Dear brothers and friends, today we are very happy to welcome among us the Swami Satchitananda and his student Kuma. They are from Ceylon. Later this morning in the community we hope to learn something about Oriental monasticism in our discussion together. Then this evening, our guests, our friends are also invited to come if they wish. And at St. Joseph's Guesthouse in the large sitting room, Swami will be with us there and we hope conduct a prayer service. And so everyone is welcome to join us for that. Now today is the fifth and last Sunday after Epiphany this year. We soon begin a new season out of Lent by next Sunday. And this time of Lent, the very word indicates something which increases or grows, expands.

[01:12]

And that indicates something of what that very time is and means. It is the spring season when nature itself begins to grow, increase, expand, revise, and experience rebirth. And so in a spiritual sense, it means the same for us too. During this time, we also are to renew. Looking forward to the blessed event of Easter, It is a time during which, as the old monks would say, a time for the active life especially, in their sense, that is, a time for the rooting out of sins, of weaknesses, of faults, and a time for growing in virtue, striving after that purity of heart which was so dear to the hearts of the early monks. And that purity of heart leads and turned them to pure prayer, which was the goal.

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And so in a sense, that is what we do, what our Holy Father Benedict encourages us to do during this season. And so in a certain sense, the whole church does, a kind of retreat. And so while striving in this way and looking forward to the blessed event of Easter, we aim at attaining this purity of heart that we may also, as it were, bud forth into that pure prayer which comes to us through our Lord and his Paschal event. And during this season too, our Bishop Hogan and the Liturgy Commission of the Diocese also present us with another opportunity in which to grow and to renew. They would like us, as does the whole church right now, to renew our prayer, to renew our worship. And so we are being presented with new forms of worship, a reform of our worship.

[03:27]

And our bishop wants us to gradually become introduced to these new forms so that we can enter into this new form and live it and pray it in a very full way. And so, beginning today in the churches throughout the diocese, a series of talks begins to help all of us learn these new rites and to recognize them and join in them in our prayer. Today it is a general sort of introduction about the changes themselves and our attitudes toward them. We have all, I'm sure, heard about the new mass form, which has been coming for some time. We may have perhaps already had some reactions, favorable or otherwise, to what we have heard.

[04:32]

And this is a very important point of today's theme, our attitudes toward the changes with which we are being presented. As always, in our human way, we have reactions, human reactions. And these can vary greatly from exaggerated enthusiasm to reluctant compliance, if not refusal. And so we need to take a step beyond these first human reactions, whatever they may be, and enter more deeply into faith, that inner dimension of our life, of our faith, and there confront the reality and the facts which come to us. This inner relationship, the inner depth of faith then, is our relationship with God and each other, which is one of mutual loving acceptance in the Holy Spirit.

[05:40]

In this way, then, we should try to recognize what it is that divine providence has prompted and why it has prompted this reform and renewal of our prayer. In this regard, then, in order to understand something about these changes, we should look to the sources from which they come. we can be assured that these new forms are not simply the fruit of the imagination of some private individual, however aesthetic and artistic he may have been. Rather, these forms are the fruit of at least, we may say, 50 years of scholarship, of research and study, But more so, they are given to us from the Church.

[06:47]

And the Church, we know, is the body of Christ. The Church is Christ present among His people, the people of God. St. Augustine tells, told us that he who touches the Church touches Christ. He is present there wherever two or three are gathered in his name. There he is. And the church is the whole assembly of all his people gathered in his name. So there he is in the midst of us. And he has given his spirit to that assembly, a spirit which prompts and guides. And so it is really from this source that we receive these this invitation to grow and increase in our prayer and our worship. Underlying this source, and I think at bottom, a basic reason for our understanding and accepting

[08:05]

and entering into these new forms is a very real fact and truth. We might in some way call it a principle of accommodation, though it's a weak expression. We can see it in the Lord himself, our Heavenly Father, having presented, having brought into existence a very beautiful work of His in creation, saw what happened to this work of His when sin intervened. How His beautiful creatures, angels and men, many of them, and men especially, were turned away from Him. This fact elicited, as it were, all the more from God his loving mercy and compassion and condescension.

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And he willed to correct this situation. And in going about this, the great gift of his descent, of his condescending mercy, comes to the fore as a kind of principle. Man could not return to God by himself. So our loving Father comes to us. This is what I mean by the principle of accommodation. God comes to us in our helplessness, in our weakness. He doesn't leave us to return to Him by ourselves. Indeed, we could not. So He comes to us. He takes the initiative. He loves first. He makes the first step. And the greatest of all these steps and of this condescension of God's loving mercy is shown to us in the great mystery of the Incarnation. Here is the coming of God to us.

