Living the Liturgy

There is an ancient Christian saying from the Patristic Erawhich is known in its most concise form as lex orandi, lex credendi. Asthe Catechism of the Catholic Church translates it: The lawof prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays.While the elegant simplicity of the phrase contains anabundance of wisdom, the liturgy has always been subject to forces thatthreaten to reduce this understanding to partial interpretations. As severalobservers have noted, these reductions include the archeologicalapproachexplicating the liturgys historical origins but in the processtreating it as a dead letterand the sociological approachfocusing on liturgyas little more than an expression of contemporary concerns.In Living the Liturgy: A Witness, Father LuigiGiussani (1922-2005) restores a more balanced view, reminding us that(according to Roberto Braschis introduction) in the liturgy God is its presentsubject and that the essence of every celebratory action is the possibilityof a gaze toward Himbecause it is always from Him that the dialogue withhumanity moves. The memorable, bracing insights in Living the Liturgywere taken from conversations that Father Giussani had with members of theinternational lay movement he founded, Communion and Liberation.