Active Participation is the full, conscious, and active sharing of the baptized in the Church's liturgical action through interior offering and the exterior responses proper to each person.
A baptismal right and duty
The sacred liturgy is the action of Christ the Head with his body the Church. By Baptism, the faithful have a right and duty to participate fully, consciously, and actively in its celebrations. They are not strangers attending a clerical performance; united with Christ, they offer the divine victim and themselves to the Father and receive the sanctifying gifts of the Paschal mystery.[1]
Participation begins within: faith, attention, repentance, prayer, self-offering, and conformity of mind and voice. It also has fitting outward expression. Interior participation and exterior participation are not rivals; bodily and verbal actions should express and deepen the worship of the heart.[2]
The forms participation takes
The faithful participate through acclamations, responses, psalmody, singing, gestures, bodily postures, reverent silence, attentive listening, and—when properly disposed—sacramental Communion. Silence is itself an integral liturgical action at the prescribed times, making room for recollection, meditation, and prayer rather than marking an absence of participation.
Some members also serve as readers, servers, cantors, extraordinary ministers, or in other authorized functions. Such service is genuine but is not the measure of full participation. A member of the congregation who faithfully joins the common prayer can participate more deeply than someone who performs a visible ministry without recollection or obedience.
Participation according to the rite
The Council directs that each minister and lay person perform all and only those parts belonging to that person's office by the nature of the rite and liturgical principles. Active participation therefore does not authorize improvised texts, the assumption of ordained functions, constant activity, or the multiplication of ministries merely to give everyone a task.
Liturgical formation is indispensable. The faithful learn to perceive the scriptural, sacrificial, ecclesial, and eschatological meaning of the rites and to carry what they celebrate into daily conversion and charity. Participation reaches beyond external involvement when the mystery celebrated reshapes Christian life.[3]
References
- 1.Sacrosanctum Concilium — Vatican II's constitution on the sacred liturgy
- 2.General Instruction of the Roman Missal — The authoritative ordering of the Roman Mass
- 3.Sacramentum Caritatis, 52–55 — Benedict XVI on the substantial meaning and conditions of active participation