This post is Part II of a series of posts that I am doing about a talk Msgr. Marini gave at the Clergy Conference in Rome. Read part one here. The original talk was posted on the New Liturgical Movement which you can read here. Some of the other parts of the talk were handled much more adeptly by Father Z. which you can read here - Liturgical Form and here - Active Participation. I decided to tackle the more basic aspects of the talk.This particular portion of the talk focused on then Cardinal Ratzinger's book: The Spirit of the Liturgy. It is the overview of the Liturgy itself. In my original post I discussed how both the Holy Father and Msgr. Marini stress the importance of CONTINUITY. This begins to dive deeper into how the Liturgy exists in time and place and the importance of the Liturgy as it is intended to exist.
My emphasis will be bold-underlined and my comments will be in red:
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. [Sacred is important here. Obviously Msgr. Marini wants to call to our attention how important the council Fathers felt that calling the Liturgy Sacred was.]
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. [In other words the East views the Liturgy stemming FROM GOD TO man.] 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. [Objective here means unalterable or truth. If Christ is Truth, then the Liturgy is an objective expression of the Mystery of Salvation that Truth gives to man.] This is a reality surpassing us, which is to be received as gift, and which must be allowed to transform us.[Here nothing is said of us giving to God, but instead we are to receive.] 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. [This statement expresses the idea that there are some modes of conduct which are in fact incompatible with the Liturgy. To use a term from my last post, there is NO CONTINUITY.] In fact, some individuals have managed to upset the liturgy of the church in various ways under the pretext of a wrongly devised creativity. [Although in my last post I argued for continuity and understanding that both the new and old form of the Mass are valid and beautiful this sentence explains that not "anything" goes. There are in fact certain things which so disrupt the continuity of the Liturgy as to be wrong. This is usually done through 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. [Although he places blame on the priests, many congregations are to blame as well. Many times when reform to the proper liturgical practices were proposed in "creative" dioceses the people fought against the reform in an effort to retain their "emotionally comfortable" forms of worship.]
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. [READ: The Liturgy is NOT 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. [This is important, especially for the Rad-Trads out there: the people who make these creative decisions are NOT bad people or even unskilled in what they do. It is their product which is wrong, not necessarily their hearts.] 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. [Simply put, CONTINUITY.] 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. [The Liturgy is ABOUT GOD, not about us.] 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. [Our job as individuals and lay people is to attend Liturgy and accept the gift, not to CREATE with the Liturgy.] 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. [Local customs and adaptations are allowed and EVEN ENCOURAGE but in their RIGHTFUL PLACE.] 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. [GOD knows what he wants and what we need better than we do. We should accept this graciously and humbly.] 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) [Continuity of the past, present, and future. Pope Benedict uses the term: "Once-FOR-All"]
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 Mass is not OUR expression to God. We must realize this. IT IS NOT OURS! The Mass is a gift and revelation to us.]
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. [The Mass could not and cannot act in its Mystery if it were ours to manipulate. Instead, Salvation form in the Mass exists because it is wholly God.]
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) [Continuity and norms ENHANCE the Liturgy. It is the Continuity which creates the sharing and unification of the Body of Christ through time. Continuity leads to universality which is the essence of our faith. Universality can only be achieved through texts and forms.]
It is sometimes argued that the usus antiquior or Tridentine Rite is archaic and not relevant to modern people. Yet, this argue can not hold water when viewed from the proper perspective from which we should look at the Liturgy. There is little that I need to say that hasn't been said by Msgr. Marini. The Liturgy must be understood as a GIFT from GOD which should exist in its SACRED form. We as people should not take it upon ourselves to try and interpret or manipulate it to appease our desires or emotions. Instead we should accept the Mass as God's gift to His bride as a pure expression of His love and desire for the Salvation of man. It is a "once-for-all" Mystery that was given to us in order to grant us everlasting life with Him.-Posted by: Joe
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