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Living the Liturgy
There is an ancient Christian saying from the Patristic Era
which is known in its most concise form as lex orandi, lex credendi. As
the Catechism of the Catholic Church translates it: “The law
of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays.”
While the elegant simplicity of the phrase contains an
abundance of wisdom, the liturgy has always been subject to forces that
threaten to reduce this understanding to partial interpretations. As several
observers have noted, these reductions include the “archeological”
approach—explicating the liturgy’s historical origins but in the process
treating it as a dead letter—and the sociological approach—focusing on liturgy
as little more than an expression of contemporary concerns.
In Living the Liturgy: A Witness, Father Luigi
Giussani (1922-2005) restores a more balanced view, reminding us that
(according to Roberto Braschi’s introduction) in the liturgy “God is its present
subject and that the essence of every celebratory action is the possibility
of a gaze toward Him—because it is always from Him that the dialogue with
humanity moves.” The memorable, bracing insights in Living the Liturgy
were taken from conversations that Father Giussani had with members of the
international lay movement he founded, Communion and Liberation.
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