Here we go again! These words may be spoken either in cynicism or with hope, expectation, and excitement as we begin another liturgical year with the celebration of Advent season.
We should try our best to speak these words with joy and expectation as we make another proximate preparation for the birth of Christ, our redeemer. With Advent we put ourselves in the liturgical dynamics of Christian life where we go through another year doing everything not only by ourselves, but also with Christ with the view of reaching our ultimate goal, not just any temporal goal.
That’s what the liturgy means. Christ, through the sacramental signs, comes and lives with us, guiding and leading us to where we should be even as we immerse ourselves in different worldly conditions and circumstances.
We need to be most aware of this basic truth of our faith. We aren’t living by ourselves alone. We are living with Christ who continues to create and re-create us with his redemptive work. It would be a great pity to miss the significance of the liturgy and fail to do our part in corresponding to Christ’s continuing redeeming action on us.
As we start another liturgical year, let’s try to assume that attitude once expressed beautifully by St. Paul: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.
“Therefore, I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” (1 Cor 9,24-27)
With another liturgical year we have another chance to run our life with Christ. The different liturgical seasons, namely, Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Ordinary Time again, provide us the complete life and teaching of Christ necessary for us to live our Christian life.
We should try our best to follow the liturgical cycle to follow Christ closely and to be a more effective member of the Church, working together with Christ for the salvation of all humanity.
In other words, our life should be liturgical. It should develop at the instance of the liturgy which nourishes our moral and spiritual life, our love for God and for everybody else. It’s in the liturgy that we can be with Christ in the most intimate way.
Obviously, our participation in the liturgy shouldn’t be passive. Even if in the liturgy Christ takes the initiative and its effectiveness lies more on Christ’s power than on our disposition, just the same we should correspond to Christ’s action in the liturgy as actively as we can. We should try our best to know what’s happening in any liturgical celebration and what we are supposed to do to correspond to Christ’s action.
We have to do a lot of catechesis in this regard, because we cannot deny that nowadays, many people, especially the young, are ignorant of the true significance of the liturgy in our life.
Of course, we cannot ignore the many efforts of some people to do some catechesis especially in the different cells of the Basic Ecclesial Communities established in the different parishes in our country.