Mens dyp taushet lå over alle ting og natten var rukket midtveis i sitt løp. kom ditt allmektige Ord, Herre, ned fra den himmelske kongsstol. (Introitus til messen søndag i juleoktaven – se hele messen her.)
På nettsidene til The New Liturgical Movement skriver Peter Kwasniewski enda en interessant artikkel om messen. Messen handler først og fremst om å møte Gud, å kunne be til Ham på best mulig måte -da er det interessant å lese hva Kwasniewski skriver:
… I wish to reflect on the peculiar beauty of the very ancient custom of the silent canon and how it confirms the intuition that the Word comes to us in the liturgy in a personal mode that transcends the notional presence of the Word obtained by reading individual words from a book. The Introit quoted above strikingly brings together both of these points: the coming of the Word Himself in the midst of total silence.
As I staunchly maintained in my lectio divina series last Lent, the Lord unquestionably speaks to us in and through Sacred Scripture, and we must constantly go to this source to hear Him; but He comes to us more intimately still in Holy Communion. The traditional practice of the priest praying the Canon silently emphasizes that Christ does not come to us in words, but in the one unique Word which HE IS, and which—immanent, transcendent, and infinite as it is—no human tongue can ever express. Once we have absorbed this fact in our life of prayer, the words of Sacred Scripture can, paradoxically, penetrate our hearts more effectively and have a more-than-Protestant effect on our minds.
What I mean by a “Protestant effect” is the way that Protestants can listen to or look at Scripture again and again – e.g., John 6 or Matthew 16 or 1 Corinthians on the Eucharist – and yet their minds remain closed to its obvious Catholic significance. They are like the disciples on the way to Emmaus, who are thoroughly steeped in Scripture but have failed to grasp the central point, viz., the victory of the Messiah over sin and death. Jesus in person has to explain to them what they already “know” but have never internalized—and Jesus comes to us in person in the Real Presence and is internalized in the most radical way when we are permitted a share in His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. …