But is there any doubt that You want my good will to give You more than this? You want my mind and heart to profit by the riches hidden in the Liturgy and thus be more united to Your Church and come thereby to a closer union with Yourself.
Good Master, the example of Your most faithful servants makes me eager to come and sit down at the splendid feast to which the Church invites me, certain that I will find, in the Divine Office, in the forms, ceremonies, collects, epistles, gospels, and so on which accompany the holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the administration of the Sacraments, healthful and abundant food to nourish my interior life.
Let us dwell on the basic idea that ties all the elements of the Liturgy together, and the fruits by which progress may be recognized will preserve us from illusion.
Each one of the sacred rites may be compared to a precious stone. Yet how much greater will be the value and brilliance of those that belong to the Mass and Office, when I know how to enshrine them all together in that marvelous setting: the liturgical cycle.
The Church, inspired by God and instructed by the Holy Apostles, has disposed the year in such a way that we may find in it, together with the life, the mysteries, the preaching and doctrine of Jesus Christ, the true fruit of all these in the admirable virtues of His servants and in the examples of His saints, and, finally, a mysterious compendium of the Old and New Testaments and of the whole of Ecclesiastical History. And thus, all the seasons are full of rich fruits for a Christian; all are full of Jesus Christ. In this variety, which all together leads up to that single unity recommended by Christ, the clean and pious soul will find, together with celestial pleasures, solid nourishment and an everlasting renewal of fervor. (Bossuet: Funeral Sermon on Maria Theresia of Austria).
When my soul lives, throughout a certain period of time, under the influence of a mystery, and is nourished by all that Scripture and tradition offer that is most instructive in this subject, and is constantly directed and made attentive to the same order of ideas, it must necessarily be influenced by this concentration, and find in the thoughts suggested by the Church a food as nourishing as it is delightful, and which will prepare it to receive that special grace which God reserves for each period, each Feast of the Cycle.
The Mystery comes to fill me not only as an abstract truth, absorbed in meditation, but gripping my whole being, bringing into play even my sense faculties, to stir up my heart and direct my will. It is more than a mere commemoration of some past event, or an ordinary anniversary: it is living actuality with all the character of a present event to which the Church gives an application here and now, and in which she really and truly takes part.
For instance, in the Christmas Season, rejoicing before the altar at the coming of the Holy Child, my soul can repeat: “Today Christ is born, today the Savior has appeared, today the angels sing on earth . . .
Hodie Christus natus est, hodie Salvator apparuit, hodie in terra canunt angeli . . . (Office of Christmas).
At each period in the liturgical Cycle, my Missal and Breviary disclose to me new rays of the love of Him Who is for us at the same time Teacher, Doctor, Consoler, Savior, and Friend. On the Altar, just as at Bethlehem or Nazareth, or on the shore of the Lake of Tiberias, Jesus reveals Himself as Light, Love, Kindness, and Mercy. He reveals Himself above all as Love personified, because He is Suffering personified, in agony at Gethsemani, atoning on Calvary.
And so the liturgical life gives the Eucharistic life its full development. And Your Incarnation, O Jesus, that brought God close to us, making Him visible to us in You, continues to do the very same thing for us all, in each of the mysteries that we celebrate.
So it is, dear Lord, that thanks to the Liturgy, I can share in the Church’s life and in Your own. With her, every year, I witness the mysteries of Your Hidden life, Your Public life, Life of Suffering, and Life in Glory; and with her, I cull the fruits of them all. Besides, the periodic feasts of Our Lady and the Saints who have best imitated Your interior Life bring me, also, an increase of light and strength by placing their example before my eyes, helping me to reproduce Your virtues in myself and to inspire the faithful with the spirit of Your Gospel.
How am I to carry out, in my apostolate, the desire of Pius X? How are the faithful going to be helped, by me, to enter into an active participation in the Holy Mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of the Church
In the very first year of his pontificate, on November 22, 1903, Pius X issued his celebrated motu proprio on Sacred Music, here quoted by Dom Chautard. The passage, in full, runs:
“We believe it our first duty to raise our voice, without further delay, to reprove and condemn everything, which in the functions of the cult and the celebration of the offices of the Church, departs from the right rule which has been laid down. For it is, in fact, our keen desire that the true Christian spirit may once more flourish, cost what it may, and be maintained among all the faithful: and to that end it is necessary to provide, above all, that everything be holy and dignified in the church where the faithful gather together to draw this spirit from its prime and indispensable source: the active participation in the sacrosanct mysteries and the public and solemn prayer of the Church. For it is vain for us to hope to bring down upon ourselves, to this end, the abundance of the blessings of heaven if our homage to the Most High, instead of rising in an odor of sweetness, on the contrary places in the hand of the Lord the scourge with which our Divine Redeemer once chased the vile profaners from the Temple.”
which that Pope called the PRIME AND INDISPENSABLE SOURCE of the true Christian spirit, if I myself pass by the treasures of the Liturgy without even suspecting what wonders are to be found therein?
If I am going to put more unity into my spiritual life, and unite myself still more to the life of the Church, I will aim at tying up all my other pious exercises with the Liturgy, as far as I possibly can. For instance, I will give preference to a subject for meditation which has a connection with the liturgical period, or feast, or cycle. In my visits to the Blessed Sacrament, I will converse more readily, according to the season, with the Child Jesus, Jesus suffering, Jesus glorified, Jesus living in His Church, and so on. Private reading on the Mystery or on the life of the Saint being honored at the time will also contribute much to this plan for a liturgical spirituality.
My adorable Master, deliver me from all fake liturgical life. It is ruinous to the interior life, above all because it weakens the spiritual combat.
Preserve me from a piety which would have the liturgical life consist in a lot of poetic thrills, or in an intriguing study of religious archaeology, or else which leads to quietism and its awful consequences; for quietism strikes at the very roots of the interior life: fear, hope, the desire of salvation, and of perfection, the fight against faults and labor to acquire virtue.
Make me really convinced that in this age of absorbing and dangerous occupations, the liturgical life, no matter how perfect it may be, can never dispense anyone from morning mental prayer.
Keep far from me all sentimentality and fake piety which make the liturgical life consist in impressions and emotions, and leave the will the slave of the imagination and feelings.
Not that You want me to remain cold to all the beauty and poetry which the Liturgy contains. Far from it! The Church uses her chant and her ceremonies to appeal to the sense faculties, and to reach, through them, the souls of her children more fully, and to give to their wills a more effective presentation of the true goods, and raise them up more surely, more easily, and more completely to God.
I can therefore enjoy all the changeless, wholesome refreshment of dogma thrown into relief by Liturgy, and let myself be moved by the majestic spectacle of a solemn High Mass, and esteem the prayers of absolution of the touching rites of Baptism, Extreme Unction, the Burial Service, and so on.
But I must never lose sight of the fact that all the resources offered by the holy Liturgy are nothing but means to arrive at the sole end of all interior life: to put to death the “old man” that You, Jesus, may reign in his place.
I will, therefore, be leading a genuine liturgical life if I am so penetrated with the spirit of the Liturgy that I use my Mass, Prayers, and Official Rites to intensify my union with the Church, and thus to progress in my participation in the interior Life of Jesus Christ, and hence in His virtues, so that I will give a truer reflection of Him in the eyes of the faithful.
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