Pope Francis hoping laity, priests come to better understanding of liturgy

Peter and John were sent to make preparations to eat that Passover, but in actual fact, all of creation, all of history — which at last was on the verge of revealing itself as the history of salvation — was a huge preparation for that Supper.

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"I do not intend to treat here in an exhaustive way the very rich theme of liturgical formation. I only want to offer some starting points for reflection. I think two aspects can be distinguished: formation for the Liturgy and formation by the Liturgy. The first depends upon the second which is essential."

Pope Francis expresses this hope in an apostolic letter released June 29, 2022, the feast of Peter and Paul. The letter is a call to greater formation in liturgy and is called Desiderio desideravi, from Jesus' words, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you."

The Pope said that there is a lot of material for study of the Liturgy but this knowledge needs to spread "beyond the academic environment, in an accessible way, so that each one of the faithful might grow in a knowledge of the theological sense of the Liturgy."

The document offers some of the Holy Father's beautiful reflections on the Eucharist and the meaning of worship.

The Pope says he is calling not for a dry mental exercise: "I repeat: it does not have to do with an abstract mental process, but with becoming Him. This is the purpose for which the Spirit is given, whose action is always and only to confect the Body of Christ. It is that way with the Eucharistic bread, and with every one of the baptized called to become always more and more that which was received as a gift in Baptism; namely, being a member of the Body of Christ. Leo the Great writes, 'Our participation in the Body and Blood of Christ has no other end than to make us become that which we eat.'"

Symbols

At the heart of the lack of liturgical formation, the Pope suggests, is the modern inability to understand symbols.

"The task is not easy because modern man has become illiterate, no longer able to read symbols; it is almost as if their existence is not even suspected."

He said that we see this first off in the way we treat the human body, which he calls a symbol "because it is an intimate union of soul and body; it is the visibility of the spiritual soul in the corporeal order; and in this consists human uniqueness, the specificity of the person irreducible to any other form of living being."

The Pope referred to his namesake, St. Francis, saying we "no longer have his gaze" -- "To have lost the capacity to grasp the symbolic value of the body and of every creature renders the symbolic language of the Liturgy almost inaccessible to the modern mentality."

"And yet," Pope Francis insists, "there can be no question of renouncing such language. It cannot be renounced because it is how the Holy Trinity chose to reach us through the flesh of the Word.

Instead, he says:

Here the Pope offered what he called a "simple way"