There's a great and tragic irony which exists in the Church today and which this homily by Archbishop Sample addresses, if only indirectly.
It was Pope Bl. John Paul II who noted that a "silent apostasy" had gripped the Church. He coined a strategic phrase that was intended to prescribe a strategy for combating this "silent apostasy": The New Evangelization. According to the reasoning behind this "new evangelization," too many who called themselves "Catholics" lived their lives in apostasy, some out of ignorance, some out of a blatant denial of Church teaching. Many needed to be re-evangelized, thus the "new evangelization.
From the beginning of Blessed John Paul II's crusade, if I may refer to his call to arms in that way, a central theme developed which was strongly promoted in the writings of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI. That theme is the renewal of liturgical understanding, an understanding which had been watered down and, in some cases, completely subverted by the liturgical reforms carried out way back in the '60's and '70's in the name of the "Spirit of Vatican II."
The reasoning on which this call for renewal stands is that, after the post-conciliar reforms, the law of prayer, as evidenced by the manner in which we offer the Mass in most parishes, constitutes a rupture with the law of prayer as it had been inherited by the Second Vatican Council, the First Vatican Council, the Council of Trent...pretty much all the way back to at least Gregory the Great. An impressive pedigree, to say the least. Pope Emeritus, writing as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in _The Spirit of the Liturgy_ was clear about the path to renewal: restoration of continuity in the law of prayer.
This clear-cut approach to the New Evangelization has recently been obscured by claims of new groups leading the charge with "new" ardor, "new" methods, "new" language..."new", "new", "new" everything. Ironically, this approach would seem to have much more in common with the "spirit" of the 1970's reformers than with the original intentions applied to the "New Evangelization."
What Archbishop Sample is suggesting in this video is a clear-cut means of implementing the wishes of Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI through liturgical restoration.
The key to proper restoration of the liturgy, and a subsequent renewal of liturgical understanding, is mercy. Restoration with mercy is done in opposition to the merciless tyranny of the reformers of the '60's and '70's in so completely discarding the mercy inherent in the Tridentine Mass in favor of their own vanities.
