Auctoritates · ad fol. i

nn. 90–94

Venite ad me · De Liturgia

Auctoritates

ad fol. i · n. 90 · videtur, sed contra, respondeo: the Council, Pius XII and the Code, reported

Videtur quod

It would seem that the liturgy is only the ritual frame of the Church’s life, the occasion of handing on the faith and not its substance; for the faith is handed on by preaching and teaching, and a frame teaches nothing. (This is the view n. 90 sets aside.)

Sed contra

Sacrosanctum Concilium 7

Christus Ecclesiae suae semper adest

The Council says that Christ is always at hand to his Church, and most of all in its liturgy. It names the ways: in the sacrifice of the Mass, in the one who ministers and above all under the eucharistic species; in the sacraments, by his power, so that when anyone baptizes it is Christ who baptizes; in his word, since he speaks when the Scriptures are read in the Church; and when the Church prays and sings, as he promised to be where two or three are gathered in his name.

It calls the liturgy the exercise of Christ’s priestly office, where signs open to the senses signify the sanctifying of man and bring it about, each in its own way, and where the whole Mystical Body, Head and members, gives public worship. So, it says, every celebration is a sacred action above all others, which no other work of the Church equals in efficacy by the same title or to the same degree.

Sacrosanctum Concilium 10

culmen … et simul fons

It says the liturgy is at once the summit to which the Church’s activity tends and the font from which all her strength flows: apostolic work aims at gathering the baptized to praise God in the Church, to share in the sacrifice and eat the supper of the Lord; and from the liturgy, from the Eucharist above all, grace pours out on us as from a spring, and men are sanctified and God glorified as nowhere else.

Sacrosanctum Concilium 47

memoriale … convivium paschale

It says that at the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, the Saviour founded the sacrifice of his Body and Blood in the Eucharist, to carry the sacrifice of the Cross through the ages until he comes, and to leave his Bride a memorial of his death and resurrection: in Augustine’s cry, sacramentum pietatis, signum unitatis, vinculum caritatis; in the antiphon O sacrum convivium, the paschal banquet in which Christ is received, the mind filled with grace, and a pledge of the glory to come given us.

Respondeo

I answer that what the Council calls Christ’s own action cannot be a frame. The Considerations settle nothing (n. 8), but on this point they repeat the Council, and the Council repeats Paul and Trent (fol. i, a and b).

Reported, not reproduced · the texts are at vatican.va

It furthermore