Sacred Signs

All worship is, in the first place, an act of justice in which the creature renders to the Creator that which is due Him. The human task is to do this act worthily, in accord with the Divine Will, and as we do it, to remember always that it is not we who shape the liturgy, but the liturgy that shapes us. This process of being shaped is the work of a lifetime. As Goethe says, we “begin by taking delight in externals, until we have the good fortune to grasp the substance.”

All Christians—especially children who are making their first steps in the faith—should try to acquire a fruitful understanding of those visible signs which believers have received down through the ages as means for expressing invisible grace. For this to happen, education is necessary, says Msgr. Romano Guardini: “We need to be shown how, or by some means be incited, to see and feel and make the sacred signs ourselves.” The first step is to look with fresh eyes at the “elements out of which the higher liturgical forms have been constructed”: the human person, and then the objects, movements, and awarenesses of time and space that pervade everyday life.

There is no better primer for this double task—delighting in the externals and grasping the substance—than Guardini’s Sacred Signs. Its combination of piercing insight, radiant piety, and almost fairy-tale-like language makes it unique in the annals of liturgical writing. Os Justi Press is pleased to make this classic available in a new edition graced with the original illustrations and a pedagogically rich introduction by Fr. Samuel F. Weber, OSB.