På slutten av boka “The Mass and Modernity”, skriver P. Jonathan Robinson også ganske tydelig om hva «aktiv deltakelse» i messen betyr. Det betyr ikke at man skal gjøre noe spesielt – bortsett fra å svare presten når
liturgien sier at man skal det, og gjerne delta i lovsangen i messens ordinarium og hymner – men det betyr at man skal følge messens hellige handling med et oppmerksomt sinn. Slik skriver han (om feilene Vatikankonsilet måtte rette opp):
… If we are going to understand how the phrase was used by those who developed its usage, we should understand that it was not something new introduced by the Council; in fact, it was used by Pope Pius X in a motu proprio entitled Tra le Sollicitudine (1903). The document is about sacred music and in it the saint asked for an «active participation in the mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of the Church». Pius X himself, however, was drawing on an earlier Lradition. Dom Alcuin cites Dom Lambert Beaudoin, one of the pioneers of the Liturgical Movement, who stated in the early years of the twentieth century that one of the principal aims of the movement was «The active participation of the Christian people in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass by means of understanding and following the liturgical rites and texts».
We could have no clearer statement of the meaning of active participation at the outset of the Liturgical Movement. Active participation is essentially contemplative, and in no sense is it primarily concerned with our doing things in or to the Liturgy. Active participation is a state of being contemplatively connected to the profound actions of the Sacred Liturgy, and from that privileged encounter we receive grace.
Since the Council the phrase has been used by many as though it were the most important reform the Council introduced, and it has been used to judge every liturgical practice. It would seem that this use of active participation as the ultimate standard for liturgical life is wrong; but if the Council was not teaching that everyone at Mass should be, at least ideally, saying and doing everything that everyone else says, sings, or does, then what was it asking for? It would seem to be the ease that in insisting that there should be active participation, the Council was making the theological point that the liturgy is essentially an action done by the whole community and that it involves both God and am. …. The sort of thing the Council did want to put an end to, for example, was the practice, still very much alive before the Council, of the laity saying the rosary together out loud during the celebration of Mass in October. The mysteries of the rosary thus became the object of devotion put in front of the laity and really were a barrier to any full, conscious, and active participation in the mysteries of the Eucharist. Participating in the Mass, that is, was almost impossible, even with a Latin-English missal. We tend today to take it so much for granted that the focus of the worshipper’s attention must be the Mass itself, and that other devotions and interests must play a subsidiary role, that it is easy to forget that this was not always the ease. The Council’s insistence on active participation must be understood as a much-needed reform. …