Cathal BarryEvery liturgical action is an encounter between Christ and the Church, writes Cathal Barry
In the liturgy the Holy Spirit is the teacher of the faith of the People of God, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The desire and work of the Spirit in the heart of the Church, the document states, “is that we may live from the life of the risen Christ”.
“When the Spirit encounters in us the response of faith which he has aroused in us, he brings about genuine cooperation. Through it, the liturgy becomes the common work of the Holy Spirit and the Church,” the key text says. In this “sacramental dispensation” of Christ’s mystery, the Holy Spirit “acts in the same way as at other times” in the economy of salvation. It prepares the Church to encounter the Lord while recalling and making Christ “manifest to the faith of the assembly”.
Power
By its transforming power, the Spirit “makes the mystery of Christ present here and now”. Finally, the Spirit of communion “unites the Church to the life and mission of Christ”, the Catechism says.
In the sacramental economy, the Holy Spirit “fulfils what was prefigured in the Old Covenant” (Lumen Gentium). The Church’s liturgy has “retained certain elements of the worship of the Old Covenant as integral and irreplaceable”, adopting them as her own.
It is on this harmony of the two Testaments that the Paschal catechesis of the Lord is built, the Catechism states, and then, that of the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church.
This catechesis “unveils what lay hidden” under the letter of the Old Testament: the mystery of Christ. It is called “typological” because it reveals the newness of Christ on the basis of the “figures” (types) which announce him in the deeds, words and symbols of the first covenant.
By this “re-reading” in the spirit of truth, starting from Christ, the figures are unveiled.
For this reason the Church, especially during Advent, Lent and, above all, at the Easter Vigil, re-reads and re-lives the great events of salvation history in the “today” of her liturgy. But this also demands that catechesis helps the faithful to open themselves to this spiritual understanding of the economy of salvation as the Church’s liturgy reveals it and enables us to live it.
In the liturgy of the New Covenant, every liturgical action, especially the celebration of the Eucharist and the sacraments, is “an encounter” between Christ and the Church. The liturgical assembly derives its unity from the “communion of the Holy Spirit” who gathers the children of God into the one Body of Christ. This assembly transcends racial, cultural, social – indeed, all human affinities.
The assembly, according to the Catechism, should prepare itself to encounter its Lord and to become “a people well disposed”.
The “preparation of hearts” is the joint work of the Holy Spirit and the assembly, “especially of its ministers”.
The grace of the Holy Spirit seeks to “awaken faith, conversion of heart and adherence to the Father’s will”.
These dispositions are the “precondition both for the reception of other graces conferred in the celebration itself and the fruits of new life which the celebration is intended to produce afterward”.