Cardinal Ratzinger's deceptively small book is packed with wisdom in each of its words, leading us on an awe inspiring review of the liturgy: "what is imperative is a new reverence in the way we treat it, a new understanding of its message and its reality" (p. 8). Just a few years before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, his writing also seems to display a certain spunkiness, which has not struck me as being so evident in his more recent writings.This magnificent little book is divided into four parts, each of which has its own chapters.Part One: The Essence of the Liturgy1. Liturgy and Life: The Place of the Liturgy in Reality2. Liturgy-Cosmos-History3. From Old Testament to New: The Fundamental Form of the Christian Liturgy-Its Determination by Biblical FaithPart Two: Time and Space in the Liturgy1. The Relationship of the Liturgy to Time and Space: Some Preliminary Questions2. Sacred Places-The Significance of the Church Building3. The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer4. The Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament5. Sacred TimePart Three: Art and Liturgy1. The Question of Images2. Music and LiturgyPart Four: Liturgical Form1. Rite2. The Body and the Liturgy (sub-divided into "Active Participation," The Sign of the Cross, Posture (Kneeling (prostration), Standing and Sitting - Liturgy and Culture), Gestures, The Human Voice, Vestments, Matter)While this book is scholarly, its deepest insights have no doubt been long understood by pious people with little formal education. While there is no way to do justice to this masterpiece in a brief review, I would like to share a few of my own favorite snippets.Part One's Liturgy and Life concludes as follows: "The narrative of the golden calf is a warning about any kind of self-initiated and self-seeking worship. Ultimately, it is no longer concerned with God but with giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one's own resources. Then liturgy really does become pointless, just fooling around. Or still worse it becomes an apostasy from the living God, an apostasy in sacral disguise. All that is left in the end is frustration, a feeling of emptiness. There is no experience of that liberation which always takes place when man encounters the living God" (p. 23).In the concluding paragraph of Part Two's The Relationship of the Liturgy to Time and Space, we are reminded that: "We do indeed participate in the Heavenly liturgy, but this participation is mediated to us through earthly signs....The liturgy is the means by which earthly time is inserted into the time of Jesus Christ and into its present. It is the turning point in the process of redemption. The Shepherd takes the lost sheep onto His shoulders and carries it home" (p. 61).As per Part Two's The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer: "even in architecture, there is both continuity and newness in the relationship of the Old Testament to the New....praying toward the east is a tradition that goes back to the beginning....what about the altar? In what direction should we pray during the Eucharistic liturgy?....[In recent times, there was] a misunderstanding of the significance of the Roman basilica and of the positioning of the altar....[Previously] the priest himself was not regarded as so important. For just as the congregation in the synagogue looked toward Jerusalem, so in the Christian liturgy the congregation looked together `toward the Lord'....The point is to discover the essence amid all the changing appearances. It would surely be a mistake to reject all the reforms of our century wholesale....a common turning to the east during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential....What matters is looking together at the Lord....Where a direct common turning toward the east is not possible, the cross can serve as the interior 'east' of faith. It should stand in the middle of the altar and be the common point of focus for both priest and praying community" (pp. 74 - 83).As per the very last sentence of Part Two's The Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, "If the Presence of the Lord is to touch us in a concrete way, the tabernacle must also find its proper place in the architecture of our church buildings" (p. 91).As per Part Three's The Question of Images: "One development of far-reaching importance in the history of the images of faith was the emergence for the first time of a so-called acheiropoietos, an image that has not been made by human hands and portrays the very face of Christ. Two of these images appeared in the East at about the same time in the middle of the sixth century....The second was the mandylion, as it was later called, which was brought from Edessa in Syria to Constantinople and is thought by many scholars today to be identical with the Shroud of Turin" (p. 119). About a month and a half prior to this writing, I was privileged and blessed to be in Turin and to see the Shroud! (As per another review I penned: "While the Church has not definitively said so, there are compelling reasons to think that the Shroud of Turin and the Veil of Manoppello are the burial cloths described in John: 20. Paul Badde believes that seeing these marked the beginning of Jesus' sheepish pals becoming powerful witnesses" (cf., The True Icon: From the Shroud of Turin to the Veil of Manoppello). While the Veil is less well known than the Shroud, Badde maintains that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI believes this of the Veil.).As per Part Four's Rite, "the liturgy becomes personal, true, and new, not through tomfoolery and banal experiments with the words, but through a courageous entry into the great reality that through the rite is always ahead of us and can never quite be overtaken" (p. 169).As per Part Four's The Body and the Liturgy, "one must be lead toward the essential action that makes the liturgy what it is, toward the transforming power of God, who wants, through what happens in the liturgy, to transform us and the world. In this respect, liturgical education today, of both priests and laity, is deficient to a deplorable extent. Much remains to be done here" (p. 175).