Worship as a Revelation

About two-and-a-half years ago, I bought a book entitled Worship as a Revelation: The Past, Present and Future of Catholic Liturgy. In my haste to buy the book, I assumed it was a history, as I was, at the time, majoring in history at Quincy University.

Once I started reading the book, I felt way over my head. The book is not a history, so much as it is a philosophical treatise on God's revelation to man through the Church's liturgy. This evening, as I was preparing to say Night Prayer and go to bed, I felt impelled to pick up the book and read a few pages. I read two chapters, "Liturgy as Revelation" and "Liturgy as Communion." The first chapter is the point of this blog post.

If there is one thing that the laity (and liturgiologists, such as myself) need to understand it is that the whole point of liturgy is two-fold: 1) God initiates the essential action in the liturgy; 2) man responds to God in the liturgy. To put it another way, God calls us to the liturgy to reveal Himself to us and we respond with faith, hope, and love (charity). Liturgy, therefore, is comprised of two actions, God revealing Himself to man, and man responding to God's revelation.

How does God reveal Himself in the liturgy, though? Is it not the laity and the priest that make the liturgy and perform it? Well, yes and no. Yes in the sense that the Church on earth carries out the ceremony of the liturgy as it is handed-down to us by the Church who safeguards it, but it is God acting through the assembly, His Mystical Body on earth, that these ceremonies are able to be carried out.

Dr. Hemming, the author of Worship as a Revelation, notes that the liturgy is handed-down to us by the Church who safeguards the liturgy because that is how Christ handed-down to us how to worship. Therefore, the rubrics of the liturgy are there to be observed, not broken, because if the liturgical ceremony is altered, the Church cannot receive the fullness of God's revelation to man through His Church.

The liturgy is where the Church, the assembled members of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth, respond to God's call in their lives to encounter God in His revelation; this revelation is the liturgy. Praying the liturgy is not so much learning how to talk to God, but how to listen to Him. In the liturgy, then, we learn to listen for God calling to us so we may respond more fully to His revelation to us.

P.S. Here is the link to the book on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Worship-Revelation-Present-Catholic-Liturgy/dp/0860124606/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319171736&sr=8-1