[10:19]

He's reaching down, taking the first step, reaching out to lift us up, to turn us back toward himself, if we will. So at bottom, then, we can see this great mystery, this great act of God's love, this greatest act of God outside himself, that of the incarnation, God becoming man, entering into our very situation, our weakness, and all things but sin becoming like us, leading us back to himself, to his life, his suffering, his dying, his rising, and his communicating to us of his life-giving spirit. Here then is the great example of God's accommodating himself to us and to our needs, to our weakness. And I think it is this very same thing which we can witness and experience now. God does the same thing and continues to do it always on our behalf.

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He does it in a special way now through his church. The Lord himself, acting through his church, is accommodating himself to us. And he wishes the church, his body, to accommodate itself to us, to our needs, our situation, our present condition. Indeed, I think this is what is happening. The Lord, the church as the body of Christ, the Lord, reaches out to us, sees our needs, our plight, and wants to help us return to the Father, to be converted, to go back to him through Christ in the power of the Spirit. This is really what is happening. And the way in which the Church then goes about doing this, to bring about this change, accommodating our needs, we can see the Spirit acting and the Lord making this condescension and descent once again through the actions of the Church.

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the greatest of which perhaps in recent times being that of the Council, Vatican II. There, under the guidance and inspiration of the Spirit, the Church assembled with Christ in its midst. And it was from here, from this assembly, from this consideration, that the Church, in her loving mercy and kindness, wished to accommodate the needs of her people. And so in many ways, right now in our consideration, that of the liturgy of worship of prayer, she is accommodating herself and is reaching out to us to lead us once again back to the Father. And so in the way in which the Church wished to do this then accommodates our human condition as it is. and that it changes, our human condition changes from age to age.

[13:45]

We can say, I think, that we have emerged from an age which is characterized to a large extent by individualism. In our day, I think we find throughout the whole context of society and the world, there is a greater consciousness of a need for community. for cooperation, for sharing with one another, peoples with peoples, nations with nations, individuals with others. There is a great consciousness of this need and many attempts to do something about it. Indeed, we hear and speak of nowadays of the world community and see a need for great cooperation there, for common welfare and peace. And so this reaches into all levels and dimensions of society in our times, and in the community of the Church as well. Do you think back just a little, a few years ago, how it was when we came to Mass on Sunday?

[14:53]

There we all attentively, we hope, sat and listened, we watched, we observed. But the celebrant, the priest himself, did all, practically. He read the lessons, he said the prayers, and led the whole celebration. And we simply watched and followed in silence and inactivity, physically at least. Interiorly, we followed and were active in spirit. But this is no longer suitable to our times, when we are now aware of community, which means sharing, participation, the one together with the other doing things together. And so our style of worship, therefore, and our prayer needs also to reflect and take into consideration this need of our times. Therefore, participation is a key word in the new forms which we receive.

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And so our Holy Mother Church looks to us and invites us in virtue of our gift of faith and of baptism. where we were consecrated and made members of Christ, where we received the privilege and the right to act as Christians, to stand before the Father and Christ in the power of the Spirit, lift up our hands in prayer to call upon the Father, and to live a life fully Christian. In virtue of this gift and privilege, then, we are called and invited to take a full and active part, not only interiorly, but with the whole person, with the whole man, with our exterior as well as our interior. Therefore, with our voice, with our body, with our gestures, all things, the whole man is invited to give praise and glory and thanks to God. And so therefore we are no longer encouraged to merely sit and listen, but to get up, as it were, and walk, and to process, to take part in the procession, to present our gifts, to proclaim our thanks and our praise with our voice and in song.

[17:11]

This is indeed very different from what we did before. And so our human reaction can at first be one of slowness, of reluctance, hesitancy. But that is again why, as I said, we must think beyond that point and in faith consider what it is we are being called to do and who we are, what is our right and our privilege. We can see something of this in today's lesson from St. Paul. where he tells us, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you are called in one body. We are called, as it were, to be one body in Christ, all of us together. Here certainly is implied our community of the faithful and of our sharing and of our participating. Filled with this peace of Christ which we receive through faith and baptism, we share and participate in the community of the body of Christ.

