57. Sacred Liturgy in God’s Plan of Salvation
1. Introduction
The term liturgy comes from the Greek ergos (work), and leiton (adjective derived from leos-laos, “the people”). In Hellenistic culture, it meant “public work”—any work performed for the common good.1
In the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, leitourgia designates the duties that were to be carried out in the tabernacle of God by the tribe of Levi, of the ancient nation of Israel. They became the Levitical priesthood, and performed sacrifices on behalf of the people (cf. Nm 3:5–10). Lay people’s performance of acts of worship was referred to as latreia and douleia.
The term liturgy was used rather infrequently in the writings of the early Christians. Perhaps they found it too poor a word to designate the “mysteries,” the “sacraments,” the worship “in spirit and truth” (Jn 4:23) of the Church. Later, Christian tradition used the term to denote that the people of God took part in the mission or “work of God” (cf. Jn 17:4).2
2. What is the Liturgy?
Liturgy is the priestly action of Jesus Christ, continued in and by the Church under the direction of the Holy Spirit. In the liturgy, the Holy Spirit himself brings about his work of salvation through effective signs, thus giving both a most perfect reverence to God and salvation to mankind. The concept of liturgy includes:
· the worship of God, blessing him for all his gifts,
· the presence of Christ the priest in the liturgical action,
· the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church’s liturgy,
· the history of salvation continued and brought about through effective signs in the liturgy,
· the sanctification of mankind through the liturgical action.
3. The Liturgy: A Work of the Blessed Trinity
· God the Father is the origin and end of the liturgy.
· The glorified Christ is present in the earthly liturgy of the Church of the apostles, which participates in the heavenly liturgy.
· God the Holy Spirit brings about the mystery of Christ in the Church’s liturgy.3
4. The Liturgy: A Work of God the Father
God the Father has blessed us in his Son and given us, as his children, the Spirit of adoption.
The act of blessing is a divine action that gives life; its origin is God the Father. From the beginning, God blessed all created beings, especially man and woman. Divine blessings manifested marvelous events for the salvation of mankind: the birth of Isaac, the deliverance from Egypt, the gift of the Promised Land, and the return of the “little remnant.” God’s blessing always produces its effect. In the liturgy of the Church, the blessing of God the Father is revealed and communicated.
In a reciprocal manner, in the liturgy of the Church, God the Father is blessed and adored as the source of all the blessings of creation and salvation. Therefore, the Christian liturgy is the response of faith and love to the “spiritual blessings” with which the Father constantly enriches us. It has a dual dimension:
i) The Church, united to the Lord and “under the action of the Holy Spirit,” blesses God the Father for his ineffable gift (cf. 2 Cor 9:15).
ii) The Church unceasingly offers her own gifts to the Father “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph 1:6).
5. The Liturgy: An Action of Christ the Priest
Before the fall, Adam ordered his acts according to the will of God; he was the priest of his own existence. Through the fall, humanity’s relationship to God was severed. Mankind needed a mediator.
The Incarnation of God the Son was God’s design. Thus, Jesus (without leaving off his being God the Son) assumed human nature in his divine Person. Jesus—true God and true man—was to be the sole Mediator and priest. All the events of his life—his years in Nazareth, his public ministry, the paschal mystery of his Passion, death, and Resurrection—are an uninterrupted priestly action. This action is not merely something that happened in the past without affecting our present life; it continues in the liturgy of the Church, where Christ brings about the force of the salvation caused by his death and Resurrection and accomplishes the perfect worship of God.4
Pope Paul VI points out that Christ is present in the Church in several ways5:
· Christ is present in his Church when she prays, since he is the one who “prays for us and prays in us and the one to whom we pray: He prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our Head, he is prayed to by us as our God.”6 He promised, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20).
· Christ is present in the Church as she performs works of mercy, not just because whatever good we do to one of his least brethren we do to Christ himself (cf. Mt 25:40), but also because he is the one who performs these works through the Church and who continually helps mankind through his divine love.
· Christ is present in the Church as she travels on her pilgrimage, longing to reach the portals of eternal life, for he is the one who dwells in our hearts through faith (cf. Eph 3:17) and who instills charity in them through the Holy Spirit, whom he gives to us (cf. Rom 5:5).
