Liturgical Piety

The liturgy is, at its core, a very personal act; it is the greatest act of worship, delivered by the priest in persona Christi on behalf of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. As such, it goes beyond mere ceremony, becoming a full-fledged sacrifice of praise, an action in which the entire Church participates for God's glory and the sanctification of souls. Over the course of nineteen cogent chapters, Louis Bouyer describes and clarifies the nature of "liturgical piety" in all its richness and implications, charting the course of the liturgy through the ages, detailing its intimate ties to the Jewish tradition, its development in the Patristic age, its roots in Sacred Scripture, and its role in the Christian Mystery as anchor for the entire sacramental order.

For the purpose of achieving “a true rediscovery of the liturgy which will be a new upsurge of its eternal vitality,” Liturgical Piety remains a sure source of insight and inspiration, revealing as it does that “the liturgy shows the distinctive features of the Catholic tradition in its most solemn form.”