Reverence in the Liturgy

"In all liturgical prayers (orationes) we never turn directly to the Father, but always address Him through the One in Whom alone God is well pleased: per Christum Dominum nostrum. This feeling, that we only dare address God in Christ and through Christ, is one which is deeply opposed to all easy familiarity; it never allows us to forget the awe in which we must always make our approach to God."

"The holy Sacrifice of the Mass is especially penetrated with this spirit: the necessity of sacrificing to God, the impossibility of offering Him an adequate sacrifice because of our poverty... we find this spirit, too, toward all that enters into contact with the Lord's holy Body, in the handling of the paten and the cleansing of the chalice.

"We also find it in all that symbolizes Christ or is dedicated to the divine service, in the kissing of the divine altar and the Gospel book. It is expressed in the bodily comportment of the priest, the faithful and the religious; in the standing up during the reading of the Gospel, during the songs of praise taken from the Gospels, the Magnificat, Benedictus, Nunc dimittis, in the bowing of the head during the Gloria Patri.

"The very fact of the harmonious structure and order of the entire Liturgy, extending even to the outer comportment, contains a profound element of reverence. This unique organic structure, corresponding so clearly to the adequate inner attitude of the one who is standing before God, is the very opposite of slackness; and, in equal measure, it is opposed to the attitude of a military or athletic drill."

-- Dietrich von Hildebrand, Liturgy and Personality: The Healing Power of Formal Prayer (1943; Sophia Inst Pr; Reprint ed., 1993). Dr. von Hildebrand (died 1977) was first Chairman of Una Voce in the United States

[Hat tip to Una Voce America, Summer 2009), p. 11]