The liturgy is not a festivity; it is not a meeting for the purpose of having a good time. The liturgy is what makes the Thrice-holy God present amongst us; it is the Burning Bush; it is the alliance of God with man in Jesus Christ, Who has died and risen again. The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment, but in rendering tangible the totally Other, Whom we are not capable of summoning. The essential in the liturgy is the Mystery, which is realized in the common ritual of the Church; all the rest diminishes it. Men experiment with it in lively fashion, and find themselves deceived, when the Mystery is transformed into distraction, when the chief actor in the liturgy is not the living God, but the priest or the liturgical director.

– Cardinal Ratzinger to the bishops of Chile, 1988, commenting on Archbishop Lefebvre’s excommunication