Devotions and Liturgy

Extract

In the last issue of The Life we had occasion to point to the importance of the changes in the Holy Week liturgy in that the Holy See has in these changes insisted on the liturgy becoming once more the primary method of prayer for every member of the Mystical Body. By now the liturgy has ceased to be the preserve of the aesthetes and cranks who decried all popular devotions in such a way as to antagonize the people whose principal source of communal prayer was the non-liturgical service ‘devotions'. The trouble with the specialists was that they sank into a morass of historical facts and conjectures. They were so intent on looking backwards that they missed the path of prayer altogether and disappeared into this historical bog. The services they enjoyed were not liturgy, for liturgy is the public work worshipping God, a public work that is alive today, drawing its vitality from the spiritual life of the people who take part in it. The worship practised by the specialists was drawn from the dead pages of manuscripts and books.