Passing On the Peace
About two weeks ago my family and I found ourselves in an unlikely setting: participating in the Divine Liturgy of the Maronite Catholic Church. Specifically, we were at St. Raymond’s Maronite Cathedral in St. Louis, Missouri. I’ve attended a Divine Liturgy before (in the Syro-Malabar tradition), so it wasn’t that foreign to me. But I was delighted to experience the way in which the Maronites conduct the Sign of Peace: The person receiving the Sign of Peace puts their hands together at about chest level, as if in prayer. Then the person giving the Sign of Peace places...
Read More“We need a form.”
Since worship, along with the other central mysteries of our human existence, outstrips our own spontaneous attempts at responding adequately to the event at hand, we all find the help we need in words and movements handed down to us by wise tradition. Oh, to be sure, the Father whom we invoke is, like any father, delighted with whatever halting, lisping, stammering efforts we direct to him from our hearts. He does not sit as critic when we come to his knee. But when we come to the business of regular, recurrent, public worship, then we are glad for a form. A structure. The inexorable march...
Read MoreBook Review: If Your Mind Wanders at Mass
Shortly before Christmas I participated in a Secret Santa exchange on my favorite book cataloging site, LibraryThing. I can only assume that the administrators of the exchange picked people due to common interests, because I was paired with a lovely young Catholic woman who picked out a copy of Thomas Howard’s If Your Mind Wanders at Mass for me. The book is deceptively short at 124 pages, but filled with wonderful reflections on liturgical participation, the parts of the Mass, and the importance of corporate worship. Dr. Howard writes with depth, but doesn’t rely on lofty or...
Read MoreKeeping Advent
Every year it seems that the cultural observance of Christmas starts a little bit earlier. Stores are constantly seeking to lengthen the time they have to sell holiday items; this year I even saw some stores with Christmas decorations in stock before Halloween! While this is understandable from a commercial point of view, it clashes with the Church’s observance and understanding of Advent — that time of both preparation for Christmas and anticipation for the Second Coming of Christ. How can we keep Advent in a culture that has forgotten this important liturgical season? Put up an...
Read MoreGood Celebration of Liturgy
Last month my office, in conjunction with our diocesan Office for Worship and the Catechumenate, offered a workshop on the Roman Missal, Third Edition to the faithful of our diocese. The introductory section, which I presented, was a brief (10 minute) overview of why good liturgical celebration is important to the life of the Church. We recorded the workshop and I offer my section below. You may notice from the context that the audience at this particular workshop was almost exclusively Catholic school teachers and staff. 2011 Roman Missal Regional Workshop – Good Celebration of...
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