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  • Is the Liturgy Hitting its Target?1
  • John F. Baldovin S.J. (bio)

Introduction

I am deeply honored today to be invited to give a lecture in honor of the late Msgr. Frederick McManus. I can remember quite clearly sitting in St. Philip's Church in Clifton, NJ sometime in the Spring of 1965, listening to an expert who had been at Vatican II speak of the new Liturgy Constitution. I was a high school senior at the time and had accompanied my older sister, who was a religious education teacher, to this session being run by Msgr. Frank Rodimer, a former student of Fred's and the chancellor of the Paterson Diocese. It was the first talk I had ever heard on the liturgy and its impact has stayed with me up to this very day. Fred McManus was a splendid spokesman for the liturgical reform. I got to know him better in the mid-1990's when I was asked to join the then "Advisory Committee" of ICEL (the International Commission on English in the Liturgy) which Fred had helped to found. Some thirty years after my first encounter with him I found him to be just as eloquent a proponent of the Vatican II vision of liturgical reform. He was an excellent priest, a fine scholar, a wonderful administrator, a remarkable tennis fan, and best and most important of all—a real Christian gentleman.

I hope that what I have to say today does him honor. [End Page 453]

1. What is Liturgy's Target?

I trust that you realize I have deliberately left my subject somewhat open in terms of defining liturgy's target. Just what is liturgy's target? My title really is somewhat disingenuous because can be a mistake to speak of liturgy's target in the singular. Or—at the very least—we have to acknowledge from the start that liturgy's target is multifaceted. As Sacrosanctum Concilium # 8 makes clear the main object of the liturgy is two-fold: the glorification of God and the sanctification of human beings. Similarly the multifaceted nature of the liturgy is expressed in the Council's language of summit and source. The liturgy does not meet its goal or target unless it is acting as the summit of our ordinary activity and at the same time is enabling us to live the Christian life.

I think it is safe to say that a great deal of effort has recently been expended in emphasizing the liturgy as the glorification of God. As SC #33 puts it, "the liturgy is above all the worship of the divine majesty." Our ultimate goal as human beings is to become adorers of God, as the First Principle and Foundation of St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises suggests and as the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann put so memorably, our vocation is to become homo adorans.2 Of course SC #33 continues by saying that the liturgy has an educative function. And I think we need to understand that in a rather holistic fashion: educative not merely as informative but as formative of the whole person. Here we are in the domain of that beautiful line of Irenaeus: "Gloria Dei, vivens homo. Vita autem hominis, visio Dei."3 Or to phrase it another way, a theology that is not properly theological and anthropological at the same time will be found wanting. The same can be said for liturgy. The sanctification of human beings is not an entirely different project from that of glorifying God. The two have to go hand in hand. To sanctify human beings is to glorify God and God is not glorified when human beings are not being sanctified.

In this essay I will be concentrating on that side of the equation which aims more explicitly at the sanctification of God's people. [End Page 454]

Before I move in that direction, however, I should say at least a word about the new translation of the Sacramentary portion of the Roman Missal. The prayers of the Roman Missal have been translated according to a new strategy, given by the 2000 Vatican document, Liturgiam Authenticam.4 This document, as well as...

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