· In another genuine way, Christ is present in the Church as she preaches, since the Gospel that she proclaims is the word of God, and it is only in the name of Christ, the Incarnate Word of God—by his authority, and with his help—that it is preached.
· Christ is present in the Church as she rules and governs the people of God, since her sacred power comes from him and since he, the “Shepherd of Shepherds,”7 is present in the bishops who exercise that power in keeping with the promise he made to the apostles.
· Christ is present in the liturgy of the Church as she administers the sacraments.
· Moreover, Christ is present in his Church in a still more sublime manner as she offers the sacrifice of the Mass. The divine Founder of the Church is present in the Mass in the person of his minister and, above all, he is really and sacramentally present under the Eucharistic species.
Through the liturgy, Christ carries out his priestly function (munus). Thus, the liturgy both signifies and produces sanctification.
The liturgy, then, is rightly seen as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. In it, signs perceptible to the senses signify and accomplish man’s sanctification in ways appropriate to each of these signs. Thus, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, the Head and its members, performs full public worship.
It follows that every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the Priest and his Body, which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others.8
The liturgy is the work of the whole Christ, head and body. Our high priest celebrates it unceasingly in the heavenly liturgy, with the holy Mother of God, the apostles, all the saints, and the multitude of those who have already entered the kingdom.9
5a) The Paschal Mystery of Christ Becomes Present in the Liturgy
From the very beginning, God decided to save humanity. His mysterious plan unfolded in stages.
i) The Old Testament is the first stage of the history of salvation. It is the time of the prophecy, or announcement, of God’s mystery (cf. Col 1:26).
ii) With Jesus, the announcement became reality. This was the fullness of time in which Christ reconciled humanity with God and performed a perfect act of worship with his sacrifice. The salvation that Christ accomplished for us took place, above all, in the paschal mystery of his Passion, death, and Resurrection.
iii) The third stage is the time of the Church, in which the Church—Christ’s body—communicates God’s salvation to humanity. In this third stage, the paschal mystery is made present and brought about in the liturgy through the sacramental system. Thus, these three realities (paschal mystery, salvation, and liturgy) are inseparable.
6. The Liturgy: An Action of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit’s mission in the liturgy of the Church is to prepare the people of God for their meeting with Christ, manifest Christ, bring about Christ’s work of salvation, and carry out the gift of communion in the Church.
(1) The Holy Spirit prepares the Church to receive the life of the risen Christ. The Holy Spirit brings about the figures of the Old Covenant in the sacraments; what was a symbol is now a reality. Thus, Noah’s ark—saved from the Deluge—and the crossing of the Red Sea prefigured salvation through Baptism (cf. 1 Pt 3:20–21). The water gushing out of the rock was the figure of the spiritual gifts of Christ (cf. 1 Cor 10:1–6). The manna of the desert prefigured the Eucharist, “the true bread from heaven” (Jn 6:32). All these events were preparation for the mystery of Christ. In the liturgy of the Church, through the readings of the Old Testament and the singing of the Psalms, the old events are remembered and revived. This preparation of the hearts is a work of the Holy Spirit.
(2) The Holy Spirit manifests the mystery of Christ, eliciting the faith of the believers. In the liturgy, the Holy Spirit and the Church cooperate to manifest Christ and his work of salvation.
The Eucharist (and the other sacraments analogously) is a memorial of the mystery of salvation.
The announcement of the word is not merely “information”; it demands a “response of faith,” which implies a personal commitment. The Holy Spirit gives the right dispositions to the listeners to understand the word of God and make it part of their lives.
The liturgical celebrations often remind the faithful of God’s interventions throughout the history of salvation; the Anamnesis of the liturgy is this “bringing to our memories” of these events. Thus, the Holy Spirit gives the grace of faith to the faithful, and the liturgical assembly becomes a community of faith that praises God—Doxology.
(3) Through his own transforming power, the Holy Spirit makes present and brings about the work of Christ’s salvation. The Christian liturgy is not merely a remembrance of the events of our salvation; it actualizes them and brings them about.
The Epiclesis (“invocation over”) is the intercession by which the priest asks God the Father to send the sanctifying Spirit so that he may transform the offerings into the body and blood of Christ. He also asks that the faithful, upon receiving these, transform themselves into a living gift to God.
