In the June 2003
BCL Newsletter...
On
May 16, 2003, the USCCB Committee on the Liturgy hosted a Forum in Commemoration of the Fortieth Anniversary of
The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium at
Conference Headquarters in Washington D.C. The Forum was entitled, The
Liturgical Renewal in the United States of America and consisted of
addresses by Monsignor James P. Moroney, Executive Director of the USCCB
Secretariat for the Liturgy (Forty Years of the BCL); Sister Doris Turek, SSND,
Staff Advisor (Inculturation and the Liturgy); Mr. Dennis McManus, Associate
Director (Translation and the Liturgy); Monsignor Anthony Sherman, Associate
Director (The Academy and the Liturgy); and Sister Janet Baxendale, SC, Advisor
(Art, Architecture and the Liturgy).
Participants
included Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine
Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments; Bishop Arthur Roche, Chairman of
the Board of Directors of the International Commission on English in the
Liturgy; representatives of national liturgy secretariats from England, Scotland,
Ireland and Australia; the directors of several national liturgical
organizations, and USCCB directors and staff. The brief presentations were
followed by two periods of open discussion; the Forum concluded with an address
by Cardinal Arinze entitled, Serving
Christ and His Church Through Liturgical Promotion.
The full text is
included here for the information of our readers.
Please accept my gratitude for
your offering me today the opportunity to listen to staff members of the USCCB
speak on the implementation of the liturgical reform in the dioceses of the United
States of America these forty years.
Sacrosanctum Concilium, being the
first of the sixteen major documents promulgated by the Second Vatican Council,
shows that the Council gave priority to the sacred liturgy. The document is in
a way sign of the hopes and prayers of the Council.
I also appreciate the
opportunity of participating in the open discussion by some of the members and
advisors of the Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy and of the invited directors
and faculty members of various liturgical organizations located in the Washington,
D.C. area. I thank all of you also in the name of the Congregation for Divine
Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments for all the effort you put into
the promotion of the sacred liturgy.
Aware that I shall, God
willing, be at the National Meeting of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical
Commissions to be held in San Antonio, Texas, next October, may I limit myself
today to the following remarks.
I begin by recalling two Gospel
encounters. The first is in the moment where, as Luke's Gospel tells us, Jesus,
on the day of his Resurrection, accompanies the disciples along the road to
Emmaus, where their hearts are fired by his conversation along the way and they
recognize him at last in the breaking of the bread.
The other is that equally
luminous moment where, as this time John's Gospel discloses, Jesus prepares a
breakfast for the disciples on the shore of Lake Galilee, telling them to cast
their net. The catch is extraordinarily great and prompts John to recognize
Jesus: It is the Lord, he says to Peter.
The first experience is one
that the Holy Father evoked in his Holy Thursday encyclical,
Ecclesia de
Eucharistia (no. 6), where he writes:
Whenever the Church celebrates the Eucharist, the
faithful can in some way relive the experience
of
the two disciples on the road to Emmaus: their
eyes were opened and they recognized him.
The recent teaching of the Holy
Father, Pope John Paul II, on the second text is well known. At the same time,
it could drift from awareness that the Holy Father refers briefly to the same
text in the Apostolic Letter,
Vicesimus quintus annus, issued to
commemorate the twenty‑fifth anniversary of the promulgation of the
Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,
Sacrosanctum Concilium. In
section III of the Letter he says:
Since the Liturgy is the exercise of the priesthood of
Christ, it is necessary to keep ever alive the affirmation of the disciple
faced with the mysterious presence of the Lord: It is the Lord. Nothing of
what we do in the Liturgy can appear more important than what in an unseen but
real manner Christ accomplishes by the power of his Spirit.
In the context, then, of the
appearances of Jesus after the Resurrection, we see the wonder, the amazement
of the disciples in the celebration of the Liturgy and in an activity that is a
metaphor for pastoral activity and in particular evangelization. For liturgical
celebration, and in particular the Eucharist, is not the whole of the Church's
life (
Sacrosanctum Concilium, nos. 9, 12) but it is the culminating
point towards which the Church's activity tends and at the same time the
fountainhead from which its strength flows (
Sacrosanctum Concilium, no.
10).
Consequently, I should like
here briefly, in Eastertime and in this year leading up to the celebration of
the 40th anniversary of the Liturgy Constitution on December 4, to link these
two documents and their concerns for a full, rich and faithful
("Catholic") celebration of the liturgy and pastoral promotion of the
Sacraments.
In doing so I should like in
particular not only to recommend the active assimilation of the recent teaching
of the Holy Father in
Ecclesia de Eucharistia, but to commend to all an
attentive re‑reading of the Letter
Vicesimus quintus annus.
I concentrate here on a few
points with which the Letter deals at some length.
- A renewal accomplished in
accord with tradition:
- Continuity with our
forebearers, our fathers in the faith, whose ancient prayers, forged in great
part
- from the Scriptures,
form the substance of our liturgical books today as they did yesterday;
- Call for our faithful
adherence, not stale nostalgia.
- The guiding principles of
the Liturgy Constitution:
- The reenactment of the
Paschal Mystery;
- The reading of the Word
of God;
- The self‑manifestation
of the Church.
- The practical applications
of the Reform:
- With forty years
experience, in a position to begin to understand better and to assess the human experience of these
years: difficulties, positive results, erroneous applications;
- Translations less
than adequate, poor music, loss of the sense of sacred, free inventions.
- The future of the renewal:
- Everywhere formation,
familiarization, and prayer, liturgical and personal;
- No future in abuses,
since there is no future in selfishness, in arbitrariness.
Both the documents to which we
have referred are concerned above all with restoring the awe, the wonderment of
the first disciples at the presence of Our Lord in the midst of their
celebration of the Eucharist and in their pastoral endeavors. That sense of
wonder can come in the midst of trials and sadness, but its natural home is not
in the trite, the lukewarm, the sordid, the selfish or the short‑sighted.
God's abundant grace comes with faith, with humility and faith-filled
liturgical celebrations.
May Our Blessed Mother, Mary,
obtain for us the grace, the joy and the peace which we all need in the promotion of the liturgical
apostolate.
With the retirement of a Bishop, the appointment of diocesan and
apostolic administrators, and the announcement of the naming of a new Bishop by
the Holy Father, the question of the naming of persons in the Eucharistic
Prayer is frequently raised.
The 1972 Decree of the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship,
Cum de nomine,
can be helpful in this regard. The Decree notes that the following persons
must
be named in the Eucharistic prayer:
- the Bishop of the diocese;
- the Bishop still retaining administration of one diocese after being
transferred to another see;
- an apostolic administrator whether the see is vacant or not with
either a temporary or permanent appointment, who is a Bishop and actually is
fully exercising his office, especially in spiritual matters;
- a vicar and prefect apostolic;
- a prelate and an abbot nullius having jurisdiction over a
territory not attached to any diocese.
The Decree also notes that "it is permitted to name in the
Eucharistic Prayer coadjutor and auxiliary Bishops who assist the Bishop of the
diocese in ruling it and others, as long as they have received the episcopal
character. If there are many such they are remembered collectively, without
mention of their names, after the name of the proper Ordinary..."
In the light of the above, the name of a Bishop‑elect is
not
to be inserted into the Eucharistic Prayer until he has taken possession of his
see.