Motu Proprio - Reflection on the Communio of the Sundays and Great feasts’

Thursday, 2 August 2007

Motu Proprio - Reflection on the Communio of the Sundays and Great feasts’

The Apostolic Letter of Benedict XVI, Summorum Ponticum, regarding the celebration of the usus antiquior of the Mass has prompted a Centre Court style of battle of Rites.
A small window on to a wider view was flagged up for me by reference to a Booklet published by St. Meinards, Ind., 1943. ‘Fruitful Days. Reflection on the Communio of the Sundays and Great feasts’, edited from the works of Dom Guéranger. This reminder of the boundless mine of Liturgical lore in such resources as the Volumes of ‘The Liturgical’ makes one cringe at the exclusiveness, selectiveness, and general restrictiveness of confining the understanding of Liturgy to one or other narrow path.

The news of a new Abbess at Stanbrook Abbey is a stimulating reminder of the enthusiasm and achievements of the time and place of a not so old liturgical renewal. A renewal prepared not to be tied to the confines of an un-Catholic outlook view of the Church.

It is not that so long ago, c.1830, since the Liturgical Movement carried in its flow the work of translation, Dom Laurence Shepherd, and the labour of publishing at Stanbrook Abbey that produced the mammoth output of Dom Prosper Guéranger in ‘The Liturgical Year’.

Benedict XVI is not one to banish any part of the treasured wealth of the traditions of the liturgy, even if it means extending our appreciation into those traditions.

“Every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old." Pope Benedict is a student of St. Augustine. He wrote his doctoral thesis on St. Augustine and just as Pope John Paul II draws on St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope Benedict draws on St. Augustine”.

Maybe it is not possible to get excited by the “Communio of the Sundays and Great Feasts” but even an occasional immersion in the liturgical deeps of a Prosper Guéranger may freshen up the spirit of celebration that goes back to Exodus 40, rejoicing from the Ark of the Covenant in the Desert to the Eucharistic Sacrifice offered in all its glory.

Lectio Divina and Liturgia Divina needs both legs to tread the walk the monastic life.