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Feast of Our Lady of the Angels
September 4, 1997


Introduction
Peace be with you!  

In the early years of the Church, a bishop in Syria wrote a little
instruction book for himself and other bishops.  Here is one crucial
task he set for bishops:

    Exhort the people to be faithful to the assembly of the
    Church.  Let them not fail to attend, but let them gather
    faithfully together.  Let no one deprive the Church by
    staying away; if they do, they deprive the Body of Christ of
    one of its members! (Didascalia, chapter 13)

We are centuries later, oceans apart.  We are separated from that
Christian Church in third-century Syria by theologies and technologies.
But what we have in common surmounts all that: we the Church assemble on
the Lord's Day, and that assembly, in the name of the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit, speaks and listens to the Word of God, makes holy
and is made holy by its Eucharistic praying and the sacred banquet of
Holy Communion.

My hope is to fulfill what this bishop saw as every bishop's
responsibility.  As bishop of this Church of Los Angeles, I exhort you
to enter into reflection with me on the Eucharist we celebrate each
Sunday in our parishes.


The Jubilee Year

Through this Letter, I want to set the direction for the way we Los
Angeles Catholics approach the Jubilee Year 2000.  We will have this one
central work to do: to carry forward the renewal of Sunday Liturgy with
vigor and joy (cf. John 16:22-24, 17:13).
 
At the start it must be clear: This will not be one task among many.  It
will be the task of these next three years.  Further, I do not see it as
the narrow responsibility of the Office for Worship or the liturgy and
music leaders in each parish.  The tasks I set forth here are meant to
unite the above persons with so many others in religious education,
initiation, youth ministry, justice and outreach, and above all, the
entire assembly that is this great Archdiocese and that is incarnate in
the parish assemblies Sunday by Sunday.

We have been called by our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, to make the
year 2000 a Jubilee Year.  Jubilee is a time to acknowledge and
celebrate that things need not be what they have been, that the future
need not repeat the past.  Jubilee is sorting out what of that past must
be forgiven or set aside, and what of the past is worthy to be grasped
and handed on, built upon, made our own and given to our children.  It
is a time when the generation now on earth pauses, repents, gives
thanks, goes forward.


The Vision of the Second Vatican Council

Among the finest graces of the just-ending century I would name the
Second Vatican Council.  Have we yet, more than 30 years after the
Council, begun to absorb what the Holy Spirit did there?  Have we
understood the way in which that amazing gathering grappled with how the
Gospel could be proclaimed and lived in the coming generations?  Those
of us who experienced the Council and believe it to have been such a
grace to our times must ponder how broad and wise were its works, and be
proud to take our tasks today from its vision.
 
Yes, it was a revolutionary grace, a brave moment, a Pentecost for our
time.  Yes, such moments are traumatic.  Did the bishops of the Council
know how hard renewal would be?  Perhaps if they had, they would not
have had the courage to begin, and to think and act in such bold ways!
But they did have the courage and the vision.  The prophets of this
century prepare us to live in the next.

I, along with the vast majority of the People of God, stand in awe of
the Council's work.  I give thanks that the bishops of the world
gathered around those two great popes, John XXIII and Paul VI, and said
that Gospel joy is ours and the promise of Jesus is ours; and that it is
better to evangelize and love this world than to hide from, ignore, or
condemn it.

Pope John Paul II, in calling us to the Jubilee Year, praises the Second
Vatican Council and says this:

    The best preparation for the new millennium can only be expressed in a
    renewed commitment to apply, as faithfully as possible, the teachings of
    Vatican II to the life of every individual and of the whole Church.
    (Tertio Millennio Adveniente: Apostolic Letter for the Jubilee of the
    Year 2000, #20)

My hope is that we can fulfill this mandate in our Archdiocese by a
singular and concentrated effort to strengthen Sunday Liturgy.  Lacking
that effort, we have no center, no identity as the Body of Christ.  With
that effort, the renewal of every aspect of our Church life becomes
possible.

    Pastoral care will see that the liturgy is not isolated from
    the rest of Christian life: for the faithful are invited
    daily to continue their common liturgical practice in daily
    private prayer; this spiritual discipline gives new vigor to
    the witness of the faith lived by Christians each day, and
    also to the fraternal service of the poor and to one's
    neighbor in general.  (Address to the French Bishops, March
    8, 1997, )

Oscar Romero, the late Archbishop of San Salvador, spoke in a homily of
these same foundational things.  Moments before his death, he talked
about Eucharist as the vital center of all that the Church does.  His
martyrdom itself seems to be in these words:

    This holy Mass, this Eucharist, is clearly an act of faith.
    This body broken and blood shed for human beings encouraged
    us to give our body and blood up to suffering and pain, as
    Christ did -- not for self, but to bring justice and peace
    to our people.  (Homily, March 24, 1980)

Liturgical renewal must demonstrate how liturgy creates such Christians
and such a Church, and how the ever-struggling Church makes its liturgy.
Romero knew it was about life, sacrifice, and praise from the Church.

Such renewal has taken us many years, with numerous successes and some
problems.  So difficult have been these first efforts that some seem
ready to declare it a failure, an embarrassing mistake of Vatican II.
Others would say we have come as far as was intended, so let us hear no
more of liturgical renewal.  And yet others call this task meaningless
in light of the great need for the Church to throw itself into causes of
justice and peace.

Yet it seems to me that only now are we getting glimpses of that
wondrous experience when a parish lives by that full, conscious and
active participation in the liturgy by all the faithful.  The situation
is unfortunately uneven.  Only in some parishes have we seen the
sustained effort from well-prepared leaders to work over many years
toward a Sunday Liturgy that is for the people of that parish the
nourishment they need, the deeds of Word and Eucharist they cherish. But
there are beginnings here, and these cause us both to rejoice and to
focus on what can be learned.

Start with Sunday Eucharist

The Jubilee Year calls out to us to take those gifts the Spirit raised
up in the Church at Vatican II.  Take them with the wisdom gained these
last three decades.  Come into the new Millennium doing Gospel deeds
throughout all realms of human life because a compelling and
contemplative celebrating of Eucharist is our doing and God's, Sunday
after Sunday.

At the head of our calendar stands Sunday, still called by us the Lord's
Day, the First Day of creation, the Day when Christ defeated death and
the Spirit blew upon the disciples.  (Catechism of the Catholic Church,
hereafter, CCC;  CCC: 2174-2175)  It is above all the day when we
assemble.  Saint Justin tried to explain to the non-Christians in Rome
what Christians were all about:

    On the day called Sunday there is a meeting in one place of
    those who live in cities or the country, and the memoirs of
    the apostles or the writing of the prophets are read as long
    as time permits.  Then we all stand up together and offer
    prayers.  And when we have finished the prayer, bread is
    brought, and wine and water, and the president similarly
    sends up prayers and thanksgivings to the best of his
    ability, and the congregation assents, saying the Amen; the
    distribution and reception of the consecrated elements by
    each one takes place and they are sent to the absent by the
    deacons. . . .   We all hold this common gathering on
    Sunday, since it is the first day, on which God transforming
    darkness and matter made the universe, and Jesus Christ our
    Savior rose from the dead on the same day.  (Apology, second
    century, 67:3-5,7)

To celebrate Sunday Eucharist the followers of Jesus risked their lives
in some times and places.  Such was the gathering, such was the praise
of God given there, such was the need to assemble the Church and make
the Eucharist!  In our day, the obstacles are perhaps greater than
hostile emperors.  What will it take to reclaim this day and it
holiness?  None of us know that, but we know that we do not live without
our Lord's Day and its assembly.   The vigor of that assembly, its
beauty and its liveliness, its quiet and its passion, are what I want to
address in this Letter.

I will focus on the Sunday Eucharist, but I do so knowing that the
ritual life of the Church does and must extend far beyond that gathering
on the Lord's Day.  I will focus on what we need to do in these next few
years.  I must recognize at the start what the Council itself recognized
in paragraph 14 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.  This immense
renewal of the liturgy of the Church can be done only when those who are
primarily responsible for the parish liturgy are themselves persons
"imbued with the spirit of the liturgy."

I believe this to be true, but I also recognize that the summons to
renewal came because liturgical practice in the Church had, in many
ways, ceased to be a source for such rich formation.  The condition,
"imbued with the spirit of the liturgy," was realistic, but it was far
easier said than done.  Where was the liturgical practice that would
form such pastors in the spirit of the liturgy?  It was a long task the
Council set in motion and much of it rests now, as it did then, in the
hands of those pastors.  How are they to be formed by the liturgy and so
live from it and lead their parishes toward a vital, joyous liturgy?

The second part of this Letter is addressed to priests and to all others
who bear leadership responsibility for the liturgy. We have learned in
these years since Vatican II that the renewal of parish liturgy does not
happen without the support, hard work, and constant learning and
evaluation by those who preside -- the priests of the Archdiocese.  They
are not the only ones responsible, but they are essential.  With thanks
for all they have done and are doing, I invite them to join me in this
entire reflection and active renewal.

Tensions

The obstacles to such a renewal of our parish Sunday Liturgy could
paralyze us, could keep us from even beginning.  I want to name some of
these and discuss one of them.  I would like to see them as challenges
that keep us attentive and honest in this work, as creative tensions
that call forth creative responses.

	* Solemnity and Community.  

Liturgy calls forth reverence. The beauty of its aesthetics, its signs
of solemnity and choreography of ministries, its poetry and its
silences, lift us in awe before the mystery of God. Yet, liturgy is to
be festive. It is about the communion and radical equality of the
Baptized, their union in the Lord, their friendly sharing of ministry
and life. It builds community by breaking open the meaning of God's Word
for our everyday lives, and by gathering us as a family around the
Lord's Table. We do not choose between solemnity and festivity, between
reverence and community. The vertical and the horizontal dimensions of
liturgy must be held together to work for us.

	* External Form and Internal Transformation.  

The external form of liturgy is a communication. It teaches and forms
the assembly. The order of actions and the use of symbols challenge and
invite us into the truths of the faith and the spiritual Tradition we
have received. Yet, liturgy is alive. It must have flesh and blood and
spirit. It flows from our deep conversion to the Lord and our joy of
knowing him. It must speak to this people, here and now. We do not need
more mechanical implementation in response to liturgical directives any
more than we need a liturgy that seems to be of the presider's own
making. We need a faithfulness to the official directives and common
forms, but a faithfulness that is imbued with the Spirit, and that opens
this Sunday assembly to the riches of Eucharistic faith.

