself
did in his priestly prayer the night before His Passion (John 17.1) In the
meantime the proposal made by me at the end of the chapter treating this
question in my work ‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ is fortunately becoming more
and more common: rather than proceeding with further transformations, simply
to place the crucifix at the center of the altar, which both priest and the
faithful can face and be lead in this way towards the Lord, whom everyone
addresses in prayer together.” (trans. from the Italian.)
Let it not be said, moreover, that the image of our Lord crucified obstructs
the sight of the faithful from that of the priest, for they are not to look
to the celebrant at that point in the liturgy! They are to turn their gaze
towards the Lord! In like manner, the presider of the celebration should
also be able to turn towards the Lord. The crucifix does not obstruct our
view; rather it expands our horizon to see the world of God; the crucifix
brings us to meditate on the mystery; it introduces us to the heavens from
where the only light capable of making sense of life on this earth comes.
Our sight, in truth, would be blinded and obstructed were our eyes to remain
fixed on those things that display only man and his works.
In this way one can come to understand why it is still possible today to
celebrate the holy Mass upon the old altars, when the particular
architectural and artistic features of our churches would advise it. Also in
this, the Holy Father gives us an example when he celebrates the holy
Eucharist at the ancient altar of the Sistine Chapel on the feast of the
Baptism of our Lord.
In our time, the expression “celebrating facing the people” has entered our
common vocabulary. If one’s intention in using this expression is to
describe the location of the priest, who, due to the fact that today he
often finds himself facing the congregation because of the placement of the
altar, in this case such an expression is acceptable. Yet such an expression
would be categorically unacceptable the moment it comes to express a
theological proposition. Theologically speaking, the holy Mass, as a matter
of fact, is always addressed to God through Christ our Lord, and it would be
a grievous error to imagine that the principal orientation of the
sacrificial action is the community. Such an orientation, therefore, of
turning towards the Lord must animate the interior participation of each
individual during the liturgy. It is likewise equally important that this
orientation be quite visible in the liturgical sign as well.
3. Adoration and union with God.
Adoration is the recognition, filled with wonder, we could even say ecstatic,
(because it makes us come out of ourselves and our small world) the
recognition of the infinite might of God, of His incomprehensible majesty,
and of His love without limit which he offers us absolutely gratuitously, of
His omnipotent and provident Lordship. Consequently, adoration leads to the
reunification of man and creation with God, to the abandonment of the state
of separation, of apparent autonomy, to loss of self, which is, moreover,
the only way of regaining oneself.
Before the ineffable beauty of God’s charity, which takes form in the
mystery of the Incarnate Word, who for our sake has died and is risen, and
which finds its sacramental manifestation in the liturgy, there is nothing
left for us but to be left in adoration. “In the paschal event and the
Eucharist which makes it present throughout the centuries,” affirms Pope
John Paul II in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, “there is a truly enormous capacity
which embraces all of history as the recipient of the grace of the
redemption. This amazement should always fill the Church assembled for the
celebration of the Eucharist.” (n.5)
“My Lord and my God,” we have been taught to say from childhood at the
moment of the consecration. In such a way, borrowing the words of the
apostle St. Thomas, we are led to adore the Lord, made present and living in
the species of the holy Eucharist, uniting ourselves to Him, and recognising
Him as our all. From there it becomes possible to resume our daily way,
having found the correct order of life, the fundamental criterion whereby to
live and to die.
Here is the reason why everything in the liturgical act, through the
nobility, the beauty, and the harmony of the exterior sign, must be
condusive to adoration, to union with God: this includes the music, the
singing, the periods of silence, the manner of proclaiming the Word of the
Lord, and the manner of praying, the gestures employed, the liturgical
vestments and the sacred vessels and other furnishings, as well as the
sacred edifice in its entirety. It is under this perspective that the
decision of his Holiness, Benedict XVI, is to be taken into consideration,
who, starting from the feast of Corpus Christi last year, has begun to
distribute holy Communion to the kneeling faithful directly on the tongue.
By the example of this action, the Holy Father invites us to render visible
the proper attitude of adoration before the greatness of the mystery of the
Eucharistic presence of our Lord. An attitude of adoration which must be
fostered all the more when approaching the most holy Eucharist in the other
forms permitted today.
I would like to cite once more another passage from the post-synodal
Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum caritatis: “During the early phases of the
reform, the inherent relationship between Mass and adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament was not always perceived with sufficient clarity. For example, an
objection that was widespread at the time argued that the eucharistic bread
was given to us not to be looked at, but to be eaten. In the light of the
Church's experience of prayer, however, this was seen to be a false
dichotomy. As Saint Augustine put it: ‘nemo autem illam carnem manducat,
nisi prius adoraverit; peccemus non adorando – no one eats that flesh
without first adoring it; we should sin were we not to adore it.’ In the
Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us;
eucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the eucharistic
celebration, which is itself the Church's supreme act of adoration.
