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Sunday 11 November 2012

Are We Aware That Liturgy is the Salvation of the World?

Magnificat really is a nifty little publication.
It proved NOT such a great gift for Mom, as its editors seem to generally try for a little variety and on weekdays in Ordinary Time, usually go for the readings, or at least Propers of optional memorials, and our weekday parish avoids such things, trouble with bookmarks, you know; so really not much help for those who, already struggling with hearing, are saddled with mumbling, ill-prepared readers.

But I, on the other hand, am really enjoying it, particularly the devotional readings from holy men and women of whom, oft as not, I have not heard.

Madeleine Delbrel, (+1964,) a French mystic, may well have been, judging from her date of death, immersed in the Liturgical Movement, and, again judging from the date of he death, surely had no reason yet to doubt the efficacy of the ongoing Vatican Council.
"Are we aware that liturgy is the salvation of the world? [emphasis added] If... it is once again necessary [to adapt the liturgy, it is not] a question of making the liturgy more human. It already is human, and tragically so; it is the Passion of the Son of God made man, made continually present among us."
Other Catholics with a grudge against Traddies, if not against Tradition itself, like to mock the phrase I coined, "Save the liturgy, save the world," as if it expressed some sort of simplistic belief that a return to the old forms is either necessary, or worse, sufficient for the salvation of mankind.

But the fact is, it had nothing to do with the Extraordinary Form, it is nothing more, nor less, than an expression of certainty of the utter importance of the Eucharistic Liturgy and its proper execution, an expression of a belief in the Eucharistic Liturgy's primacy in the economy of salvation, an expression of solidarity with the Vatican II dictum that the Eucharistic Liturgy is the very Source and absolute Summit of our Christian life.

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