Today is the feast day of Blessed Ildephonsus Schuster, OSB, Archbishop of Milan and a great liturgical scholar, who was invested a Bailiff of the Order of Malta in 1933.
In his writings, the Cardinal emphasized the cosmological importance of the Sacred Liturgy. Not just a earthly ceremony of ‘togetherness’, as some would have it, but rather “the very source of the holiness of the Church is wholly comprised in Her Liturgy, so that without the Divine Sacraments, the Passion of the Savior, in the present economy instituted by God, would not have any efficacy for us, due to the lack of instruments able to transmit its treasures to us.”
This is why we must have a great care for the solemn, careful and devout celebration of Holy Mass, the other Sacraments, and the Divine Office, for without these we will lack the grace we need to serve properly our Lords the Sick and the Poor, in whom we serve our Crucified and Risen Lord.
A few days before his death seventy years ago, Cardinal Schuster bade farewell to his seminarians: “You want something to remember me by,” he said. “All I can leave you is an invitation to holiness.”
Blessed Ildephonsus – pray for us.