What Role Should the Liturgy Play in Evangelization?

A question we as Christians must ask today is this: given the changes that have happened in the modern world and are still happening, how should we act to best evangelize people today? There are two different questions embedded here: 1) what are the changes that have happened in the world, and 2) how do we best respond to those changes?

There are many ways to tackle this question; however, I think it is prudent to start with how the Church herself has responded. We can study the opinions of philosophers and theologians and sociologists and historians as much as we want, and that is a good thing to do, but Jesus gave us a Church, which He guides by the Holy Spirit, and that is always a good place to look first.

With that in mind, the most obvious place to start is the Second Vatican Council, which, one could argue, sought to answer this very question. It sought to understand the place of the Church in the modern world and to formulate the best approach for the Church to take to fulfill her mission of spreading the Gospel and bringing souls to Jesus Christ.

It is illuminating that the Second Vatican Council began with debates and discussions on the liturgy, which were formalized in the document titled Sacrosanctum Concilium. The Council Fathers chose to begin addressing the problem of how the church should interact with the modern world by discussing the liturgy. Not only was this the starting point of the council, but Sacrosanctum Concilium was also the most undisputed and common ground among the Council Fathers. They found the most unity in discussing the liturgy, and this first debate would then set the tone for the rest of the council and influence all subsequent discussions.

I think this point cannot be underestimated. The Holy Spirit guided the bishops and all those present at the council to begin by discussing the liturgy, and that discussion was an overwhelming point of common ground for the bishops from across the world. In other words, the liturgy is key to discussing the Church’s place and role in fulfilling her mission in the world today. The liturgy is not a side discussion in this larger conversation, but a fundamental part of it.

The unfortunate part is that today, when making a statement like that, so much debate is stirred up, and people start to have strong, differing opinions about what it means. Many people will immediately jump to whether this means the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) or the Novus Ordo, but that, to me, misses the point.

The important point is that the liturgy, and its central place in the life of the Church, is essential when we consider how to address the problems we find in the world today. Why is that? What is it about the liturgy that makes this the case? What is the liturgy and what does it do to us that makes it so essential, yes, for people at all times and places, but especially for people today?

Theologically, it makes sense to give the liturgy this primary place, as the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC 1324). But there is another aspect that seems to have been lost in all of the discussion around the liturgy today, and it deals more with what might be called the “spirit of the liturgy”, to use a quote from the title of a book first written by Fr. Romano Guardini and then later Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI). The liturgy does something to us; it forms us and develops in us a certain worldview, and this formation is essential for evangelizing modern man.