What is the Liturgy?
The liturgy, the true prayer of the Church, is the fruit of lips that acknowledge God’s Name.
Through the liturgical prayer, we participate in Christ's own prayer addressed to the Father in the Holy Spirit; it is a school of communion that frees the heart from indifference, shortens the distance between brothers and sisters, and conforms to the sentiments of Jesus; it is the high road that transforms us, educating us.
The liturgy is the prayed faith, the truth relived in prayer. It must be celebrated with fervor so that grace reaches each one. This attitude helps supersede individuality and open up to the “we” of the Church in prayer.
The gathering together, the posture of the body, remaining silent, the expressions of the voice, and the involvement of the senses, are the ways to participate in the celebration. Everybody is making the same gesture, everyone speaking together in one voice — this transmits to each individual the energy of the entire assembly, in the awareness of being one body.
These are some concrete priorities for the liturgy as the “true” prayer of the Church.
The first priority is to rediscover the choral nature of liturgical prayer, through which, uniting ourselves to the mother tongue of the Church, we become one choir, one body, and one voice. Saint Augustine reminded us of the profound relationship of our prayer with Christ: “When we pray, we speak to God, it is Jesus himself who prays for us, prays in us, and is prayed to by us. [...] Let us therefore recognize Him in our words, and His words in us.”
The second priority is its relationship with sacred hymns. Music in the liturgy is not an ornamental element, but an integral and necessary part. “If the faithful sing, they are in the Church; if they are in the Church, they preserve the faith and Christian life.”
The third priority refers to silence, as shown by the constant reminders in the Eucharistic celebration of the act of keeping silent. We must counteract the frenzy, noise, and chatter that undermine us in our daily lives by valuing sacred silence, an eloquent gesture, a favorable time and fruitful space to remain in the love of the Lord, cultivate a contemplative gaze, give depth to the prayer of the heart, and let oneself be transformed by the Spirit.
The fourth and final dimension refers to the ministries, that must be at the service of the liturgy. In them, the diversity of the gifts that the Holy Spirit inspires in the Christian community is manifested.
We need a constant commitment to formation so that personalism and delusions of protagonism may be avoided and a true service to communion can be achieved.
Excerpts from Pope Francis