“The liturgy has no purpose, or, at least, it cannot be considered from the standpoint of purpose. It is not a means which is adapted to attain a certain end—it is an end in itself. This fact is important, because if we overlook it, we labor to find all kinds of didactic purposes in the liturgy which may certainly be stowed away somewhere, but are not actually evident.”
Romano Guardini (1885-1968)
In his minor classic The Spirit of the Liturgy (1918), Romano Guardini devotes seven short chapters to various reflections on the nature of Catholic worship: “The Prayer of the Liturgy,” “The Fellowship of the Liturgy,” “The Style of the Liturgy,” “The Symbolism of the Liturgy,” “The Seriousness of the Liturgy,” and “The Primacy of the Logos over the Ethos.”
The quotation that begins this post is from a chapter most non-Catholics, and even many Catholics, might find surprising: “The Playfulness of the Liturgy.” Again, Guardini posits that the liturgy has no purpose, but this purposelessness is itself meaningful. Imagine the soul as child, and the liturgy a spiritual playground. “The child, when it plays, does not aim at anything. … It does not want to do anything but to exercise its youthful powers, pour forth its life in an aimless series of movements, words and actions, and by this to realize itself more fully.” And the child desires to do all of this under the protective gaze of his Father. In the liturgy we are able to be true children of God.
Guardini sees something similar in the creation of art. But these things can only really be understood “by those who are able to take art and play seriously.” Although there is a time for pedagogy and analysis, there is a time for play, too. Those who cannot appreciate this destroy the beauty of play by imposing on it “aims and purposes” that do not naturally belong to it.
This is just as true for the liturgy. Which is not to say that Guardini sees no place for seriousness in the liturgy (as should be apparent in the chapter titles listed above). Indeed, Guardini observes that there is seriousness even to our playfulness. “Have you ever noticed,” he asks, “how gravely children draw up the rules of their games, on the form of the melody, the position of the hands, the meaning of this stick and that tree? It is for the sake of the silly people who may not grasp their meaning and who will persist in seeing the justification of an action or an object only in its obvious purpose. … The liturgy has laid down the serious rules of the sacred game which the soul plays before God.”
In this sense, the liturgy reflects Nature. “The liturgy creates a universe brimming with fruitful spiritual life, and allows the soul to wander about it in at will and to develop itself there.” The image invoked by 
Guardini is a field in the open woods. “Are flowers and leaves useful? Of course; they are the vital organs of plants. Yet because of this, they are not tied down to any particular form, color, or smell. Then what, upon the whole, is the use of the extravagance of shapes, colors, and scents, in Nature? … Measured merely by the standard of apparent and external utility, there is a great deal in Nature which is only partially, and nothing which is wholly and entirely, intended for a purpose, or, better still, purposeful.” One who wanders around the field looking for abstract purposefulness in Nature is mostly missing the point. Similarly misguided is the Catholic who views the Mass as a mere means of Eucharistic delivery, or worse, as an occasion to receive dogmatic instruction.
In the poem “Words,” from his collection Interrogations at Noon (2001), Dana Gioia writes,
“The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.
…
The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always—
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.”