Receiving the Eucharist means adoring him whom we receive. Only in this way
do we become one with him, and are given, as it were, a foretaste of the
beauty of the heavenly liturgy.” (n.66)
I think that, among others, the following passage from the text I just read
should not go unnoticed: “[The Eucharistic celebration] is itself the
Church's supreme act of adoration.” Thanks to the holy Eucharist, his
Holiness, Benedict XVI, asserts once more: “The imagery of marriage between
God and Israel is now realised in a way previously inconceivable: it had
meant standing in God's presence, but now it becomes union with God through
sharing in Jesus' self-gift, sharing in his body and blood.” (Deus Caritas
est, n.13) For this reason, everything in the liturgy, and more specifically
in the Eucharistic liturgy, must lead to adoration, everything in the
unfolding of the rite must help one enter into the Church’s adoration of her
Lord.
To consider the liturgy as locus for adoration, for union with God, does not
mean to loose sight of the communal dimension in the liturgical celebration,
even less to forget the imperative of charity toward one’s neighbour. On the
contrary, only through a renewal of the adoration of God in Christ, which
takes form in the liturgical act, will an authentic fraternal communion and
a new story of charity and love arise, depending on that ability to wonder
and act heroically, which only the grace of God can give to our poor hearts.
The lives of the saints remind and teach us this. “Union with Christ is also
union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just
for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become,
or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him,
and thus also towards unity with all Christians.” (Deus caritas est, n. 14)
4. Active Participation.
It was really the saints who have celebrated and lived the liturgical act by
participating actively. Holiness, as the result of their lives, is the most
beautiful testimony of a participation truthfully active in the liturgy of
the Church.
Rightly, then, and by divine providence did the second Vatican Council
insist so much on the necessity of promoting an authentic participation on
the part of the faithful during the celebration of the holy mysteries, at
the same time when it reminded the Church of the universal call to holiness.
This authoritative direction from the council has been confirmed and
proposed again and again by so many successive documents of the magisterium
down to the present day.
Nevertheless, there has not always been a correct understanding of the
concept of “active participation”, according to how the Church teaches it
and exhorts the faithful to live it. To be sure, there is active
participation when, during the course of the liturgical celebration, one
fulfills his proper service; there is active participation too when one has
a better comprehension of God’s word when it is heard or of the prayers when
they are said; there is also active participation when one unites his own
voice to that of the others in song....All this, however, would not signify
a participation truthfully active if it did not lead to adoration of the
mystery of salvation in Christ Jesus, who for our sake died and is risen.
This is because only he who adores the mystery, welcoming it into his life,
demonstrates that he has comprehended what is being celebrated, and so is
truly participating in the grace of the liturgical act.
As confirmation and support for what has just been asserted, let us listen
once again to the words of a passage by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, from
his fundamental study “The Spirit of the Liturgy”: “What does this active
participation come down to? What does it mean that we have to do?
Unfortunately the word was very quickly misunderstood to mean something
external, entailing a need for general activity, as if as many people as
possible, as often as possible, should be visibly engaged in action. However,
the word ‘part-icipation’ refers to a principal action in which everyone has
a ‘part’...By the actio of the liturgy the sources mean the Eucharistic
prayer. The real liturgical action, the true liturgical act, is the oratio....This
oratio—the Eucharistic Prayer, the “Canon”—is really more than speech; it is
actio in the highest sense of the word.” (pp. 171-2) Christ is made present
in all of his salvific work, and for this reason the human actio becomes
secondary and makes room for the divine actio, to God’s work.
Thus the true action which is carried out in the liturgy is the action of
God Himself, his saving work in Christ, in which we participate. This is,
among other things, the true novelty of the Christian liturgy with respect
to every other act of worship: God Himself acts and accomplishes that which
is essential, whilst man is called to open himself to the activity of God,
in order to be left transformed. Consequently, the essential aspect of
active participation is to overcome the difference between God’s act and our
own, that we might become one with Christ. This is why, that I might stress
what has been said up to now, it is not possible to participate without
adoration. Let us listen to another passage from Sacrosanctum Concilium:
“The Church, therefore, earnestly desires that Christ's faithful, when
present at this mystery of faith, should not be there as strangers or silent
spectators; on the contrary, through a good understanding of the rites and
prayers they should take part in the sacred action conscious of what they
are doing, with devotion and full collaboration. They should be instructed
by God's word and be nourished at the table of the Lord's body; they should
give thanks to God; by offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the
hands of the priest, but also with him, they should learn also to offer
themselves; through Christ the Mediator, they should be drawn day by day
into ever more perfect union with God and with each other, so that finally
God may be all in all.” (n. 48)
Compared to this, everything else is secondary. I am referring in particular
to external actions, granted they be important and necessary, and foreseen
above all during the Liturgy of the Word. I mention the external actions
because, should they become the essential preoccupation and the liturgy is
reduced to a generic act, in that case the authentic spirit of the liturgy
has been misunderstood. It follows that an authentic education in the
liturgy cannot consist simply in learning and practicing exterior actions,
but in an introduction to the essential action, which is God’s own, the
paschal mystery of Christ, whom we must allow to meet us, to involve us, to
transform us. Let not the mere execution of external gestures be confused
with the correct involvement of our bodies in the liturgical act. Without
taking anything away from the meaning and importance of the external action
which accompanies the interior act, the Liturgy demands a lot more from the
human body. It requires, in fact, its total and renewed effort in the daily
actions of this life. This is what the Holy Father, Benedict XVI calls
“Eucharistic coherence”. Properly speaking, it is the timely and faithful
exercise of such a coherence or consistency which is the most authentic
expression of participation, even bodily, in the liturgical act, the
salvific action of Christ.
