They are thereby invited and led to offer themselves, their labors, and all created things together with Him." (PO 5) Through His very flesh, made vital and vitalizing by the Holy Spirit, He offers life to men. "For the most blessed Eucharist contains the Church's entire spiritual wealth, that is, Christ Himself, our Passover and living bread. The Eucharistic action is the "source and summit" (LG 11 CCL 897), "the soul" (DC 5) of all Christian life, "the very heartbeat of the congregation of the faithful." (PO 5) The true center of the sacred liturgy, and indeed of the whole of Christian life, is the Eucharist (EM 1). People need to see through the externals of liturgical forms, see through even the central external of the priest celebrant himself, to arrive at the inner reality of what is happening, of Who is present among us. It seems to me that a basic principle of the was this: Liturgy is "good" to the degree that it pierces the senses, goes beyond the externals, to reach the heart and resurrect the sense of reverence for God in the individual person. The ultimate purpose of the was not so much to effect changes in the liturgy, as to effect a change in the hearts and souls of Catholic worshippers. It is far easier to apply oneself to what touches the senses, much harder to weigh the abstract and the sublime. It is a trait of human nature, I guess, to get away from pondering fundamentalsthey're too ponderousin order to get to what is more fascinating, the externals. When you deal with a constitution you are dealing with fundamentals. my father and mother.the thousands of people in the Diocese of Arlington for whom I celebrate the sacred mysteries and with whom I receive the body and blood of Christ Jesus. That is the Church, the teaching and believing Church of the apostles and martyrs, the People of God of twenty centuries. How can an educated person in the twentieth century, you ask, actually believe in the Eucharist, really believe that bread and wine in fact become the body and blood of Jesus Christ? Me? I believe it because, thanks to the grace of God, someone whom I thoroughly respect and love has taught me it's a fact, an awesome fact. I mean, of course, the Holy Eucharist, both as the unbloody sacrifice of Jesus in the Mass, and as the living Christ, God and man, whom we receive in Holy Communion. It is something at the heart of my daily consciousness which, by God's gift, I believe with every fiber of my soul. In these few pages I would like to share with you some personal reflections on which, although I do not understand it, I hold as absolute fact, an irrefutable truth. The dust has settled sufficiently now that I think it might be useful to look back across these twenty-five years to see if the considerable hopes of Vatican Council II have been achieved, to ask if, by and large, the renewed liturgy has helped us worship better, pray better, become better persons of faith. This only troubled the faithful and impeded or made more difficult the progress of genuine renewal." (LI 1) As a result some individuals, acting on private initiative, arrived at hasty and sometimes unwise solutions, and made changes, additions or simplifications which at times went against the basic principles of the liturgy. There have been others who, concerned with urgent pastoral needs, felt they could not wait for the definite reform to be promulgated. "There have been those who, for the sake of conserving ancient traditions, were unwilling to accept these reforms. Early on in the reform, a 1970 appraisal said this: Millions of Catholics, though sometimes bewildered by it all, bravely accommodated themselves and their lifelong habits to new ways of worshipping God together.Īdmittedly the era of liturgical renewal did not always and everywhere get off to a good start. Hundreds of documents on the liturgy have since been published by the Holy See in the wake of the Thousands of liturgists eagerly plunged into the effort to implement and further the reforms. The made a powerful impact in our parishes, there for all to see and judge. Nothing is more clearly at the core of Catholic life and practice than our public worshipwhich, in fact, is precisely what "liturgy" means. Twenty-five years ago today, on December 4, 1963, the more than 2400 bishops of Vatican Council II, in union with Pope Paul VI, issued their first major documentthe Council's first fruitsthe historic While many of the issues discussed in the Council (1962-1965) had only an indirect bearing on the everyday life of the faithful, the liturgy touches virtually everyone immediately and personally. Given on Decemon the Feast of Saint John Damascene A PASTORAL LETTER ON REVERENCE FOR THE EUCHARIST
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