[18:17]

Another key word is that of celebration, which also flows from the idea of community and of participation. What does it mean to celebrate? Celebration implies in itself, in the very word, a gathering of people together. So it already implies community in itself. And there's also a notary connotation of joy, of happiness in this gathering. We know several, many kinds of celebrations. We celebrate weddings. We celebrate anniversaries. We celebrate graduations. We celebrate all kinds of accomplishments in which people have cooperated in unified effort and achieved something. These call for a gathering, a kind of thanksgiving, and a joyful celebrating of that event. And this is indeed to what we are invited and called to do in our Eucharistic celebration, in the Mass, as we know it.

[19:27]

Saint Paul also gives us hints today as to what this means. After telling us that we are called into this one body of Christ, he says, and be thankful. That is a key note. This is something which this body of people called together do. This should characterize them. If anything should characterize a Christian, it is this gratitude, this deep fundamental thanksgiving. Because he knows who he is, who God is, what he has received, Through the gift of faith, he has become one with Christ, been made a son of the Father once again, through Christ, and been given the gift of that glorious spirit of the risen Christ, his Holy Spirit. Any Christian who is fully aware of this fact in his life, as an individual, cannot help but be almost bursting at the seams with joy and thanksgiving gratitude.

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And this is the thing then which could characterize each of us, and all of us together, as we are called to assembly, as here and now, to express that very same gratitude and thanksgiving. This is what a celebration is, we can say. And so this then is something of what has been prepared for us by our Holy Mother Church in which our diocese is presenting to us during these weeks and calling us to recognize and see and enter into with a cheerful and joyful heart filled with this peace of Christ, welcoming these new forms, taking them on wholeheartedly, entering into them so that we may as a community, as individuals in community, express our loving thanksgiving and praise by sharing in this great mystery and giving thanks and praise and glory to God.

[21:40]

This very thing then is what we are to do now. St. Paul goes on in his lesson to tell us more about how to do this. Teach and admonish one another in all wisdom. And as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thanksgiving in your hearts, do this in honor of God. And so we do this very thing now. We sing songs and psalms and hymns in praise of God. And now as we continue in the Eucharistic sacrifice, in the second part of our liturgy, we make that thanksgiving. We are invited to join with Christ in making His thanksgiving to the Father, that perfect act of thanks which He offered the Father by His life of obedience to His Father's will through dying and rising. We are now invited to join and give our bit, as it were, of thanksgiving together with His, that He may present it to the Father, that we may be accepted by Him and be given the gift of His Holy Spirit.

[22:53]

So then let us now join together in full participation, in full joy and thankfulness in this celebration of the Holy Eucharist. As I think most of you know, Bishop Hogan has decided that it would be best if we introduce the new changes in the Mass in a gradual way. And in this he listened to the to the suggestions of the Liturgical Commission of the Diocese and to our own Father Damasus. that this would be the best way, really, to gradually introduce the people to these new changes and to enable them to assimilate and to understand of what is going on. So each week, then, throughout the diocese, one section, one portion of the new way in which we'll celebrate Mass will be introduced so that all of us can become familiar with it.

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and so that by the time the whole Mass, the entire change is instituted after Easter, why, we would be familiar with it, and familiar with it in a gradual sort of way. And the first portion of that which we're beginning with this morning is the so-called introductory rite, or preparation rite, the beginning of the Mass. I think all of us are aware in the things that we do that the most difficult part really is the beginning and then the end. Once something gets going we all do fairly well, but it's difficult to start and it's always difficult to bring it then to a real conclusion. And for that reason the preparation, the introduction, the beginning of the Mass also has an importance all its own. It has a special significance and a value, really, for us.

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And I think there are three things which we should be aware of or try and keep in our mind at this time. And before I mention either of the three, it's sometimes good if we remind ourselves that such a preparation, such an introduction, a beginning, a making ready, is a part, really, of all our human undertakings. Someone has given the example of, take a football game like the Rose Bowl. Before the game, there's a parade. Before the game is a parade, which is a preparation, really, for the game itself. It takes on, in the course of time, almost becomes a thing in itself. But what it is, really, and originally, is a preparation for the game which follows. And it's important for us to see here that any of the portions of the Mass, and especially the introductory portion, doesn't become a thing in itself.

[26:07]

Its importance and its whole function, its significance, is for what follows. It's to lead us into what follows. And the first thing is our realization and the deep realization of being called. We are called to this assembly. We are gathered here by God. We are an Ecclesia. We are a gathering. We are people specifically brought here by God. We talk very often of knowing the will of God, of having the experience of God, and I think most of us picture it or imagine it, conceive of it, in terms of something which is tremendously startling, like St. Paul's vision on the way to Damascus, or some of the visions we've heard about of the saints. And God then, in some thunderous sort of way, speaks to me. But this isn't true at all. God is constantly, as it were, in communication with us, in communication with us, and by a variety of ways, the same as we are in communication with one another.

