I came across this morning. It puts this whole perspective to “make progress” with the Divine Liturgy into proper perspective:
Patriarch Maximos IV Sayegh of Antioch at Vatican II:
"We must not allow the adaptation of the liturgy to become an obsession. The liturgy, like the inspired writings, has a permanent value apart from the circumstances giving rise to it. Before altering a rite we should make sure that a change is strictly necessary. The liturgy has an impersonal character and also has universality in space and time. It is, as it were, timeless and thus enables us to see the divine aspect of eternity. These thoughts will enable us to understand what at first seem shocking in some of the prayers of the Liturgy - feasts that seem no longer appropriate, antiquated gestures, calls to vengeance which reflect a pre-Christian mentality, anguished cries in the darkness of the night, and so on. It is good to feel one’s self thus linked with all the ages of mankind. We pray not only with our contemporaries but with men who have lived in all centuries."
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