Living the Liturgy: A Witness

There is an ancient Christian saying from the Patristic Era which is known in its most concise form as lex orandi, lex credendi. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church translates it: "The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays."

While the elegant simplicity of the phrase contains an abundance of wisdom, the liturgy has always been subject to forces that threaten to reduce this understanding to partial interpretations. As several observers have noted, these reductions include the "archeological" approach-explicating the liturgy's historical origins but in the process treating it as a dead letter-and the sociological approach-focusing on liturgy as little more than an expression of contemporary concerns.

In Living the Liturgy: A Witness, Father Luigi Giussani (1922-2005) restores a more balanced view, reminding us that (according to Roberto Braschi's introduction) in the liturgy "God is its pres