Vocation: Sister Disciples Of The Divine Master

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A Pauline Centenary Pastoral Tool

ALBERIONE AND THE LITURGICAL MOVEMENT, n. 8 ***

A Doctoral Thesis Presented at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute

THE FEATURES OF BLESSED ALBERIONE’S TEACHINGS

ON THE LITURGY

DOCTRINAL CONTENT: Definition of Liturgy (A.1)

Blessed Alberione’s legacy of liturgical writings is quite modest in comparison with the works of liturgical theologians such as Prosper Gueranger, Odo Casel, etc. His liturgical works are practically nothing but numerous shards or fragments of thoughts. Nonetheless, these mosaic fragments express vitally and synthetically, though not certainly systematically, the various aspects of the Christian mystery celebrated in the liturgy. It is our intention to delineate the doctrinal themes of his teachings on the liturgy and present them in a more systematic form. In this way we hope to have a better understanding of the liturgy from the point of view of a man who has been deeply imbued with the liturgical spirit. Moreover, we wish to present the originality and genius of some of his thoughts which galvanized and impelled him to dedicate his life generously in the field of liturgical apostolate and in the promotion of the Liturgical Movement in the Church.

DEFINITION OF LITURGY

The definitions that Blessed Alberione gave of the liturgy are many and run the gamut from rubrical to theological. He could not certainly limit himself to one definition since his understanding of the liturgy was complete, ranging from the technical to spiritual. According to him, liturgy could be studied in its technical and exterior aspects and this level of understanding is the easiest. Acknowledging that the study of rites and ceremonies are important for a better celebration of the sacred liturgy, he affirmed, however, that the understanding of the soul or spirit of the liturgy is more important than just a mere technical or rubrical understanding of it. The meaning of the liturgy should be understood, he insisted.

a) Liturgy as the Public and Exterior Worship Regulated by the Church

According to Blessed Alberione, liturgy is the complex of prayers, acts, words and public practices established by Jesus Christ and the Church. In another occasion, he defined liturgy as “public worship”. The public and social worship that we ought to render to God should be regulated, guided and directed by the authority. He believed that the authority is in Jesus Christ and the Church, exercised especially through the Pope. He spoke of liturgy as “the complex of acts of exterior worship”.

It would be necessary at this point to clarify Blessed Alberione’s notion of “exterior worship”, which should be seen against the backdrop of his understanding of “inner worship”. He starts off from the basic premise that we should render God a fitting worship. This worship could either be interior or exterior. According to him, our inner worship consists of the inner virtues of faith, hope and love of God, and these inner dimensions give rise to exterior worship, which the liturgy is. He asserted: “The interior worship gives value and meaning to the exterior worship; on the other hand, the exterior worship vivifies and expresses the internal worship.” He remarked that the holy sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments, which derive their power from the sacrifice of the Cross, should be considered in the first place since they are the highest form of piety. “It is not just man/woman nor the person who prays, but it is Jesus Christ”, he explained. Included in the liturgy considered as “exterior worship” are the prayer of the Church, rites of blessings, the building of churches and the preparation of statues, images, crucifixes, etc., even the religious profession itself. For Blessed Alberione, the sacred liturgy is especially presented in four books: the breviary, the missal, the ritual and the Roman pontifical.

Indeed, Blessed Alberione was convinced that the inner worship of faith, hope and love does not suffice. The total person must give worship to God in all his/her dimensions. Hence, the necessity of exterior worship. He concluded: “First, the inner worship; from the inner worship will be derived the love of exterior worship.”

b) Liturgy as a “Book of Truth, Morals and Prayer” and the “Book of the Holy Spirit”

Blessed Alberione observed that many people were reducing the study of liturgy to the purely technical or aesthetic aspects of worship. He believed that the liturgy of the Church should not be limited to this, but rather, should be interpreted integrally and totally. For him, and this seems to be the characteristic note of his entire teaching on the liturgy, the real and integral understanding of the liturgy could be formulated in its threefold reality as dogma, morals, worship. He described the liturgy as a “book of truth, morals and prayer”. It is a book of truth because it contains a rich treasure of religious culture and doctrine. In the liturgy, the Church lays out, in the course of the year, the basic as well as the loftiest truths so that the faithful may have the right faith. Moreover, the liturgy is a book of morals because it is a salutary pasture of moral teachings. In the sacred liturgy, all the holy commands, virtues and means of salvation are recalled, explained and applied in practical life. Moreover, the liturgy is a book of prayer. “It is the most powerful prayer”, remarked Blessed Alberione, “because it is the prayer of the Church – the prayer of everyone”. Hence, he concludes: “In the liturgy we have everything: dogma, morals, worship. On the other hand, he explained, “in the liturgy the Church wants to bring the entire person to God: mind, will, heart.”

