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Romano Guardini and the Liturgy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Patrick Gorevan
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‘The Catholic liturgy is the supreme example of an objectively established rule of spiritual life.’ ‘The liturgy is the lex orandi'. These were the principles of Romano Guardini’s liturgical writings, both theological and pastoral. He sought to bring the liturgy into the centre of the Christian’s life, at the heart of the many other, more private, expressions of prayer and reverence. He offers an overview of Christian public prayer:

Prayer must be simple, wholesome and powerful. It must be closely related to actuality and not afraid to call things by their names. In prayer we must find our entire life over again. On the other hand, it must be rich in ideas and powerful images, and speak a developed but restrained language; its construction must be clear and obvious to the simple man, stimulating and refreshing to the man of culture. It must be intimately blended with an erudition which is in nowise obtrusive, but which is rooted in breadth of spiritual outlook and in inward restraint of thought, volition and emotion. And that is precisely the way in which the prayer of the liturgy has been formed.

According to Aidan Nichols, if the principles of Romano Guardini on liturgy had been consistently applied to contemporary sensibility in the 1960s and 1970s, his influence might have stopped the post-conciliar liturgical reform from backing modernity as a winning ticket, just at the point when it became converted into postmodernism. This short sketch points to some of Guardini’s insights in the liturgical area, especially on questions which have recently been taken up anew by liturgical thinkers.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 79 , Issue 926 , April 1998 , pp. 197 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Guardini, Romano The Spirit of the Liturgy (translated by Lane, Ada), Sheed and Ward, London 1938, p. 36Google Scholar.

2 Looking at the Liturgy, Ignatius Press, San Francisco 1996, p. 81Google Scholar.

3 Before Mass (translated by Briefs, Elinor Castendyk), Longmans, London 1955Google Scholar, also available as Preparing Yourself for Mass, Sophia Institute Press, Manchester NH, 1997Google Scholar.

4 Sacred Signs, Veritas, Dublin 1979Google Scholar.

5 The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 18‐22.

6 Translation from The Divine Office, Collins, London 1974Google Scholar.

7 Before Mass, p. 154.

8 The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 58‐60.

9 Eucharistic Presence. A Study in the Theology of Disclosure, CUA Press, Washington 1994Google Scholar.

10 Robert Sokolowski ‘Praying the Canon of the Mass’, in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, July 1995, 11.

11 After Writing. On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy, Blackwell, Oxford 1998, p. 184Google Scholar.

12 The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 68.

13 Ibid., p. 84.

14 Guido Gazelle, the Flemish nineteenth‐century poet, quoted in Schmaus, Michael, The Essence of Christianity, Scepter, Dublin 1961, p. 93Google Scholar.

15 Jones, David, The Anathemata, Faber, London 1972, p. 16Google Scholar.

16 Before Mass, pp. 24‐25.

17 The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 96.

18 Ibid., p. 141.

19 Ibid., p. 103.

20 Ibid., p.96.

21 Ibid. p. 65