Words and Gestures in the Liturgy is a call to attentiveness. What do the various movements in the liturgy mean? How do words affect and effect liturgical actions? Antonio Donghi explains that these gestures emerge from the experience of prayer; they are a response to the invitation to relationship with God. Donghi writes that the habit of drama tends to have us celebrate passively the great mysteries of salvation." This text (a revised and expanded edition of Actions and Words: Symbolic Language and the Liturgy, 1997) pulls readers out of that passivity and into an active and knowledgeable participation in the worship of God.

Antonio Donghi is a priest of the Diocese of Bergamo in Northern Italy and a teacher of liturgy and sacramental theology. Besides being a frequent contributor to various periodicals focusing on liturgical spirituality, he has published six other books with Liberia Editrice Vaticana.