In this paper I first survey several paradigms of liturgical renewal that respond to the mandate of the Second Vatican Council and I restate a suggestion made in 2007 for a new model of liturgical study, ‘Appreciating the Liturgy’. This new model encourages a deeper appreciation of the current liturgy and is offered that the Church may better discern the way forward in the renewal of the liturgy. Then, following a brief presentation of the liturgical hermeneutic taught at the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy and a practical example of analysing a prayer with this method, I conclude by showing how the ‘Appreciating the Liturgy’ model has helped to reveal a liturgical hermeneutic heretofore overlooked, that of Christian maturation by developmental steps.

The method which Daniel McCarthy and I have developed and used here can validly be applied to other liturgical sources, yet this paper's conclusions, based on the analysis of a newly-composed oration in one of the renewed texts (editiones typicae) resulting from the Second Vatican Council and the Constitution on the Liturgy, suggest that Christian maturation was a real concern of those taking part in the Council.