ACTIVE PARTICIPATION: ENTERING MORE DEEPLY INTO THE SACRED MYSTERIES

Few phrases from Vatican II have had as much influence on Catholic liturgical life as “full, conscious, and active participation.” And few, perhaps, have been interpreted in so many different ways.

For many of us, active participation came to mean doing something: responding, singing, reading, serving, or taking some visible role in the liturgy. But is that what the Council actually meant?

In Sections 14-20, we discover something important. The Council speaks not only of external participation, but of participation that is both internal and external. And before calling for greater participation, it repeatedly calls for something else: formation – of seminarians, priests, and the faithful themselves. That raises a question worth considering.

Did the Church’s call for deeper participation in the sacred mysteries eventually become confused, in some places, with a call for greater external activity?

In Day Two, we place Sacrosanctum Concilium, alongside Sacred Scripture, St. Pius X, Pius XII, and Benedict XVI as we begin examining what the Church has historically meant by active participation.

And we will continue making the distinction that is essential to this entire study:

What did the Council actually say?

What was legitimately introduced afterward?

And what was eventually done in the name of Vatican II?

We are only at Section 20, so we will not rush to conclusions. We will keep reading the evidence and allow the Church’s own documents to guide us.

I hope you read Day Two prayerfully and ask yourself one question in particular:

If I were doing nothing outwardly at Mass except kneeling before God with my whole mind and heart united to the Sacrifice of Christ, would I consider myself an active participant?

May this study help all of us enter more deeply – not merely into a discussion about the liturgy, but into the sacred mysteries themselves.