Liturgical orientation of Pope Francis

Apr 06, 2015

By Fr Andrew Cameron-Mowar SJ
We see in Pope Francis someone who continues to live in the grace of the transformation brought about in him by his experience of the depths of Ignatian prayer, and also someone who, through that transformation, brings intimacy and imagination, memory and hope into everything that he does, especially when he celebrates the liturgy.

This is not a man for tearing down and for re-inventing history. There will be no major changes in liturgy. However, we remain in the process of renewal, of bringing about in their fullness the fruits of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. For Pope Francis, the promulgation is a cause for “gratitude for the profound and wide-ranging renewal of liturgical life, made possible by the conciliar Magisterium … and at the same time urges relaunched commitment to welcoming and more fully implementing this teaching.”

Thus began Pope Francis’ message to Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, then prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, on the occasion of the conclusion of the symposium Sacrosanctum Concilium. Gratitude for and Commitment to a Great Ecclesial Movement, organized by this dicastery in collaboration with the Pontifical Lateran University.

Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the developments since then “have improved our understanding of the liturgy in the light of the divine Revelation, as the ‘exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ’ in which ‘the whole public worship is performed by the mystical body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the head and his members.’ Christ is revealed as the true protagonist of every celebration, and he associates with himself ‘the Church … his beloved Bride who calls to her Lord, and through him offers worship to the Eternal Father.’ This action, which takes place through the power of the Holy Spirit, possesses a profound creative force able to attract every man and, in some way, the whole of Creation.”

“To celebrate true spiritual worship means to offer oneself as a living sacrifice, sacred and agreeable to God. A liturgy detached from spiritual worship would risk becoming empty, declining from its Christian originality to a generic sacred sense, almost magical, and a hollow aestheticism. As an action of Christ, liturgy has an inner impulse to be transformed in the sentiments of Christ, and in this dynamism all reality is transfigured.”

Pope Francis quoted Benedict XVI who, in his Lectio divina to the Pontifical Major Roman Seminary in 2012, explained that “our daily life … must be inspired, profuse, immersed in the divine reality, it must become action together with God. This does not mean that we must always be thinking of God, but that we must really be penetrated by the reality of God so that our whole life — and not only a few thoughts — may be a liturgy, may be adoration.”

Pope Francis then called for “a renewed willingness to go ahead on the path indicated by the Council Fathers, as there remains much to be done for a correct and complete assimilation of the Constitution of the Holy Liturgy on the part of the baptized and ecclesial communities. I refer, in particular, to the commitment to a solid and organic liturgical initiation and formation, both of lay faithful as well as clergy and consecrated persons”. The major contribution of Pope Francis to this process can be found in his extended writing on preaching, as found in Evangelii Gaudium.

On Homily
For those who have the task of preparing a new homily each week, this text is, I would argue, one of the most profound meditations on the life, vocation and role of a minister who preaches ever to emerge from Rome. In typical Jesuit fashion, Pope Francis takes a “365” view: exploring the power of the Gospel, the sacramentality of the kerygma – the proclamation and preaching of the Word of God and its content, the mission and role of the minister who is preaching and guiding the people, and the nature of the assembly (the people of God) who are to be transformed by their experience of hearing the Word and living out what it means.

Pope Francis hopes for Christians to be enriched and cheered by what they read and hear, though, unfortunately “There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter.” All need to live in the hope and expectation that their Christian life is not, quoting Benedict XVI, “the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”.

Pope Francis’ aim is towards a re-imagining of what the homily is about, and how to bring about the necessary transformation, in the preacher as well as in the congregation, that will bring the Church more in line with the vision of the Council Fathers fifty years ago. Thus “A renewal of preaching can offer believers, as well as the lukewarm and the non-practising, new joy in the faith and fruitfulness in the work of evangelization. The heart of its message will always be the same: the God who revealed his immense love in the crucified and risen Christ.”

Missionary Parish And we are not to restrict our work simply to those who enter our church building and wait for us to speak, “...missionary outreach is paradigmatic for all the Church’s activity. Along these lines the Latin American bishops stated that we “cannot passively and calmly wait in our church buildings”; we need to move “from a pastoral ministry of mere conservation to a decidedly missionary pastoral ministry”.

Pope Francis reminds us that good, effective liturgy, including that elusive ingredient of “beauty”, creates a movement within a community that combines, not only the celebration in joy of the life of the risen body of Christ gathered together as one, but also is itself a form of evangelisation, attracting those who need to hear the loving words of Christ the most. “... An evangelizing community is filled with joy; it knows how to rejoice always. It celebrates every small victory, every step forward in the work of evangelization. Evangelization with joy becomes beauty in the liturgy, as part of our daily concern to spread goodness. The Church evangelizes and is herself evangelized through the beauty of the liturgy, which is both a celebration of the task of evangelization and the source of her renewed self-giving.”

It is significant that Pope Francis places so much emphasis on the role of a parish in this ministry. The parish, which for him is “not an outdated institution” needs, though, to be a place of flexibility, growth, renewal, discernment. Its ministers and its members need to be renewed in the discerning life of prayer promoted by his Jesuit founder: to reflect frequently about the questions: “What is happening here?” “How is the Lord leading us to serve the people better?” “What do our people truly desire?”

The Pope continues: “While certainly not the only institution which evangelizes, if the parish proves capable of self-renewal and constant adaptivity, it continues to be “the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters”. This presumes that it really is in contact with the homes and the lives of its people, and does not become a useless structure out of touch with people or a self-absorbed group made up of a chosen few. The parish is the presence of the Church in a given territory, an environment for hearing God’s word, for growth in the Christian life, for dialogue, proclamation, charitable outreach, worship and celebration. In all its activities the parish encourages and trains its members to be evangelizers. It is a community of communities, a sanctuary where the thirsty come to drink in the midst of their journey, and a centre of constant missionary outreach. We must admit, though, that the call to review and renew our parishes has not yet sufficed to bring them nearer to people, to make them environments of living communion and participation, and to make them completely mission-oriented.”