	* Unity and Diversity.

We are one. Our Catholic faith will not allow the distinction "us"
versus "them." On Sunday we gather in one Lord, one faith, one Baptism.
Yet, we are many. When we gather, it is also to witness to the
universality of our faith, evident in the many parts that make up the
one Body. We celebrate the diverse experiences, cultures, and charisms
that assemble around the one table. Because of the uniqueness of our
local Church in this regard, we must say more.

The Challenge and Blessing of Many Cultures

The liturgy not only can but must build on what is suitable in the
culture of a people.  In our Archdiocese we Catholics come from many
cultures with many different gifts.  The Lord has brought us all
together and we are called to be fully Christ together.  In population,
we are predominately from Spanish-speaking cultures, with all their own
diversity.  But we embrace many Asian and Pacific Island cultures as
well as the diversity of various African and European cultures that have
had their own development on this continent.  And there is cultural
richness within cultural richness.

This is a difficult challenge.  Yes, we want liturgy with sounds and
gestures that flow from the religious soul of a people, whether
Vietnamese or Mexican, Native American or African American.  Yet we have
a Catholic soul.  We are in need of witnessing to that soul, of being in
assemblies where the vision of Paul comes alive, where the Vietnamese,
the Mexican, Native American and African American stand side by side
around the table singing one thanksgiving to God.  And although that
thanksgiving may have the rhythm of one particular culture, all will
join with their hearts.  Before we are anything else -- any sex,
ethnicity, nationality or citizenship -- we need to be the Body of
Christ, sisters and brothers by our Baptism.  Every one of us needs to
know by heart some of the music, vocabulary, movement, and ways of
thinking and feeling that are not of our own background.  The larger
society we are a part of needs this witness.

We have to accomplish two results:  to let the prevalent liturgy take on
the pace, sounds, and shape that other cultures bring;  and to strive in
our parishes to witness that in this Church there is finally no longer
this people or that people, but one single assembly in Christ Jesus.
(CCC:1207)

Either task would be difficult; together they seem daunting.  We can be
discouraged and do neither, or we can be excited by the challenge.  But
imagine liturgies where the economic and racial segregations of our
society are overcome.   The language of Pentecost, many languages
speaking God's praise at the same time, is our language and our
heritage.  It goes far beyond vocabulary.  It is God made manifest in
the gifts of every people. (CCC: 1204)
 
Catholics speak this Pentecost language.  This is no melting pot.  This
is communion.  Communion means life together.  Communion means we share
and share alike, yet each person comes to that Communion in the full
stature of his or her culture.

This striving for catholicity extends beyond ethnicity: the Sunday
assembly should bring together men, women and children of all ages. It
should be the one experience in our lives when we will not be sorted out
by education level, skin color, intelligence, politics, sexual
orientation, wealth or lack of it, or any other human condition.  If the
assembly is the basic symbol when the liturgy is celebrated (CCC: 1188),
the comfortable homogeneity promoted by so many in this nation has no
place.  Homogeneity and comfort are not Gospel values.

I want to warn against an excessive "inculturation" that is destroying
our liturgy.  In the past generation, we have introduced into the
liturgy some practices and attitudes from North American society that
have no place there.  For example:  the hurried pace, the tyranny of the
clock, the inattention to the arts, the casual tone of apresider, the
"what can I get out of it?" approach of the consumer, the "entertain me"
attitude of a nation of television watchers.  All these are the wrong
sort of inculturation.  Their prevalence shows how difficult it is to
seek what in the culture offers a true correspondence with the spirit of
the liturgy.
 
I hope that what follows -- Part One addressed to all, Part Two
addressed primarily to those responsible for the parish liturgy week by
week -- will be read in light of this tension.  We have obligations: to
explore inculturation in our many ethnic traditions, to strive for a
broad catholicity in the makeup of our parishes, and to be critical of
those ways in which the mainstream culture has at times deformed the
liturgy and robbed it of its power.

An Invitation

All this sounds difficult, but I believe there is a starting point:
Sunday Mass.  That is what the remainder of this Letter speaks about.
From these years of experience with the renewal of the liturgy, we know
many practices and principles that can be applied now, in all our
parishes, to the worthy celebration of Sunday Mass.  That application is
to be our work, even if other work must be put aside over these years
that take us to the Jubilee Year.  What we accomplish together will
shape the Church of our Archdiocese in the new Millennium.  With much
catechesis and preparation in our parishes, what we will have in place
by the year 2000 will grow stronger and deeper in the first decade of
the new millennium.
   
During these next years we will begin using the second English edition
of the Sacramentary and the Revised New American Bible Lectionary.  The
renewal of Sunday Liturgy suggested in this Letter will be excellent
preparation for introducing the revised Sacramentary.

Liturgical renewal is a matter of passion, of catching some glimpse of
the way strong Sunday Liturgy makes strong Catholics, and of how these
Catholics make their Sunday Liturgy. (CCC: 1324)  That, I believe, is
the insight and the determination needed, whatever the ethnic
composition of the parish.  It is good news.


				PART ONE

		       A Message to All Catholics
		   of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles


Sunday Mass, 2000

I am going to share with you my vision of a parish Sunday Eucharist.  It
is a summer Sunday in the Jubilee Year 2000, 30 minutes before the 10
a.m. Mass at Our Lady of the Angels parish.  Already, several members of
the choir are talking together and trying bits of music with the
director and the cantor.  Soon the first usher to arrive is tidying up
the entrance way and removing any bulletins left in the assembly's area
at the last Mass.  The sacristan has placed the bread and wine on a
covered table near the entrance.   Servers, lectors and communion
ministers begin to arrive and go about their necessary preparations.  By
now the early comers are here, some kneeling in prayer or sitting
quietly.  Others stop in the Blessed Sacrament chapel; others light
candles in the alcove that holds an image of Our Lady ofGuadalupe.  As
10:00 nears, more people stop to write in the parish's Book of
Intercessions.


The Entrance of the Assembly  

In houses and apartments all through the neighborhood, the true entrance
procession of this Mass has been in full swing, sometimes calm,
sometimes hectic.  Sunday clothes are being put on.  Many families are
finishing breakfast, conscious of the one-hour fast.  Here and there are
adults who choose to fast altogether until taking Holy Communion.  Some
households make a conscious effort to keep the morning quiet: no radio
or television, and the Sunday papers wait until later in the day.

In a surprisingly large number of households, but still a tiny minority,
the Sunday Scriptures have already been read aloud together on Friday or
Saturday evening.  Others met during the week in Spanish-speaking or
English-speaking prayer groups where the Lectionary's Sunday readings
were pondered.  Teenagers spent part of the regular youth group meeting
reading these Scriptures.

When we think about preparing for liturgy, we usually think of the
ministers -- the choir rehearsing, the lectors engaging their readings
all through the week, the homilist spending some time every day of the
week until it all comes together on Saturday, those who care for the
sacred space keeping it clean and beautiful.  But the liturgy is the
work of the whole assembly, and here we begin to see that many take this
seriously.  Many have prepared themselves to come together today and
participate fully in this Eucharist.

So this is the entrance procession, coming from all directions, made up
of all ages, several races, a variety of economic circumstances and
political outlooks -- and speaking at least three first languages!  But
they are all in a great procession, the Church assembling in the house
of the Church.  "We shall go up with joy," "Que alegr¡a cuando me
dijeron vamos a la casa del Señor", or as we used to pray from Psalm
43, "Introibo ad altare Dei."   On the way to that altar of God, most of
these people pass by the large Baptismal Font and take water from it,
perhaps remembering their own Baptism.  They enter their liturgy marked
with the water of baptism, marked with the cross of Christ whose Body we
became in those waters. (CCC: 1267)

At 9:45 the choir is assembled and a brief but serious rehearsal begins,
firming up what was practiced last Wednesday evening.  This warm-up of
voices lasts until just a few minutes before the liturgy is to begin;
toward the end many in the now two-thirds full church join in singing.
By now the presider is vested and stands with servers and lectors near
the main entrance, adding to the welcome of the ushers.  The ushers,
knowing the church will be full, are doing their best to fill the pews
nearest the altar first.  They make special efforts to see that parents
with very small infants get places in the first rows (where there are
more comfortable chairs).

Likewise, the ushers invite any who would find the communion procession
difficult to take places in those areas throughout the assembly space
with room for wheelchairs.  The ushers point out to any newcomers with
pre-school children that child care is available, or they are welcome to
have their children with them (it is surely not appropriate to have them
in a separate room).  The sacristan has invited the gift-bearers to
bring the bread and wine forward at the proper time and is now going
over the "checklist for Sunday Mass" before joining the assembly.
Sponsors and catechumens find each other and fill in the first few rows
of one section of the church.

Although people go out of their way to greet one another and be
gracious, it is never done in such a way that you feel one person is the
host and another is the guest.  Everyone is at home.

At one minute before 10 o'clock, the cantor greets the assembly and asks
them to give some brief attention to the hymn that will be used as a
recessional today.  As they conclude this little rehearsal, the cantor
announces the hymnal number of the procession song, then stands quietly
for a moment before gesturing for everyone to rise as the
instrumentalists begin to lead everyone into singing a hymn of praise
that seems to build verse by verse.  The procession of servers with
cross and candles, lectors (one of them with the Lectionary held high),
and presider waits at the edge of the assembly until the second verse
begins, then moves slowly forward.  By that time, each minister,
including the presider, is singing.

At Our Lady of the Angels, the renovation put people on three sides of
the area where the altar and the ambo are, so most members of the
assembly are able to participate more fully with the other members of
the assembly.  For a year now it has been the custom, once the entrance
song begins, for the people on either side of the aisle in the long
central part of the church to turn toward the aisle until the procession
has passed.  In fact, they are turning toward each other, becoming
conscious of each other's presence as the church begins its liturgy.
The peace greeting, when it comes later on, will somehow seal this
communion, this sense of being not individuals, but the assembled Church
offering its praise, thanks, lament and intercession before God.

