 |
Liturgical Commission
ENCOUNTERING JESUS CHRIST IN THE LITURGY
Corrado Maggioni
Exhorting us to prepare ourselves for the Jubilee by dedicating this Year to
Reflection on the mystery of Christ and this through a re-discovery of our
Baptism (cf TMA n. 40-41), Pope John Paul II wisely leads us to
conjugate knowledge of Christ: who is Jesus Christ?, with a living experience of
Him: how-where can we meet him today?
If the first question is answered by catechesis, in its many forms, the
second is answered by our liturgical celebration, in all its wondrous
Christological fullness. Truly present in the community gathered in his name,
Christ speaks and works, "here and now for us": he proclaims the
Gospel, giving to those who receive it with faith the strength to put it into
practice; through the holy cleansing he makes believers living members of his
Body, he consecrates them with holy anointing, for them he breaks the Bread of
life and pours out his Blood in the chalice of salvation ... The liturgy allows
us to live in-through-with Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to the
glory of the Father.
Our commitment in the liturgical sphere, in view of the Jubilee, takes two
directions: one on the formative plain, that is a deeper understanding of the
value of the Christian celebration and the other on the celebrative plain, that
is a promotion of the quality of liturgical prayer. These two aspects in fact
were the subject of reflection on the part of the Central Committee's Liturgical
Commission which, to compliment its guide-book "Towards the Great Jubilee
of the Year 2000", last December 1st, sent the Presidents of the National
Committees a circular letter signed by the President, Mgr. Geraldo M. Agnelo.
The significant title of the Letter: "Encountering Jesus in the liturgy",
emphasizes the call to follow, in order to be "touched" by Christ, the
way of the liturgy, the principal way, open to all and valid for all. We are
reminded of this in numbers 2 and 3 of the Letter, where it says "there is
no better guide, traditional and at the same time pedagogical, than the liturgy
because, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, it is here, above all during the
divine sacrifice of the Eucharist that <our redemption is brought about>
... When in fact Christians gather, first of all on Sunday to celebrate the
Eucharist, they encounter Christ, present in the Church as she prays and
worships, present in his Word, since it is he who speaks when in the Church the
Holy Scriptures are proclaimed, present in the person of the priest, present in
a most special manner in the Eucharistic sacrifice, under the consecrated
species of bread and wine (cf SC, n. 7)."
1. Reflection on the significance of the celebration of Christ's mystery
Preparation for the Jubilee is an opportune time to apply that which the
Second Vatican Council Vatican indicated for the whole Church and every
individual member (cf TMA 18-20). In the liturgical sphere therefore it
is an opportune time to assimilate the teaching of the Sacrosanctum
Concilium - used also by the Catechism of the Catholic Church to explain the
liturgy of the Church - and to understand and apply the liturgical reform
deriving from it. Although the reform of the liturgical books is now complete,
there is still much to be done for their correct and fruitful use.
To work in this sense does not mean to invent novelties for our celebrations
or increase their quantity, but first of all to live more deeply the Church's
normal liturgical economy, beginning with the "sacramental" itinerary
of the liturgical year, illuminated by the Easter Tridium and regulated by
Sunday, the day on which through the Eucharist, Christ "appears" among
his disciples to explain the Scriptures to them and to transmit to them divine
life, through the sharing in his Body and Blood, (cf Lk 24).
The Church on her pilgrimage through time could not exist without
celebrating, because she would come to lack that wondrous transfusion flowing
from the side of the Risen Lord, which allows her to form with Him one body,
watered with the same stream of blood which began on the Cross. Here is what the
Holy Father writes in this regard, quoting gestures and formulas from the
liturgy of the Easter Vigil: «In the liturgy of the Easter Vigil the
celebrant, as he blesses the Easter candle which symbolises the Risen Christ,
proclaims: Christ yesterday and today, Beginning and End, Alpha and Omega. all
time belongs to him, and all the ages, to Him be glory and power through every
age for ever». He says these words as he inscribes on the candle the
numerals of the current year. The meaning of the rite is clear: it emphases that
the fact that Christ is the Lord of time; he is its beginning and its end; every
year, every day, every moment are embraced by his Incarnation and Resurrection,
and thus become part of the "fullness of time". For this reason, the
Church too lives and celebrates the liturgy in the span of a year. The solar
year is thus permeated by the liturgical year, which in a certain way reproduces
the whole mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption, beginning from the First
Sunday of Advent and ending on the Solemnity of Christ the King, Lord of the
Universe and Lord of History. Every Sunday commemorates the day of the Lord's
Resurrection. (TMA 10).