In Blessed Alberione’s theological vision, the three anthropological faculties of mind, will and heart correspond respectively to the dogmatic, moral and cultic aspects of the liturgy. In the light of his threefold understanding of the liturgy and the animating role of the Holy Spirit with regard to it, it is understandable why he defined it as the “book of the Spirit”. He reiterates about the liturgy: “It is the book of the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus Christ” and he explains that in forms of prayer, in acts of worship, in sacred things, the Holy Spirit enlightens, manifests the divine will and infuses grace. In other words, the sacred liturgy of the Church is all at the same time, “the law of prayer, the norm of acting and the rule of faith”. Blessed Alberione qualified, however, that the leges credenda, orandi et agenda are so intimately linked that they basically constitute one law, in the same way that a human being is one sole person though one has three faculties: intelligence, sentiment and will.

The great bulk of Blessed Alberione’s teachings on the liturgy is simply a reformulation and reiteration of his basic understanding of the liturgy perceived in its dogmatic-moral-cultic aspects. We can observe, moreover, that his understanding of the liturgy as the book of the Spirit and as a book of truth, morals and prayer is essentially Christological, based on the biblical definition of Christ: “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6). According to Blessed Alberione, the Holy Spirit is “the soul of the soul” and through the Spirit, we are moved to live in Jesus Christ: in Christ the truth, the action of intelligence; in Christ the way, the action of the will; in Christ the life, the action of the sentiment.

The intimately linked Christological and pneumatological dimensions of the liturgy could be gleaned in the following statement of Blessed Alberione.

Now this Spirit is in the Church of God … The Holy Spirit then sanctifies the Church: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:5). “You must be born anew” (Jn 3:7).

The Holy Spirit came upon us in baptism. He came upon us, with a greater abundance of gifts in confirmation. He comes upon us in every sacrament we receive and takes possession of the soul more and more … The Eucharistic species are consumed and the real presence ceases, but the Trinity endures. The Holy Spirit endures in light, strength, sanctification and grace. Therefore, keep in mind: the Divine Master taught and he left us his most holy examples; the Divine Master won grace for us by dying on the cross. But all this is realized and communicated in our soul by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Blessed Alberione upheld that it is indeed the Holy Spirit who communicates the fruits of redemption which Christ won for us on the cross: poured out in baptism, the Holy Spirit gives us grace; poured out in confirmation, he makes grace increase; and outpoured in the Eucharist he gives us life. He intervenes in sacramental absolution to purify us. At work in the priestly ordination, the Holy Spirit ennobles the soldier and the minister of Christ. In the sacrament of matrimony, he sanctifies the union of spouses and in the extreme unction, he prepares the soul for divine judgment that it may be worthy to receive the prize. Indeed, the liturgy is the means through which the Holy Spirit acts, not only to spread the truth that Jesus proclaimed and the virtues he practiced, but above all, to communicate the grace he won for us.

c) Liturgy as the “Sacramentality of the Bible”

Another interesting definition that Blessed Alberione gave of the liturgy highlights the latter’s inherent and intimate connection with the Word. He asserted that the liturgy is the sacramentality of the Bible in the sense that the liturgy is drawn out and is the realization of what is in the Bible. He did not elucidate on how the liturgy is precisely the sacramentality or realization of what is in the Bible. But from his affirmation that the liturgy is drawn out from the Bible and from his declaration that when there is no biblical reading nothing could be grasped neither of the meaning nor of the fruits of the liturgy, we can have an idea why he defined the liturgy as the “sacramentality of the Bible”. The liturgy is the actualization of the saving event proclaimed by the Bible. And since the Bible provides the content of what is celebrated and actuated in the liturgy, then it is understandable why Blessed Alberione referred to the liturgy as the sacramentality of the Bible and why he insisted on the necessity of the Bible for the people. Without the Bible, the liturgy would not mean anything to the people; much less could they give God glory or make a conscious prayer.

Blessed Alberione believed that the continuous “dechristianization” of life, art, thinking, etc. depends on the lack of liturgical-biblical oxygen, a situation which for centuries our people have lived. This phenomenon of the separation of the Bible and the liturgy, which had endured for centuries, gave way to painful consequences: a great number of people do not understand the Mass, the sacraments, the celebration, etc. He observed, moreover, that a preaching dissevered from the Bible was not felt as the Word of God, but rather, as mere human logic.

According to Blessed Alberione, the liturgy is basically the Word of God and that the Church continues to instruct the faithful through the liturgy. He exclaimed: “What a mine of God’s Word in the liturgical books! The rabbles of every kind of books that invade daily the library market are a miserable comparison.” Indeed, the breviary, missal, rituals and other liturgical books are a great treasury of the Word of God. He explained that in the liturgical books, we can find:

Word inspired by the Scriptures, whose Old Testament pages present us the figure of Christ and whose New Testament pages present us Christ in person. Word of God coming forth from the mouths of saints and doctors. Word of God actuated in the lives of saints and martyrs who are Christ living on in his mystical body. And finally, the Word, nay, the mind of the Church, surging forth in all the prayer formulas and in the rites and ceremonies, that have their own silent eloquent language oftentimes more eloquent than words.

He declared, moreover that though some passages in the liturgical books are not direct quotations from the Bible, they contain nevertheless the biblical meaning, spirit and character.

Indeed, Blessed Alberione’s conviction and understanding of the liturgy as the sacramentality of the Bible induced him to develop the pastoral program: “the binomial liturgy and Bible” or, citing the words of Saint John XXIII, what he described as “the chalice and the book”.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

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