Liturgy as public prayer

Summing up the Gueranger conclusions:

The liturgy, being a spiritual sacrifice, has praise as its main end. It sings the glory of God in an objective way, forgetful of self.

As an expression of faith, confidence, love, joy, hope, etc., it necessarily has recourse to song, music, and poetry, the only language capable of expressing the transports of its “sober inebriation.”

It’s lyrical rather than didactic, poetic, stirring, not an intellectual exercise . . . God-centered . . . the work of sanctification and supernatural education . . .

In this vein Dom Paul Delatte wrote:

It demonstrates . . . two points of utmost importance: that the simple faithful, by the grace of their baptism are fitted for liturgical prayer, and that to bring them to love this prayer in a spirit of faith is the most effective way, if not the only way, to stop the desertion of the churches.

Expulsion of religious orders from France would for a time move the center of gravity of the Liturgical Movement, no longer in France, but Belgium. Already in 1882, Dom Gerard van Caloen, a monk of Maredsous and future bishop of Phocee, was publishing a Missal for the Faithful in Latin and French.

This was later followed by the Little Missal for the Laity, which achieved great success. In 1884, van Caloen founded the Messager des fideles which in 1890 became the learned Revue Benedictine. In 1889 at the Eucharistic Congress of Lieges, he presented a very daring thesis for the time: the communion of the faithful during the Mass.

St. Pius X, possessed of an immense pastoral experience,. . . knew that a trend for renewal was developing, . . . So on November 22, 1903, he published his famous motu proprio Tra le Sollecitudini restoring Gregorian chant. In this document he inserted the vital sentence which went on to play a determining role in the evolution of the Liturgical Movement:

Our keen desire being that the true Christian spirit may once more flourish, cost what it may, and be maintained among all the faithful, We deem it necessary to provide before anything else for the sanctity and dignity of the temple, in which the faithful assemble for no other object than that of acquiring this spirit from its primary and indispensable source, which is the active participation in the most holy mysteries and the public and solemn prayer of the Church.

Active = fervent, vigorous, energetic (not jumping up and down).

Pope St. Pius X gave a fresh impetus to the renewal of liturgical fervor. For him as for Dom Gueranger, the liturgy is essentially theocentric; it is for the worship of God rather than for the teaching of the faithful. . . .