Vocation: Sister Disciples Of The Divine Master

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A Pauline Centenary Pastoral Tool

ALBERIONE AND THE LITURGICAL MOVEMENT, n. 10 ***

A Doctoral Thesis Presented at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute

THE FEATURES OF BLESSED ALBERIONE’S TEACHINGS

ON THE LITURGY

“The Ecclesiological-Mariological Aspect of the Liturgy”

Ecclesiological Aspect:

Jesus Christ lives on in the Church and as a consequence, the Church continues to be Jesus Christ guiding the souls. The Church is Christ’s mystical body and using the figure of a hand moving under the head’s command, Blessed Alberione exhorted us to move under the command of the head, Jesus Christ, who always seeks the Father’s glory. Alluding to the ecclesial character of the liturgy, he remarked: “The liturgy is something alive and vivifying: something holy and sanctifying. It is in a certain way, the consummation itself of Jesus Christ. Through it, he continues to be in the Church, the Master, the Priest and Victim, the Sanctifier: the way, truth and life for us.”

Our Founder declared that through the liturgy, the Church lays out the infinite merits of Jesus Christ, her Head, so that God may be glorified worthily and that salvation may be brought to us. He was deeply aware that the cultic and redemptive ends accomplished by Christ in the history of salvation constitute the very same vocation or mission that the Church, as Christ’s mystical body, carries out in the liturgy.

Blessed Alberione stated that the liturgy is the worship established and rendered to God by the Church through Jesus Christ. He explained: “The Church, through its ministers, becomes the voice and sums up the voice of the whole mankind who has the duty of always rendering supreme worship to God, who is the beginning and the end, as their supreme ruler. The Church sums up the duties of all, - of all mankind. The Church speaks and acts for them and for all, presenting everyone before God.”

United with the act of reparation and thanksgiving of Christ, the Church, that is, the entire body of the faithful, through Christ’s ministers, always offers interior and exterior worship to God, thus continuing the perfect worship Christ offers to the Father. Hence, the public worship of the Church is accomplished in Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ.

Blessed Alberione contends that the Church’s public worship should be regulated by an authority, and authority for him resides in Jesus Christ and the Church, especially the Pope. He stated that the Pope is the teacher of faith, the teacher of morals and the teacher of liturgy. He exhorted: “We should live with this vision of things that is truly in the spirit of the Roman Church”. He remarked that the liturgy is inspired and guided by Rome, even with regards to various rites, such as Ambrosian rite, the Armenian rite, the Coptic rite, etc. He was convinced of the necessity of obeying the sensus ecclesiae manifested principally through the Pope’s decision.

Our Founder’s reverential stand for the Roman authority’s regulation of Christian worship and his original preference for the Roman rite did not militate against nor prove to be a contradiction to a more profound principle: the universality of the Church and the Christian faith. His ecclesial openness can be gleaned in the following statement he made in 1962 concerning the rites. “The variety of rites does not impede the unity of faith, but rather manifests that the Church is not merely in Italy or Europe. The Church is universal and embraces all continents … We in Europe are a part. We in Italy are a small part.”

With regard to the redemptive end, Blessed Alberione believed that the liturgy contains the life and the Church and through it, salvation is conferred to us. He wrote: “Through the liturgy, the Church lays out the infinite merits of her Head, Jesus Christ, not just to render God the glory due to him, but also to confer salvation to us. Hence, while it infuses the spirit of religion in souls and inspires the need to cry out to God their own admiration and dependence, by means of Jesus Christ and in union with the Church and the whole creation, the liturgy communicates divine life or holiness, of which it is the source … The liturgical prayer has a cleansing, enlightening, fortifying and unifying power. It is the most powerful prayer because it is the prayer of the Church – the prayer of all.”

Indeed, our Founder believed that the sanctifying mission of Christ, as also his teaching and pastoral mission, is actuated in the liturgy. According to him, the liturgy is the most bountiful source of grace poured out upon the mystical members by means of our Head. The Mass and the other sacraments communicate the vital sap that passes on from the vine to the branches: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me bears much fruit” of grace and apostolate. Indeed, in the mind of Blessed Alberione, the Church in which Christ himself lives on and in which he teaches, guides and sanctifies souls. This Church is destined to reach the ends of the earth, forming one flock under one Shepherd.

Mariological Aspect:

In his teachings on the liturgy, Blessed Alberione made a few incisive references concerning Mary’s role in it. According to him, Mary is the “mother of the liturgy” because she is the mother of Jesus who is not only the “leitourgos” but the “liturgy” itself. Though he did not explicate, we can glean from this affirmation some implied ideas; for example, without Mary there can be no Christian liturgy. He asserted, moreover, that Mary contributed more than anybody else to the Eucharistic sacrifice because Jesus, the Son of God, took her own flesh in the Incarnation. Hence, the Christian liturgy has a necessarily Marian dimension because Mary is intimately involved in the mystery of Jesus, who is both the “liturgy” and the “leitourgos”.

In his conferences to the Pious Disciples of the Divine Master, he often presented Mary as their model of liturgical life and apostolate. Mary is the teacher of liturgy. He explained how Mary celebrated and lived the two liturgies: first, the liturgy of the Old Testament under the Mosaic law; and when Jesus inaugurated the New Covenant with his blood, the liturgy of the New Testament. He stressed, moreover, Mary’s faithfulness in carrying out these two liturgies. Proposing to them the figure of Mary as model in the accomplishment of the liturgical apostolate, which is a way of revealing Jesus to the world, he exhorted the Pious Disciples: “Ask Mary the grace to work in the liturgy following her ways and spirit.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

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