In recent decades, scholars have called attention to the actions in worship and their meaning for building
faith. Catherine Vincie gives us a brief review of the history of teaching that resulted in changes for both Roman Catholics and Protestants.
When
we think of the liturgical reform movement before the Second Vatican Council,
we normally think of the work first done on the European continent primarily by
the Benedictine monasteries and then later brought to North America and
developed further there. Indeed, the Benedictine revival in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries holds inestimable importance for the evolution of the
liturgy that came to a head in the Vatican II reforms. Prosper Guéranger
(1805–1875) was singularly important to the revival of Benedictine monasticism
and its work on the liturgy in the nineteenth century.
In
1837, Pope Gregory XVI constituted Solesmes as an abbey and named Guéranger its
first abbot. The abbey became a center for liturgical exploration and study and
is probably best known for its work on Gregorian chant. The abbey laid the
foundation for generations of Benedictine liturgical scholars who worked on the
historical, textual, and musical dimensions of the liturgy as well as on the
popularization of correct liturgical celebration. Other abbeys, such as Beuron
and Maria Laach in Germany, and Maredsous and Mont César in Belgium, were
particularly important to the liturgical movement. The twentieth-century
liturgical movement could stand on solid ground because of the historical and
textual study of the liturgy done in these monasteries during the nineteenth
century, even if textual analysis was in its infancy during this period.
The
modern liturgical movement can be traced to Dom Lambert Beauduin’s address to
the Belgium Malines Conference in 1909, titled “The True Prayer of the Church.”
.
. . Beauduin thought that the piety of the church had become privatized and
that it was divorced from the liturgy. In his mind, that piety could be renewed
by a better understanding of liturgical texts made known through translation
into the vernacular. This came to pass in the development of the many bilingual
missals of the first half of the twentieth century. The theological
underpinnings of Beauduin’s work were the church understood as the mystical
body of Christ and the idea that the priesthood of the faithful equipped the laity
for full and active participation in the liturgy.
Further
study expanded our understanding of who we are as people of Christian worship.
.
. . French and Belgium scholars, such as A-G. Martimort and Thierry Maertens. .
. retrieved a biblical theology of the assembly as one gathered by God, who
responded to the revelation of God in word and sacrament with thanksgiving and
praise, and who participated with God in the gathering from the four winds of
all people into God’s assembly. Not only was the assembly the subject of the
liturgy, but the assembly was also differentiated into ministries, each of
which had a distinct office to perform. This retrieval of a theology of the
assembly in the 1950s and 1960s had implications for the revision of all the
liturgical books after the council.
All of
this work has resulted in assemblies for worship that truly involve the people of
God, the Body of Christ, in many aspects of the liturgical action. The intent
has been to enact a theological perspective that no longer sees the gathered
people as an “audience,” but as worshippers.
Catherine Vincie, “The RCIA and the Liturgical Movement,” Liturgy 31, no. 2 (2016), 3-10.
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