Main excerpts of the interview granted by the Master of Papal Liturgical Celebrations, Monsignor Guido Marini, to Paolo Luigi Rodari, published today in Il Riformista (transcript):
"My very first reaction was one of great surprise and great fear. Afterwards, I lived with a certain trepidation the eve of the beginning of my service and, also, I greatly felt the separation from my diocese and from my city [Genoa], from my sister and from her family, from so many friendly people, from the sets in which I practiced my priesthood in particular ways: the [Archdiocesan] Curia, the Seminary, the Cathedral. At the same time, though, I remained much honored of having been called by the Holy Father to carry out the service of Master of Liturgical Celebrations. I immediately felt the opportunity which was granted to me of being beside the Holy Father as a true grace for my priesthood."
Monsignor Guido Marini, Genoese, 42, thus describes describes to Il Reformista his arrival at the Vatican last October to take the post of Master of Papal Liturgical Celebrations. A nomination which allows him to work in close contact with Benedict XVI.
"I have found precise confirmation of what I felt at the beginning of this new task of mine - he says - every time I have had the grace of meeting the Holy Father. These meetings have been and are always motive of great joy and of great emotion for me. I have never thought that I, careful reader and admirer of cardinal Ratzinger, that I would one day have the pleasure of being close to him as I am now. And, besides, every time, along with the profound veneration which the figure of the Pope provokes in me, I live the experience of his serene, gentle, kind, and delicate human demeanor which fills my heart with joy and invites me to apply myself with every energy to cooperate with generosity, humility, and fidelity in the fulfillment of his Magisterium in the liturgical field, as much as it related to my competences."
..."The position of the Cross at the center of the altar - Marini says - signals the centrality of the Cruficied in the eucharistic celebration and the exact interior orientation which the entire assembly is called to have during the eucharistic liturgy: we do not look at ourselves, but at Him who was born, dies and was risen for us, the Savior. The salvation comes from the Lord, He is the East, the Sun which rises, to whom we must all turn our gaze, from whom we must all receive the gift of grace. The question of liturgical orientation, and the even practical way by which this takes shape, has great relevance, because a fundamental theological, anthropological, ecclesiological datum, inherent to the personal spirituality, is connected to it."
Continuity
A "repositioning", that of the Cross, which makes clear how the liturgical practices of the past must live still today:
"The liturgy of the Church - Marini explains -, as by the way all her life, it made of continuity: I might say development in continuity. This means that the Church proceeds in her historical path without losing sight of her own roots and her own living tradition: that may demand, in some cases, even the retrieval of precious and important elements which were lost, forgotten along the way, and which the passage of time has made less luminous in their authentic meaning. When this happens, it is not a return to the past, but a true and enlightened progress in the liturgical field."
And, in this progress, the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum cannot be unmentioned:
"A twofold precise understanding comes up when considering with attention the Motu proprio and also the letter addressed by the Pope to the bishops of all the world to present it. First of all, that of attaining "a reconciliation in the bosom of the Church"; and, in this sense, as it has been said, the Motu proprio is an extremely beautiful act of love towards the unity of the Church. Secondly, and this is a fact not to be forgotten, that of favoring a mutual enrichment between both forms of the Roman Rite: in such a way, for instance, that in the celebrations according to the Missal of Paul VI (ordinary form of the Roman Rite) it 'will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage'."
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Image: AFP/Andreas Solaro
Image: AFP/Andreas Solaro
