Ivan Merz — Promoter of liturgical revival in Croatia

Ivan Merz, a layman, very young, united his unusually penetrating genius with great knowledge, and with his intuition and lucidity pointed to the real problems of the soul, society and future. That is how he could anticipate — not in full, naturally — all that the II Vatican Council partly sanctioned and partly encouraged in the field of the renewal of christian life through liturgy nearly 40 years later. Therefore we wish to present Ivan Merz as a promoter of liturgical revival in Croatia. Ivan\u27s truely unique religious-liturgical growth and orientation, began during the last years of his secondary schooling, made obvious progress during his studies in Vienna and particularly during the war, on the front, then during the continuation of his studies in Vienna, and it became fully formed and completed during his studies in Paris. Like other promoters of the liturgie movement all over the world, Ivan also lived with the Church through liturgy and he made liturgy the base and the means of his apostolate among Croatian catholic youth. He had a correct conception of the importance of liturgy not only in the life of an individual, but also in the renewal of all christian life. He considered the mass to be the heart of liturgy. Accordingly, he stimulated active participation in the mass with missal in the hand and recommended daily holy communion; he evaluated liturgie singing correctly renouncing singing that was not in the liturgical spirit; he required prayers to be liturgically correct and raised many other iturgical questions. Obviously, the majority of Merz\u27s ideas — the more important and main ones — were in harmony with the teaching and constitutions of the II Vatican Council later and have, therefore, lasting value. In this light Merz appears as a visionary forecasting new times in the Church in liturgy and in christian life. These new times have found confirmation and new stimuli with the II Vatican Council and realisation in our post-council days. The appearance of Ivan Merz, a very young layman was unique in the modern catholic liturgical movement, since the initiators of these renewals in other countries were regularly big monasteries or well known members of the clergy. »Thus Ivan Merz deserves to be called a beloved, precious son of the Church, a soul chosen, a favourite of God and to be put as an example of modern, truely lived holiness.« (Tommaso Federici