“Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomine tuo da gloriam!”
(Not to us O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory!)
Psalm 115 (113)
The Church stands and falls with the Liturgy. When the adoration of the divine Trinity declines, when the faith no longer appears in its fullness on the Liturgy of the Church, when man's words, his thoughts, his intentions are suffocating him, then faith will have lost the place where it is expressed and where it dwells. For that reason, the true celebration of the Sacred Liturgy is the centre of any renewal of the Church whatever.
Pope Benedict XVI
Part of the mission of Holy Rosary parish is summed up in the Latin motto ut in omnibus gorifectur Deus. What does this mean?
This motto, which may be translated that in all things God may be glorified, comes from our parish's Benedictine tradition. It may be found at the end of chapter 57 of the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict.
The exhortation was originally intended for those who sold the monks’ handiwork, reminding them that God should be glorified not only by the monks’ labor, but also by the justice of the seller’s transaction. However, it has been extended to mean that every labor should be undertaken in obedience, faith, penance, and prayer so that God might be glorified in all things.
At Holy Rosary, it means restoring the sense of the transcendent to the sacred liturgy. After all, this is the place where "heaven and earth kiss", where we ourselves are swept up into the eternal, heavenly liturgy in which our earthly liturgy is both a participation and a foretaste.
The Catholic Church has a rich, two thousand year history of worship and devotion, of art and architecture and music. This is our heritage, our patrimony. These great riches of the Church are not meant to be shelved in some museum or hoarded in some treasury; they meant to be shared with all.
And these riches are inexhaustible.
We are a Catholic parish practicing the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, but in the liturgical arts, we strive to bring the extraordinary to the Ordinary. Our ultimate desire as humans is for the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, who is Christ. Surely the One who is Goodness and Beauty and Truth should be worshipped in goodness, beauty, and truth?
Beauty, then, is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and His revelation. These considerations should make us realize the care which is needed, if the liturgical action is to reflect its innate splendour.
Pope Benedict XVI
[T]he liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows. For the aim and object of apostolic works is that all who are made sons of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of His Church, to take part in the sacrifice, and to eat the Lord’s supper.
(Sacrosanctum Concilium 10)
In all that we do, we strive for the following:
“The only real gift man should give to God is himself.”
(Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy)