Wolterstorff on pre-Reformation liturgy

The Roman Catholic liturgical scholar J. A. Jungmann acknowledges that on the eve of the Reformation “The role of the laity [at the eucharist] was to all intents and purposes that of a spectator.” (p281 citing “Liturgy on the Eve of the Reformation” Worship 33 (1959): 508)

“My suggestion, in short, is that the medieval Western liturgy was a liturgy in which, to an extraordinary degree, the action of God in the liturgy was lost from view. The actions were all human. The priest addressed God. The priest brought about Christ’s bodily, but static, presence. The laity adored Christ under the bread-like and wine-like appearances. The reception of the concecrated bread from the hands of the priest caused an infusion of grace in the communicants. But where in all this was God, the living active God? The bread infuses the grace it signifies. The consecration by the priest effects Christ’s bodily presence. But God as agent is nowhere in view. And what was the point of it all? “Hearing Mass was reduced to a matter of securing favors from God,” says Jungmann. (p287 quoting “Liturgy on the Eve of the Reformation” Worship 33 (1959): 508 p511)

Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘The Reformed Litugy’ pp273-304 in Donald K. McKim (ed.) Major Themes in the Reformed Tradition (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1992)