	As the singing continues, the presider greets the altar with a kiss.  At the chair, he continues to sing with the assembly.  When the singing ends, all make the Sign of the Cross: we do all that we do in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Looking at the assembly, the presider then exchanges the greeting.  In two or three well-prepared sentences he invites -- maybe exhorts is a better word -- the assembly to enter well into this liturgy.  He is careful not to speak in any way that would imply it is his liturgy, or that the people assembled are guests.  Nothing he says makes trivial what is about to be done here.  

The rites by which the community assembles are quite simple during these
Sundays in Ordinary Time compared with how the parish begins its liturgy
during the seasons of Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter.
Year-round, however, these rites conclude when the presider calls
everyone to prayer: "Oremos/Let us pray."  And then, in response,
silence.  This silence is long enough to settle into, and like song,
creates the Church.  The presider has been praying this opening prayer
all week by himself, and now he speaks it in a clear and understandable
proclamation.  The loud "Amen" says that the assembly has heard.

When the people at Our Lady of the Angels sit down, there is usually a
sense that in all these moments -- from the alarm clock to this Amen --
the Spirit has brought them somewhere: into the worship space they call
the "church," and even more into the Church itself, into the assembly
that will here pray not as so many individuals, but as the Body of
Christ.

The Liturgy of the Word  

All the readers of Scripture know what they are there to do.  They know
that these readings could be read privately by each individual, but that
this public reading is quite different.  For two years now there have
been no booklets for the assembly to follow the reading, although by the
front doors there are Sunday Missals for the hearing impaired and for
those whose language is different from the one used at this Mass.  The
assembly gives all its attention to the lector.

These lectors have been struggling with the assigned Scripture for the
past few days.  Their manner and understanding may vary, but they open
this Lectionary and read  knowing that this church is full of people
hungry for the Word of God.

The lectors have taken the time to hear anew old words, to let the
images of Scripture reflect against and mingle with their lives. Each
has found something to cherish in a reading, something to be passionate
about. But they also know how to communicate their passion without
calling attention to themselves.  The assembly is hearing God's Word.
You can tell that the main activity going on during these readings is
good listening.  And what a treasure that is!  The liturgy -- God's word
proclaimed and God's word listened to -- is being carried by the
assembly and they mean it when they say, "Thanks be to God/Demos gracias
a Dios." Every Sunday the Sacred Scriptures have been opened and read
aloud. God's Word proclaimed and listened to will be the foundation for
all else that this Church does. (Lectionary, Introduction: 1 & 10; or
GeneralInstruction of the Roman Missal: 8)

Silence follows the first and second readings at Our Lady of the Angels,
and again after the homily, lasting about a minute.  People are used to
it, and know what to do with it.  They will tell you:  Let that reading
echo in your head, cling to a word or a phrase, savor it, stand under
it.  It becomes a very still time.  Babies fuss, but people are not
distracted.

The psalm after the first reading is almost an extension of this
silence.  No one gets out a book because the parish uses a repertoire of
perhaps a dozen psalms -- and each year they learn one or two more --
where all can sing the refrain by heart.  The cantor at this Mass, like
the other cantors at Our Lady of the Angels, knows that people want to
hear the words.  Good articulation is as important as a good voice.
Sometimes the homilists have borne the psalm, and especially the
refrain, into the homily. Sometimes the texts appear in the parish
bulletin with the suggestion that these psalms be prayed at home.  In
these ways and more (seasonal evening prayer, for example), the people
of Our Lady of the Angels are coming to know the Church's oldest prayer
book, the Psalter.

Another reader comes forward for the second Scripture and again silence
follows.  There is nothing half-hearted about the procession that now
begins:  The alleluia is singing to move with, to process with;  it
takes candle-bearing servers, incense bearer, and book-bearinpresider
through the assembly and to the place of proclamation.

A regular churchgoer usually knows within a sentence or two whether the
homilist worked hard enough on the homily.  This Sunday and every Sunday
at Our Lady of the Angels, the expectation is that not only did the
preacher work on this homily, but so did the ten or so people who meet
every week on, say, Monday evenings to read, pray with and talk about
the Scriptures for the coming weeks. The homilists are committed to
being there and lectors often come as well.  Sometimes these Monday
night meetings give yesterday's homily a review.  Noticeable progress
has been made since this practice began, although some weeks are better
than others. Two years ago the parish staff, parish council and
homilists made a pact: homilists would give adequate time to preparing
the homily (including the Monday night meeting), and the staff and
council would find ways to assume other parish and pastoral duties and
responsibilities, thus freeing up the priests.

Something else is evident this morning:  The habit of listening calls
forth a preacher's best.  And this assembly knows how to listen.

    Listening is not an isolated moment. It is a way of life. It
    means openness to the Lord's voice not only in the
    Scriptures but in the events of our daily lives and in the
    experience of our brothers and sisters. It is not just my
    listening but our listening together for the Lord's word to
    the community. (Fulfilled in Your Hearing, #20)

Although there is no set time for a homily's length, about ten to twelve
minutes on this Sunday in Ordinary Time seems best for both homilists
and listeners.  And the homilists know it takes time to prepare a
well-focused ten- to twelve-minute homily.

After a minute or so of silence, after the homily, five catechumens (who
hope to be called to Baptism next Easter) and seven candidates (who on
Easter will be welcomed into full communion) are dismissed to continue
studying the Scriptures.  Two catechists go with them.  The assembly
sees these people week after week for a year or more.  They are very
much a part of this parish community.

The Creed is a loud, almost mighty sound, chant-like.  Few need the text
as the rhythm carries it along.  Then the Liturgy of the Word comes to
its conclusion in prayerful intercession.  No longer is there a dull
reading of bland texts with a weak "Lord, hear our prayer/Te lo pedimos
Se¤or" after each.  Today the cantor chants the intercessions.  The
texts are short and strong.  Only a few are written new each week, and
these echo some image or notion from the day's Scriptures and the week's
news.  The assembly is engaged in this rhythmic exchange with the
cantor.  One would have to believe that these people regularly pray in
their homes for the world and the Church, for the sick and the dead. The
back and forth of cantor and assembly shows that this parish is standing
together before the Lord and demanding to be heard.


The Liturgy of the Eucharist  

Everyone sits down to recollect themselves and to focus their attention
on the table of the Lord, which is now reverently prepared with the
plate of bread, the cup and a large flagon of wine.  Nothing distracts
from the power of the bread and wine in their simple vessels.  Last
Sunday the choir sang, but today all keep silent as the table is
prepared. Ushers pass baskets.  More than once over the past years the
homilists have talked about almsgiving in the Catholic tradition, for
both the Church and the poor. These have been homilies, not "money
talks," when the Scriptures or something else in the day's liturgy
suggested that the assembly consider its mission, its responsibilities,
and what it means to trust God.  The parish bulletin regularly prints
financial information to support both aspects of the parish's mission,
caring for the poor and for the Church.  Writing a check or coming up
with cash is a vital liturgical deed in the root meaning of liturgy, a
work done by people on behalf of the larger community. (CCC: 1070)

Selected members of the assembly then bring the gifts of the assembly in
procession to the presider who receives them in thanksgiving as the
personal sacrificial  offerings of the people of God.  (CCC: 1350, 1351)


After the Prayer over the Gifts, the Eucharistic Prayer begins.  Here we
are at the center of Catholic praying and that center is Eucharistic.
The presider gives the ancient summons to "lift up your hearts" and to
give the Lord praise and thanks.  The dialogue is chanted -- strongly,
loudly, and back and forth to make clear that what is about to happen
needs the full and active participation of everyone.  The presider's
posture and gestures invoke such participation, the way his voice does
in dialogue and proclamation.

This participation in the Eucharistic Prayer has been the greatest
change at Our Lady of the Angels.  The parish always worked for good
singing and good lectors.  But the Eucharistic Prayer was a kind of
orphan.  People said, "We lift them up to the Lord," and sang the "Holy,
Holy."  But for years no one could have told you anything about the
Eucharistic Prayer except that "the priest does the consecration."  Now
the parishioners can talk about the experience of standing and singing
God's praise together;  they can see how much their lives need to be
filled with thanksgiving;  and they recognize that their presence to one
another at this table witnesses to the breadth of the Church in place
and in time, a holy communion.  They can talk about solidarity with one
another across all dividing lines.  They can talk about sacrifice and
the mystery of Christ's passion, death and resurrection that is
remembered and realized here in a powerful shaping of their own lives.
Above all, they can talk about the way the Holy Spirit is invoked to
transform these gifts and themselves. And so they are talking about the
presence of Christ in the simple gifts of bread and wine, and in the
mystery that is this Church. (CCC: 1352-1354)

Great mystery is conveyed in the faces and postures, singing and
silence, gesture and word.  Everyone is attentive, bodies engaged as
much as hearts.   It is clearly the central moment of this Lord's Day
gathering.  Over the altar and the gifts of bread and wine, all God's
saving deeds are remembered, all is held up in praise of God, all is
asked of God.  The Catholic sensibility to sacrament, to the presence of
God, is never more joyous, never more challenging.  We need to take care
in our thinking and in our language: When we say "Eucharist," we mean
this whole action of presider and assembly.  That is the Eucharist whose
grace and powerful mystery can transform us and, in us, the world. (CCC:
1368)

The presider chants most of the Prayer and the refrains are the same
most Sundays of the year, sung to music capable of carrying the liturgy
week after week.  The exchange between presider and assembly is
seamless, as proclamation and acclamation are woven together.  The
Prayer takes only four or five minutes, but in its intensity it is
clearly the center of this Sunday gathering.  As was said long ago, the
Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church.  And that
is what we take part in on a Sunday morning.  No wonder that when the
great "Amen" is concluded, one can sense a collective sigh, a deep
breath.

The chanting of the Our Father then carries the assembly toward Holy
Communion.  The peace greeting is not long or protracted, but it is
anything but perfunctory.  People seem to look each other in the eye.
They clasp hands firmly or embrace. As the presider raises a large piece
of the consecrated bread to break it, the cantor begins the litany "Lamb
of God/Cordero de Dios" that will carry us until the bread is all
broken, the consecrated wine all poured into the communion cups, "God's
holy gifts for God's holy people."
  
