Pastoral Letter on Liturgy
On Pentecost Sunday 1998, Pope John Paul II issued an apostolic letter entitled, Dies Domini, “The Day of the Lord”, He wrote about the importance of Sunday, the first celebration of the early Church. He challenged people to see Sunday as a day of rest following the example of the Creator who rested on the seventh day. On Sundays we gather together to celebrate the "source and summit" (culmen et fons) of our faith "“ the death and resurrection of Christ. It is the Paschal Mystery into which we were baptized, and it is this mystery of faith that we teach and preach as we pass the faith on to our children.
The liturgy is the "source and summit" of our Christian life because it is at once the sacred place where the supernatural gifts of the blessed Trinity are poured forth upon us as well as the most authentic expression of that life, the fullest expression of what we believe and of what we have become in Christ Jesus. The liturgy is the meeting ground for God and humanity. It is the precise place where God comes down to us and we are lifted up to God. This twofold movement of love, signified and made real in the liturgy, is most perfectly accomplished in the Eucharist, the "source and summit" of our worship, where God extends his very self, substantially, and where men and women, united in a single body, take flight, upon the wings of Jesus' sacrifice, toward the Father, wrapped in the love of the Lord. The liturgical act of the Eternal High Priest accomplishes our salvation. Indeed, the signs of our Sunday celebration are efficacious signs; through them we are sanctified by the work of the Risen Christ. In the Eucharistic celebration, we receive not only the nourishment which sustains our being, but that which continually transforms and "re-creates" us.
It is in the cross that suffering is redeemed, that death gives way to new life. By this central mystery of our faith, we gather together as a community to give thanks and praise over bread and wine that they become Body and Blood of Christ. In our sharing of Communion, we are recreated in the image and likeness of Christ and sent out to be the sacrament of God's presence in the world. For these reasons our Sunday assembly for Eucharist is of utmost importance. The people of God need to hear the gospel of Christ anew, hear it preached well, and to be challenged by the message of Christ.
The redemptive sacrifice of Christ and the sacramental outpouring of grace REFASHIONS OUR ENTIRE BEING, makes us a "new creation" (Ezek 36:26; Jer 31:33-34; 2 Co 5:17; Gal 6:15). In this light, the redemptive mystery must be viewed in mystical unity with the mystery of creation. Already at the dawn of our existence we were made for God, to be with God, and to find repose and fulfillment in him. To that end we were given intelligence " by which we are IMAGES of God's loving, creative thought ", so that we might seek him out and find him (Deut 4:29; Prov 8:17; Jer 29:13-14; Sir 6:27-28). This God reveals himself in all of his inner secrecy in the person of Jesus Christ. It is there, in our personal relationship with Jesus, that we fulfill the very purpose of our creation. Creation, therefore, looks forward to redemption, and redemption is the perfection of everything creation was intended for (Ro 8:19-23). But fallen nature recovers even more than what was lost through sin by the restorative work of Christ. By eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking his blood (Jn 6:53), we are refashioned into the LIKENESSES of Christ; the original creative relationship of pure dependence for being is unspeakably remade into a relationship of mystical unity and sonship.
