Una Voce San Bernardino

A very interesting interview with the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Antonio Cardinal Cañizares Llovera, has been published by Paolo Rodari and Il Foglio on January 9th, 2010.

[Note: The blogger over at The New Theological Movement (you read that correctly) has done a partial translation of this same interview, which he kindly notified me of, and to give credit where it is due, I used some of his translation as the beginning point for our own NLM translation, going through it and the original interview, making our own revisions from that basis. From that, I have further added the other paragraphs which pertain to the sacred liturgy.]

Here are the relevant liturgical excerpts, which forms most of what Rodari presents us with. The bolded emphases are from the NLM.

The former archbishop of Toledo and primate of Spain, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, has led the Vatican “ministry” which concerns itself with the liturgy for a little over a year now. A delicate task in a pontificate, such as that of Benedict XVI, in which the liturgy and its “restructuring” has a central role after the post conciliar drift. Indeed, the liturgy is the centre of the life of the faithful. The Pope said it again at Christmas: as for the monks, so it is for every man, “the liturgy is the first priority. Everything else comes after.” It is necessary, “to put in second place all other occupations, as important as they may be, to set out toward God, to allow Him to enter into our life and our time.”

“I have received — he explains — the mission to complete, with the valuable and indispensable help of my team, those tasks that are assigned to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus of John Paul II with respect to the order and promotion of the sacred liturgy, in the first place of the sacraments. For the religious and cultural situation in which we live and for the same priority which corresponds to the liturgy in the life of the Church, I believe that the primary mission which I have received is, with total dedication and engagement, to promote, revitalize and develop the spirit and true sense of the liturgy in the consciousness and life of the faithful; that the liturgy becomes the centre and the heart of the community; that all, priests and faithful, consider it as substantive and indispensable in our lives; that we live the liturgy in the fullness of truth, and of it, which is in its fullness, as the Second Vatican Council says, “the source and summit” of the Christian life. After a year at the head of this Congregation, every day I hope and I feel more strongly the need to promote in the Church, and on every continent, a strong and rigorous liturgical impulse to re-vivify the rich legacy of the Council and of the great Liturgical Movement of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century — with men like Guardini, Jungmann and many others – brought to fruition by the Church at the Second Vatican Council. There, no doubt, is our future and the future of the world. I say this because the future of the Church and of all humanity is placed in God, in the life of God and that which comes from Him, and this happens in the liturgy and through it. Only a Church which lives the truth of the liturgy will be able to give the one thing which can renew, transform and recreate the world: God and only God and His grace. The liturgy, in its purest character, is the presence of God; God’s saving work and regeneration, communication and participation in His merciful love, adoration, acknowledgement of God. It is the only thing that can save us.”