(4) The Holy Spirit unites the Church to the life and mission of Christ. Through the liturgy, the Holy Spirit implants in the Church the spirit of communion of people among themselves and with the Blessed Trinity. Thus, the liturgy can produce its fruits in the life of the faithful: the new life according to the Spirit, commitment to the mission of the Church, and service to her unity.
In the liturgy, the Holy Spirit unites the Church to Christ’s life and mission of salvation. Thus, the liturgy, a work of Christ, is also an action of the Holy Spirit and his Church.
7. The Liturgy: A Sanctifying Reality
On the day of Pentecost, the Church was manifested to the world. The Holy Spirit inaugurated a new era—the time of the Church. During this time, Christ manifests, brings about, and communicates his work of salvation through the liturgy of the Church—the sacramental system—“until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26).
In obedience to her Founder’s behest, the Church prolongs the priestly mission of Jesus Christ mainly by means of the sacred liturgy. It does this, most of all, at the altar, where the sacrifice of the cross is constantly reenacted. Along with the Church, her divine Founder is present at every liturgical function giving fitting worship to God.
The concept of liturgy in the New Testament is singular. The major element of the Christian liturgy is not what man does, but what God accomplishes in Jesus Christ through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
It is an error to think that the liturgy is only the outward or visible part of divine worship, or that it is just an ornamental ceremony with a list of laws and prescriptions according to which the ecclesiastical authority orders the sacred rites to be performed.
God cannot be honored worthily unless the mind and the heart turn to him in quest of the perfect life, which unites work and adoration. The liturgy—the adoration rendered to God by the Church in union with Christ—is the most efficacious means of achieving sanctity.10
8. The Liturgy: A Sacramental Reality
Christ sent the apostles not only to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, but also to accomplish the very work of salvation that they announced. “This work of salvation which they preached should be accomplished through the sacrifice and the sacraments, around which the entire liturgical life revolves.”11
Theoretically, human salvation could have been accomplished through subjective relations of God and mankind. In reality, God wanted to dispense his salvation through objective and symbolic (i.e., sacramental) realities. Through these realities—the sacraments—God communicates his life and salvation to mankind, and mankind has access to God.
In the liturgy, Christ’s mystery of salvation becomes present through the power of the Holy Spirit. Christ’s body (the Church) is a kind of sacrament (i.e., sign and instrument) in which and through which the Holy Spirit bestows the mystery of salvation.
“Seated at the right hand of the Father” and pouring the Holy Spirit over his body, the Church, Christ acts now through the sacraments. Instituted by Christ, the sacraments are sensible signs (words and actions) that actually confer the grace that they signify. With the sacraments of the liturgy, the history of salvation is continued and brought about through effective signs.
9. The Liturgy: A Didactic Reality
The liturgy has always been an ecclesial school to nourish faith and foster the formation of the Christian people. The religious formation of a significant part of the faithful takes place through their participation in Sunday Mass, baptismal, funeral, and matrimonial liturgy.
A sacramental celebration is intertwined with signs and symbols. The significance of the sacraments is rooted in the work of creation and in human culture, outlined in the events of the Old Covenant and fully revealed in the Person and work of Christ. Such is the divine pedagogy of salvation.12
The pedagogical aspect of the liturgy is conveyed through:
· its content: the great themes of the history of salvation and revelation are offered,
· its structure: the Liturgy of the Word (readings and homily) prepares the faithful to understand the essence of the sacrament,
· its language, which is addressed to the entire person (intelligence, will, emotions, and intuition) through various elements (words, songs, meditation, postures, gestures, movements, vestments, and colors),
· its “climate” of prayer and active participation, which helps to elicit, transmit, and strengthen the faith.13
Footnotes:
1. Cf. CCC, 1066–1209.
2. Cf. Ibid., 1069.
3. Cf. Ibid., 1077–1112.
4. Cf. SC, 5–7.
5. Cf. Paul VI, Enc. Mysterium Fidei, 35–38.
6. St. Augustine, On Psalm 85.1, PL 37.1081.
7. St. Augustine, On Psalm 86.3, PL 37.1102.
8. SC, 7.
9. CCC, 1187.
10. Cf. Pius XII, Enc. Mediator Dei, 25–26.
11. SC, 6.
12. Cf. CCC, 1145–1152, 1189.
13. Cf. J.A. Abad Ibañez, M. Garrido Bolaño, O.S.B., Iniciación a la Liturgia de la Iglesia; SC, 33.
The term liturgy comes from the Greek ergos (work), and leiton (adjective derived from leos-laos, “the people”). In Hellenistic culture, it meant “public work”—any work performed for the common good.1
In the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, leitourgia designates the duties that were to be carried out in the tabernacle of God by the tribe of Levi, of the ancient nation of Israel. They became the Levitical priesthood, and performed sacrifices on behalf of the people (cf. Nm 3:5–10). Lay people’s performance of acts of worship was referred to as latreia and douleia.
