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166 • Part II. The Sacraments: The Faith Celebrated
Sacraments. He believed that all the aspects of liturgical celebration
should be understood.
Martin produced a small card that contained a record of days of
grace in his life: Baptism, First Confession, First Communion, Confirmation,
and his ordination (Holy Orders). On the respective days, he burned a
candle before this framed card and spent an hour in prayer reflecting
on the saving grace he had received from God. He frequently reminded
his people to celebrate the anniversaries of their own sacred days, when
they received their own first Sacraments.
He spent several Lenten sabbaticals in Rome. Each day he partici-
pated in Lenten liturgies at various ancient churches in Rome, studying
their history and art. He incorporated this experience into his Lenten cate
chesis for his parishioners and others, helping them to sense Lent as a
journey to Easter. He possessed an instinctive appreciation of the sacra-
mental principle in which the visible elements of nature and history speak
of the hidden but active presence of God in Christian worship.
Inspired by Pope Pius X’s
motu proprio
on sacred music, he popular-
ized Gregorian Chant to the point where his people could sing it easily
and prayerfully. He taught them the prayer life of the Church by which
they could enrich their lives in union with Jesus ever interceding for us
before the Father.
Msgr. Hellriegel died in 1981.
The encyclical
On the Sacred Liturgy
by Pope Pius XII was a major
statement about the Church’s liturgy in the years prior to the Second
Vatican Council. Pope Pius provided a vision for the Church’s liturgical life
that bore fruit in the Second Vatican Council’s
Constitution on the Sacred
Liturgy
(
Sacrosanctum Concilium
). Msgr. Hellriegel and others working in
the liturgical movement drew inspiration from these developments.
•
LITURGY CELEBRATES THE PASCHAL MYSTERY
The Church celebrates in the liturgy above all the Paschal
mystery by which Christ accomplished the work of
our salvation.
—CCC, no. 1067