The Liturgy of the Faithful

The Liturgy is the everlasting interaction of the gathered community being united in the body of Christ. The liturgy can be understood as an ontological interaction with Christ as the community is constantly being molded in the image and likeness of Christ (cf. Gen 1.26-27). That is why a presbyter can never celebrate a liturgy without the gathering of the community because the community represents the living body of Christ in the world. The presbyter recites during the institution narrative "for He gave his life up for the world". The He, being Christ, is what is being offered on behalf of all and for all. If Christ is being offered for all and we represent His image and likeness then we to are also asked to give up our lives for the life of this world. When we gathered together to celebrate the liturgy it is a joyful occasion because after the death of Christ we live in the joy of the resurrection. It was through death that we received life. The following are passages taken from  Archimandrite Robert Taft, who is the world's leading figure on liturgy. The passages sum up what the liturgy should represent and not what we make liturgy ought to be.

"No prayer is "private" in the sense of being done alone..our prayer is always done in company with "the communion of saints" to which we belong by baptism." + Archimandrite Fr. Robert Taft

 

"When asked directly how to pray, Jesus teaches his disciples the Our Father as the ideal model (Mk 6:9-15; Lk 11:2-4). He also instructs them to pray without making a show of it, but quietly, humbly, and in the spirit; not with "long prayers in public" like the Pharisees (Mk 12:40; Lk 20:47), but in solitude, using few words (Mt 6:1, 5-8), humbly asking forgiveness like the publican (Lk 18:9-14)." + Archimandrite Fr. Robert Taft

 

"Liturgy is at the very center of the redemptive work Christ exercises through the ministry of the Church. Anyone who does not celebrate and live the liturgy of the Church according to the mind of the Church, cannot pretend to be either a Christian or an apostle, true to the Church of Christ." + Archimandrite Fr. Robert Taft

 

"Our basic identity is Christian, and to be Christian is to be another Christ. That is what the liturgy makes us in baptism, nourishes in the eucharist and the proclamation and preaching of the Word, restores in confession and anointing of the sick. Liturgy, then, is a locus of our spiritual lives because in the liturgy it is Christ himself who forms us into other Christs by conforming us to himself."  + Archimandrite Fr. Robert Taft

 

"...if the Bible is the Word of God in the words of men, the liturgy is the saving deeds of God in the actions of those men and women who would live in him. Its purpose... is to turn you and me into the same reality. The purpose of baptism is to make us cleansing waters and healing and strengthening oil; the purpose of Eucharist is not to change bread and wine, but to change you and me. Through baptism and Eucharist it is we who are to become Christ for one another, and a sign to the world that is yet to hear his name.

Our true Christian liturgy, therefore, is just the life of Christ in us that we both live and celebrate. That life is none other than what we call the Holy Spirit. This is salvation, our final goal. The only difference between this and what we hope to enjoy at the final fulfillment is that the mirror spoken of in 1 Cor 13:12 will no longer be needed: as Adrien Nocent put it, the veil shall be removed." + Archimandrite Fr. Robert Taft

"Liturgy teaches us balanced, objective, traditional, ecclesial prayer. As the prayer of the Church, the liturgy is the prayer of Christ himself, the full Christ, head and members. This alone gives a transforming value to our prayer that it cannot have when done alone. Liturgy is traditional ecclesial prayer in that it has stood the test of time, and has been with the Church from its origins. Liturgy is balanced, objective prayer because it is not something that depends on our tastes and sentiments, but is the Church's efficacious encounter with God in the worship of the Father through Jesus in his ever-forming Spirit. So liturgy is the Church's ancient school and model of prayer, in which she teaches her age-old ways of how to glorify God in Christ as Church, together as one Body, in union with and after the example of Jesus her head. Through this constant diet of Sacred Scripture, not only does God speak his Word to us, not only do we contemplate over and over again the central mysteries of salvation, but our own lives are gradually attuned to this saving rhythm, and we meditate again and again on the mystery of Israel, recapitulated in Jesus, which is also the saga of our own spiritual odyssey. The march of Israel across the horizon of Sacred History is a metaphor for the spiritual pilgrimage of us all.

This gives liturgical prayer a concentration on the essential rather than the peripheral; it gives our prayer equilibrium insofar as its rhythms are set by the Church and not by our own private subjectivity and sentiment. How much penance, how much contrition, how much praise, how much petition, how much thanksgiving should our prayer-life contain? It is all right there in the pedagogy of the Church's liturgy. How much devotion to the Holy Trinity, how much attention to the Mysteries of Christ's life, how much to his Passion, how much to the Mother of God, how much to the saints? How much fasting, how much feasting? Our liturgical calendar with its seasonal and festive rhythms has it all. This gives a balanced and objective comprehensiveness to the Church's prayer that is a sure remedy for the one-sided excesses and exaggerations of a subjective devotionalism that emphasizes only those aspects of prayer that have personal appeal to some particular culture or individual at any given moment, often for less than ideal reasons." + Archimandrite Fr. Robert Taft