27TH NATIONAL MEETING OF DIOCESAN DIRECTORS OF LITURGY 2012
STATEMENT
The celebration of the Year of Faith (October 11, 2012) was declared by Pope Benedict XVI to commemorate the 50th year of Vatican II. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (December 4, 1963) the first document of Vatican II, enshrines the basic principles of the renewal of the Church and her liturgy.
On the auspicious occasion of the forthcoming fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Constitution on the Liturgy of Vatican II, we the delegates to the twenty-seventh National Meeting of Diocesan Directors of Liturgy, held in Bacolod City from September 10-14, 2012, join the entire Church in praising and thanking the Holy Spirit for the inestimable gift of liturgical renewal.
The spiritual life of the Catholic faithful in the Philippines continues to be immensely enriched by the reformed liturgy. This is indeed a time of rejoicing and for committing ourselves to keeping alive and active in our local communities the legacy of the council.
In the course of our meeting we reviewed chapter by chapter the provisions of the Constitution on the Liturgy and assessed how they have been implemented in our country. We see the gains of the council for the past 50 years in the Philippines although recognize the great challenges that are still open to us. Therefore,
1. We thank God for the gift of Vatican II. We thank the Church for implementing the liturgical reform of the council. Our Christian lives have been immensely enriched by active and devout participation in the liturgy and by understanding God’s word. We thank the council for giving the lay people the joy and privilege of sharing in the liturgical ministry of the Church. We pray that the council will continue to yield abundant fruit in our country and the world for the glory of God and the sanctification of our souls.
2. We thank God for Vatican II’s Constitution on the Liturgy in which the council fathers set forth the directives on the reform of the liturgy. We thank Pope Paul VI who zealously and faithfully brought to fulfilment the conciliar mandate of the liturgical reform. We are resolved to uphold the conciliar decrees on the liturgy and to welcome with deep faith and cheerful obedience the changes that the Church has instituted after the council.
3. We thank Vatican II for retaining sound liturgical traditions, so that we will stay connected to the worship of our ancestors in the faith. We likewise thank it for opening the way to legitimate progress, so that the liturgy and the paschal mystery it celebrates will not remain detached from our day-to-day life experiences. We advocate Pope John XXIII’s conciliar principle of aggiornamento and his prophetic vision of a Church that sojourns in the modern world with mission to evangelize it. We are particularly grateful to Pope Paul VI for providing us with a renewed form of Holy Mass that we can understand, participate in, and hold as source and summit of our Christian lives.
4. We thank God for the bishops, priests, religious, and lay people that promoted the Liturgical Movement with pastoral zeal and often with great personal sacrifices. We thank them for the courage to call for legitimate progress in the liturgy on the basis of sound tradition. We thank the innumerable liturgical scholars and experienced pastors who generously offered their expertise in order to realize the aim of active participation. We pray that their memory will be etched in the pages of our liturgical history, as now they celebrate the eternal liturgy in the kingdom of heaven.
5. We thank Vatican II for active participation, which is our right and duty as baptized Christians. As liturgical assembly, we hold fast to it in accord with the liturgical norms of participation. We adhere to the discipline of the Constitution (art. 28) that “in liturgical celebrations each person, minister or lay who has an office to perform, should carry out all and only those parts which pertain to their office by the nature of the rite and the norms of the liturgy”. Lastly, we propose to qualify our active participation always and everywhere with deep sense of reverence and awe in the presence of the sacred mystery.
6. We thank Vatican II for restoring the Word of God as an integral element of the liturgical celebrations. We thank the Church for stressing the importance of spiritually enriching and socially relevant homilies, which explain God’s word to us. We give fuller value to the liturgy of the word when we have trained lectors and psalmists, when we use the proper liturgical books, and when we read from an ambo that reflects the dignity of God’s word.
7. We thank Vatican II for the use of the vernacular language in the liturgy, so that God may speak to us and we to God in a language we understand. The ultimate aim of liturgical translation is to promote active and devout participation by which our minds are nourished by divine doctrine and our hearts are lifted up in liturgical prayer. With Pope Paul VI we desire that the liturgical texts should be noble and beautiful as befits divine worship. With him we desire that they should be clear, unencumbered, and within the reach of all, so that every one, including children and the uneducated, may draw from the riches of the liturgy.
8. We thank Vatican II for restoring the authority of the local Ordinaries and the Bishops’ Conferences to regulate certain matters in the celebration of the liturgy in their respective dioceses and territories. We support our bishops in their exercise of such authority for the spiritual and pastoral good of the faithful entrusted to their care. While they maintain the unity of the Roman rite, they strive to make it understandable and meaningful to their people.
We thank his Excellency, Bishop Vicente M. Navarra, DD, his clergy, and the people for hosting this national meeting. The spirit of grateful remembrance with which we looked back at the 50 years of Sacrosanctum Concilium was strengthened by their generosity and hospitality.
That in all things God may be glorified.
