Cardinal Bertone: Liturgy should motivate Christians to be better citizens

Vatican City, Aug 28, 2007 / 08:43 am

In a letter to the participants of the 58th Liturgical Week in Italy, which is being held in the city of Spoleto, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, explained that active participation in the liturgy prepares Christians to immerse themselves in the reality of the world.

In letter dated August 11, Cardinal Bertone emphasized that the theme of the Liturgical Week, “Celebrating in the City of Man,” “aims to show that in order to live as Christians we must harmonize personal fidelity to Christ with ‘citizenship,’ that is, with the commitment to be present in the world as his witnesses.”

“Conscious of the invitation of Christ to be ‘salt’ and ‘leaven’ of the earth,” the cardinal continued, Christians “are committed, motivated by the Holy Spirit, to animate, with the richness of evangelical love, the culture and traditions of their times.”  The event’s theme “helps to understand better how to carry out this mission in today’s society with evangelical fidelity celebrated in the liturgy and lived out in daily life.”

The Vatican Secretary of State went on to note that the liturgy is the place where believers can re-think and re-commit themselves in their service to the community.

“The Holy Father noted this in his post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, emphasizing that a profound Eucharistic spirituality is capable of affecting the social fabric,” Cardinal Bertone added. 

“An active participation in the liturgy makes the Christian more aware of his vocation and responsibility to be a sign and witness of a radically new way of acting in the world,” he said.

“Called to contribute in the building up of the earthly city,” the cardinal wrote, Christians “are thus committed to favoring the dynamics of participation and responsibility, solidarity and subsidiarity in the economic and social spheres, which are at the service of the person and of the common good,” he said.