[27:17]

And we should learn that we are having an experience with God in a variety of ways. Because this is Sunday, and because I respond to it, because of the church's regulations about Sunday, because I respond to them, because of my Catholic faith. All these things are ways, are in fact the voice of God, the communication of God to me. And when I respond to all of these, not in a mechanical way, but with an open heart and realizing what I'm doing, I'm more than simply fulfilling the obligations of the Church. I really am in contact with God. I'm having an experience of God, and the kind of an experience of God that opens me for even greater experiences, for a knowledge of His ways, for an ability to kind of feel with Him, to view things the same as He sees them.

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If I do these things mechanically and unthinkingly, it's valueless. In fact, it's worse than valueless. It can even be harmful. but opening my heart and myself to the circumstances in which I live of the day, I do really, and this is our belief, come into contact with God, or God comes into contact with me. So this is the first thing. From the time we arise in the morning, the whole thing takes on a different aura and context and meaning. Because the reason that I arise this morning is to come to this assembly, to respond to God, to become one with the Christian people whom He's called. It makes a total difference in my whole day. It makes a total difference in my whole arising and moving, because it has a different purpose and a different goal. And it's a different thing, really. I'm not going about my own business.

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but I really am going about that which is my Father's business. So that's the first thing, a deep realization that we are being called. We're called together into this assembly and with these people whom God has given me, whom he also has called, and which gives them a new reason for being loved or respected for my joining with them. And the second thing is that we're called to a unity. We're called to a unity. And the Mass is precisely this mystery of unity. We're given this fellowship with which I greeted you this morning, which is the love of God our Father and this graciousness and favor, the reality of our union with Christ and with his Holy Spirit. It's into this unity that we are invited. And there's a new unity then among us. There's a new dimension in our lives which is brought about by the Mass, which is brought about by our listening to the Word of God, is brought about by our celebration of the Eucharist.

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So our being called and our responding and this experience of God is to lead us to a deeper one. where both our heart and our mind, our affection, is being brought into union with His, and then we're being brought into a greater union, which is this union of a subsisting life. The very life of God is communicated to us. And that's the second thing. And the third is that it's It is in terms of a preparation. It's in terms of an opening for something which is greater. I am called and I am brought to God and I really am opened for something which is to come and which is coming. And I take on in this way really the dimensions of a man of God, of a child of God, of someone who is moving, who is progressing. And I yield myself to this movement, to this force, to this influence.

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And our own word for it really would be openness. What I want to accomplish, what God wants to accomplish in me through this particular rite is an openness to whatever follows. So this being called, this being united, and this being opened to the influence of God, these are three of the most important and basic things which we're doing in this introductory portion of the Mass. And we should arouse ourselves and the sentiments which go with this, not simply to kind of stumble through it or to get it over with, but to see these things and to thank God for this opportunity to respond to Him, to be united with Him, to be open not only to Him but to all of mankind. So we realize also the imperfection and the need really to continue to strive

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after God and to lay hold, as St. Paul says, of him who has laid hold of me, that we aren't yet perfect, but that shouldn't be a source of discouragement. And so then we should also be mindful of our negligences, of our deliberate sins, of the hardness of our heart that we acquiesce in. So let us then, with these things in mind, hear the petitions which we have and ask God's mercy and kindness that we do become like him. My dear friends, the repeated invitation to focus the attention of your mind and of your heart on the very center of our Christian faith, which is formulated in the words of St.

[33:57]

John the Evangelist, God is charity. That means God is that love that seeketh not her own, but spends and gives herself. And with this in mind, my dear friends, let us turn to today's Gospel. There you see the Son of God made man, our Lord Jesus Christ. Nobody has seen God but the one who was in the Father's bosom. He has made him known to us. Now what does the one who shows us the Father's love because he comes from his bosom, what does he do? The first thing is he turns to three among his disciples. And what does it mean? It's a note, I think, of special affection

[35:00]

of intimacy to just these three, Jake, James, and John, and Peter, called by their names. Then he takes them apart. That means he takes them out of the ordinary context of life, where worries cloud the sky where we are half asleep in the routine of our daily doings. He takes them out of this ordinary life and he leads them up to the mountain. For what purpose? To reveal to them the secret, the secret of his love on the top of the mountain. And what is the secret of his love? It's the transfiguration, the transfiguration of his face in splendor.

