About 50 University of Akron students attended a program presented by RooCatholic, the Newman campus ministry program.
Hosted by St. Bernard Parish, the event included dinner in the parish hall and a presentation by Auxiliary Bishop Michael Woost in the church. Christa Alaburda, the campus minister, coordinated the Feb. 12 program.
“Ars Celebrandi: Forming our Liturgical Lives for Discipleship” provided the students with a closer look at the liturgy. Bishop Woost noted that the art of celebrating (ars celebrandi) includes the following things:
- A sense of the sacred
- Liturgical norms
- Significance of outward signs
- Harmony of the rite
- Liturgical vestments/vessels
- Liturgical furnishings
- Sacred space (environment)
- The “why” and “how” of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal and the Order of Readings for Mass
- Liturgical seasons and feasts
- Language of the liturgy, including words (ritual texts), liturgical music, postures –– such as sitting, standing and kneeling –– and gestures, silence, movement (processions), colors, sacred art and architecture.
For the liturgy to produce its full effects, the bishop said the faithful must come to it with the proper disposition. When a liturgy is celebrated, the faithful should participate and be fully aware of what they are doing, actively engaged in the rite and enriched by it. Everyone has some role in the liturgy, he noted.
“It is not simply about the perfect observance of the liturgical principles and rubrical norms found in the ritual books. It is also and more significantly about the spirit of faith, devotion and adoration in which the liturgy is celebrated,” Bishop Woost explained.
As an encounter with God, the liturgy should lead to an intimate union with Christ. The bishop called this encounter mystical because “it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments –– the holy mysteries –– and, in him, the mystery of the Holy Trinity.” This intimacy is initiated by Jesus, he said, quoting from Scripture. The disciples are Jesus’ beloved, Bishop Woost said, and in the Old Testament, Abraham, Moses and the other prophets were loved by God.
He used the image of an iron bar and how its properties can change when it is heated in a fire to explain how we are changed by our encounters with the Lord. In the sacraments, beginning with baptism, God joins his life to us so we can become more like him. In confirmation, we become temples of the Holy Spirit, who transforms our lives and lives within us.
“In Christ, we become sharers of the divine nature, experiencing divinization and are called to live the life of God,” Bishop Woost said, noting this happens through the Eucharist. We begin with the conviction that we will encounter the presence of the living God in the celebration of the Eucharist. This occurs in the presider and other ministers, in the proclamation of God’s word, in the people gathered and in the sacraments, uniquely the Eucharist, he added.
“Every liturgy –– every sacramental celebration –– is an encounter with the living God,” the bishop said. “We should walk out different from the way we walked in because of this encounter.”
At the Easter Vigil, the newly baptized are told, “Behold what you are. Become what you receive.” Bishop Woost said we have become and are becoming Christ by grace, which means we are called not just to celebrate the liturgy/sacraments, but to become them.
“The invisible God uses perceptible reality to be with us and to touch our lives in love, to transform us, to inspire us to further action and to move us toward our ultimate goal: heaven. However, as this unfolds, human beings remain human and deal with divine and human interaction.
Christ giving Christ to Christ is another way of looking at this, he said. This takes place through: Christ the minister –– extraordinary ministers of holy Communion, readers (lectors), music ministers, ushers, choir members, cantors, sacristans, deacons, presiders, etc. Christ the “sign,” the Eucharist, word, song, service, hospitality, environment, music, etc. and Christ the brother/sister (members of the liturgical assembly).
“The goal is to become what you receive,” the bishop said.