The Bugnini-Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform - MusicaSacra

tions, so that the faithful could listen to it fully, consciously from year to
year and could understand better and better what has happened to them in
Baptism. This Preface makes clear that Baptism is more than an act of joining
the followers of Christ, it is more than making an act of faith. It is substantially
a supernatural event taking effect ex opere operato. The generative
power of Christ's redemptive act fecundates the womb of Mother Church
(which was expressed without prudery in the fine language of symbols by
the candle being let down into the baptismal font), and the font becomes
the place of a mystical birth now and at every Baptism. It is hard to understand
why the importance of the font (one of the cultic places of the
church) and the dignity of parish churches ("baptismal church" in the old terminology)
had to be neglected, and why the whole blessing of the font had
to become an empty ceremony in recent times when the common font is
not used and the water is blessed for each administration of Baptism not as
an exception but as a norm.
The Vigil liturgy of the Roman rite was not an extended variant of the
Mass. It consisted of well-rounded sections making up a perfectly structured
unity. Whoever had the chance to take part in it, keeps the memory of
the unforgettable moment when the series of rites turned - with a well perceptible
change — into the rite of the Mass. The rite started in the darkness
of the tomb, and the nearer it got to the highlight of the celebration, the
more the inner direction of the whole rite became expressed in outward
forms. At the beginning of the rite the celebrant was not dressed in white
garments and the altar was without the usual ornaments. He who entered
the church found himself in the silence of Good Friday. It was the Church
reborn in Baptism that later adorned its edifice: the flowers were placed
onto the altar before the beginning of the Mass only, and then the priest put
on the white chasuble for the Mass. The reform may have intended to assist
the faithful in taking the whole Vigil more seriously, yet as a result, the inner
divisions of the rite became somehow blurred. I am of the opinion that the
indifference of the new liturgy to the signs of changes shows a lack of taste
and it was harmful to the liturgy of the Vigil.
The length and content of the celebration needs a closing proportionate
with, and worthy of, the whole. This might be the reason why the custom
survives up to the present day that a short Vespers (or Lauds in the last decades)
stood in the place of the Communion chant. This extension of the
rite was probably an extra burden for some priests. But if the new order al-
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