Parolin: deepening of liturgy
enables us to love our brothers and sisters
 |
| The Eucharist |
In a Letter to the 70th National Liturgical Week of Italy,
Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, conveyed the Pope's
greeting and message to the participants.
By Robin Gomes
Spreading the "liturgical formation", in order to
help the People of God love the liturgy as "an experience of encounter
with the Lord and with their brothers and sisters", aims at conversion
that enables one to love and serve others like Christ. Vatican Secretary
of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, underscores this message in a letter he sent
on behalf of Pope Francis to participants in the 70th National
Liturgical Week of Italy, which kicked off on Monday in Messina.
The theme of the August 26-29 event is “Liturgy: a call for
all to baptismal holiness.”
In the letter addressed to Bishop Claudio Maniago
Castellaneta, who is president of the Centro di Azione Liturgica (Center for
Liturgical Action), which is organizing the 4-day gathering, Cardinal Parolin
is particularly urging that “communities be helped to interiorize better the
prayer of the Church", by rediscovering its contents and observing its
rites.
According to the Vatican’s top official, a better
understanding of the meaning and symbolic language of the liturgy, particularly
Holy Mass, will help Catholics encounter the Lord and grow in
holiness.
The liturgy will be “capable of forming and transforming
those who participate in it, if pastors and laity will learn ever better to
grasp its meaning and symbolic language, including art, song and music in the
service of the mystery celebrated, including silence.”
Holiness and liturgy
The purpose of organizing the National Liturgical Week is to
underscore the importance of deepening the liturgical renewal as desired by the
Second Vatican Council.
“The theme of holiness immediately and directly invokes the
liturgy,” writes the cardinal, referring to “Sacrosanctum Concilium”, the
Council's constitution on the sacred liturgy. The Council Fathers
"insist on the fact that the liturgy, at the moment in which it
celebrates holiness, sanctifies those who participate in it" - something
with which Pope Francis agrees when he says, "the liturgy is the life for
the entire people of the Church".
“In the liturgy,” he says, “the inaccessible holiness of
God”, in fact, becomes a tangible reality in Christ which is present in and
communicated with the face of mercy, ‘agape’ and gratuitous love that the
Father pours into the hearts of believers through the gift of the Spirit,
making them live his own life.
Cardinal Parolin says that the Holy Father wishes that this
liturgical week be able to create the awareness that the liturgy is a
privileged place where the holiness of God draws us to Himself.
Christlikeness
In the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit makes us share in the
divine life that "transfigures our entire mortal being, making it capable
of loving" as Christ did, offering our lives in the service of our
brothers and sisters.
The liturgy is, in fact, "an experience aimed at the
conversion of life through the assimilation of the Lord's way of thinking and
behaving", Cardinal Parolin continues, recalling the words of Pope Francis
in February to Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of
the Sacraments. The Pope recalled that the liturgy is not something of
"do-it-yourself “, but the manifestation of the ecclesial community, where
prayers and gestures resound with “we” and not “I”.
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