He also noted other aspects and participants of the celebration including the altar servers, readers, choir, etc. saying that "'ars celebrandi' demands good preparation, faith, humility and focussing attention on the sacred mystery rather than on self. When the Mass is celebrated in this spirit it nourishes faith and manifests it powerfully - 'lex orandi, lex credendi.' With a genuine understanding of the role of liturgical norms, such a celebration is free of trivialization and desacralization. It sends the people of God home properly nourished, spiritually refreshed and dynamically sent to evangelize."
Archbishop William Levada, the recently instated Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called for a certain reform of homilies during the Mass in order to better catechize the faithful.
"A certain artificial opposition", he said, "between homilies with doctrinal characteristics and those with liturgical ones has prevented the catechetical formation of the faithful, making it difficult for them to practice their faith in the modern secularized world."
"This false dichotomy", he said, "can be overcome only by showing how the doctrinal aspect is that which draws the most profound meaning from Sacred Scripture, in a similar way to the liturgy itself, bringing us to meet Christ, our Redeemer.
The Archbishop proposed that the Synod "makes its own the recommendation (cf. no. 47) to prepare a pastoral program - not to be imposed but to be proposed to those who preach during Sunday Eucharistic celebrations - on the basis of a three-year partition of the lectionary, linking the proclamation of the doctrine of the faith to the biblical texts in which such truths are rooted, and making reference to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and to its recently published Compendium."
Yesterday, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, Archbishop of Madrid, addressed a problem he sees of "radically secularized" interpretations of the second Vatican Council which distort proper celebration of the Eucharist.
