Participation

The Church earnestly desires that all the faithful be led to that full, conscious and active participation in liturgical celebrations called for by the very nature of the liturgy. Such participation of the Christian people… is their right and duty by reason of their baptism...  This full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else in the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy.                                                                     Vatican Council II (1963), Sacrosanctum Concilium 14.

What is this ‘active participation’ and how does it arise from our baptism?

To answer this question, we have to take a step back and ask: who celebrates the liturgy?  The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes it clear: Liturgy is an ‘action’ of the whole Christ…  it is the whole community, the body of Christ united with its Head that celebrates (CCC 1136, 1140).  Now, when we are baptised, we are joined to Christ and become a member of his Body, the Church.  It is the Church which acts in the liturgy and the liturgical assembly represents the Church at a particular place and time.  Liturgy is therefore communal prayer, the corporate action of the Church/Christ.

Sometimes, people understand this participation as primarily an ‘internal attention’ to the saving action of Christ.  It is true that participation in the divine life, an encounter with Christ and an interior union with him in the mystical body are the final goal of Christian worship. Liturgical participation is the means by which we enter the sacred mystery of God.  Those who spiritualise the notion of participation treat liturgical participation like going to a concert where the music may indeed have a profoundly moving effect on the listener.  However, at a concert, people are present as a silent audience: they are not actually making the music.  In the Church’s liturgy, on the other hand, they are by their baptism part of the Body of Christ and so take part in the doing.  Participants in the liturgy are not spectators; the people are not an audience.

Others have argued that it is primarily the priest who, by virtue of his ordination, acts in the person of Christ.  In this case, the assembly of the baptised would participate in what the priest is doing.  Rather, all the baptised – priest and people alike – participate in what Christ is doing.  By his ordination, the priest represents the headship of Christ, speaks on behalf of all, and presides over the liturgy to facilitate the manifold ministries of the baptised (welcoming, singing, proclaiming and so forth).

Sometimes one gets the impression from liturgical resources that ‘active participation’ means responding and singing, standing or sitting, moving in procession and other external actions.  Liturgy preparation is a matter of external organisation.  In fact, the externals promote active participation (SC 30) and provide a pathway into it, but do not constitute the essence of what participation means.  True participation in the liturgy is both inward and outward, internal and external. 

In liturgy, we do not retreat into our individual prayer even when silence is kept.  [Liturgical] silence is not an inner haven in which to hide oneself in some sort of intimate isolation, as if leaving the ritual form behind as a distraction. That kind of silence would contradict the essence itself of the celebration. Liturgical silence is something much more grand: it is a symbol of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit who animates the entire action of the celebration. For this reason, it constitutes a point of arrival within a liturgical sequence.

Pope Francis, Desiderio desideravi (2022), 52.

We speak of the liturgy as a ‘celebration’ which contains within itself the idea of a great assembly, a concourse, a congregation. Each of the baptised takes part in the corporate action of the liturgical assembly. This is how we are one with Christ and participate in the saving mystery of his death and resurrection.

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