Go into the Deep: Full, Conscious, and Active Participation in the Liturgy

 - February 6, 2016

 

In the Gospel this weekend, Jesus invites his disciples, tired after fishing all night without success, to “put out into the deep water” and let down their nets. This got me thinking about how we too come to Church on the weekend, often tired, or frustrated by things in our life that are not going as they should. Sometimes, the last place we want to go is “into the depths”! And yet, that is exactly where Christ is calling us: speaking to our hearts, drawing us into friendship and communion, inviting us to bear fruit.

The Vatican II Declaration on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, invites all Catholics to “full, conscious, and active participation” in the liturgical life of our parish communities. If the Eucharist is truly the “source and summit” of Christian life, then those of us engaged in the various liturgical ministries are called to model and facilitate for the entire congregation an experience of prayer and inner transformation, through our common worship. “The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the font from which all her power flows.” In order to be penetrated by the spirit of the liturgy, we are called - presider or deacon, lector or Eucharistic minister, choir member or altar server, welcomer or coordinator – to attend to the Mass with reverence and joy, with a deep spirit of prayer, so that all may experience Christ’s invitation to “go into the deep” and give it a generous and joyful response.

The word “liturgy” comes from the Greek word leiturgia: the work of the people”. So all of us have an important role to play. We come to the liturgy not as spectators waiting to be entertained, or as isolated individuals looking for a quiet place to perform our devotions. We come not to reluctantly fulfil an externally-imposed duty, but as living members of the Church, gathered together: to be formed by God’s Word and to be nourished at the Table of the Eucharist. We bring to the liturgy all that we are – our joys and struggles, concerns about family and work, the needs of the world around us – to be transformed by Christ and sent forth to be His presence in the world. So let us “go into the deep”: as we joyfully embrace in the Mass our identity and vocation as God’s beloved, as truly the Body of Christ.