By Fr. W. A. Hughes, M.S.F.S.,

it already. There is no question of something to be inaugurated.
The Mystical Body has not died, nor has it ever ceased its divine task of worshipping the Eternal Father. It remains only to fulfil this task consciously and dynamically. not just for a few days of the year, but all the time.
Preparation for the Liturgy of Easter must not be limited to hearing instructions explaining in more or less detail the symbolism of the various rites. but above all must be an awakening to the daily need of life in God and to the social manifestation of that life as the People of God.
What is the value once a year of eloquent presentations of the Paschal Mystery when Sunday after Sunday that same Mystery is enacted so listlessly? Why bother to explain the symbolism of the Paschal Candle, if the light it expresses and should enkindle is given no expression at the weekly memorial of the Resurrection of the Light of the World?
Appreciation
THE importance of the Word-of God cannot be efficaciously stressed at Easter, when during the year any and every excuse is enough to justify the missing out of the proclamation of the Word of God in the Epistle and Gospel, even when it is otherwise not mumbled in unintelligible haste.
The grandeur of the Paschal meal can never be brought home if, throughout the year. the Holy Mass does not express the undoubted piety of priest and people but is jerkily raced through in defiance of its sacramental nature.
Where, in short, is the possibility of nourishing an appreciation of
tianity as "a religion made for the interior consolation of a few chosen souls."
The Mystery \A The Mystery \A
TE are told in the instruction preparatory to Easter that the liturgical year is the
Mystery of Christ. It is the sacrament of Christ, Christ shadowing-out His divinity in the humanity of His Mystical Body as once He did in the body of His own flesh.
The Mystery of Jesus Christ as the bridge between heaven and earth was not taken away by his departure. nor even replaced by something else, but by means of the Liturgy continues in us, the People of God.
The graces of growth that He manifested in Nazareth, the loving wisdom shown daily to a stumbling world. His teachings and His struggles, the Spirit who moved Him in these, continue to fill His sacramental projection into history, His Mystical Body of which we are the members.
We are not just individuals, units complete in ourselves. We arc members, united together, forming the Mystical Christ.continuing His work which is the worship of the.Father and the enlightening of the world.
What binds us into this unity and holds us there is the Liturgical Life—the public worship of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, Head and members, the work of the Church of God.
This unity. this one-ness finds in the Liturgy its very source: not just an -external aid, not just the acts of the historical Christ presented to us as an instruction to the mind or as a goad to the will. It is Life itself. "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life."
The Centre
IF we seek the centre of this great Mystery of God, we find it in the Holy Eucharist, not only at Easter but for all of us at least once a week. Here is our contact with the Divine, the renewal of our union with God and with one another.
All the efforts demanded at Easter to take part in the Liturgy have their place in our lives every Sunday, for it is the same Liturgy expressed in the same sacramental Sacrifice. The Liturgy is not made up of pieces, the Christ is not presented to us in bits from which we can choose as the year goes by. with rather a special tit-bit at Easter.
Christ is one, the Mystery of Christ in the Liturgy is one, totally and indivisibly at each Maas. Neither do God's People go to Him in annual jumps.
At each Mass they are there together as His People, baptised in the blood of the Lamb, united to one another by the same divine Life, seeking the same divine Food. The Liturgy then is not a complicated new fashion, but the necessary and divinely willed expression of the march of God's People.
Here is the meaning of the Paschal ceremonies, and the "preparation" for these can only be a deeper appreciation of the
Daily ...
COMMON sense shrinks from the abs.urdity of limiting to once a year the recognition of that Paschal Mystery which cries out the Father's daily recognition of His children's hunger. Acceptance of the Liturgy's necessity can be won only by daily example, not by annual bursts of enthusiasm.
Each one must shake off his bewilderment at the "novelties". to see in them the answer to the emptiness of life. This is the task now at hand, to be met not in mutterings but with the courage and simplicity of the children of God, crying out in actions as well as in words for the daily fulfilment of that reverence for the Mystery of Christ so loudly proclaimed at Easter.
Let us work with the privileges accorded by the Holy Father, and under his directives do all in our power to give what is due to God and to ourselves as members of the Mystical Body of His Son: a dynamic participation in the weekly Liturgy, carried out with dignity and the 'greatest reverence for the sacramental prolongation of our Saviour's divine work before God and among men.