Liturgical Piety--or lack thereof

I returned last week from a meeting of the 'Sacred Music Symposium' organized by some priests of the diocese of Marquette, Michigan. I have been offering presentation on the connection of music and morality, and these have been quite well-received, which is gratifying.

This year, we also read and discussed "Liturgical Piety" by Louis Bouyer. This is a classic book in many senses. I can hardly wait to read it again for his insights on the great mystery of our salvation and its celebration in the Divine Liturgy.

On the other hand, there is a whimsical feeling that goes with reading the enthusiasms of the Liturgical Movement in the 1950's. I don't have hard data on this, but I can't imagine that Fr. Bouyer would have been pleased with where the liturgy has gone in the past 50 years. He only died a few years ago, so he surely had an opinion.

One of the most striking aspects of the lack of liturgical piety, properly understood, is that, for all the talk of full and active participation, my impression is that we are not necessarily participating in the same meaning at Mass. This points to a failure in the Liturgical Movement, one of whose goes was to educate all believers in the meaning of the sacramental actions so that participation would be intelligent and this intelligence in turn would be formed by the actual requirements of the liturgy itself, rather than on popular devotional piety (the rosary, the Stations of the Cross, etc--all of which are fine personal devotions, but are not essential as the liturgy is).

Being out in a parish for two days brought this home to me. To give but one example: even though Rome has quite recently given clear directives on the proper reception of Holy Communion, there remains an astonishing variety of personal expression at these moments: people making various gestures and assuming various postures, responding with their own versions of "Amen" (e.g. "Thank you, Jesus!" "Amen forever!") and so on. Now, we obviously want a personal response to our Lord. What is misunderstood here is that we need our personal response to be shaped by the liturgy. Otherwise, we fail to 'be renewed in our minds' as St. Paul exhorts us in Romans and elsewhere in similar phrases. We risk indulging in our own sense of propriety at the expense of God's wishes. We may believe that we are serving Him better and more authentically, but is it not truly the case that the acceptable friend or servant is the one who does what is asked of him? When God's Church proposes actions for us, shouldn't we with gratitude do those actions with simplicity and reverence? Blessed are we, says Baruch, for we know what is pleasing to God. But don't we risk losing that blessing by self-expression?

Here, we priests must share in the blame, as it is obviously all too frequent that we take liberties with the received instructions for the Mass and for other sacraments and so give the impression that a supposed authenticity of expression is to be preferred to simple and grateful obedience to God's will.

This is a more complex issue than I am presenting it here, and to cover it fully, I would like to explore a bit more the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding Church renewals and so on, but the basic thrust of what I have written I stand behind: the true piety of the believer is by definition based on the Faith and the Faith is something we receive and not something we shape by our own preferences and perceived 'needs'.