From The Pastor's Desk:

I am continuing from last week’s letter when I began to take a look at Vatican Council II, 61 years later. As a part of our Eucharistic Revival, the parish council has looked over and we have quietly changed a few areas in our celebration of the mass. This week I am giving some of the directives from the Council found in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. As a side note, when I was in graduate school at St. Meinrad School of Theology we were told it takes a 100 years for a council’s decrees to truly be implemented. We still have close to 40 years on that type of time line and we can see people in the church pushing back against the documents especially in the area of liturgical worship.

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, was approved almost unanimously by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican and was promulgated in solemn session on December 4, 1963. The Roman Missal which we now use at the altar, was a result of the Council. It took a little over 50 years for the revisions and translation into English to be accepted by the Commission on Liturgy at the Vatican. During those years we had a number of books called Sacramentary as the Commission worked on the Roman Missal translation. What we now use called the Roman Missal is as close to the Latin translation of the past.

The directives out of the Constitution was to promote, the active participation of the people. The whole of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy is not just changing of the liturgical rites, texts and language. Its aim was to foster the formation of the people and that the pastoral activity of the sacred liturgy is the fulfillment of that activity.

The liturgy, even though it is the center of our Catholic worship, is not the whole of the Church’s activity. As the Constitution states, “great care must be taken that pastoral work be properly linked with it.” To conclude that paragraph, “there are to be close links between liturgy, catechesis, religious instruction and preaching.”

This year beginning this month of June, through June of 2024 of the National Eucharistic revival, we are in the Year of Parish Revival. There are four areas, or four invitations 1) to Reinvigorate our worship, 2) Personal Encounters, 3) Faith Formation and 4) Missionary sending among those in need.

Please welcome our Mission Co-op Priest next weekend.