Liturgy Committee

The Liturgical Committee works with the pastor to prepare and oversee all the Masses and the special liturgy celebrations throughout the yearly calendar...

From selecting the songs and hymns to aligning and bringing up the harmony of the Mass, they do it all...  so that our church experience may be enlightening and fulfilling...

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Liturgy...?

What you do mean...? Tell me more about it...

Liturgy is an action of Christ and his body, the church.  It is ritual worship in community.  Liturgy is literally the work of the people - the saving work of Christ made present by the power of the Spirit through which our salvation is both signified and realized.  In liturgy, we remember and make present the paschal mystery of Christ...

Liturgy is an act of communication: God with us, and we with God and with one another. It communicates God's living Word and God's saving deed through symbolic language - "signs perceptible to the senses" (Texts of the Vatican II - Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, #7) through which we encounter God, who is both immanent and transcendent. 

Through the power of spoken word and ritual action, the liturgy communicates and forms the faith of the church, as we are reminded in the ancient dictum lex orandi, lex credendi: the law of prayer is the law of belief...

A broad range of ministries are exercised within the liturgy, but all ministers are first and foremost members of the assembly.  No minister stands apart from the people he or she serves; we are the one body of Christ, the high priest who gathers us together. 

Each particular minister needs both the spirituality and the skills to exercise a talent for the common good.  The spirituality of the minister is rooted in who we are, not in what we do - in the baptism that we all share...

Ministry in the liturgy is a service; it is not an individual prerogative but an ecclesial one...

In preparing the liturgy, we must also prepare the ministers for liturgy - nurturing their prayer life, helping them grow in holiness and in the baptismal call, and giving them special training and skills to fulfill the specific roles within the liturgical celebration for the building up of the entire body... 

There are numerous resources-books, cassettes, videos, conferences and seminars to assist in the formation of ministers for the liturgy.  This includes especially the priest, who must have a clear understanding of and reverence for the rite. 

We should provide the best resources available to our communities as well as ample opportunities for prayer and reflection so that those who lead us in liturgy will truly be people of prayer themselves...

The purpose of the liturgy is to make people holy, to build up the body of Christ, and thus ultimately to give worship to God.  God does not need the liturgy, we do... 

God's initiative draws us to worship, and God has placed the very desire to give praise within our hearts; as the preface IV for week days says so beautifully: "You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift.  Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness, but makes us grow in your grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

What makes the liturgy "the perfect offering" is not the exquisite music or architecture or art, or even the renewal of the rites.  The liturgy is the perfect offering because it is Christ's offering.  We who are Christ's body are joined with him in offering Christ and ourselves in an ongoing sacrifice of praise, just as he commanded...

As ministers, we would like the liturgy in our parish to be perfect, and we certainly put considerable effort into making it the best that our community can provide.  And the best thing we can do to provide quality celebrations in our communities is to trust the liturgy and prepare it well for celebration... 

The liturgy belongs to the whole church - not to any particular individual or local community.  It has been handed down to us.  It is not only a celebration in this particular time and place, but it links us with the countless faithful who have gathered at the Lord's command through the ages. It propels us into a future when we will celebrate in the fullness of God's reign at the eschatological feast of heaven...

Therefore, we do not need to "plan" something new, different or more exciting than what we did the last time. We simply have to do it again - faithfully, to the best of our ability, using the richness of the signs and symbols, confident that this living sacrifice of praise that we offer with Christ will form us and transform us... 

The cultural diversity of our communities requires concern for more than just differences in languages; it also requires respect for differences in ritual traditions, music, art and other artistic expression, such as movement, posture and gesture, vesture and myriad other elements. 

We are challenged to prepare liturgy that can nourish a variety of peoples from Sunday to Sunday, yet have common elements that the entire community can share on those special gatherings of the entire parish - most especially the Easter Triduum...

In the end, how do we know if the liturgy we have prepared is "good"?  Liturgy is good if it achieves its purpose: if it helps us grow in holiness, builds up the Body of Christ and gives glory to God.  What does that?  Not a golden calf of perfect forms but rather a liturgy that impels us into the world to do the work we have rehearsed in the rite...

Liturgy is good when... the hungry get fed, the imprisoned get visited and the poor have the good news preached to them... 

When we prepare well the liturgy that the church has already planned, it forms and transforms us more perfectly into the image of Christ.  And we give thanks!

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