I wish to discuss this point further. Are we truly certain that the
promotion of an active participation consists in rendering everything to the
greatest extent possible immediately comprehensible? May it not be the case
that entering into God’s mystery might be facilitated and, sometimes, even
better accompanied by that which touches principally the reasons of the
heart? Is it not often the case that a disproportionate amount of space is
given over to empty and trite speech, forgetting that both dialogue and
silence belong in the liturgy, congregational singing and choral music,
images, symbols, gestures? Do not, perhaps, also the Latin language,
Gregorian chant, and sacred polyphony belong to this manifold language which
conducts us to the center of the mystery?
5. Sacred or liturgical music.
There is no doubt that a discussion, in order to introduce itself
authentically into the spirit of the liturgy, cannot pass over sacred or
liturgical music in silence.
I will limit myself to a brief reflection in way of orienting the discussion.
One might wonder why the Church by means of its documents, more or less
recent, insists in indicating a certain type of music and singing as
particularly consonant with the liturgical celebration. Already at the time
of the Council of Trent the Church intervened in the cultural conflict
developing at that time, reestablishing the norm whereby music conforming to
the sacred text was of primary importance, limiting the use of instruments
and pointing to a clear distinction between profane and sacred music. Sacred
music, moreover, must never be understood as a purely subjective expression.
It is anchored to the biblical or traditional texts which are to be sung
during the course of the celebration. More recently, Pope Saint Pius X
intervened in an analogous way, seeking to remove operatic singing from the
liturgy and selecting Gregorian chant and polyphony from the time of the
Catholic reformation as the standard for liturgical music, to be
distinguished from religious music in general. The second Vatican Council
did naught but reaffirm the same standard, so too the more recent
magisterial documents.
Why does the Church insist on proposing certain forms as characteristic of
sacred and liturgical music which make them distinct from all other forms of
music? Why, also, do Gregorian chant and the classical sacred polyphony turn
out to be the forms to be imitated, in light of which liturgical and even
popular music should continue to be produced today?
The answer to these questions lies precisely in what we have sought to
assert with regard to the spirit of the liturgy. It is properly those forms
of music, in their holiness, their goodness, and their universality, which
translate in notes, melodies and singing the authentic liturgical spirit: by
leading to adoration of the mystery celebrated, by favouring an authentic
and integral participation, by helping the listener to capture the sacred
and thereby the essential primacy of God acting in Christ, and finally by
permitting a musical development that is anchored in the life of the Church
and the contemplation of its mystery.
Allow me to quote the then Cardinal Ratzinger one last time: “Gandhi
highlights three vital spaces in the cosmos, and demonstrates how each one
of them communicates even its own mode of being. Fish live in the sea and
are silent. Terrestrial animals cry out, but the birds, whose vital space is
the heavens, sing. Silence is proper to the sea, crying out to the earth,
and singing to the heavens. Man, however, participates in all three: he
bares within him the depth of the sea, the weight of the earth, and the
height of the heavens; this is why all three modes of being belong to him:
silence, crying out, and song. Today...we see that, devoid of transcendence,
all that is left to man is to cry out, because he wishes to be only earth
and seeks to turn into earth even the heavens and the depth of the sea. The
true liturgy, the liturgy of the communion of saints, restores to him the
fullness of his being. It teaches him anew how to be silent and how to sing,
opening to him the profundity of the sea and teaching him how to fly, the
nature of an angel; elevating his heart, it makes that song resonate in him
once again which had in a way fallen asleep. In fact, we can even say that
the true liturgy is recognisable especially when it frees us from the common
way of living, and restores to us depth and height, silence and song. The
true liturgy is recognisable by the fact that it is cosmic, not custom made
for a group. It sings with the angels. It remains silent with the profound
depth of the universe in waiting. And in this way it redeems the world.” (trans.
from the Italian.)
At this point I would like to conclude the discussion. For some years now,
several voices have been heard within Church circles talking about the
necessity of a new liturgical renewal. Of a movement, in some ways analogous
to the one which formed the basis for the reform promoted by the second
Vatican Council, capable of operating a reform of the reform, or rather, one
more step ahead in understanding the authentic spirit of the liturgy and of
its celebration; its goal would be to carry on that providential reform of
the liturgy that the conciliar Fathers had launched but has not always, in
its practical implementation, found a timely and happy fulfillment.
There is no doubt that in this new liturgical renewal it is we priests who
are to recover a decisive role. With the help of our Lord and the Blessed
Virgin Mary, mother of all priests, may this further development of the
reform also be the fruit of our sincere love for the liturgy, in fidelity to
the Church and the Holy Father".
Msgr. Guido Marini
Pontifical Master of Liturgical Ceremonies