The term liturgy was used rather infrequently in the writings of the early Christians. Perhaps they found it too poor a word to designate the “mysteries,” the “sacraments,” the worship “in spirit and truth” (Jn 4:23) of the Church. Later, Christian tradition used the term to denote that the people of God took part in the mission or “work of God” (cf. Jn 17:4).2
2. What is the Liturgy?
Liturgy is the priestly action of Jesus Christ, continued in and by the Church under the direction of the Holy Spirit. In the liturgy, the Holy Spirit himself brings about his work of salvation through effective signs, thus giving both a most perfect reverence to God and salvation to mankind. The concept of liturgy includes:
· the worship of God, blessing him for all his gifts,
· the presence of Christ the priest in the liturgical action,
· the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church’s liturgy,
· the history of salvation continued and brought about through effective signs in the liturgy,
· the sanctification of mankind through the liturgical action.
3. The Liturgy: A Work of the Blessed Trinity
· God the Father is the origin and end of the liturgy.
· The glorified Christ is present in the earthly liturgy of the Church of the apostles, which participates in the heavenly liturgy.
· God the Holy Spirit brings about the mystery of Christ in the Church’s liturgy.3
4. The Liturgy: A Work of God the Father
God the Father has blessed us in his Son and given us, as his children, the Spirit of adoption.
The act of blessing is a divine action that gives life; its origin is God the Father. From the beginning, God blessed all created beings, especially man and woman. Divine blessings manifested marvelous events for the salvation of mankind: the birth of Isaac, the deliverance from Egypt, the gift of the Promised Land, and the return of the “little remnant.” God’s blessing always produces its effect. In the liturgy of the Church, the blessing of God the Father is revealed and communicated.
In a reciprocal manner, in the liturgy of the Church, God the Father is blessed and adored as the source of all the blessings of creation and salvation. Therefore, the Christian liturgy is the response of faith and love to the “spiritual blessings” with which the Father constantly enriches us. It has a dual dimension:
i) The Church, united to the Lord and “under the action of the Holy Spirit,” blesses God the Father for his ineffable gift (cf. 2 Cor 9:15).
ii) The Church unceasingly offers her own gifts to the Father “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph 1:6).
5. The Liturgy: An Action of Christ the Priest
Before the fall, Adam ordered his acts according to the will of God; he was the priest of his own existence. Through the fall, humanity’s relationship to God was severed. Mankind needed a mediator.
The Incarnation of God the Son was God’s design. Thus, Jesus (without leaving off his being God the Son) assumed human nature in his divine Person. Jesus—true God and true man—was to be the sole Mediator and priest. All the events of his life—his years in Nazareth, his public ministry, the paschal mystery of his Passion, death, and Resurrection—are an uninterrupted priestly action. This action is not merely something that happened in the past without affecting our present life; it continues in the liturgy of the Church, where Christ brings about the force of the salvation caused by his death and Resurrection and accomplishes the perfect worship of God.4
Pope Paul VI points out that Christ is present in the Church in several ways5:
· Christ is present in his Church when she prays, since he is the one who “prays for us and prays in us and the one to whom we pray: He prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our Head, he is prayed to by us as our God.”6 He promised, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20).
· Christ is present in the Church as she performs works of mercy, not just because whatever good we do to one of his least brethren we do to Christ himself (cf. Mt 25:40), but also because he is the one who performs these works through the Church and who continually helps mankind through his divine love.
· Christ is present in the Church as she travels on her pilgrimage, longing to reach the portals of eternal life, for he is the one who dwells in our hearts through faith (cf. Eph 3:17) and who instills charity in them through the Holy Spirit, whom he gives to us (cf. Rom 5:5).
· In another genuine way, Christ is present in the Church as she preaches, since the Gospel that she proclaims is the word of God, and it is only in the name of Christ, the Incarnate Word of God—by his authority, and with his help—that it is preached.
