Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
In
the weeks to come, your parish bulletin will carry explanations of
the Holy Eucharist and the Sacrament of
Reconciliation, along with some
instructions on how we are to celebrate these sacraments
as God’s Holy
People in the Archdiocese
of
with you when I celebrate Mass in the parishes
and institutions of the
Archdiocese, and I hope now for a moment of renewal in
our worship.
As
you know, the sacraments are acts of faith.
We believe that the
risen Christ acts through the sacraments. He gives us grace, which
brings us into his own life here and in the life to
come.
The
sacraments are acts of the Church. The
Church knows what Christ
gives her the power to do, and it is the Church
that puts order into the
celebration of the sacraments. The Church, in the words of Vatican II,
is a “hierarchical communion” gathered around
Christ, our mediator with
the Father.
That reality shapes our worship.
The royal priesthood of
the baptized is made active in the Mass by the
ministry of ordained
priests, so that the Eucharist is the action of the
whole Christ, made
visible in head and members in his body, the Church.
The
sacraments are rites. When the national
anthem is played,
everyone rises.
That is a secular rite. The
sacraments are rites of the
faith community; they require common responses and
actions. It is easier
to respond since the liturgy was put into the
vernacular, and most people
do so with good voice. Likewise most people act together, for
example,
making the Sign of the Cross at the beginning of
the
a body, with various members taking different
roles and functions, in a
integrated pattern.
Normally, we sit to listen, we stand out of
respect,
and we kneel to adore.
The
Catholics of the Archdiocese of Chicago worship using the Roman
rite, and the Roman Missal has recently been
slightly revised. This
revision necessitates a few changes in the way we
worship together.
These changes will be explained in the fall
and will come into effect on
the First Sunday of Advent,
affect celebrations of the Eucharist that use the
Roman rite as it was
done before the revisions called for by the
Second Vatican Council. It
also does not affect the worship of Catholics in
Cook and
who belong to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic
Church or to the Syro-Malabar
Catholic Church or to the Maronite
or other Eastern
for these communities worship according to their
own rites.
The
explanations and instructions to follow are like a collective
examination of conscience about the state of our
worship. Our
participation in worship should be deliberate or
conscious, active, and
fruitful.
Sometimes we participate by acting and speaking, sometimes by
silence and recollection. Participation is always conditioned by an
interior disposition of faith, hope, and charity.
The
charity that bring us to the Eucharist also brings us from the
Eucharist into a world in
need of love. Because we are one with Christ,
it is his love that we are to bring to
others. In the Archdiocese, we
are talking more and more about sharing Christ’s
spiritual gifts, that
is, evangelizing. The Eucharist both gives us the zeal to
introduce
others to Christ and is itself the greatest gift we
are to share, for it
is Christ himself. The Mass is the means by which God makes
holy the
world; it is the worship that the human race
offers to the Father,
adoring him through Christ in the Holy Spirit. It is the most important
thing we do, the only thing we will do for all
eternity. Thank you for
all your efforts to do it well.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of