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Liturgical Symbols Simplified

This document summarizes a book by Romano Guardini called "The Holy Signs." It discusses how Guardini's approach to liturgical education in the book differs from more academic liturgical scholarship. Specifically, Guardini focuses on everyday elements of liturgical ceremonies like gestures, objects, and times of day. He describes their meanings at a simple, lived level rather than providing complex historical or scientific explanations. The goal is to emphasize that liturgy is a real manifestation of faith today, not just ideas from the past.

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39 views2 pages

Liturgical Symbols Simplified

This document summarizes a book by Romano Guardini called "The Holy Signs." It discusses how Guardini's approach to liturgical education in the book differs from more academic liturgical scholarship. Specifically, Guardini focuses on everyday elements of liturgical ceremonies like gestures, objects, and times of day. He describes their meanings at a simple, lived level rather than providing complex historical or scientific explanations. The goal is to emphasize that liturgy is a real manifestation of faith today, not just ideas from the past.

Uploaded by

Indra
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PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIT DELLA SANTA CROCE

FACOLTA DI TEOLOGI

Lettura del libro di Romano Guardini


I santi segni

YOSEPH INDRA KUSUMA


(6507 T21)

MISTAGOGIA DELLE AZIONI E DEI SIMBOLI LITURGICI


PROF. FERNANDO LPEZ ARIAS

ROMA 2016

I got a very different impression when reading this book. Other liturgical books
usually contain how rites or prayers had been appearing in worship as well as their
historical background behind it. In addition, most of them also contain scientific
explanations of the meaning of various kinds of liturgical practices. However, it seems as
though Guardini did not want things like this to appear in this short book.
In this book Guardini wanted to make a liturgical education book, and not a liturgical
scholarship book. He wants to emphasize that the liturgy is not only at the level of ideas,
and does not just exist in the past, but it is a real manifestation of today. For Guardini, the
liturgy has a sacramental character that makes liturgy become something that is alive and
manifest a divine reality that is invisible and often hidden.
For this, Guardini took some elements which the faithful encounter every day when
they celebrate liturgical ceremonies, namely: Sign of the Cross, the hands, kneeling,
standing, walking, striking the breast, steps, doors, candles, holy waters, sanctified time,
evening, midday, the name of God, etc. Guardini raised these elements in the discussion
and tried to describe in the level of daily living. Only then, slowly he reveals the spiritual
meaning and the Christian meaning of the gestures and the various objects. In writing this
book Guardini positioned himself as a teacher who was explaining the meaning behind the
various elements present in the liturgy, but also as a mother who is teaching his son how
to live the Christian faith simply.
For those who are accustomed to reading scientific/academic liturgical books (that
have "high level" scientifically) maybe this book feels so subjective, too casual, and a little
impressionistic, but for me personally, I am inspired by Guardini to make my liturgical
catechesis truly understandable by the people easily and not just to satisfy my own mind,
and at the same time abandon the needs and context of the faithfuls life. Keeping everything
simple does not mean that we are stupid.
Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.
(C.W. Ceram).

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