An Appraisal of Liturgy as Communication (original) (raw)
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International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 2021
The study deals with the question of how liturgical theology, articulating the close interconnections between liturgy and church, can contribute to a contemporary theory of church. It works with reflections on the church as expressed by two Protestant theologians, the American liturgical theologian Gordon W. Lathrop (1939) and the Czech practical theologian Pavel Filipi (1936–2015). The main theses of this study are that liturgy is a place where the joint vision of the church is formed, with the help of biblical imagination. Therefore, the perspective of liturgical theology can be beneficial for contemporary studies of churches, especially as they consider church reforms. This perspective reminds us of the theological view on the substance, function, and mission of the church in the contemporary world.
The Liturgical Development of the Eucharist in the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church
This paper seeks to outline the historical development of the Liturgy, and in particular, the Eucharist from its Institution at the Last Supper until its present form. The authors examine the context of the Last Supper in some detail, noting the Jewish influence of Passover and the Roman persecution on the fledgling sect as it grappled during the first few centuries of its existence to maintain an identity and to flourish in spite of such persecution. The influence on the liturgy in ‘peace-time’ is seen through the diversification of rites. The establishment of the Roman Canon and the eventual standardization at the Council of Trent is explained. This paper concludes with the further reforms after Trent at Vatican II and discusses how they have been received. It is of course completely impossible to do justice to any of these topics in such a short and cursory overview as this paper must attempt. What the authors hope to achieve through this paper, apart from a broadening of their own understanding through the various readings in preparation for this paper, is to show how at each stage of the development of the Liturgy there will be differences, it is hoped that one can also see the similarities. The paper describes how the Mass moved from a communal meal to a sacred one; how at different stages the human and divine aspects of the Liturgy became important; and how because of this importance further fights ensued and were expressed externally through public disagreement over such major issues as transubstantiation, or internally within the Church between rites and Mass translations. To put it simply: The Mass Matters – and it is necessary to understand what it is in the Mass that led Catholics to be prepared to be martyred, to travel as missionaries in foreign lands, to baptise and to preach to converts, so that they might fulfil the Lord’s command to do this in memory of Him.
The Word of God plays a very important role in the life of every Christian. The liturgy of the word is the very significant part of Eucharist. The Sacred Scripture and tradition are the main structure of the liturgy since the liturgy is based on the Sacred Scripture and tradition.
A Liturgy of the Word and the Words of the Liturgy
For us Christians, the communities of the disciples of Jesus, all liturgy must be an encounter with him and his prayer to the Father. This is the mysterium constituting our liturgy: it is not a matter of imposed rites performed as a matter of obeying divine commands nor fulfilling the demands of the virtue of religion. This is the reality of anamnesis echoing in the words 'do this in memory of me', which encounters the presence of the Father's Anointed among us: it is not a matter of repetitious imitation. This is our re-hearing the Scriptures which, through the Spirit, lead us into the truth: it is neither attention to, nor study of, a set of sacral 'spiritual' texts. Indeed, such is our liturgy's nature that we often describe it as the encounter hodie with the One we confess as incarnate: the Christ is the sacrament of our encounter with God; and the encounter's privileged moment is the liturgy. As such, the liturgy takes place within the creation and addresses the Father from the creation: it is must not be seen as an esoteric activity. Over 60 years after Pope Pius XII's encyclical Mediator Dei, this view of the liturgy is hardly new; and, indeed it should be a moment of thankfulness for Catholics, that the 'Liturgical Movement' which took official form with Pius and inspired those who worked for the reforms of Vatican II, is now having an influence far beyond the bounds of Catholicism. But if this theological position-the encounter with the liturgy is a moment in the incarnation of the Lord-is widely accepted when we think abstractly of liturgy'; does it inform our practice, the actual way we celebrate liturgy?