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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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