LITURGICAL AND SACRAMENTAL LIFE
The Community insists upon a liturgical piety. It requires of us a participation that is ever more intimate to the liturgy of the Church.
In the liturgy Christ is made present by giving himself to each one of us and the soul listens in a more authentic way to the divine Word; in participation in the liturgy, this divine Word returns to be a creating Word for the soul It is in the liturgy that God himself comes to you, transforming you in love, assimilating you into Himself, He who is Love.
OUR MONASTIC LIFE DEPENDS UPON LITURGY. BUT WHAT IS LITURGY?
It is the act by which God becomes part of time and unites present things to those of the past so that the present things become the efficacious sign - 'sacramentum' - of his presence and of his action.
The liturgical mystery is always the real presence of Christ: It is He, in fact, who prays, it is He who sacrifices Himself.
Christ through the Liturgy is totally present for us, but under a sign which conceals Him.
I ought to live my union with God and realize my monastic life in that union with Christ, accepting this 'sign', living my contact with Christ through this 'sacramentality'.
My life is dependent on the liturgy, but in a more extended way one can say in dependence on the sacraments.
The true and right liturgy is the complex of those acts which most directly are sacramental; but then, even all of human life and all of Creation become a Liturgy, for the Christian who discovers all human things as sign of the divine presence, not independently of the Church but in union with the Church, which can use these realities as means either to express a sign of God's presence or as the instrument of one of His actions.
In the mystery of the liturgy the entire universe is present too, at least symbolically: all is gathered about in the liturgical act, or rather the liturgical act itself gathers everything together for the fulfillment of that which the liturgical act achieves: if it be praise, praise; if sacrifice, sacrifice.
The liturgical act thus becomes the act, so to say, not only of God but of creation, the act which achieves ultimate perfection, the final perfection of the entire universe.
The entire Church lives just the act of Christ and the act of Christ is the entire Church; and this act is never surpassed, never over and, though perfect, it can never end. It is an act which always lasts.
This is the mystery of the Church: the Church in its liturgical prayer is present as the assembly of all men, not only those living and present but also those who lived five thousand years ago; of those who are on earth and of those who are in heaven; all one, because they are all one Christ.
Certainly, the liturgy is made explicit through us, who are still mortal. However, through our presence not only is God made present in his inaccessible greatness, but also the entire Church and above all the Church Triumphant is made present.
The Church on earth is like a mysterious entrance of the visible world into the invisible one, it is the mysterious possibility for us to enter the divine world; it is the passage, it is the Easter: the passage from visible reality to invisible reality, from present reality to future reality.
It is not just being physically present in a liturgical act that counts, but it is in the passage from the visible world to God's world, where the saints already dwell, that the Church is made present for us.
Therefore, the presence of the Church which is achieved in the liturgical mystery, after having first made God present, also makes present the saints because through them God has communicated himself: This is why God and the saints are the Church. And you too are mysteriously present with them: it is a society of love to the extent that you believe, to the measure that you love.
The Church on earth is the atrium of the Church of God, it is the entrance, the door. Without this door one cannot enter. But to enter is to be part of this society: God and the saints.
In the liturgical act all the Church of heaven is made present: God, the Virgin, the Angels, the saints, the apostles: the Church in heaven is made present in the Church on earth.
For the soul that lives the Church's liturgy, the divine immensity and the divine eternity open themselves in every instance, in every place.
In the liturgy truly we overcome our loneliness, we conquer the inertia of space and of time, we break the strict bounds within which we are confined, we enter into communion with God, we live this communion with God beyond the immanence of the created world which seems to imprison us. Only the liturgy can free us, only the liturgy can save us. What saves us, in fact, is the mystery of the Cross, which is the supreme liturgy.
PARTICIPATING IN THE DIVINE LITURGY.
The Liturgical Constitution says that in liturgical prayer it is the Church which prays, and it is Christ Himself who intercedes for us and praises God.
No ecstasy can overcome in dignity and grace a conscious participation in the liturgical life. Objectively liturgical prayer surpasses all prayer whatsoever.
All the life of the Church is consumed and expresses itself in the liturgical life.
The liturgical act, which is Christ's prayer itself, is infinitely greater than our participation: it is up to us to enter into it with an ever purer participation.
No act is more beautiful, more worthy: it is the act of Jesus made present as praise and intercession. This act which consumes everything, which expresses all life present and future should become ever more our act.
Let us therefore participate in the liturgy, but with a true, authentic participation. And with this in mind let us be conscious that what we do in the liturgy is not our act, but is the act of the whole Church, of the mystic Body, it is the act of the 'Total Christ' in his unity. ('CHRISTUS TOTUS')
An active participation in the liturgy implies that we are the instrument of an action of Christ.
Whenever the liturgical group comes together - we ought to know this - Christ is present in all His reality as Son of God and Saviour of the world: present in His glorious resurrection, present in His mission as Saviour.
To live the liturgy for a Christian is not to live a norm, but to enter into the 'historia salutis', into the final fulfilling of this story of salvation which the liturgy renders present. But it is impossible to live the liturgy if we do not seek first of all to form ourselves to a Biblical spirituality.
The Bible is the key to knowing and penetrating into the mystery of salvation, into the fundamental stages of its story; and if the liturgy makes present this story in its fulfillment, in the humility of the mystery, the Bible illumines the content and the greatness of that which the liturgy makes present. Such a deep bond ties together the Bible and Liturgy.
