Church’s new image is rich

Bishop Edward Risi OMI, in his column “A better Mass” (July 9-15) asks: “What makes the Mass we celebrate today better than the Mass as we knew it in pre-Vatican days?”
He points to three developments which he says make the new rite better than the old:

• The greater use of Scripture as the basis of the prayers of the liturgy.
• The greater exposition to the Scriptures through the 3-year cycle for Sundays and the 2-year cycle for weekdays.
• Simplicity in the rite’s structure.

Bishop Risi touches on but doesn’t spell out explicitly a fundamental development in the liturgy, one which lies at the heart of the changes we have come to appreciate, namely a renewed model of Church, the Church as the People of God, the Church which St Peter, in his first letter describes as “A holy nation, a royal priesthood, a people set apart to sing the praises of God”.

In a recent interview, Archbishop Piero Marini, for 20 years chief liturgical advisor to Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, said: “The Missal of Pius V nowhere makes reference to the ‘People of God’… The Tridentine liturgy…made a sharp distinction between the priest and the people of God. The liturgy became something priests do.

“Today, Vatican II helped us to rediscover the idea of the priesthood as something universal. The faithful don’t receive permission from priests to participate in the Mass. They are members of a priestly people, which means they have the right to participate in offering the sacrifice of the Mass. “This was a great discovery, the great emphasis, of the Council…” (interview with National Catholic Reporter columnist John Allen, December 2007).

The “General Instruction on the Roman Missal” reflects this new emphasis when it says: “The meaning of the [Eucharistic] Prayer is that the entire congregation of the faithful should join itself with Christ in confessing the great deeds of God and in the offering of Sacrifice” (para 78).

And in paragraph 95 it says: “In the celebration of Mass, the faithful form a holy people, a people whom God has made his own, a royal priesthood, so that they may give thanks to God and offer the spotless Victim not only through the hands of the priest but also together with him, and so that they may learn to offer themselves.”

This exciting rediscovery that it is the whole congregation which celebrates the Mass is central to the teaching of of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference in its recent publication (to which Bishop Risi refers): the “Pastoral Introduction to the Order of Mass”. To quote: “The liturgical assembly is…the gathering of God’s people to exercise its royal priesthood in the sacrifice of praise” (p 23).

The People-of-God model of Church which lies behind this teaching has enormous meaning, not only for liturgy but for every aspect of Church life. Indeed, its full implications have yet to be explored.

Noel Brennan OFM Cap, Pretoria