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The faith because God loves and those who love God desire to see the faith of the Beloved. Not only that, the other manifestation is that of the voice. The voice of the Father. This is my Beloved Son and I delight in Him. Words that reveal the Father's wisdom. His inner relation, eternal relation to His tongue. A relation of love, essentially. And then the invitation to us, listen to His word. And that, my dear friends, is the reason why I rejoice in the fact today that I, in this context, have the privilege to explain to you briefly another step in the reform of the liturgy that we are entering into during this Lenten season.

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I mean the opening up of the Word of God to the ears of the people of God. in the course of the celebration of the Eucharist. Certainly, I may first just point out briefly the necessity and the need for this reform of the liturgy of the Word in the Roman Rite. we must remember that only a very small part of scripture came to be proclaimed to the people in the literacy that we have followed all these last centuries. Now, this may be not so bad. Maybe it was not so bad at the time when this usage was practiced. because then there were other days in the week, especially Wednesdays and Fridays, where the faithful were invited and the opportunity was always open to them to come and to listen to the Scripture that was being read on these days, Wednesdays and Fridays.

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and that was without the celebration of the Eucharist. But then, my friends, when this usage disappeared and the celebration of the mass was extended, of the Sunday mass, was extended then in the later course of time to every day, then, of course, the situation became serious. The most Sunday Mass with the text is repeated practically every day or perhaps replaced by saints and then the readings were geared to this topic of the saint and taken from the common or as we recall very one can say vividly the daily Requiem Masses. Now in this practice the proclamation of the Word of God during the liturgy and in public had really shrunk to an absolute minimum.

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Then when we turn to this minimum and consider a little more what it was that was then presented to us, we can say the Sunday lectures themselves were reduced, first of all, from the original three lessons to two. And then furthermore, these two that were left in the course of time, of the liturgy of the Roman Rite, got mixed up in their composition, in their mutual relation, through the vicissitudes of reading and copying the wrong manuscripts at the wrong time, and hazards like this. So one really must say that at that time the choice of the readings that were presented to the people of God was not systematic at all, and it was to a great extent really limited to the local circumstances of the Church of Rome.

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And this local liturgy, in the course of time, and especially since the Council of Trent, was and happened to be imposed universally upon the whole Western Church all over the earth, and on top of it, it was supposed to be read in Latin. Now, my dear friends, what the present reform and noun amounts to, I would say, is this. First of all, a third reading on Sundays is being reintroduced. And that means, as you can see on today's liturgy already, that the context, the broader context, and the light of salvation history comes into focus in the announcing of Holy Scripture on Sundays to you.

[41:44]

The taking in of the Old Testament into the series of readings allows us to listen to the words that proclaim the coming of the future salvation. In our case today, only to point it out, let us say on the margin, today the comparison with Mount Tabor and Mount Moriah. And Mount Moriah understood Abraham's going up and offering Isaac. Mount Moriah also understood in the full light of the New Testament gospel that we have read And just to indicate it with one word, it shows clearly to you who is meant in the context of salvation history by Abraham and who is meant by Isaac.

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And you will immediately see that Abraham is God the father and that Isaac is the son. the one who is today on Mount Tabor, but for what reason to prepare the hearts of his disciples for his death and his resurrection. And that really is, let us say, the inner meaning of the combination of these two proclamations of scripture to make us realize that also it is not so much, let us say, in first line, Abraham, the father, as the representative of human fathers, who is called by God to offer his son Isaac But it is first of all the fulfillment of the infinite charity of our Heavenly Father who sends His Son to become a propitiation for our sins and to die for us.

[43:57]

The Father is Abraham. Isaac is the son of God made man. So it's a manifestation, first of all, of God the Father's infinite love to us. And then, of course, in the Apostle, in the third reading, That always, I mean the second reading in our sequence, that always is then and brings to us and shows to us the word of love as it penetrates like leaven into the practical life of the people to transform it. As today, if God is for us, who is against us? Then Paul reminds us of that in the face of the father sending his son to die for us, if this father is for us, and indeed he is for us, because here we celebrate the son's death and resurrection right in this Eucharistic celebration at this altar, then who is against us?