Holy Communion is a procession at Our Lady of the Angels, a practice
parishioners have worked hard to bring about.  Two years ago, row by
row, from the front to the back, people lined up for communion.  During
Eastertime the homilists talked -- and after Mass so did many people --
about what the Communion time means.  The key was unfolding the wonder
and thanksgiving Catholics feel toward the Body of Christ -- the
consecrated bread and wine, and the Church.  Both have the same name.
What does it mean when the Body of Christ comes forward to receive the
Body of Christ?  The sense of a Church in procession has somehow
replaced the feeling of individuals lining up.  For example, the first
to come forward are no longer those in the front pew;  rather, the
people in the back pews begin the procession so that the whole room
seems to be surrounded by a procession of people.  Here is a Church
partaking of the sacred banquet.

The invitation to Communion, "This is the Lamb of God," and the
assembly's response are followed immediately by the beginning of the
Communion procession song.  At this point, the procession is moving --
that is, the ministers of Communion are at the Communion stations
beginning the Communion of the assembly.

	The ordinary and extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist this
Sunday represent the diversity of the community: women and men, young
and old, of different races, backgrounds and circumstances.  They are in
no hurry and neither is the assembly.  Yet there seem to be enough of
them that the procession can keep moving while each individual is
treated with reverence:  Ministers look each person in the eye and say,
without rushing, "The Body of Christ/El Cuerpo de Cristo," "The Blood of
Christ/La Sangre de Cristo."  Each person has time to respond, "Amen."
The ministers, also without hurrying, then place the Body of Christ in
the hand or on the tongue, and give over the Blood of Christ.

The song that is sung throughout is good for processing: No one needs to
carry the printed words because only six or seven songs are used at
communion throughout the year.  They fit the movement and the moment.
Each is sung often enough to be familiar, and each has a melody and
words that flourish with repetition. This Sunday's single Communion song
continues until presider and assembly sit down after all have taken Holy
Communion.

It took some years before most of the assembly received the Blood of
Christ as well as the Body of Christ.  Perhaps the spirit of invitation
did it, a spirit that recognizes how this drink from the cup of
consecrated wine is needed by each of us in our thirst, how this
drinking complements the eating of the consecrated bread.  Eventually
the assembly began to hear the simple words: "Take this, all of you, and
drink from it. . . ."

Perhaps because the assembly at Our Lady of the Angels has clearly
discovered how to make the Eucharistic Prayer so conscious and intense,
the whole of their Communion Rite is compelling -- from the Lord's
Prayer to the silent and still time after all have received. People are
intent on the hard work of  liturgy, caught up in singing, procession
and even silence.  To be with them is to know deeply that we are the
Body and Blood of Christ.  To be with them is to learn how to be in this
world with reverence, with a love of God that is incarnate in how we
speak to others, how we move amidst the holiness of matter and of time.


We must capture again the great power of silence within our Sunday
liturgies.  Too often the impression has been given that properly
celebrated liturgy must be filled with sounds:  prayer, song,
speech--regarding silence as a vacuum to be avoided at all costs.  But
we have come to learn that we all need the gift of silence throughout
liturgy in order to help us enter more fully and deeply into the mystery
of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.  The silence and the
stillness in the church become a wondrous mixture of personal and
communal prayer.

Above all, Our Lady of the Angels has learned that the steady experience
of a participatory ritual can carry the Church Sunday to Sunday.  People
do not want to be entertained and passive. They want to become energized
in the hard but delightful work of liturgy, praising and thanking God,
remembering the liberating deeds of God, interceding for all the world.
These desires are most clear when people enter into the spirit of the
Eucharistic Prayer and share in the Paschal Banquet.  What a witness to
the Spirit-inspired work of Vatican II!

Taking Leave 
 
At Our Lady of the Angels this Sunday the announcements are a transition
from the final quiet and peace of the Communion to the sending forth.
The various activities of the week are announced, then all stand and the
presider prays the blessing and the dismissal.  A concluding song leads
to much visiting and to the procession out.  I mean the true procession
of this Church:  one, two, and five at a time going back to
neighborhoods and homes, roles and jobs, studies and waiting.  But
Sunday by Sunday the world is here being transformed in Christ!

Visiting Our Lady of the Angeles Parish  

I have tried to describe what makes Our Lady of the Angels parish
breathe and exercise its life in Christ.  The description had to be
detailed to give the whole content.  I have not outlined how I want
liturgy to look in every parish of our Archdiocese three years from now.
Look first for the texture.  The details are important because care for
details matters greatly in liturgy,  but these are the details of Our
Lady of the Angels.  The details at your parish will differ -- but each
parish should intend to have this beauty and intensity each Sunday.

From Here to There

"How could I survive without Sunday Mass in my parish?  I have to be
there with my parish on Sundays.  I am needed!"  That must be what
Sunday obligation is about for us, and that is what I hope Catholic life
can be like as we urgently process in this renewal.

I want to kindle a passion for a vital Sunday Liturgy in every parish of
our Archdiocese.  And I will support the various ways to do that by
taking responsibility for providing training and supporting leadership.
Enthusiasm for this work, a blessing of the Holy Spirit, must be
immense.
  

I will, both personally and through the agencies of the Archdiocese,
ensure that the priests and others who are responsible for the parish
liturgy receive what they need to lead toward such vital liturgy.

But one thing must come from you, the people of the parishes. Please
give every kind of encouragement to your priests to use the
opportunities we provide for formation in liturgy.  Priests must know
that the people of their parishes believe that this is time and money
well spent, and that their parishioners want the following which can
only come from their pastors:

 * better presiding:  How can priests be better in their role at the
   Sunday liturgy?
 * better preaching:  How can priests improve the content and the
   delivery of the homily on Sunday?
 * better leadership:  How can priests themselves be leaders and work
   confidently with other parish leaders in bringing the whole parish
   toward the kind of Sunday Liturgy I have described?

The first two are specific, and we will provide ongoing help of various
kinds, in both areas.

The third, however, is what we have lacked, yet it is a most critical
factor in a deeply rooted renewal of the liturgy. Better leadership
would include the following:

 * teaching about the liturgy;
 * preaching that takes seriously the assembly's experience of the
   liturgy and builds up that experience; and
 * above all, seeking in the liturgy one's deeply Catholic spirituality
   and the very  shape of a Catholic life.

I ask you to support your priests as we focus on such matters in these
next few years.  This becomes more complex when we face the decreasing
number of ordained priests and the number of parishes that have up to a
dozen Sunday Masses in overcrowded spaces.  There are no simple
solutions, but these circumstances cannot be a reason to delay the
renewal of the liturgy.  In many parishes a first step would be a staff
position for a parish liturgy director. Approaching this goal by
clustering or twinning parishes might be more effective.  Such a staff
position should not further segregate the various parish activities
(school, religious education, outreach), but can be the occasion for a
breakthrough in cooperation and understanding of how the liturgy is the
concern and the life of the entire staff.

As formation of the clergy toward better presiding, preaching and
leadership takes place, you will be challenged to do what only you, the
baptized members of the parish, can and must do if we are to fulfill the
vision of Vatican II.  I would ask you to think of your own involvement
in the following ways:

	1.  Your Right, Your Duty.  

Come on Sunday knowing your dignity: in Baptism, you put on Christ.  You
are the Body of Christ.  Vatican II, in the Constitution on the Sacred
Liturgy, said that "full, conscious and active participation by all the
faithful" was the "right and the duty" of all the faithful because of
their Baptism. (#14)

It has taken more than three decades for those profound insights to take
hold.  Most of us were satisfied to look for something less than what
was intended: We were happy when a parish had good singing, and when
lector and Communion ministries were done well.

But good singing and good ministry are not enough.  You who are baptized
have duties that are wrapped up in that kind of participation the
Council called "full," "conscious" and "active."  When we consider the
Sunday Liturgy at Our Lady of the Angels in 2000, we can form some
working notions of each of those qualities.

"Full" participation brings us to the liturgy, body and soul, with all
our might.  It begins long before the liturgy in making sure that Sunday
Mass is not just one more thing on our "must do" list.  The people of
Our Lady of the Angels let the time of liturgy be first.  They do not
just keep the time of Mass from disruptions; they give it room in their
lives.  They have some good habits: perhaps looking over the Scriptures,
or fasting until Mass, or not distracting themselves in the early hours
of Sunday.  They come to Mass mindful of theirresponsibility -- to
themselves, one another, and God.  Because they want the priest, choir
and lector to prepare, they know that they too must prepare to be good
members of the assembly.

"Full" participation also means that a baptized person does not mentally
weave in and out of the liturgy.  Our duty is not just to be present;
our duty is to be fully present.  The songs are for singing, the
Scriptures for listening, the silence for reflecting, the intercessions
for pleading, the Eucharistic Prayer for immense thanksgiving, the
Communion for every kind of hunger and thirst satisfied in partaking
together of the Body and Blood of Christ, and the dismissal for going
out to love the world the way God does.

In addition, our participation is to be "conscious." We must enter with
great openness into the chant and song, the processions and gestures,
the words and silences of the liturgy.  "Conscious" participation is
opening every part of ourselves -- body, mind and spirit -- to what we
do at the liturgy.  We stand consciously and with attention.  If we
reach out our hands to the Body and Blood of Christ, we do so with
grace, mindful of our hunger and the world's hunger, and of God's
goodness.

Another way to be "conscious" at the liturgy is to be aware of our
Baptism.  We come on the Lord's Day to the table of the Eucharist
because we have been through the waters of Baptism.  Because we died to
our old selves and became alive in Christ, we gather on Sunday, not as
isolated persons, but as the Church, with its diversity of cultures,
languages, and races. This is difficult for those accustomed to think of
themselves as autonomous individuals -- workers, taxpayers, citizens.
But here, the liturgy is celebrated by the assembled Church.

Cultivate, then, your deep awareness that it is not so many individuals
who are standing here singing, but the Church. It is not individuals who
are coming forward to the table, but the Church. It is not even
individuals who are going forth to live by the Word they have listened
to and the Body and Blood of Christ they have eaten and tasted. It is
the Church going forth as a leaven in the midst of the world God loves.
This is perhaps the most difficult part of the whole renewal.

"Active" is the third quality of the Baptized person's participation.
Please do not see "active" as the opposite of "contemplative."  Some of
our activity at liturgy is contemplation. Part of the genius of the
Roman Rite is that it presumes a beauty on which our spirits can feast.
If we have too often seen "active" as "busy," consider the liturgy at
Our Lady of the Angels and see the wealth of silence, as well as the
powerful reading of Scripture, and preaching and singing of psalms to
engage our contemplation.

