– Enrico Finotti
Parish advices are often excessive and boring. Do they have to be done?
The rubrics allow that in the ending rites, before giving the blessing, brief announcements can be given (IGMR 90). The indication is of maximum sobriety, both in assessing the actual need, and in recalling their brevity. Announcements must not become a rule, but an exception and communications must be short and incisive.
Often, however, these announcements become a prolific exposition, not rarely without a style that respects the sacredness and sobriety of the liturgy. The notices, if intended as always necessary and regular, cause a fall in the contemplative climate, which should endure as a spiritual halo in the assembly that is soon going to leave the church. In fact, the church hall must preserve the sacred silence to allow the faithful to continue the meditation and prayer on an individual level. The fraternal communication and therefore also the proper place to transmit the parish advices is the churchyard or the atrium. Here we must find the most appropriate and incisive ways to give information on the pastoral life of the Christian community. If we do not distinguish the environments we end up sacrificing the space reserved for liturgy in an unduly manner, an effective encounter with the mystery that transforms, elevates and makes possible a true fraternity rooted on a supernatural basis. Without the primacy of the mystery, accepted, contemplated and assumed inwardly, each mutual communication lapses into a superficial and fragile philanthropic relationship, which does not sufficiently draw from the own strength of the sacrament received and not adequately internalized. In the light of this consideration, liturgical operators will have to seriously evaluate the appropriate time for parish announcements and be able to offer with spiritual tact respectful of the irrepressible values proper to liturgical action and its full educational effectiveness. It should be more and more common that the liturgical celebration and the church are not the venue of every parish activity, but the place proper to prayer, prayerful silence, meditation and even personal encounter with God (as the Psalm recites “my house is a house of prayer”): a dimension that must be as much as possible favored.
In this sense it seems appropriate to increasingly overcome the practice of announcements with alternative forms such as the weekly leaflet, educating the faithful to a minimum commitment, to take an interest in what happens in their parish, without wanting at all costs to reach them with exhausting and repetitive communications, which sometimes bore and annoy them.
It is finally well established that the advices cannot be given from the ambo, reserved exclusively for the proclamation of the Word of God.
(From “Il mio e il vostro sacrificio. Il liturgista risponde”, 2018©Chorabooks. Translated by Aurelio Porfiri. Used with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved)
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