Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Our Mother Tongue

In the 1950s Mother Geneviève Gallois wrote an appropriately little book about a legendary saint known as Little Placid. In it she describes the way this humble man was shaped by the liturgy:
The Liturgy put into his mouth words he never dared utter. His words formed his thought and his thought formed his being. And so, the Liturgy enfolded him as in a mould, and when it had transformed him, then rose to God as the expression of his own being . . .
Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, for all his immense theological erudition, is also a very simple and humble man, a man who also has a great devotion to the liturgy. The liturgy, he writes, is the Christian's mother tongue. Through the liturgy, he says, "the language of our Mother becomes ours; we learn to speak it along with her, so that gradually, her words on our lips become our words."

The humblest of saints and the greatest living theologian are here united in their love for the liturgy and its subtle transforming effects.

1 comment:

Dan Florio said...

Now that is thought for food...