"Active" participation also calls us to attend to others, to a kind of
presence.  This is crucial to what Catholic liturgy is all about.  Such
attention to others has at least two manifestations.

First, we are here not to make our own prayer while each other person in
the church at the same time makes his or her own prayer.  We are
Baptized people standing with other Baptized people. Our thanksgiving is
in the Church's thanksgiving.  Our attention to God's Word is in the
assembly's attention.  Our intercession is in the Church's intercession.
The mystery of our transfiguration in Christ is in the whole body of
Baptized people transfigured. (CCC:1136-1141)

To create solidarity, be attentive to where you take your place and set
a good example.  Go as close as possible to the Eucharistic table.  Go
to the middle of the pew and sit next to somebody and make room for
others next to you.  The Body of Christ has to be visible, audible,
tangible.  Pope John Paul II recently called for bishops to attend to
the quality of the signs by which the liturgy takes place, and he
stressed that "the first sign is that of the assembly itself. . .
Everyone's attitude counts, for the liturgical assembly is the first
image the church gives." (Address to the French Bishops, March 8 1997)

Second, "active" participation means the awareness that at liturgy, we
never close out the larger world.  The liturgy shows us Gospel living
and how to be in the world.  Catholic morality, how we deal in justice
and charity day by day with great and small matters, is to be
encountered and uncovered from our active participation in the liturgy.

2. Ministries.   

The liturgy at Our Lady of the Angels parish in the summer of 2000 has
no ministries that we do not have now.  This is an area where the
Churches in our country have taken the renewal of Vatican II to heart.
It is clear that many ministries are best done by members of the
assembly who have the talents and training to do them well.

The core of ministry is the assembly:  The ministers I imagine at Our
Lady of the Angels have been and continue to be exemplary assembly
members in their full, conscious and active participation. These people
understand what it means to step forward and proclaim a reading,
minister Holy Communion, or sing in the choir.  Parishes might set a
limit on the number of years a person serves in a ministry, asking that
each person take off a year after four or five years in a single
ministry.  This limit would refresh people in their primary role as
assembly members.

The best floor plans manifest the entire assembly as the body enacting
this liturgy, so that the ministers come from the assembly rather than
sit as a separate group.Many of us remember living with an understanding
that the liturgy was simply the work of a priest.  Now we have begun to
grasp in what way the assembled Church, the Body of Christ, celebrates
the liturgy together with the presider.  What, then, is the ministry of
the ordained priest at Sunday Mass?

In our Catholic tradition, the one who is called by the Church to the
order of priest is to be in the local parish community as the presence
of the bishop.  The bishop remains always for us in a direct
relationship with every parish of the Diocese.  He is also our bond with
the Catholic Church through the world and the Church of all the ages.
But the bishop, since the early centuries of the Church, has laid hands
on other worthy members of the Church and sent them to be his presence
with the scattered communities. On Sunday, the one who presides, the
ordained priest, comes not only as other ministers do, from the
assembly, but comes as the one who "orders" this assembly, who relates
this assembly to the bishop and to the larger Church.  True to our
Catholic soul, we understand our Church bonds to be more flesh and blood
than theory and theology.  Here, in this human being, is our bond with
the bishop and with the other communities throughout the world and the
centuries.

3.  Steps You Can Take. 
  
I will be asking priests and others in leadership to begin preparing
themselves and the parishes to make much progress by the year 2000 in
our Sunday Liturgy.  Here are several habits that each church going
Catholic can begin to cultivate that will bring us together into a
life-giving liturgical practice Sunday after Sunday.


 * Become people who worship in the midst of the Sunday Liturgy.

Know which Gospel and New Testament letters we are currently reading on
Sundays, and use these for daily reading.  Bring to the prayer of
intercession on Sunday all that you pray for; take from it persons to be
remembered daily by you; when you hear the news of the community and the
world, hear it as a Christian who must in prayer lift up the world's
needs.  Mark with prayer your morning rising and your evening going to
bed: the Lord's Prayer certainly, but also some song or psalm from the
songs and psalms of Sunday Liturgy in your parish.


 * Become people who prepare themselves for Sunday Liturgy and people
   for whom Sunday Liturgy is preparation for the week.

Seek little ways that can help you make the Lord's Day as much as
possible a day when liturgy has room.  Find some habit for Sunday
morning that helps you anticipate being together as a Church to do the
liturgy.  Find just one steady practice that makes you stretch toward
the Reign of God we glimpse at Mass: It might be a way to make more real
the collection that happens on Sunday for the Church and the poor;
extending the peace of Christ that you receive each Sunday to others in
need of that peace; or fasting from food or distractions and so becoming
thoroughly hungry for God's Word and the Eucharistic banquet.  In ethnic
communities we find many examples of practices that resonate with the
Sunday Liturgy, such as the blessing of children that is so much to be
praised in Hispanic families.


 * At the Liturgy, be the Church.  

Know the awesome responsibility you share for making this liturgy!  Do
not hide; do your private praying in the other hours of the week.
Welcome one another, be at peace with one another.  Sit together.  Sing
songs from your heart.  Do not be afraid to show in your eager attention
that you are hungry for God's Word when the readers read, hungry for
Christ's Body and Blood when you come forward in Holy Communion.  Give
thanks and praise to God by your great attention in the Eucharistic
Prayer.  Keep your eyes open to one another and do everything you can to
build up the Church, the Body of Christ.  If the presider or homilist
needs help, do not criticize - help.


 * Apart from the Liturgy, be the Church.
   
Remember we are always the Body of Christ, always in communion with one
another.  Know that you can ask for help from one another.  Let others
know that.  In the simplest deeds of daily life at work or at home, be
conscious of this life we share in Christ, of its joy and its hope.  Do
not set yourself as separate from others, but understand that we who are
the Church are one with others. In us, God is calling and blessing and
sanctifying the world God loves.  Look at the liturgy as a remote
preparation for your week.  Listening to God's Word on Sunday morning is
preparation for the listening we do for God's Word in our lives all
week.  The thanks we proclaim at the Eucharistic Prayer is a preparation
for thanks over all tables and all meals, and also over all.  The common
table of Holy Communion is a preparation for looking at the whole world.


 * Give thanks always. 
  
Pray grace at meals even when you are alone in the traditional prayer of
"Bless us, O Lord," or a phrase as simple as "Let us give thanks to the
Lord our God; it is right to give thanks and praise!"  Sing when you are
with others at table.  If your morning and night prayer is not permeated
with praise and thanks to God, enrich it with verses of psalms and
prayers from our tradition.  (For example, "We worship you, we give you
thanks, we praise you for your glory,"  "Te bendecimos, te adoramos, te
glorificamos, te demos gracias por tu santa gloria."  Or, "Blessed be
God for ever!" "Bendito seas por siempre Señor."  Or any or all of
Psalm 148.) Cultivate moments of contemplation even during the busiest
day, when gratitude can flow from the goodness of a person, any element
of creation, or any good work of human making.



				PART TWO

		    A Message to Priests and Others
	     Who Have Responsibility for the Sunday Liturgy

In Gratitude

This message is about Eucharist, about the Sunday prayer of praise and
thanksgiving.  First, then, I give thanks to God for the attention to
the liturgy consistently given by priests in this Archdiocese.  Without
your leadership, on what ground could this Letter stand?

Many of you, like myself, were prepared for ministry before Vatican II.
What the Council offered us was wonderful, but difficult.  Many of us
did not readily grasp what the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy asked
of us.  Those prepared after Vatican II have had to contend with various
understandings and approaches to the liturgy.  Many of you who work in
this Archdiocese were prepared for your ministry in other lands,
cultures and languages, and you have had to make many transitions.  If I
now ask even more of you, I do it with full gratitude.

I invite you to share this gratitude of mine with those in the parishes
who have worked with you to build up the liturgy of the Church.

What follows addresses you as priests, and also addresses the many who
join you in taking responsibility for the Sunday Liturgy.  Please know
that I am myself committed to this work.  Together we will approach the
Jubilee Year doing what will have the greatest impact on the Church of
the next Millennium in our Archdiocese.

I will do all I can to support your efforts to implement this Letter
over the next years.  But as always, the good to be done comes from all
those working at the parish level.  Please reflect on what I am sharing
here.  I hope you can make it your own because I believe that the Church
in Los Angeles -- as magnificent as it is diverse, with manychallenges
but with innumerable blessings -- can flourish in this renewal.

Leaders Who Need and Embrace the Assembly

I want to be clear:  I believe we are at a crucial place in the Church's
liturgical renewal.  We can abandon it, believing that what we have now
is what the renewal intended, or we can learn from the past -- mistakes
and successes -- and go forward.  I want to invite all of us to go
forward together.

We have learned that the renewal of the liturgy cannot take on its own
course apart from the renewal of catechesis, the building up of our
Churches as places where justice is done, and the strengthening of our
parishes as communities.  I do not mean that liturgy will take sole
precedence for several years, and then we will then turn to religious
education, then outreach, then community.

Rather, we will focus on the liturgy with concrete goals and deadlines
for implementation.  But I understand that this is how we will learn to
do catechesis well and thoroughly for children, for adults, catechumens
and the baptized.  And I understand that this is how we will become
people who see clearly where justice must be done with the liturgy as
our constant strength and inspiration for doing this justice.  And I
understand that building our liturgical practice is the only way we as
Catholics make our parishes communities.

We must keep all these aspects of being the Church before our eyes in
these years.  As parish leaders, whatever your own special expertise or
interest might be, work together for such strength in the Sunday
assembly.  Seek and discover how that assembly -- and not just the
dedicated few -- can be about evangelization and catechesis, justice and
outreach, the ministering to each other in community.  Implementation of
this letter begins and continues when pastor, staff, council and liturgy
committee have a firm grasp of the way these aspects of being Catholic
are related.

The agencies of the Archdiocese and I will support you, but each parish
will have to develop its own approach.  By the summer of the year 2000,
can we all be somewhere near where Our Lady of the Angels is?  I think
we can because much has already been done.  Our achievements in
preparing ministers, liturgy committees, and coordinators are
outstanding.  Build on this success.

It will be necessary and helpful to set goals and timetables, to decide
on means of presenting good liturgical practice to the parish as a
whole, and to critique present practice and be realistic about how it
falls short.

