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The Sense of Mystery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

P.M.
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There are many people today who condemn the efforts that are being made to make the liturgy more intelligible. The Mass and the Sacraments, they say, are mysteries; it is only right that they should be unintelligible. All this concentration on the instructive power of the liturgy is a false emphasis; the ceremonies of the liturgy are not meant to teach, they are meant to convey a feeling of reverential awe for the great mysteries of our salvation which are beyond the power of our understanding. Why this desire to have everything pat and plain, to hear and understand all the words of the Mass? The Church uses mysterious rites and a language that is not easily understood because the liturgy expresses mysteries that cannot be understood. A hundred years ago as great a scholar as Dom Guerangcr could write: ‘The Church … proclaims her victorious and immutable doctrine in the language of the people who hear her; but her mission is not only to instruct this people.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 13 , Issue 145 , July 1958 , pp. 37 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © 1958 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Institutions Liturgiques, vol. III, p. 84.

2 Conrad Pepler, O.P., ‘Latin is Still Practical': The Life of the Spirit, June 1957, p. 566.

3 II Tim. 3, 16.

4 De Civ. Dei X, 20.

5 I Cor. 10, 16.

6 Epis. 63, 13. P.L. 4, 384B.

7 C.T.S. translation no. 128.

8 c.f. I Peter 2, 9; quoting Ex. 19, 6.

9 Roman Canon. It was not till the end of the eighth century that Alcuin thought it wiser to change this phrase to ‘pro quibus tibi orferimus vel qui tibi offerunt', etc.

10 S.T. II-II, 91, 1.

11 I Cor. 14, 14-16. St Paul is speaking not of a foreign language but of a charismatic babbling; his arguments apply here none the less.

12 P.L. 17, 255, B.

13 Session xxii, canon ix, D.D. 956. For a lucid statement of the teaching of the Council on this matter see J. McDonald: ‘Theology and language in the liturgy', in English in the Liturgy, ed. R. A. Cunliffe.

14 Allocution to the Liturgical Congress of Assist, A.A.S. 1956, p. 724. c.f. Mediator Dei, no. 64. (Eng. trans.)

15 Luke 8, 10. c.f. Ambrosiaster, ubi sup. 256D-257A.

16 Conrad Pepler, O.P., ibid.

17 cf. Hebrews 9, 1-10, 18.