Understanding the liturgy begins with experiencing and living it, said a Belgian cardinal."Understanding the liturgy is far more than a cognitive exercise; it is a loving 'entering in,'" said Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Mechelen-Brussels, Belgium, in a talk on liturgical renewal Oct. 25 at The Catholic University of America.
"The uniqueness of the liturgy is that it gives pride of place to experience.... First experience, first live the liturgy, then reflect and explain it," said the cardinal, who as a young theologian and liturgical expert in the 1960s was involved in drafting the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.
"The liturgy is first God's work on us, before it is our work on God," he said. "The acting subject of the liturgy is the risen Christ…. The liturgy is the continuation of his incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection." ---Cardinal Godfried Danneels
He said those who did not experience the liturgy before the council must have difficulty now imagining how much it has changed in less than half a century, since today "the new liturgical model is evident practically everywhere."
He noted that one major change after the council was in "the relationship between the minister and the people."
Even church architecture, with the Communion rail separating priest and people, emphasized a distance between priest and people before the reforms, he said. The separation was so great that the liturgy often consisted of two parallel celebrations, with the priest celebrating the "official liturgy" in Latin while the people "set about their personal devotions," he added.
"The active involvement of the people in the liturgy is an unparalleled gift of the council to the people of God," he said.
While endorsing that participation, he also cautioned that "there is a shadow side" to it.
"Participation and mutual celebration can lead to a subtle form of manipulation.... Those who serve the liturgy, both priests and laity, become its owners" instead of its servants, he said. This can lead to trivializing the liturgy, eliminating the sacred and turning it from the worship it is supposed to be into a mere social event, he added.
Cardinal Danneels said the trend he was describing is not universal, but it would be wrong to ignore it in any serious attempt to evaluate the state of liturgical practice some 40 years after the council.
"The liturgy is first God's work on us, before it is our work on God," he said. "The acting subject of the liturgy is the risen Christ…. The liturgy is the continuation of his incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection."
"We attend the liturgy at God's invitation," he said. "The liturgy is not a feast we laid out for ourselves according to our own personal preferences. It is God's feast. We attend by invitation."
This does not exclude creativity in the celebration of the liturgy, and "creativity is actually called for," he said.
"The problem lies with the boundaries of our intervention. One cannot simply transform and rearrange the whole thing. Changes have to be made with intelligence."
He called a deepening understanding of the liturgy by the celebrating community one of the primary concerns of Vatican II itself and of the church since then.
In approaching the question of understanding the liturgy, Cardinal Danneels said it is important first to see what sort of understanding should be sought.
"If the liturgy is the epiphany of God's dealings with his church, then the deepest core or heart of the liturgy will never be completely open to our grasp," he said. "There is indeed a hard core in the liturgy --- the mystery --- which is ungraspable. One can only enter into it in faith."
The liturgy "is not an object of knowledge in the commonplace sense of the word," he said. "It is not an object of knowledge at all, rather it is a source of knowledge, a source of understanding.... Profound realities only gradually yield their full significance."
He said reaching this kind of understanding involves lived experience, repetition, silence, ritual, "letting the liturgy speak for itself."
"The liturgy needs time to deliver its riches," he said. "It has nothing to do with physical or clock time but with the spiritual time of the soul."
Catechesis also has an important role in understanding the liturgy, he said. But he emphasized that the liturgy itself is not the place for such catechesis: That should come afterward, reflecting and building on the lived experience of the liturgy itself through the senses, symbols, hearing the proclaimed word, ritual immersion in the Christian mysteries.
In a brief question-answer session after his talk, the cardinal was asked to comment on Pope Benedict XVI's recent decision to permit wider use of the Tridentine Mass in Latin.
In his decree, the pope said the Tridentine Mass celebrated according to the 1962 Roman Missal should be made available in every parish where groups of the faithful desire it.
He also said the Mass from the Roman Missal in use since 1970 remains the ordinary form of the Mass, while celebration of the Tridentine Mass is the extraordinary form.
Cardinal Danneels said he thought the pope did so in the hope that giving wider access to the pre-Vatican II version would draw some Catholics attached to that rite, especially the followers of the schismatic late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, back into the church.
He said he has no objections to permission for wider use of the rite --- although "in Belgium it was superfluous; people are not asking for it" --- as long as those seeking it accept other teachings of Vatican II, such as those on religious freedom.
Cardinal Danneels' talk was sponsored by Catholic University's School of Canon Law as the inaugural Msgr. Frederick R. McManus Lecture, a new series honoring one of the leading figures in Catholic liturgical renewal in the English-speaking world in the second half of the 20th century.
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