How do we move from where we are to something more like the intense,
nourishing and life-rehearsing Sunday Mass I described in Part One?  The
most basic answer is that we begin to believe we are an assembly
celebrating and being transformed by the liturgy.  We begin to believe
it and to act that way.

Too often many of us who preside have acted as if it would be enough to
hold people's attention, to give them a bit of inspiration, to make them
feel better after than before.  These are not wrong things to do, but
they have little to do with the reality of what liturgy is for
Catholics, and little to do with what the Council set as our agenda in
paragraph 14 of the General Constitution on the sacred Liturgy.  We can
learn from what we have done so far. We will not have a renewal of the
liturgy as long as there remains the habit that some do the liturgy and
others attend, some give and some receive, some prepare and others just
get there.

We need to have in both mind and heart the Council's vision of a Church
that can, with strong leadership, achieve the full, conscious and active
participation that is the "primary, indeed the indispensable source from
which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit"
(Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, #14).  How else can this Churchlive
without that spirit?  And where else can such spirit be found? We will
receive eagerly our Tradition, celebrate our rites, from Sunday to
Sunday and season to season, so that we are slowly fashioned into
Catholics whose lives are God's own love for the world.

Do not miss what is implicit in paragraph 14:  Liturgy is liturgy when
it is the habitual deed of the Church. These assemblies must know it
deeply and thoroughly, as something so beautiful and profound that
repetition only enhances our love for these deeds and our growth from
them.  Unlike so much else in our modern lives, liturgy is not diversion
or entertainment, not measured by any standard suitable to those worlds.
It is instead an orchestration of word and silence, chant and gesture,
procession and attention, that we are to know, wonderfully, by heart.

We must face a primary obstacle head on.  After the Council, nowhere did
the institutional Church seem to know how to do what the Constitution on
the Sacred Liturgy saw as absolutely essential for renewal:  the
condition that the "pastors of souls, in the first place, become fully
imbued with the spirit and power of the liturgy and attain competence in
it."  We cannot go on unless we attend to this foundational element of
the renewal.  I have no single answer as to how this might be done.

My commitment must be to offer to all who are ordained the challenge and
opportunities to go deeper into the liturgy, to discover firsthand what
the Council's summons is about, and to lead parishes toward renewal.
But the goal of this Letter is not the mechanical implementation of what
follows.  This Letter is a summons to let renewal come from our own
disciplined and emerging sense for what is right in liturgy.  We cannot
survive another generation of external change without deep love of the
liturgy and the life we are to find in its celebration.

I will speak of the "Qualities of the Presider," "Catechesis for the
Liturgy," "Challenges," and "A Schedule of Implementation."  The first
three summarize the areas where the most work is needed.  The fourth
attempts to make concrete some basic steps. These basic steps can be
offered only because of work already done: by the parishes, the Office
for Worship and other agencies of the Archdiocese.

Qualities of the Presider

No single personality type makes a good or poor presider. Some may bring
more of the gifts necessary to the task; others may cultivate more
strenuously the required disciplines and make up for the gifts they
lack.  We may not have attended as we might have to the gifts to be
sought in a presider or the discipline to become skilled in presiding.
I want to emphasize some elements of the presider's task that could most
benefit from work in these next years.

	* The presider serves the liturgy that this Church, 
	  in all its diversity, is celebrating.  

Often, we who preside seem not to trust the liturgy.  We have all
experienced this: the presider who talks too much, or who must prove his
humor or piety again and again, or who keeps the other ministers
guessing as to what will happen next, or who lets his own way of doing
things or his own feelings of the moment dictate.  What happens?  He has
claimed the liturgy as his own and made the assembly an audience.  This
ends any possibility of a Church enacting its liturgy in this sacred
space.
 
Presiders who act in these ways fail to trust both the liturgy and the
Church.  All presiders need to be within an assembly led by a priest who
has achieved the art of trusting the Church to do its liturgy.  What a
good thing it is when the "audience" mentality has disappeared both in
presider and assembly! Although such opportunities may complicate our
schedules, we must seek them out.  And even when the presiding is less
than we might wish, occasionally being in the assembly at Sunday Liturgy
occasionally builds our desire for a renewed liturgy as little else can.

But that is only part of the answer.  Until there is a clear sense for
how the assembly, served by many good ministers, celebrates the liturgy
Sunday by Sunday, presiders may rush into a vacuum and try to fill it.
Thus we have to progress in two areas at the same time: in the
self-awareness of presiders and in the parish's progress -- that is,
parishioners responding to God's call, coming Sunday by Sunday in full
expectation and need of doing all they must to make good liturgy.

A presider prepares by knowing thoroughly the flow of the liturgy in
this community, which is why it is never ideal when presiders are
"circuit riders."  They need to know how this liturgy is celebrated
Sunday after Sunday by this assembly.  The presider must know about
timing, the length of silences (after "let us pray," for example), the
pace of the procession, what is sung and what is spoken, what the other
ministers do, and when and how they do it.  The audience/performer
feeling sets in as soon as the assembly perceives, usually
subconsciously, that this presider will act according to his own notions
of pace, what is sung and what is not, silences or lack of them.  Then
liturgy, as we are trying to understand it, will not be fully
celebrated.

Preparation to preside is about care with every text to be spoken or
sung at a liturgy.  This applies certainly to the central tasks of the
presider:  proclaiming the presidential prayers and the Eucharistic
Prayer.  But it applies also to the various invitations,greetings and
the blessing.  And if there are optional "exhortations," then these also
need to be prepared.  Even those who are gifted with good voices need to
grapple with the words before making them part of the Church's liturgy.

A good presider is thoroughly attentive to the liturgy, just as every
member of the assembly must be.  He visibly attends to the readings,
joins in the singing, and keeps silent and still when that is expected
of everyone else.  The presider is "there" for the liturgy, thoroughly
engaged in the ritual.  This is an attitude, a way of being and
conducting oneself.  It can happen only when we realize that "presiding"
is not merely an item in an ordained person's job description.  The
presider comes to the liturgy expecting much from theassembly, other
ministers and the Lord.  He comes with hunger and thirst for God's Word,
for making intercession, for giving thanks to God. We ask this of all
members of the assembly.

The presider does not expect to be carried by emotion or by the good or
sad feelings of the moment.  The rites of the Church are capable of
touching every possible human emotion because they are not dependent on
the feelings of the moment.  Our rites are filled with passion, but it
is the Church's passion, the deep caring for the world, for creation,
for God's love to be manifest.  Ritual is, in a good play of words,
about the passion of Christ.  That leads directly to the next aspect of
presiding.

	* The presider respects symbol.  

What we do at liturgy takes us beyond the literalness that dominates our
lives.  To preside, a person must live from the rich ambiguity of
symbolic reality.

Respect for the power of symbol does not come easily.  Even in the
Church, we are afraid of symbol.  We want the facts, the dimensions.  We
want a literal truth, but the literal can never be "the way and the
truth and the life."  Symbols get beneath the surfaces and are true and
real.  The symbols we live by are large, ambiguous, and always engaging
us anew.  One who would preside at liturgy must be practiced in
reverence for the symbolic reality of the deeds done by the Church at
liturgy.  Think how the early preachers in the Church could expound over
and over again on a deed like Baptism, knowing it from a dozen sides,
scores of Scriptures to be quoted and examined because each gave them
some new insight and none exhausted whatever happens in the Baptismal
waters.  Is that pool of water a womb or a tomb?  Is this a marriage
bath or a funeral bath or a birth bath?  It is all!

The symbolic deed done with power and reverence is fundamental.  At
Sunday Eucharist, there is reverence for the Body of Christ when we have
eaten bread that is bread to all the senses, and when we habitually have
enough wine for the cup to be shared by every communicant.  Do not
deprive these symbols -- bread, wine, eating, drinking -- of their
power.  Our more careful planning helps us avoid taking from the
tabernacle hosts consecrated at a previous Mass because we have given
thanks over this bread and wine on this altar.

Presiders need to nurture immense respect for our Catholic sense of
symbol, of sacrament.  We want to know the depth of the things done,
used, and said in liturgy, whether this be immersion in water, fragrant
anointing with chrism, Word proclaimed from a worthy book of Scriptures,
or bread and wine on an altar that is surrounded by baptized persons
giving God praise and thanks in the voice of the presider and in their
own voices.

More than catechisms or homilies, the symbols, when they are respected
and done fully, are the teachers of the Church.  But these symbols are
not things or abstractions.  They are the whole engagement of assembly
and its ministers in the deeds that define them.  Doing their symbols,
Christians form Christians.  Those who would take on the role of
presider must in these years examine themselves and learn the ways in
which they either foster the power of our symbolic actions, or reduce
these actions to one-dimensional,impoverished signs.

	* A presider has a "liturgical piety," a spirit formed 
	  and continually formed anew by the liturgy.  

This is what the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy calls that "true
Christian spirit" that is sought and found in full, conscious and active
participation in the liturgy.

There are various valid expressions of Catholic piety, but the test of
every piety is the liturgy.

For example, a priest may know the Bible from a scholarly perspective,
but still need to discover how it sounds and what it means when its
words are spoken powerfully in the midst of the Church and attended to
by an assembly.  Liturgical piety and spirituality crave God's spoken
Word, pondered in silence and in homily amidst the lives of people and
the life of the world.  Or a priest may know a variety of theological
discussions of what transpires in the Eucharistic Prayer, but may know
little of what it looks like, how it sounds, and how passionate the
moments can be when the Sunday assembly regularly is engaged in the
Eucharistic remembering, acclamation and intercession that is their
Eucharistic Prayer, the center of this liturgy, the deed that is shaping
their lives.  A liturgical piety's essence will be the habit of such
praise and thanksgiving.  We must avail ourselves of opportunities to
experience liturgy celebrated this way.

Catechesis for the Liturgy

When the reforms of the liturgy were introduced after Vatican II, there
was often little preparation. However, experience showed that when
parishes were well prepared with catechesis in various forms, the
reforms were embraced and the liturgy came to be celebrated with care
and enthusiasm.

If we as an Archdiocese are to make serious efforts at renewal these
next three years, then catechesis must be a part of this.

