'Because the Sacred Liturgy is truly the font from which all the Church's power flows...we must do everything we can to put the Sacred Liturgy back at the very heart of the relationship between God and man... I ask you to continue to work towards achieving the liturgical aims of the Second Vatican Council...and to work to continue the liturgical renewal promoted by Pope Benedict XVI, especially through the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis...and the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum... I ask you to be wise, like the householder...who knows when to bring out of his treasure things both new and old (see: Mtt 13:52), so that the Sacred Liturgy as it is celebrated and lived today may lose nothing of the estimable riches of the Church's liturgical tradition, whilst always being open to legitimate development.'
These words of Robert Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, underline the liturgy's fundamental role in every aspect of the life and mission of the Church.
Liturgy in the Twenty-First Century makes available the different perspectives on this from leading figures such as Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, Abbot Philip Anderson, Father Thomas Kocik, Dom Alcuin Reid, and Dr Lauren Pristas.
Considering questions of liturgical catechetics, music, preaching, how young people relate to the liturgy, matters of formation and reform, etc.,
Liturgy in the Twenty-First Century is an essential resource for all clergy and religious and laity involved in liturgical ministry and formation. Bringing forth 'new treasures as well as old, ' its contributors identify and address contemporary challenges and issues facing the task of realising the vision of Cardinal Sarah, Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and the Second Vatican Council.
Reid, Alcuin: -
Dom Alcuin Reid is a monk of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, France. After studies in Theology and in Education in Melbourne, Australia, he was awarded a PhD from King's College, University of London, for a thesis on twentieth century liturgical reform (2002), which was subsequently published as The Organic Development of the Liturgy with a preface by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. He has lectured internationally and has published extensively on the sacred liturgy, including Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger (2003), The Monastic Diurnal, The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described (2009), A Bitter Trial: Evelyn Waugh and John Carmel Cardinal Heenan on the Liturgical Changes (2011). His writings have been translated into Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Polish and Croatian.
Dom Alcuin takes his place at the centre of the new liturgical movement called for by Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) promoting an authentic interpretation of the Second Vatican Council's call for liturgical reform within a hermeneutic of continuity, a critical assessment of its implementation and of the need for a reform of the reform, as well as an openness to the value and riches of the usus antiquior in the Church of the twenty-first century. He was the principal organiser of Sacra Liturgia 2013, the international conference on the role liturgical formation and celebration in the life and mission of the Church in Rome in June 2013, and edited its proceedings Sacred Liturgy: The Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church (2014). He coordinates the ongoing Sacra Liturgia initiatives.
