Louis John Cameli
The Spirituality of Celebration People who "go to Mass on Sunday" would like some contact with God, some sense of being together as family, as neighbors, as Catholics. The author seeks out those elements that make liturgy an inspiring and inspired experience.
When does a liturgy "succeed?" When does a liturgy "fail?" The questions are difficult. Everyone knows when a liturgy has touched the lives of a community singly and together. But to elaborate specific criteria for evaluating a liturgical experience--that is the difficulty inherent in these questions. In the following pages, I propose some criteria for evaluating or judging the "success'' or "failure'' of liturgy. The words need quotation marks enclosil).g them, because we will consider success and
failure on a special level-the level of spiritual experience, that is, the experiential or sensed awaren~ss that flows into the lives of individuals and communities who participate in public worship. People who-in their words-" go to Mass on Sunday" want inspiration. In language and thought that is uncluttered with theological jargon, they would like some contact with God and some sense of being together as family, as neighborhood, as Catholics. The task of this paper centers on discerning those elements which make a liturgical experience an inspired and inspiring experience. To speak of spiritual experience, to speak of evaluating it in terms of its in-spirited and in-spiriting qualities is to speak of a task 63