The primary form of catechesis I want to call forth during these three
years involves preaching, in part because I want this catechesis to
reach every practicing Catholic.  But also because I believe it can be
done in fidelity to the norms for the homily, and I want us to form a
good habit of this kind of preaching.

For an example of what I mean by a homily that includes catechesis for
or about the liturgy, consider the well-known words of Augustine:

    If, then, you wish to understand the Body of Christ, listen
    to the apostle as he says to the faithful, "You are the Body
    of Christ, and his members" (1 Corinthians 12:27).  If,
    therefore, you are the Body of Christ and his members, your
    mystery has been placed on the Lord's table, you receive
    your mystery.  You reply "Amen" to that which you are, and
    by replying you consent.  For you hear "The Body of Christ,"
    and you reply "Amen."   Be a member of the Body of Christ so
    that your "Amen" may be true.

His words could be a contemporary homily on any of those summer Sundays
when Mark's Gospel is interrupted for the reading of the sixth chapter
of John's Gospel.  What does Augustine do here that most of us fail to
do even when the opportunities are right before us?  To begin, he knows
the whole of the liturgy as a source for his preaching.  We tend to
limit ourselves to the Scripture readings.  Augustine has before him the
day's Scriptures, its psalms and songs, the season's whole milieu, and
the memory of how our assembly celebrates the liturgy.  He can summon to
his own and the assembly's consciousness the Sunday Eucharist every
Sunday, the baptizing every year, the anointing whenever someone is ill.
These memories of deeds we have done together are a common language.

Augustine can preach that language!  How he can preach it!  It is a
language that the catechumens are slowly beginning to speak, a language
that the long-baptized are still learning although now it is not as
familiar as their mother tongue.  It is a language of gathering around
the flames of candles and oil lamps, of tasting milk and honey on the
night of Baptism, of hunger and thirst, of touching and tasting the
consecrated bread and wine every Lord's Day, of hearing and seeing the
waters of the font receive the bodies of the beloved elect and return
them newborn in Christ, and of seeing, smelling and reaching out to
touch the fragrant oil that flows down the faces of the newly baptized
at the great Vigil each year.

The reason Augustine and so many others of that time could preach this
way is that the rites themselves must have been done with great
strength, with respect for symbol and the goodness of repetition. And
even as we strive to celebrate with such participation in our rites, we
can preach from what we are already experiencing.  I am not talking
about inviting the assembly to celebrate any part of the liturgy better.
Rather, this kind of catechetical preaching invites the assembly to join
with the preacher in reflecting on what has been their experience so
far.

For example, it is the experience of the assembly members to say "Amen"
when the minister addresses them with these words, "The Body of Christ,"
"The Blood of Christ."  The preacher asks: Ponder what that experience
means.  Did you hear this or realize that?  Do you ever remember these
Gospel words of Jesus or these verses of the psalmist?  Does it ever
overwhelm you how this touch is like the ways human beings touch one
another?  Perhaps the preacher needs to talk to people and find out what
they would think about this communion experience if they were asked to
think about it. Perhaps the preacher needs to talk with ministers of
Communion to garner their wisdom about their ministry and the community
they serve.

This catechesis for the liturgy will probably be difficult for us at
first.  But we learn the language by doing the deeds.  We may discover
that many members of the Sunday assembly (perhaps especially those with
strong ethnic identity) are ready to speak this language, have been
practicing it all their lives, and will welcome it joyfully.  But the
language must not outrun the reality.  If we begin to speak about the
many-splendored gesture called the Sign of the Cross, we will need to
know how to make that gesture with dignity, reverence and a sense of
participation in something ancient.  If we begin to speak about the
"Amen" we say to the minister's "Body of Christ," "Blood of Christ," we
will want to know that the bearing, speech, eyes and posture of the
ministers of Communion confirm all that we say.

This preaching from the liturgy does not exhaust the ways of doing
catechesis for the liturgy.  Here we will need to strengthen the
relationship between those who work in liturgy and those who work in
catechesis.  You whose ministry it is to teach, whether at a graduate
level or a pre-school level:  Are you not members of the assembly who
celebrate your parish liturgy?  And you who prepare liturgy, are you not
people formed by your teachers and still being catechized and
catechizing others in many ways?  These are just two facets of being a
Church.
 
I want to encourage all parish ministers to explore possibilities for
even fuller collaboration, especially in sacramental preparation.  How
can the present and emerging forms of liturgical life be the source and
subject of catechesis?  We need the service of those who have special
knowledge in the many areas of parish life, recognizing that all are
ritual and sacramental beings whether they teach or are taught, and all
are in search of knowledge and meaning when they celebrate their rites.
This kind of recognition -- that we stand on common ground -- will
multiply energies and enable everyone to serve a Church In desperate
need of learning, formation, and liturgy.

These next years are a time to push hard in this direction at every
level.  Let catechists, teachers and Directors of Religious Education,
teachers in our Catholic Schools, see how a strong parish liturgical
life forms Christians.  And let those who work in liturgy know that the
stronger the assembly's participation in the liturgy, the greater the
need for all forms of instruction and catechesis. The goal is not
aesthetic liturgy or age-appropriate understandings of a catechism.  The
goal is a Church that is acting on God's love for the world.  We must
come back, again and again, to Matthew 25:  "Amen, I say to you,
whatever you did for one of these least brothers or sisters of mine, you
did for me."

Challenges

	The Homily. 

The homily is liturgy.  Its words are the words of the liturgy as much
as the prayers of the presider or the songs of the assembly.  We are
told time and again that faithful Catholics want good preaching and
homilists who develop and hone their skills.

The homilist needs an ear for speech and an eye for the significance of
the everyday and the extraordinary.  A homilist needs time to delve into
all sorts of worlds, to silently ponder and to write.  A homilist needs
the habits of reading and listening to good speaking.  Even with all
that, a homilist needs to speak with conviction within and to the
Church.

The approach and guidelines of the U.S. bishops in our 1979 document,
Fulfilled in Your Hearing, should be studied and applied.  Take to heart
the germ of an idea in that document: that homilists meet regularly with
members of the assembly to read and ponder the Sunday Scriptures.
 
	The Eucharistic Prayer.   

What we have often done well for the Liturgy of the Word, we must now do
for the Liturgy of the Eucharist.  We must engage the Eucharistic Prayer
itself, "the center and summit of the entire celebration" (GIRM, 54).  I
have spoken of this above in describing the liturgy at Our Lady of the
Angels.
 
By 2000, let it be obvious to the visitor and let it be deep in the
heart of the regular churchgoer: When called upon to lift up our hearts,
we do so!  And with hearts lifted up to God we all give God thanks and
praise, call upon God's Holy Spirit, remember God's gracious deeds,
intercede once more, and seal all this with our Amen.  The "center and
summit" is yet too often the neglected and misunderstood.
 
How can we be ourselves, the Baptized, unless we begin to pray the
Eucharistic Prayer fully?  How is it chanted or proclaimed?  How well do
the acclamations acclaim?  How is it, even if subtly, set off from the
preparation rite and the Communion Rite?  How does the very appearance
of the sacred altar -- the plate of bread that is bread to all the
senses, the cup of wine and the flagon full of wine for the whole
assembly -- center us?
  
This change will require catechesis and preparation of presiders and
musicians.  Let us begin now.  Attend to the bread of life: Let it
satisfy the requirements of the General Instruction, let it be ample for
each Eucharist.  Attend to the cup of everlasting life: Let it be there
for all at every Sunday Mass.  Attend to the text: Those responsible
should determine the way that the approved texts for the Eucharistic
Prayer will be prayed through the course of the year.  The choice of
Prayer should not be at the sole discretion of the presider, but should
reflect the aspirations and needs of this community.  It is the entire
assembly's prayer.  Attend to the manner of proclamation and acclamation
as a first step in making the Prayer a clear center of our Sunday Mass.

	The Communion Rite.   

Again, although there is much to be done, these tasks are simply
implementing the reforms of Vatican II.  Now they can be done with some
wisdom and good catechesis.  The Communion Rite begins with the Lord's
Prayer and ends with the Prayer after Communion.  It is the work of the
assembly and should be treated as such.  Let all raise their hands in
prayer for the Our Father and through the acclamation "For thekingdom .
. ."  Let the peace be shared with warm embraces and clasping hands, for
here every human relationship of blood or friendship fades before the
closeness we have as members of Christ's Body.

Then let the litany "Lamb of God" bring attention back to the table
where the breaking of bread still speaks of Christ among us, as it did
at Emmaus.  Let the litany last as long as it takes for the bread to be
broken, the cups to be prepared and the ministers to take their places.
Then immediately all are called to the table: "This is the Lamb of
God...."

	There is to be a true procession that makes sense in the configuration of the church. This processing continues throughout the Communion with singing that begins immediately after the acclamation, "Lord I am not worthy...",  as Communion itself does. Great attention has to be given to the arrangement of ministers and to the flow of the procession around and through the assembly.  The songs used at Communion should be ones that all can sing without books in their hands, each parish having perhaps six or seven Communion songs that are able to bear repetition, in word and melody, through the years.  This singing of a single Communion song lasts until the procession and all the sharing of Holy Communion end. 

Then the assembly is seated.  This is followed by an adequate time of
silence, of stillness.  On some Sundays the assembly may sing a
thanksgiving hymn.  And finally, the Prayer after Communion.  The
announcements, if any, always follow this prayer.

I must add two additional points.  First, the practice of distributing
hosts consecrated at a previous Mass is nowhere envisioned in the
Church's liturgy nor in the rubrics.  Nor would it be allowed by a right
understanding of the Eucharistic Prayer and the assembly.  It should be
done only when some unusual circumstance has led to too little
consecrated bread for the present liturgy.

Second, receiving both the Body and the Blood of Christ is to be the
practice of every parish at every Sunday Liturgy.  Homilists should
occasionally make reference to the fullness of the symbol that is now
extended to every communicant. The words of Jesus are spoken in every
Eucharistic Prayer: Take this, all of you, and drink from it.  The words
are there, inviting the homilist to dwell on them.  Those who minister
the "cup of everlasting life" should do so with joy and welcome.
 
	Assemblies That Manifest Our Catholic Soul.   

A number of challenges in the celebration of the liturgy might best be
understood under this heading.

