United States Catholic Catechism for Adults

166 • Part II. The Sacraments: The Faith Celebrated

Sacraments. He believed that all the aspects of liturgical celebration should be understood. Martin produced a small card that contained a record of days of grace in his life: Baptism, First Confession, First Communion, Confirmation, and his ordination (Holy Orders). On the respective days, he burned a candle before this framed card and spent an hour in prayer reflecting on the saving grace he had received from God. He frequently reminded his people to celebrate the anniversaries of their own sacred days, when they received their own first Sacraments. He spent several Lenten sabbaticals in Rome. Each day he partici pated in Lenten liturgies at various ancient churches in Rome, studying their history and art. He incorporated this experience into his Lenten cate chesis for his parishioners and others, helping them to sense Lent as a journey to Easter. He possessed an instinctive appreciation of the sacra mental principle in which the visible elements of nature and history speak of the hidden but active presence of God in Christian worship. Inspired by Pope Pius X’s motu proprio on sacred music, he popular ized Gregorian Chant to the point where his people could sing it easily and prayerfully. He taught them the prayer life of the Church by which they could enrich their lives in union with Jesus ever interceding for us before the Father. Msgr. Hellriegel died in 1981. The encyclical On the Sacred Liturgy by Pope Pius XII was a major statement about the Church’s liturgy in the years prior to the Second Vatican Council. Pope Pius provided a vision for the Church’s liturgical life that bore fruit in the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy ( Sacrosanctum Concilium ). Msgr. Hellriegel and others working in the liturgical movement drew inspiration from these developments. • LITURGY CELEBRATES THE PASCHAL MYSTERY

The Church celebrates in the liturgy above all the Paschal mystery by which Christ accomplished the work of our salvation.

—CCC, no. 1067