169 What Happens When We Celebrate the Liturgy?

YOUCAT Lesson 169

YOUCAT the catechism of the Catholic church

169   What happens to us when we celebrate the liturgy?

..…..Photo: …..Parishioners receiving communion participate in the Sunday Mass liturgy at Cross Plains, Wisconsin …..121.....169

When we celebrate the liturgy, we are drawn into the love of God, healed and transformed.  [1076]

The sole purpose of all liturgies of the Church and all her sacraments is that we might have life and have it abundantly.  When we celebrate the liturgy, we encounter the One who said about himself, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).  Someone who is forsaken and goes to Mass receives protection and consolation from God.  Someone who feels lost and goes to Mass finds a God who is waiting for him.

While he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.  Luke 15:20

  

…….THE CELEBRATION OF THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERY

…….THE SACRAMENTAL ECONOMY

…….1076 The Church was made manifest to the world on the day of Pentecost by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.( compare Sacrosanctum concilium 6; Lumen gentium 2)¹    The gift of the Spirit ushers in a new era in the "dispensation of the mystery" the age of the Church, during which Christ manifests, makes present, and communicates his work of salvation through the liturgy of his Church, "until he comes."( 1Corinthians 11:26)²    In this age of the Church, Christ now lives and acts in and with his Church, in a new way appropriate to this new age. He acts through the sacraments in what the common Tradition of the East and the West calls "the sacramental economy"; this is the communication (or "dispensation") of the fruits of Christ's Paschal mystery in the celebration of the Church's "sacramental" liturgy.

It is therefore important first to explain this "sacramental dispensation" (chapter one). The nature and essential features of liturgical celebration will then appear more clearly (chapter two).

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