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Tag: liturgy

  • The Pandemic as an Apocalypse of the Body

    This was my entry into the Archbishop’s Annual Essay Contest. It was not selected as one of the winners. I. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. On March 13, 2020, the U.S. President, Donald Trump, declared a National Emergency. The events, both nationally and globally, that then transpired in…

  • "Out of worship are the springs of life."

    Operating on the assumption that the Church is a polis and that a polis is given form by the inculcation of its myths and rituals, Peter Leithart makes the claim that: Liturgy is the first form of Christian discipleship training, of paedeia, of induction into the culture of the Church. This claim sounds appealing to…

  • A Theory of the Homily: Against Expositional Preaching?

    I. Here is a story: In the Middle Ages, the clergy would not let the people read the Bible, let alone hear the Bible, since the Bible (and all of the liturgy) was in Latin, a language which only clergy knew. This gave the clergy a monopoly on Church teaching, the laity themselves having to…

  • A Theory of the Homily: the Sermon in Context

    I. The liturgy is not formless, but has a structure to it, a shape. From start to finish, there is a logic to its parts and its flow. While each of the “parts” of the liturgy can be meaningfully spoken of by their headings and traditional names (the “Sanctus,” the “Sursum Corda,” the “Benediction,” etc),…