“The opening to the world called for by Vatican II has often been interpreted, in the years after the Council, as a sort of “conversion to secularization”: This attitude was not lacking in generosity, but it led to obscuring the importance of the liturgy and to minimize the need for observing the rites, which were considered too distant from the life of the world which had to be love and with whom one had to be fully connected, up to being fascinated by it. The result was a grave crisis of identity of the priest who could no longer perceive the importance of the salvation of souls and the need to announce to the world the newness of the Gospel of Salvation. The liturgy is, without doubt, the privileged place of deepening the identity of the priest, called to “fight the secularization”; for, as Jesus says, in his priestly prayer: “I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from evil. They are not of the world, as I also am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth.” (John 17, 15-17).
“This certainly will be possible through a more rigorous observation of the liturgical norms that preserve the priest from the requirement, even the unconscious one, to draw the attention of the faithful on his person: the liturgical ritual which the celebrant is called to receive filially from the Church in fact allows the faithful to come more easily to the presence of Christ the Lord, of which the liturgical celebration must be a telling sign, and which must always come first. The liturgy is wounded when the faithful are left to the arbitrariness of the celebrant, his quirks, his personal ideas or opinions, to his own wounds. Hence also follows the importance of not banalizing the rites which, tearing us away from the secular world and thus from the temptation of immanentism, have the gift to immerse us suddenly in the Mystery and open ourselves to the Transcendent. In this sense, one can never stress enough the importance of the silence preceding the liturgical celebration, an inner narthex, where we are freed of the concerns, even if legitimate, of the secular world, in order to enter the sacred space and time where God will reveal his Mystery; [sc. one can never stress enough the importance] of silence in the liturgy to open oneself more readily to the action of God; and [sc. one can never stress enough] the appropriateness of a period of thanksgiving, integrated or not into celebration, to apprehend the inner extent of the mission that awaits us, once we were back in the world. The obedience of the priest to the rubrics is also itself a silent and eloquent sign of his love for the Church of which he is but the minister, i.e. the servant.”
Taken from: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=9276
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