|
The Pope explains that “every aspect of the celebration must be carefully tended to (space, time, gestures, words, objects, vestments, song, music…) and every rubric must be observed. Such attention would be enough to prevent robbing from the assembly what is owed to it; namely, the paschal mystery celebrated according to the ritual that the Church sets down. But even if the quality and the proper action of the celebration were guaranteed, that would not be enough to make our participation full.” In fact, if “astonishment at the fact that the paschal mystery is rendered present in the concreteness of sacramental signs, we would truly risk being impermeable to the ocean of grace that floods every celebration.”
This amazement, the Pope clarifies, has nothing to do with “the vague expression ‘sense of mystery’ [which is] sometimes among the presumed chief accusations against the liturgical reform.” The amazement of which the Pope speaks of is not a kind of bewilderment before an obscure reality or an enigmatic rite, but is, “on the contrary, marveling at the fact that the salvific plan of God has been revealed in the paschal deed of Jesus.”
Pope Francis makes it very clear that Liturgy is about Christ, not the celebrant. He then observes that in Christian communities their way of living out the celebration “is conditioned — for better or, unfortunately, for worse — by the way in which their pastor presides in the assembly” and he lists several “models” of inadequate presiding, albeit of contrasting features: “rigid austerity or an exasperating creativity, a spiritualizing mysticism or a practical functionalism, a rushed briskness or an overemphasized slowness, a sloppy carelessness or an excessive finickiness, a superabundant friendliness or priestly impassibility.”
These are all models that have a single root: “a heightened personalism of the celebrating style which at times expresses a poorly concealed mania to be the center of attention,” amplified when celebrations are broadcast online. Whereas, “to preside at Eucharist is to be plunged into the furnace of God’s love. When we are given to understand this reality, or even just to intuit something of it, we certainly would no longer need a Directory that would impose the proper behavior.”
Concluding his Apostolic Letter, Pope Francis asks “all bishops, priests, and deacons, the formators in seminaries, the instructors in theological faculties and schools of theology, and all catechists to help the holy people of God to draw from what is the first wellspring of Christian spirituality,” reaffirming what is established in “Traditionis custodes” so that “the Church may lift up, in the variety of so many languages, one and the same prayer capable of expressing her unity,” and this single prayer is the Roman Rite that resulted from the conciliar reform and was established by the saintly pontiffs Paul VI and John Paul II.
The publication of this Apostolic Letter has once more lit the embers of the ecclesiological and liturgical debates currently prevalent among various factions. Among the various reactions to this document include disbelief, shock, and hurt by those who love the traditional Latin Mass; while those favorable to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council express vindication, triumph, and glee. I think we should rise above these controversies and rediscover the beauty and sacredness of the celebration.
I will be offering two sessions on this Apostolic Letter on August 11th at 10:30am St. Stephen (in person) and 7:00pm on Zoom.
Fr. Paulson
| 
