(Vatican Radio) – The Liturgy is the school of prayer where God Himself teaches us
to pray. But in order to celebrate the Liturgy well, to really experience the re-enactment
of Christ’s Paschal Mystery we must make our hearts God’s Altar and understand that
the Liturgy is the action of God and of man, as the Second Vatican Council teaches
us. In his latest instalment in his cycle on the School of Prayer, Pope Benedict XVI
dedicated his Wednesday audience to prayer and the liturgy. Emer McCarthy reports:
Below
a Vatican Radio translation of the Holy Father’s catechesis:
Dear
Brothers and Sisters, in recent months we have made a journey in the light of the
Word of God, to learn to pray in a more authentic way by looking at some great figures
in the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Letters of St. Paul and the Book of Revelation,
but also looking at unique and fundamental experience of Jesus in his relationship
with the Heavenly Father. In fact, only in Christ, is man enabled to unite himself
to God with the depth and intimacy of a child before a father who loves him, only
in Him can we turn in all truth to God and lovingly call Him "Abba! ! Father. " Like
the Apostles, we too have repeated and we still repeat to Jesus, "Lord, teach us to
pray" (Lk 11:1).
In addition, in order to live our personal relationship with
God more intensely, we have learned to invoke the Holy Spirit, the first gift of the
Risen Christ to believers, because it is he who "comes to the aid of our weakness;
for we do not know how to pray as we ought,"(Romans 8:26).
At this point we
can ask: how can I allow myself to be formed by the Holy Spirit? What is the school
in which he teaches me to pray and helps me in my difficulties to turn to God in the
right way? The first school of prayer which we have covered in the last few weeks
is the Word of God, Sacred Scripture, Sacred Scripture in permanent dialogue between
God and man, an ongoing dialogue in which God reveals Himself ever closer to us. We
can better familiarize ourselves with his face, his voice, his being and the man
learns to accept and to know God, to talk to God. So in recent weeks, reading Sacred
Scripture, we looked for this ongoing dialogue in Scripture to learn how we can enter
into contact with God.
There is another precious "space", another valuable
"source" to grow in prayer, a source of living water in close relation with the previous
one. I refer to the liturgy, which is a privileged area in which God speaks to each
of us, here and now, and awaits our response.
What is the liturgy? If we open
the Catechism of the Catholic Church – an always valuable and indispensable aid especially
in the Year of Faith, which is about to begin - we read that originally the word "liturgy"
means " service in the name of/on behalf of the people" (No. 1069) . If Christian
theology took this word from the Greek world, it did so obviously thinking of the
new People of God born from Christ opened his arms on the Cross to unite people in
the peace of the one God. "service on behalf of the people " a people that does not
exist by itself, but that has been formed through the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ.
In fact, the People of God does not exist through ties of blood, territory or nation,
but is always born from the work of the Son of God and communion with the Father that
He obtains for us.
The Catechism also states that "in Christian tradition (the
word" liturgy ") means the participation of the People of God in "the work of God."
Because the people of God as such exists only through the action of God.
The
very development of the Second Vatican Council reminds us of this. It began its work,
fifty years ago, with the discussion of the draft on the Sacred Liturgy, solemnly
approved on December 4, 1963, the first text approved by the Council. The fact that
document on the liturgy was the first result of the conciliar assembly was perhaps
considered by some a chance occurrence. Among the many projects, the text on the sacred
liturgy seemed to be the least controversial, and, for this reason, seen as an exercise
in the methodology of conciliar work. But without a doubt, what at first glance seemed
a chance occurrence, proved to be the right choice, starting from the hierarchy of
themes and most important tasks of the Church. By beginning, with the theme of "liturgy"
the primacy of God, his absolute priority was clearly brought to light. God before
all things: the Council’s choice of starting from the liturgy tells us precisely this.
Where God’s gaze is not decisive, everything else loses its direction. The basic criterion
for the liturgy is its orientation to God, so that we can share in His work.