· Christ is present in the Church as she rules and governs the people of God, since her sacred power comes from him and since he, the “Shepherd of Shepherds,”7 is present in the bishops who exercise that power in keeping with the promise he made to the apostles.
· Christ is present in the liturgy of the Church as she administers the sacraments.
· Moreover, Christ is present in his Church in a still more sublime manner as she offers the sacrifice of the Mass. The divine Founder of the Church is present in the Mass in the person of his minister and, above all, he is really and sacramentally present under the Eucharistic species.
Through the liturgy, Christ carries out his priestly function (munus). Thus, the liturgy both signifies and produces sanctification.
The liturgy, then, is rightly seen as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. In it, signs perceptible to the senses signify and accomplish man’s sanctification in ways appropriate to each of these signs. Thus, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, the Head and its members, performs full public worship.
It follows that every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the Priest and his Body, which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others.8
The liturgy is the work of the whole Christ, head and body. Our high priest celebrates it unceasingly in the heavenly liturgy, with the holy Mother of God, the apostles, all the saints, and the multitude of those who have already entered the kingdom.9
5a) The Paschal Mystery of Christ Becomes Present in the Liturgy
From the very beginning, God decided to save humanity. His mysterious plan unfolded in stages.
i) The Old Testament is the first stage of the history of salvation. It is the time of the prophecy, or announcement, of God’s mystery (cf. Col 1:26).
ii) With Jesus, the announcement became reality. This was the fullness of time in which Christ reconciled humanity with God and performed a perfect act of worship with his sacrifice. The salvation that Christ accomplished for us took place, above all, in the paschal mystery of his Passion, death, and Resurrection.
iii) The third stage is the time of the Church, in which the Church—Christ’s body—communicates God’s salvation to humanity. In this third stage, the paschal mystery is made present and brought about in the liturgy through the sacramental system. Thus, these three realities (paschal mystery, salvation, and liturgy) are inseparable.
6. The Liturgy: An Action of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit’s mission in the liturgy of the Church is to prepare the people of God for their meeting with Christ, manifest Christ, bring about Christ’s work of salvation, and carry out the gift of communion in the Church.
(1) The Holy Spirit prepares the Church to receive the life of the risen Christ. The Holy Spirit brings about the figures of the Old Covenant in the sacraments; what was a symbol is now a reality. Thus, Noah’s ark—saved from the Deluge—and the crossing of the Red Sea prefigured salvation through Baptism (cf. 1 Pt 3:20–21). The water gushing out of the rock was the figure of the spiritual gifts of Christ (cf. 1 Cor 10:1–6). The manna of the desert prefigured the Eucharist, “the true bread from heaven” (Jn 6:32). All these events were preparation for the mystery of Christ. In the liturgy of the Church, through the readings of the Old Testament and the singing of the Psalms, the old events are remembered and revived. This preparation of the hearts is a work of the Holy Spirit.
(2) The Holy Spirit manifests the mystery of Christ, eliciting the faith of the believers. In the liturgy, the Holy Spirit and the Church cooperate to manifest Christ and his work of salvation.
The Eucharist (and the other sacraments analogously) is a memorial of the mystery of salvation.
The announcement of the word is not merely “information”; it demands a “response of faith,” which implies a personal commitment. The Holy Spirit gives the right dispositions to the listeners to understand the word of God and make it part of their lives.
The liturgical celebrations often remind the faithful of God’s interventions throughout the history of salvation; the Anamnesis of the liturgy is this “bringing to our memories” of these events. Thus, the Holy Spirit gives the grace of faith to the faithful, and the liturgical assembly becomes a community of faith that praises God—Doxology.
(3) Through his own transforming power, the Holy Spirit makes present and brings about the work of Christ’s salvation. The Christian liturgy is not merely a remembrance of the events of our salvation; it actualizes them and brings them about.
The Epiclesis (“invocation over”) is the intercession by which the priest asks God the Father to send the sanctifying Spirit so that he may transform the offerings into the body and blood of Christ. He also asks that the faithful, upon receiving these, transform themselves into a living gift to God.