If from the gospel texts we come to profess that historically the Word of
God became man, born of the Virgin through the power of the Holy Spirit, that he
died and is risen for the redemption of the world, during the liturgical
celebration, on the other hand, we meet sacramentally Christ who took on flesh
and blood to become God-with-us and for us: we listen to him, we praise him, we
thank him, we welcome him, letting ourselves be caught up in his offertorial
logic, we communicate with him in order to live in Him; we feel the life-giving
breath of his Holy Spirit; we offer heartfelt thanks to the Father, source of
the redeeming incarnation, we build ourselves up as Church, as humanity
reconciled by "God with us and for us". In brief, entering into the
mystery, we have a living encounter with the Word of God who asks to make his
home in us, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, through "holy signs".
The liturgical celebration, through its particular nature, makes Christ the
Redeemer perpetually accessible. Saint Leo the Great expressed this so
admirably: "that which was visible of our Redeemer, has passed into the
sacraments" (Tractatus 74,2; CCL 138 A, 475).
2. To improve the quality of our celebrations
The comprehension of the prayers, gestures, hymns, liturgical signs allows
us to perceive the knowledge-experience which the Church at prayer has of the
company of Christ. And we know that the celebration does not regenerate the Word
only for the theological hearing or saying, it regenerates it in the life of
those who pray, renewing it. The event of the Word who took flesh and blood
through the power of the Holy Spirit, in the believing Virgin, lives again in
the mystery of the Eucharist: from the table of the Word to the table of the
Body-Blood of the Lord, so that the participants become the Body of Christ
working in the world, prolonging his redeeming incarnation.
While the praying people listen, sing, acclaim and invoke Christ the Lord
and the Father through Him, they are not representing a scene like actors at the
theatre, they are telling, celebrating, living, their involvement in that event:
they are experiencing the mystery of the redemption as it becomes present, with
its fruits, in their lives taking part in it personally.
Hence the importance of interior participation in the liturgy, before
exterior participation. In this way we understand how mistaken is the
insinuation of a false conviction that greater exterior "activity"
during a celebration corresponds to better participation. There comes to light
also the importance of the "truth" of signs: the altar, a sign of
Christ, cannot be transformed into somewhere to put things, as if it were a
shelf, nor can the sanctuary, where the priest acts "in persona Christi"
be mistaken for a stage, nor can the baptismal font be reduced to a basin and
jug, nor the gift of the white robe be minimised by placing on the newly
baptised person a small piece of material which cannot be worn, nor can the
paschal candle, sign of Christ risen and living forever, be a tube of plastic
which never burns down while it shines, brighter than "the morning star"...
If the liturgy is an encounter with Jesus Christ, it follows that the themes
indicated for this first year of preparation for the year 2000 should be an
opportunity to examine the quality of our celebrations, to see if they are
beautiful, incisive, fruitful, highlighting what is helpful for prayer and
reducing what is disturbing to prayer in all its dimensions. This is a task
which falls first of all to those responsible for the arrangement of the
celebrations: bishops, priests, deacons, readers, acolytes, cantors, organists,
animators and liturgical groups, sacristans ... But we must not forget that the
liturgy involves personally all the baptised, adults and children, the elderly
and the young, the healthy and the sick. Each one should be able to exclaim with
Saint Ambrose: "In your sacraments O Christ, I meet you face to face"
(De Apologia Prophetae David 12,58; PL 14,916).
|