A true liturgical renewal presupposes, therefore, a Biblical renewal: the active participation in this reform movement, which distinguishes the Church of today, requires a great love of the Word of God, a study of Holy Scripture, a profound and wise knowledge of these divine pages.
What is important above all for the goals of a liturgical renewal is that the Word of God never become only the teaching of a doctrine, but that it continues to be, for us who listen, a story and a prophecy; a story of what has happened and, a prophecy of that which ought to be fulfilled in us.
The participation in the liturgical mystery would be a shabby thing if it were only a response to a priest or a listening to a word that has now become more comprehensible just because it is read in our national language! Authentic participation is welcoming into oneself the Word, letting ourselves be moulded by it, abandoning ourselves to its divine force. The liturgical mystery is neither a representation, show, nor even a school; it is the act in which is consumed the life of the world and in which our destiny is achieved.
The act of Christ accomplished God's plan in the death on the Cross; the Christian liturgy makes present that act which now becomes your own act. The fulfilling of a sacred story which ends in Christ is made present now in you to achieve your own salvation.
Liturgy is an act of faith. The event is fulfilled also outside of the liturgy, but in the liturgy you listen to this Word and in fact, objectively, it produces a descent of God into your world, an entering of God into time, into the reality of created things: It is the Church that guarantees this.
God is always at work, but there is no better guarantee of this as the one we are given in the liturgical act.
GOD MAKES HIMSELF PRESENT: THIS IS THE LITURGY!
The Early Church could well say: 'May this world finish and may your grace come about!' And it could say this 'The Lord comes!'- because in the exercise of the liturgy, it realized this encounter with the Absolute. The encounter is immediate, and you must know it. It is He who is here and who speaks to you.
If the Community were to give to the world the testimony that we know how to pray and if others truly realized that we enter into a real communion with God, perhaps we would have given the highest and most efficacious testimony, that which is peculiar of the CFD
Let the liturgy truly be our prayer. Let us make it so that the Church liturgy become our own prayer and that the same Spirit, which renews the Church, be that which moves us to prayer!
THE VALUE OF LITURGICAL PRAYER IN ITS DEPENDENCE ON SACRED SCRIPTURE
In the reciting of the Divine Office we represent the whole praying Church 'with the same words of God'.
If the Community has as its goal the witnessing to the primacy of contemplative values, prayer necessarily is the most direct expression of this.
We ought to live of prayer, we ought to live prayer.
And we know also what prayer we ought to live (our Rule says it): it is the Liturgy. All the life of the Church is taken up with and expresses itself in the liturgical life. It is essential for all Christians and particularly for us to live the liturgical life.
The liturgical act, which is the very prayer of Christ, is infinitely greater than our participation: it is up to us to enter into it with a participation that is ever purer. No one act is higher, more worthy: it is the act of Jesus made present as praise and intercession.
This act which consumes all things, which expresses all present and future life, becomes ever more our act, as it is that of Jesus.
The reading of Holy Scripture and the Divine Office are our 'most important' prayers.
Holy Scripture eliminates at the root an equivocal mysticism. Christian mysticism always recognises the abyss between the creature and the Creator. The abyss is overcome only by God. It is He who comes to you, it is He who always overcomes the abyss. He gives Himself and it is in His gift that you can reach out to Him.
The reading of Holy Scripture makes us remain faithful to the concrete sense of the monastic life, liberates us from all false rhetoric.
Holy Scripture often has a crude and harsh language, but it is exactly what we need. It does not deceive. We often seek not to see too clearly because we would not bear the clear vision of who we are. And above all else, Holy Scripture is the Word of God. The reading of Holy Scripture is a sacramental; through this the soul communicates with the divine Word. Certainly, God reveals Himself and gives Himself to us in Christ and the Eucharistic Communion is above the reading of Holy Scripture; but after the humanity of Christ it is the word of Scripture that communicates God to us. Therefore, after the Sacraments, there is no more efficacious means of grace.
The Divine Office is Christ's very prayer; and as the priest when celebrating Mass, acts 'in persona Christi', so it happens to those who say the Office; by saying the Office we are guaranteed our mysterious but real participation in the praise of the Word.
The Liturgical Constitution says that in liturgical prayer it is the Church which prays, it is Christ Himself who intercedes for us and praises God.
In the Divine Office we associate ourselves in a mysterious, but real way with the angels, with the saints, and we participate, as much as we can participate as human, created beings, in the praise itself of the Word.
Certainly, our participation is faulty, but no ecstasy is greater in dignity and grace to a conscious participation in the liturgical life.
The Divine Office remains the hinge of our daily life. It gives meaning, it gives value of adoration and of praise to all of our activities.
The prayer of the Church cannot be other than that of Christ. He has made us participate in His life so fully that the prayer of Christ and of the Church is one. And the Word of the Church, in its prayer, is the pure Word of God, the inspired Word.
How great is the dignity of prayer! In the saying of the Divine Office we are not just praying on our own, but the entire Church prays through us: the prayer that we say is the very word of God! The Word of God multiplies itself for us in so many words, but in reality it is only one Word and its nature aims towards unity, to become one: across all the words, we in some way live that which the priest lives when he offers not bread and wine, but the Body, the Blood, the Soul and the Divinity of Christ to the Father, because the word is the Word, is Christ.
The content of all Sacred Scripture is not other than Jesus. Through the inspired word, as we listen to Jesus and gather Him in us, so now 'we speak' Him to the Father. It is as if from us 'He went upstream to the fountain'.