 + The physical make-up of the worship space should go as far as
   possible to make welcome the handicapped, the elderly, and parents
   with young children.  They too are the Church and welcome us as we
   welcome them.  Cry rooms were a well-meaning but mistaken effort.
   The liturgy, well celebrated, touches more dimensions than any of us
   dare name.  Beware of liturgy so "adult" that the child is not at
   home.
 
 + Language and culture were mentioned in the Introduction.  This is a
   complex matter, but not as complex as we would sometimes make it.
   All of us can, as a first step, sing acclamations and litany refrains
   in other languages.  We can above all strive to hold two difficult
   but correct directions together: our liturgy's openness to the arts
   of a culture, and our need to bear witness Sunday by Sunday that here
   in our assemblies all the segregations of society are overturned and
   there is a common song sung by a great diversity of people.

 + Horizontal inclusive language, at least to the extent encouraged by
   the U.S. bishops in their work of revising liturgical books, should
   be incorporated into all liturgical celebrations of this Archdiocese.

A Schedule for Implementation

As we approach the Jubilee Year, and the dedication of this
Archdiocese's new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, we dedicate
ourselves to a continuing, emphatic renewal of the Sunday Eucharistic
Liturgy in our parishes.

Out of all that has been said here, I want to single out a number of
milestones that can be used through these years.  Depending on progress
already made, a parish may adapt these, but every parish needs to start
now on a course of catechesis and liturgical practice that will bring us
to the year 2000 with hundreds of parishes celebrating liturgy more like
the one I tried to describe above, even at the cost of delaying other
important pastoral initiatives.

	1.  By Pentecost 1998:  responsibility, evaluation and a plan. 
  
Where does responsibility for the liturgy rest?  With the pastor,
certainly, but who assists him?  How effective and helpful are the
relationships between principal people?  If they need improving, how
will this be done?  If the parish has no one competent in the work of
liturgy coordination, and no group or committee to support it, then
finding a liturgy coordinator or committee must come first.  In some
parishes the formation of this committee, under a trained director, may
occupy the better part of a year.  In other parishes, it may be that
long before anyone can be trained through the Certification Program of
the Office for Worship.  In some cases, the pastor or someone else on
the staff who is trained in liturgy can assume responsibility.

There is no one right way to organize the work of preparing the
liturgies celebrated in a parish.  Each parish will begin from where it
is, and as soon as possible establish a plan for liturgical renewal,
especially of Sunday Eucharist, by the year 2000.

2. By the end of August 1998: a plan for looking carefully at five areas
during the fall of 1998.

 * Worship space:  Does the arrangement, furnishing and beauty of the
   present worship space help or hinder the full, conscious and active
   participation of the assembly? Often the limitations of existing
   buildings must be accepted.  But accept them with the imagination to
   use that space in the best way possible: How can it be used so that
   neither the presider, ministers nor assembly itself thinks of the
   assembly as an audience?

 * Music:  First, has it become almost a matter of course that the
   liturgy is sung and that the music to do this is worthy and bears the
   repetition by revealing in word and sound ever deeper levels of
   participation?  Second, do the acoustics and sound system provide not
   only for presider, lector and cantor to be heard by the assembly,
   but, equally important, for the assembly to hear itself?  The sound
   of the assembly singing should be a primary goal of good acoustics in
   the church.

 * Ministries:  Assess strengths and weaknesses in the preparation and
   ongoing training and support within each ministry, both those that
   are more public (lector, cantor, choir, other musicians, ministers of
   communion, servers, ushers) and others that are equally important
   (music director, sacristan, liturgical decorators, writers of
   intercessions).  From this evaluation, plan as needed for recruitment
   (that is fully representative of all members of the parish),
   training, in-service work, and sometimes retirement.

 * Presiding and preaching.  Involve the presiders themselves in a plan
   for evaluation and improvement.  Review this Letter carefully for
   setting local priorities for presiders and preachers.  In both areas,
   continuing help is available from our Office for Worship and the
   Office of Continuing Formation for Clergy.

 * Mass schedule.  This is always difficult for many reasons.  The
   guidelines given in my last Pastoral Letter on Sunday Eucharist, The
   Day on Which We Gather, are helpful and still apply in every way.
   ("The Day on Which We Gather" Guidelines: #V.,A. inclusive)

3.  By the First Sunday of Advent 1999, every Sunday Liturgy is
celebrated with the Eucharistic Prayer and the Communion Rite as
described in this document.

Many parishes are ready now to begin this implementation.  In others,
much work must first be done with the ministries, songs, and overall
care given to the liturgy.  Here is a summary of (but not a substitute
for) what was said above:

 + The Eucharistic Prayer is the prayer of the gathered assembly prayed
   by the presider.  It should be clear to all by the intense
   participation of the assembly that this is the central moment of the
   Sunday Liturgy.

 + The Eucharistic Prayer should have a clear beginning (the preface
   dialogue set off from what went before) and an ending (the Amen set
   off from the Lord's Prayer).

 + The choice of text should be determined by an overall plan for the
   parish.

 + The acclamations should be strong, as should the presider's
   proclamation.  The flow of thanksgiving and praise, memorial,
   invocation of the Spirit and intercession should be chanted or spoken
   with great reverence and attention.

 + The tabernacle is to be approached only when some misjudgment of the
   amount of bread needed has been made.  Otherwise it is not used for
   Communion at Mass.

 + The bread is to appear to the senses as bread. (GIRM: 283)

 + There should be ample wine for the Communion of the assembly, and all
   are to be invited wholeheartedly to share from the cup.

 + The orans posture (standing with hands outstretched, not linked) is
   appropriate for all at the Lord's Prayer through "For the
   kingdom...."

 + The Lamb of God is a litany to be sung all through the breaking of
   the bread and until the presider is ready to say, "This is the Lamb
   of God...."

 + The Communion song, a processional song of the assembly, is to begin
   immediately after the response, "Lord, I am not worthy ..." and is to
   continue until all have received Holy Communion.

 + The Communion procession is to be a procession in deed as well as
   name.

 + The ministers of Communion, including the presider, are to give great
   attention to each person coming to Communion.

 + An ample period of silence follows the Communion procession.

 + Announcements and other community activities follow the Prayer after
   Communion.

Overall, catechesis is to accompany every effort to renew the liturgy.
This is the work not only of pastor and liturgy committee, but of those
in catechetical work.  Parishes or clusters of parishes should seek out
and employ those with degrees in liturgical studies who have a good
pastoral sense.  These persons would then assist in the implementation
of this Letter and the ongoing care of the liturgy.

I invite the appropriate offices and departments of the Archdiocesan
Catholic Center to come together to discern how all can assist with and
collaborate in the important, life-giving, parish-transforming work I
have outlined in this Letter.

Conclusion

Nothing more clearly and wonderfully defines who we are as Catholics as
does the celebration of the Eucharist, the Sacrifice of the Mass.  We
are the Eucharistic Church historically, and the Eucharist has been at
the very heart and center of our beliefs and practices.  The Eucharist
has sustained persecuted Catholic Communities down through the
centuries, even in our own time.  Heroic efforts have been taken to
celebrate the Eucharist clandestinely in areas of persecution and
opposition, thus sustaining the life of the Catholic Church.

It is my prayer and hope that the full celebration of the Eucharist at
each Sunday Mass across the Archdiocese of Los Angeles will inspire all
of our Catholic people to understand ever more fully the precious gift
that is ours in this mystery of faith.  The full and proper celebration
of the Eucharist becomes a powerful teacher for all of us, and the
reverence, joy, participation, and silence of our celebrations deepens
all of us in the life of Jesus Christ.

It was surely above all on "the first day of the week," Sunday, the day
of Jesus' Resurrection, that the early Christians met "to break bread"
(Acts 20:7).  From those early days down to our own time in the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the celebration of the Eucharist has been
continued, so that today we encounter it everywhere in the Church with
the same fundamental structure.  It remains the very center of the
Church's life.

Thus, from Eucharistic celebration to Eucharistic celebration, as they
proclaim the Paschal Mystery of Jesus "until he comes," the pilgrim
People of God advances, "following the narrow way of the cross" (I
Corinthians 11:26), toward the heavenly banquet when all the elect will
be seated at the table of the Kingdom forever!

Notes
+++++

 1. The topic of the Eucharist is inexhaustible in its many graces and
    understandings.  Like a precious diamond, each view of it offers new
    and deeper insights.  For the purposes of this Pastoral Letter I
    wish to incorporate totally the full teaching of the Church on the
    Eucharist as found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
    paragraphs 1066 to 1209, on Liturgy, and 1322 to 1419, on the
    Eucharist.  While my focus in this Letter is on the Sunday
    celebration of the Eucharist, all of the teachings and
    understandings of the Catechism are understood as the principles
    upon which this Letter stands.

    Given the misunderstanding that sadly exists among some Catholics
    about the very nature of the Eucharist, I wish to include par. 1376
    from the Catechism as a foundational teaching for all:

    The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring:
    "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he
    was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the
    conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares
    again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes
    place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the
    substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance
    of the wine into the substance of his blood.  This change the holy
    Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called
    transubstantiation."

 2. Note that the Catechism speaks of the Assembly as one of the very
    names for the Eucharist:  "The Eucharistic assembly (synaxis),
    because the Eucharist is celebrated amid the assembly of the
    faithful, the visible expression of the Church."  [par. 1328]

    Pope John Paul II addressed a group of French Bishops on March 8,
    1997, emphasizing the role of the Assembly:  "...the first sign is
    that of the assembly itself ... Everyone's attitude counts, for the
    liturgical assembly is the first image the church gives."

 3. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal states:  "Following the
    example of Christ, the Church has always used bread and wine with
    water to celebrate the Lord's Supper. (281)
 
    According to the tradition of the Church, the bread must be made
    from wheat;  according to the tradition of the Latin Church, it must
    be unleavened. (282)

    The nature of the sign demands that the material for the eucharistic
    celebration appear as actual food.  The eucharistic bread, even
    though unleavened and traditional in form, should therefore be made
    in such a way that the priest can break it and distribute the parts
    to at least some of the faithful."  (283)

    Consequently, parishes are strongly urged to use bread for the
    Eucharist that more closely resembles bread.  Recipes for approved
    altar breads are available from our Office for Worship.

 4. See the Catechism, especially paragraphs 1337 through 1344.

original document available at
http://www.la-archdiocese.org/Eucharist/E970904.html
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