積極參與

小弟近日閱讀一本已買了多時的小書，名為《Cardinal Reflections - Active Participation and the Liturgy》。當中輯錄了數位樞機（包括：Cardinal George Pell, Cardinal Francis Arinze, Cardinal Jorge A. Medina Estévez, Cardial Francis Eugene George）對禮儀內的「積極參與」的看法。

精彩！

而下選錄 Card. Arinze 所寫的其中一段：

... It is not a surprise that soon after this [Second Vatican] Council some people began to exaggerate to the extreme of activism in liturgical participation. They seemed to be pushing an unwritten agenda of active participation at all costs, in all sorts of ways, by everyone and in all parts of the liturgy if possible. Sometimes this lead to noisy celebrations in which the roles of ordained priests and the lay faithful who have the royal priesthood were confused. Silence and times for meditative listening were apparently not considered important. Activism, or the effort to get everyone to be doing something active all the time, was sponsored as if it were what the Second Vatican Council desired (cf. Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments: Redemptionis Sacramentum, 40).

Sometimes such tendencies appeared in choirs dominating the celebrations, occupying positions that distract the congregation and edging out the priest celebrant to a role of secondary importance. At other times, activism appears in endless commentaries where the speaker is probably unconsciously projecting self-image and is doing his or her best not to allow the priest or the people to have a quiet moment. A recent craze for so-called active participation is the idea that there must be dance at a solemn Mass. I have seen a Mass where some misguided person arranged a dance for entry, another for Gloria in Excelsis Deo, another for the Gospel, one for the offertory, one for Sanctus, one for thanksgiving after Communion and a final exhibition for exit! This dance operator forgot to tell us whether people come to Sunday Mass in order to watch dances, whether there is no parish hall for dances after Mass, and whether the Latin Mass liturgy had the tradition of dance. Why must the People of God be afflicted with so many distractions just when they come to adore God on Sunday?

All this leads us to state that while the Second Vatican Council ordered fuller, more conscious, and active participation in the liturgy, it is of vital importance that we accept that the liturgy is primarily something that Christ does, not something that we put together. It is something that we receive, not something that we invent. It is a celebration of the mysteries of Christ in which we are allowed to take part as members of the Church. "True liturgical education cannot consist in learning and experimenting with external activities. Instead one must be led toward the essential action that makes the liturgy what it is, toward the transforming power of God, who wants, through what happens in the liturgy, to transform us and the world" (J. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 175) ...

禮儀是基督的作為，而非出自我們的「拼湊」；
禮儀是要我們「領受」、而非「發明」。

實在值得我們反思......