[45:08]

through this tremendous joy that we are children and members of the kingdom of the Father's love. Now this, therefore, concerns one aspect of the present reform, and that is the introducing of a third reading on Sundays and on feast days. To give especially this broader insight, one can say, into the inner workings of the living Word of God, which is only fully brought to our awareness by the contrast of the Old and the New Testament. And then the second part of the reform is the introducing of the readings and the distribution of the readings to a cycle of three years, cycle of three years. That in this way again, of course, you can see that therefore the repetition of the same readings every year on every Sunday, the same, makes room for a much broader selection also on Sundays, distributing a much greater, let us say, amount of the truth of God to a cycle of three years.

[46:30]

Then the third one is the immense importance also of taking into this system of the proclamations of the Word of God, not only the Sundays in three lessons and in three cycles, but taking into it the weekdays. So, my dear friends, a tremendous effort indeed has been made during these years since 1964. I just wanted to bring to your attention just for a moment also the enormous work and has gone into it. You can already realize that such a reform like this cannot be the matter of a moment. And indeed, the work has accomplished, you know perhaps, that altogether not less than 40 commissions for the reform of the liturgy are working full steam since 1964.

[47:36]

One was delegated in the spring of 1964 to prepare the revision of the readings of the Mass, composed of 18 members. Now, the work that then was done, just to indicate to you that all Latin liturgies from the 6th to the 12th century were intimately and exactly studied, Not only the Latin liturgies from the 6th to the 12th century, but also all the oriental liturgies, about 15 of them of different rites. All their readings and lectionaries and courses were studied. And finally, all lectionaries used since the 16th centuries to the present day in all the churches of the Reformation were also drawn into the study that preceded the publication of the present volume of the lectionary, which consists of no less than 440 pages.

[48:44]

Then in 1965, about 30 biblical scholars were drawn into the work and compiled a list of readings from the Old Testament and from the New Testament for the Sundays. And in this way, we are ordered to choose the most important texts in the history of salvation, especially for the Sundays. So this work, in its tale, was enormous. It was accompanied by another special work, which was going on in Germany and in France, where the Episcopal conferences had taken it into their own hands to prepare lectionaries already for provisional use during these years in their respective countries, in France and also in Canada and in Germany and Austria. Then in July 1967, The Concilium then published the first order of readings for the Sundays and the weekdays and the Feasts of St.

[49:54]

And these were sent to all Episcopal conferences all over the world and altogether to about 800 experts on the liturgy, on exegesis, on catechetical teachings, and on pastoral doctrine. After this work was done then, and the effect of especially this work was a complete rewriting and reordering of the entire lectionary, one can say, practically with the assistance of the entire Catholic world. by as the scholars and those initiated really are concerned, the experts one can say. And so in July 1968, the readings for the feasts and the days of the year were finished and were printed And then we have published this year, in the beginning of this year, last year, I mean, as I say, about 440 pages.

[50:59]

And this comprises the readings concerning what we call the proper of the time and the proper of the stains for the feast. also the common, and further, ritual masses, what we call ritual masses, I mean in great numbers, for masses that, for example, can be celebrated, now let us say for catechumens, at the occasion of baptisms, at the occasion of the admission into the community of the church of validly baptized adults, and this especially will be a thing of great importance, I'm sure, in the next future, then also the confirmation for First Communion and so on. Outside of these, what we call ritual masses, the masses for different and various occasions. occasions concerning the church, occasions concerning the public, for example for us here in the United States, Mass on Thanksgiving, Mass on the first of May, Fourth of July, all kinds of things like this.

[52:11]

and universal needs or special needs of individuals and so on. So I don't want to bore you with just an enumeration of this. I just wanted to give you a view and a kind of glimpse of the enormous effort that really has been made and which is completely unique, really, in the whole history of the Church and cannot be compared to anything that ever has been done before, the sum total of the whole. Let us say, effort is this, first of all, the Word of God for the people of God. That is the first thing. And second, the Word of God in the liturgy in harmony and catching up, as it were, with the tremendous progress that has been made in the exegesis in biblical sciences since the 16th century. Now I think the combination of these two things will, if you think that we now enter into a complete new contact with Holy Scripture, not only one or two individuals, not only some priests, but the entire people of God as such,

[53:33]

into a contact with Holy Scripture, which is infinitely deeper than anything that we have done up to now, you will see that this, to my mind, this reform of the lectionary, is one, one can say, the center, the most important, the heart of the entire liturgical reform. And therefore, my dear friends and brothers and sisters in Christ, let us rejoice in this tremendous effort of the Church and of the Church of Rome that has been done, the tremendous work that has been done. Let us be grateful to the scholars who have worked and cooperated in such a wonderful work in this reform, and let us then turn our ears and the ears of the heart to the Word of God, which is nothing than the manifestation of His love.

[54:29]

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