(4) The Holy Spirit unites the Church to the life and mission of Christ. Through the liturgy, the Holy Spirit implants in the Church the spirit of communion of people among themselves and with the Blessed Trinity. Thus, the liturgy can produce its fruits in the life of the faithful: the new life according to the Spirit, commitment to the mission of the Church, and service to her unity.
In the liturgy, the Holy Spirit unites the Church to Christ’s life and mission of salvation. Thus, the liturgy, a work of Christ, is also an action of the Holy Spirit and his Church.
7. The Liturgy: A Sanctifying Reality
On the day of Pentecost, the Church was manifested to the world. The Holy Spirit inaugurated a new era—the time of the Church. During this time, Christ manifests, brings about, and communicates his work of salvation through the liturgy of the Church—the sacramental system—“until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26).
In obedience to her Founder’s behest, the Church prolongs the priestly mission of Jesus Christ mainly by means of the sacred liturgy. It does this, most of all, at the altar, where the sacrifice of the cross is constantly reenacted. Along with the Church, her divine Founder is present at every liturgical function giving fitting worship to God.
The concept of liturgy in the New Testament is singular. The major element of the Christian liturgy is not what man does, but what God accomplishes in Jesus Christ through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
It is an error to think that the liturgy is only the outward or visible part of divine worship, or that it is just an ornamental ceremony with a list of laws and prescriptions according to which the ecclesiastical authority orders the sacred rites to be performed.
God cannot be honored worthily unless the mind and the heart turn to him in quest of the perfect life, which unites work and adoration. The liturgy—the adoration rendered to God by the Church in union with Christ—is the most efficacious means of achieving sanctity.10
8. The Liturgy: A Sacramental Reality
Christ sent the apostles not only to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, but also to accomplish the very work of salvation that they announced. “This work of salvation which they preached should be accomplished through the sacrifice and the sacraments, around which the entire liturgical life revolves.”11
Theoretically, human salvation could have been accomplished through subjective relations of God and mankind. In reality, God wanted to dispense his salvation through objective and symbolic (i.e., sacramental) realities. Through these realities—the sacraments—God communicates his life and salvation to mankind, and mankind has access to God.
In the liturgy, Christ’s mystery of salvation becomes present through the power of the Holy Spirit. Christ’s body (the Church) is a kind of sacrament (i.e., sign and instrument) in which and through which the Holy Spirit bestows the mystery of salvation.
“Seated at the right hand of the Father” and pouring the Holy Spirit over his body, the Church, Christ acts now through the sacraments. Instituted by Christ, the sacraments are sensible signs (words and actions) that actually confer the grace that they signify. With the sacraments of the liturgy, the history of salvation is continued and brought about through effective signs.
9. The Liturgy: A Didactic Reality
The liturgy has always been an ecclesial school to nourish faith and foster the formation of the Christian people. The religious formation of a significant part of the faithful takes place through their participation in Sunday Mass, baptismal, funeral, and matrimonial liturgy.
A sacramental celebration is intertwined with signs and symbols. The significance of the sacraments is rooted in the work of creation and in human culture, outlined in the events of the Old Covenant and fully revealed in the Person and work of Christ. Such is the divine pedagogy of salvation.12
The pedagogical aspect of the liturgy is conveyed through:
· its content: the great themes of the history of salvation and revelation are offered,
· its structure: the Liturgy of the Word (readings and homily) prepares the faithful to understand the essence of the sacrament,
· its language, which is addressed to the entire person (intelligence, will, emotions, and intuition) through various elements (words, songs, meditation, postures, gestures, movements, vestments, and colors),
· its “climate” of prayer and active participation, which helps to elicit, transmit, and strengthen the faith.13
Footnotes:
1. Cf. CCC, 1066–1209.
2. Cf. Ibid., 1069.
3. Cf. Ibid., 1077–1112.
4. Cf. SC, 5–7.
5. Cf. Paul VI, Enc. Mysterium Fidei, 35–38.
6. St. Augustine, On Psalm 85.1, PL 37.1081.
7. St. Augustine, On Psalm 86.3, PL 37.1102.
8. SC, 7.
9. CCC, 1187.
10. Cf. Pius XII, Enc. Mediator Dei, 25–26.
11. SC, 6.
12. Cf. CCC, 1145–1152, 1189.
13. Cf. J.A. Abad Ibañez, M. Garrido Bolaño, O.S.B., Iniciación a la Liturgia de la Iglesia; SC, 33.