Category Archives: Baptism

The following lecture was given by Rev. Josef Andreas Jungmann, S.J., to the sixth annual Irish Liturgical Congress at Glenstal Abbey, on the 8th April, 1959.

It is an honour and a pleasure for me to be invited to speak here at your Liturgical Congress, which is so promising — and all the more that it is on the very heart of the Liturgy that I am invited to comment.

Of all the undertakings in the liturgical realm for which we must thank Pope Pius XII, without any doubt the most important is the renewal of the Easter Liturgy. If we were only to consider the external appearance of this reform, we might conclude that we are dealing chiefly with insignificant changes, such as the change in the time for the services. But a closer look will soon show us, that behind these seemingly insignificant details, there is indeed an event of great importance in this reform.

For that evidently we must look at the original form of the Easter celebration, i.e. the form that was used in the early Church, and the basic ideas which this celebration both contained and expressed from the very beginning.
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