The volume originates from transcriptions of lessons the author gave between 1965 and 1973 around the theme of liturgy as the root of Christian life.

Part One. The Mass

The Mass is the most important gesture of our existence because it is the gesture of the death and resurrection of Christ; the Christian assembly has its supreme expression in the Mass. There is no other scheme for a change in our personality than that of the sacramental gesture in the unity of its parts.

The Parts of the Mass

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. This is the premise of faith, in the introduction the Church calls us to the consciousness of what we are, it is a judgment on our whole person and our whole life.

Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries. There is nothing healthier than the realistic awareness of the condition in which we must carry out an action; recognizing that we are fragile and that we are sinners makes it possible to reestablish without falsehood the ultimate judgment that Christ is all.

The Word of God. The proclamation of the word of God (with the passage from the Old Testament, the Epistle, the Gospel) makes us aware that we are sinners. Only through this real contrition can we hear the deep call of the word of God, the call of faith. Yet, this call is heard with a great detachment; but when the Word of God illuminates our life, accompanying it with the awareness of our disproportion, we feel a “healthy pain” that pushes us to be better or, as Saint Paul puts it, a “godly sadness.” The word of God converts, changes the meaning of everyday life.

Offertory. It is the gesture to which the Word of God “pushes” us; illuminated by the Word of God, we desire our whole life to belong to Christ. The offertory is the moment in which, supported by the readings, we enter into the “play” of God, with our freedom. The condition that makes it possible to understand this gesture is to have the awareness that we are part of the mystery of Christ, the Church.

Consecration. During the consecration, the priest is asking God to “make true” the bread and wine and through them “the relationships with friends, with one’s wife, with one’s husband, with colleagues”—true and full of faith, that is, as God wants them to be. The prayer that is at the center of the Mass says that “everything should become the body and blood of Christ,” everything should become “the gesture of Christ.”

Our Father. At the end of the consecration, the Our Father is the prayer by which Jesus teaches us that all our actions have only one aim—that His Kingdom come, that everything we do be part of the design of God. Our conversion will happen “in proportion to our capacity to base our lives truly on this fulcrum, even if we remain sinners.” “Your kingdom come” thus coincides with “deliver us from evil,” that means living in such a way that “our sin does not become a prison.”

Grant peace to our days. Peace is a consequence of faith since peace results from our becoming free from sin, and this is only possible through the mercy of God. By abandoning ourselves to Mercy “our past life becomes new and everything cooperates for the good, even our evil.” This fraternal peace, which is born from faith in the mercy of God, is structured according to three factors: It does not murmur; It is not wrathful; It does not close the heart.

Part Two. Liturgical Times and Feast Days

Advent. The time of Advent is the time of human expectation in which God begins to proclaim Himself the mystery; therefore, it is the time of the Old Testament. However, as the liturgical time of Advent is the beginning of the journey, it recalls the end, the goal of the road; and thus, it is also the time when we become aware that history and existence find their meaning in His coming. In Advent, the only theme is “He who comes”; “the awareness of the imminence of His coming, therefore, the vigilance—a life lived in the awareness of ourselves as expectation.” This patiently waiting renders us free from everything but, at the same time, present in everything.

Christmas. Christmas is the time of a new reality, a new presence—certainty, announced by expectation, becomes objective. The aim of the Incarnation is to assimilate us to His Divinity. It is therefore the feast of the Father, who generates, who is the mover of everything, and it is the feast of the Son who, in the obedience and simplicity of a child, wants His Father’s Will to be done. The supreme call of the Mystery of Christmas is the establishment of obedience in the world to the point of sacrifice, to the Cross that is announced by the incarnation itself. Therefore, the task of Christians is not that of revolutionizing structures but of communicating the announcement of salvation by becoming companions to men and women.

Lent. The liturgy of Lent is the manifestation of salvation through “Jesus Christ who is Lord of man, of nature, of the cosmos, of the world and of its whole history.” Jesus Christ now has precise contours and evidently brings a new measure to the world; this new measure is witnessed in the Gospels of the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, and Lazarus—Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Universe. The light of the Epiphany now imposes itself on the streets, a light that responds, opposes itself to common mentality and power. So, for the Christian, it is the time of conversion. It is no longer a vague expectation, no longer a joy without responsibility because the announcement has just been given—the novelty of Lent is the need for us to respond; the miracle of Jesus Christ in His maturity comes forward and attracts us to the point that we are transformed, we become assimilated to Him. Jesus Christ claims us, asks us to adhere to His person, asks us for a radical level of faith and charity, that is, maturity. This adhering leads to the presentiment of the end, the anticipation of what will happen, the expectation of His second coming, and it understands that the fulfillment of time passes through death and resurrection, that the condition of resurrection is death. What seems like a failure, like death, in the light of faith, becomes a gateway to His second coming, “Things are heavy, but we carry them, because we are made like Christ, the giant who runs the race.”

Easter. Easter is the victory of Christ, His resurrection, and in this lies the answer to a fundamental anxiety in the heart of man; in the Easter season, human expectation is definitively fulfilled, and therefore the true novelty of our attitude lies in this “definitive announcement” of the resurrection of Christ, of which man is made capable by grace—Christian discourse, irreducible to the discourse of a social or civil advancement and therefore to a humanism, is essentially a witness to the fact that Christ fought against death and won. In Easter, Jesus Christ emerges as the “ultimate judge” as He is the only one who has overcome death, who has overcome the root of sin that leads to death; the Church is the place that announces this “foundational unity of the world,” it is the visible structure of the body of Christ, where communion is realized as an unimaginable unity among us. Easter gives shape to our main commitment, that is to “understand and live the connection of everything with the foundation that is Christ risen from the dead.”

Ascension. In the Ascension, we can understand that our Christian vocation does not become authentic “except through the absence of manifestations of the power of Christ according to our expectation”—the Ascension is thus the beginning of Pentecost since the Ascension is the gateway, “according to the story of salvation that the Father has established,” to the accomplishment of His definitive truth, namely that of being the Lord of all things, and to the accomplishment of the truth of man who, in his grief of parting, feels an attachment to Christ. Heaven is not a “beyond” but is the ultimate level of things; by ascending on high, Christ did not ascend above all things but descended into the depth of things. The Ascension is the mystery of the transfiguration of everything and of everything that relates to us—it is only with the Ascension that the possibility of really transforming our lives has begun.

Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is the principle of seeing God, of having an experience of God as the Holy Spirit is the principle of the knowledge of the Father and the Son, “On that day you will realize that I am in the Father and you are in me and I in you,” “He will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you” (John 14:16-26). The Holy Spirit gives us that certainty that does not originate in our own strength, that subsists in the midst of aridity and temptation and makes us strong, consoles us and makes joy possible. In Pentecost, the Holy Spirit puts his seal upon us and we are transformed to such an extent that we can say, together with Saint Paul, “We even boast of our afflictions” because the Spirit is the “first installment of our inheritance.” The Spirit gives the one true hope that is based on something the principle of which I already hold.

Trinity. It is the revealed mystery that is at the origin and end of everything; it is the source of grace that establishes the old and the new Covenant; it is the source of charity, by which we are taught the recognition of our own nothingness and consistency in an Other; it is the point that, when contemplated, brings down all human barriers and causes personalism to cease. Trinity’s Grace and Charity are communicated to man historically, throughout history, to dissolve our “rigidity, like a glacier,” “inertia” and “hardening,” in obedience and love to Jesus Christ.