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INTRODUCTION
1.
This sacred Council has several aims in view: it desires to impart an ever
increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably
to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change;
to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to
strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of
the Church. The Council therefore sees particularly cogent reasons for
undertaking the reform and promotion of the liturgy.
2.
For the liturgy, "through which the work of our redemption is
accomplished," 1 most of all in the divine sacrifice of the
eucharist, is the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their
lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the
true Church. It is of the essence of the Church that she be both human and
divine, visible and yet invisibly equipped, eager to act and yet intent on
contemplation, present in this world and yet not at home in it; and she is all
these things in such wise that in her the human is directed and subordinated to
the divine, the visible likewise to the invisible, action to contemplation, and
this present world to that city yet to come, which we seek 2. While the
liturgy daily builds up those who are within into a holy temple of the Lord,
into a dwelling place for God in the Spirit 3, to the mature measure of
the fullness of Christ 4, at the same time it marvelously strengthens
their power to preach Christ, and thus shows forth the Church to those who are
outside as a sign lifted up among the nations 5 under which the
scattered children of God may be gathered together 6, until there is
one sheepfold and one shepherd 7.
3.
Wherefore the sacred Council judges that the following principles concerning
the promotion and reform of the liturgy should be called to mind, and that
practical norms should be established.
Among
these principles and norms there are some which can and should be applied both
to the Roman rite and also to all the other rites. The practical norms which
follow, however, should be taken as applying only to the Roman rite, except for
those which, in the very nature of things, affect other rites as well.
4.
Lastly, in faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that
holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right
and dignity; that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them
in every way. The Council also desires that, where necessary, the rites be revised
carefully in the light of sound tradition, and that they be given new vigor to
meet the circumstances and needs of modern times.
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