The Healing Power of the Liturgy (original) (raw)
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This paper I wrote as a preparatory paper for the conference of the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation (IALC) which met in Montreal in August 2015. In this paper I would like to fuel the discussion of reconciliation and liturgy on the basis of Robert Schreiter’s proposal for a spirituality of reconciliation. It will become clear that remembrance plays an important part in reconciliation. As remembrance is a key concept for both theology and liturgy, the first part of this paper will explore some of its dimensions, based on Miroslav Volf’s book The End of Memory. The second part explores Schreiter’s concept of a spirituality of reconciliation. The third part of this paper takes its structure from the three roles for churches in the process of reconciliation, as Schreiter proposes. In that part I focus on liturgy, with special attention to some of the dynamics between liturgy and community. Both Schreiter and Volf emphasise the role of the community, a role I found in my own research on liturgy in relation to suffering.
Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation: On Theurgic Participation in God
This thesis, providing a metaphysical grounding for liturgical participation, argues that ‘active participation’ in the liturgy must be understood principally as our participation in God’s act and particularly in the act of Christ and only secondarily as our ritual involvement. Engaging Thomas Aquinas, Joseph Ratzinger, and Catherine Pickstock, as well as Neoplatonist philosophy, both Pagan and Christian, this thesis proposes that this should be understood in terms of theurgy, which is the human participation in divine action, which finds its consummation in the Incarnation. This thesis argues that without the Incarnation, all acts will remain extrinsic and imposed but that acts can become real and intrinsic precisely because the Incarnation makes possible true union with the divine, a metaphysical union-in-distinction, without confusion, because this union is not extrinsic. It is rooted in one person or suppositum, the incarnate Logos. Through union with Christ, as the one common focus of the divine-human relation, we can have true union with God and may offer true worship. In order to make sense of active participation, then, we need to understand theology in theurgic terms, where theurgy is understood not as a mechanical ‘coercion’ of God but as a participation in His act, in creation and through Christ as the true theurgist, the ‘master theurgist,’ whose work transforms our act and the liturgy. Doing so, we find a theological and philosophical basis of how we may participate in the liturgy as a divine work, without either ‘collapsing’ into God, and consequently denying their real and substantial, though derived, integrity, or divorcing our works from their divine source. This thesis, therefore, explores, liturgically, the relation between grace and nature, noting that in order to obtain a deeper understanding of the liturgical act, we also need a deeper understanding of its ground in God. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14132/
Re-Membering in Action: Liturgy and Healing of Hurt Memories
Studia Liturgica, 2020
We experience around us situations of violence, pain, suffering, and injustice. Some of these experiences often leave individual and/or communal memories hurt in many different ways. The consequence is that when these hurt memories live with us they begin to shape our identity and selfhood from the perspective of wounded persons. Overlooking these experiences or burying them to amnesia can lead to the denial of what we are truly called to be. Remembering well these memories with hope for a better future in the presence of the risen Lord would be a source of healing for both individuals and communities. This essay posits liturgy as the means by which we can re-member the past to the present and so look to the future with hope of healing. This is so because liturgy has the capacity to bring the participants in the ritual to the past event as a present encounter. Through symbols, gestures, words, songs, and materials used in the ritual, in a concrete manner the participants receive wha...
Joseph Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy offers clarity in reorienting the human person and culture. Ratzinger consistently emphasizes that the proper understanding and celebration of the liturgy assists the worshipper to embrace the gift of his own logos by participating in the life and love of the Incarnate Logos. In this presentation, I will outline how Ratzinger weaves the relationship between the celebration of the sacred liturgy and the Christian life in his theological tapestry. First, I will explore Ratzinger’s emphasis that the liturgy is above all an opus Dei (“the work of God”). Second, I will examine the implications for Ratzinger’s understanding of sacrifice within the sacred liturgy and for the human person. Finally, I will demonstrate that there is an inherent link between the liturgy and the moral life.
2020
It is axiomatic in Orthodox liturgical theology that the central act of worship, the Divine Liturgy, is a participation here and now in the coming kingdom of God. This should naturally result in the shaping of Orthodox worshippers to live in this age according to the heaven-on-earth reality of the age to come, to live the "liturgy after the liturgy" in a life of kingdom-building. Yet there is little to suggest that this is happening in Orthodox churches today. Drawing on postcritical insights that challenge modernity's limitationsespecially the concept of life as an enacted social drama, the importance of narrative for signification and formation, and the priority of embodied, participatory knowledge-the author proposes that the decline in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy's power to transform worshippers results principally from an eclipse of the enacted narrative of the kingdom of God within liturgical celebration. iii Using his ministry base of an Orthodox mission parish as a case study, the author has implemented a series of changes in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy to recover and prioritise narrative elements. This includes the publication of a service book focusing on what to do in the liturgy-in essence, a contemporary mystagogical catechesis attending to the participatory knowledge of enacted narrative. Then, drawing insights from a narrative method of qualitative research with a group of worshippers at the mission, the author shows that, when worshippers are encouraged to grasp and embody the story contained within the liturgy, they can be inspired to reflect on and renarrate their lives according to the story of God as a precursor of fuller Christian formation. The discussion concludes with a tentative model of narrative liturgical formation and suggestions for application in other parish contexts and for further study within the Orthodox Church.
Full, Conscious and Active: The Church Participates in the Liturgy
This paper is the text of a keynote address given at the Archdiocese of Perth's Liturgy Conference held in February, 2015. The Roman Catholic Church is currently celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Vatican Council II (1962-1965). The most dramatic impact of the Council on the Church's life was the Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, which called all the members to "full, conscious and active participation." This paper looks back over the last 50 years in the Church and the world, and offers a few ideas for the way forward.
Liturgy Matters: Liturgy and Scripture as the Mirrors Of Catholicity
This article considers two recent debates about the reform of the liturgy in the light of the principle of lex Orandi lex Credendi. Liturgy is important because it nourishes and sustains belief, but a didactic approach to liturgy does not do full justice to the dynamic nature of the liturgy and its relation to the community. It examines the development of the canon of scripture from a phenomenological perspective, as a paradigmatic example of the dynamic relationship between the liturgy and the community. As "full, active and conscious" participants in the liturgy, the faithful also has a part to play in the recognition and acceptance of these reforms.
Mission, Liturgy, and the Transformation of Identity
Mission Studies, 2010
Th is article considers the signifi cance of liturgical worship for the purpose of overcoming the problem of intellectualism and rationalism that have been prevalent in the modern Christian missions since the 19th century. Despite its centrality in Christian life, worship has been given a marginal place in the discussions of Christian mission. Th e author, however, maintains that it should play a crucial and powerful role in mission at the age when human identity is increasingly becoming fl uid and problematic, as it is capable of producing profound spiritual transformation among worshippers and thus establishing in them a new identity centered on Christ without eradicating "primordial attachments." Th is is because liturgy has a holistic nature with its rich symbolism and is able to reach the non-rational level of personality where the primordial attachments operate. Th e author, who teaches courses in Christianity at a Christian college in Kobe, Japan, takes as his starting point the apparent impasse of Christian higher education in today's Japan which still operates on the Enlightenment model of mission with its emphasis on knowledge as the foundation of faith. He takes advantage of some insights of recent Ritual Studies to illuminate the identity-forming character of liturgical rituals.