But
we may ask: what is this work of God that we are called to participate in? The answer
offered us by Conciliar Constitution on the sacred liturgy is apparently double. At
number 5 it tells us, in fact, that the works of God are His historical actions that
bring us salvation, culminating in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; but
in number 7, the Constitution defines the celebration of the liturgy as "the work
of Christ. " In reality, the two meanings are inseparably linked. If we ask ourselves
who saves the world and man, the only answer is Jesus of Nazareth, Lord and Christ,
Crucified and Risen. And where does the Mystery of the Death and Resurrection of Christ,
that brings salvation it becomes present and real for us, for me today ? The answer
is the action of Christ through the Church, in the liturgy, especially in the Sacrament
of the Eucharist, which makes real and present this sacrificial offering of the Son
of God, who has redeemed us, in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, through which we
pass from the death of sin to new life, and in the other sacramental acts that sanctify
us (cf. PO 5). Thus, the Paschal Mystery of the Death and Resurrection of Christ is
the centre of liturgical theology of the Council.
Let's take a step further
and ask ourselves: how is this re-enactment of the Paschal Mystery of Christ made
possible? Blessed John Paul II, 25 years after the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium,
wrote: " In order to reenact his Paschal Mystery, Christ is ever present in his Church,
especially in liturgical celebrations. (27). Hence the Liturgy is the privileged place
for the encounter of Christians with God and the one whom he has sent, Jesus Christ
(cf Jn 17:3). "(Vicesimus quintus annus, n. 7). Along the same lines we read in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church: " A sacramental celebration is a meeting of God's
children with their Father, in Christ and the Holy Spirit; this meeting takes the
form of a dialogue, through actions and words." (n. 1153). Therefore, the first requirement
for a good liturgical celebration is that both prayer and conversation with God, first
listening and then answering. St. Benedict, in his "Rule", speaking of the prayer
of the Psalms, indicates to the monks: mens concordet voci, "may the mind agrees
with the voice." The Saint teaches that the prayer of the Psalms, the words must precede
our mind. Usually it does not happen this way, first one has to think and then what
we have thought, is converted into speech. Here, however in the liturgy it is the
inverse, the words come first. God gave us the Word and the Sacred Liturgy gives us
the words, and we must enter into their meaning, welcome them within us, be in harmony
with them. Thus we become children of God, similar to God. As noted in the Sacrosanctum
Concilium, to ensure the full effectiveness of the celebration " it is necessary
that the faithful come to it with proper dispositions, that their minds should be
attuned to their voices, and that they should cooperate with divine grace lest they
receive it in vain "(n. 11). The correlation between what we say with our lips and
what we carry in our hearts is essential, fundamental, to our dialogue with God in
the liturgy.
In this line, I just want to mention one of the moments that,
during the liturgy calls us and helps us to find such a correlation, this conforming
ourselves to what we hear, say and do in the liturgy. I refer to the invitation the
Celebrant formulates before the Eucharistic Prayer: "Sursum corda," we lift up our
hearts outside the tangle of our concerns, our desires, our anxieties, our distraction.
Our heart, our intimate selves, must open obediently to the Word of God, and gather
in the prayer of the Church, to receive its orientation towards God from the words
that it hears and says. The heart’s gaze must go out to the Lord, who is among us:
it is a fundamental requirement.
When we experience the liturgy with this basic
attitude, it is as if our heart is freed from the force of gravity, which drags it
down, and from within rises upwards, towards truth and love, towards God. As the Catechism
of the Catholic Church recalls: " In the sacramental liturgy of the Church, the mission
of Christ and of the Holy Spirit proclaims, makes present, and communicates the mystery
of salvation, which is continued in the heart that prays. The spiritual writers sometimes
compare the heart to an altar. "(No. 2655): altare Dei est cor nostrum.
Dear
friends, we celebrate and live the liturgy well only if we remain in an attitude of
prayer, united to the Mystery of Christ and his dialogue as the Son with the Father.
God Himself teaches us to pray, as St. Paul writes (cf. Rom 8:26). He Himself has
given us the right words to hear to Him, words that we find in the Psalter, in the
great prayers of the liturgy and in the same Eucharistic celebration. We pray to the
Lord to be ever more aware of the fact that the liturgy is the action of God and man;
prayer that rises from the Holy Spirit and ourselves, wholly directed to the Father,
in union with the Son of God made man (cf. Catechism the Catholic Church, n. 2564).