Articles tagged with liturgy

“A Sacred Action Surpassing All Others”

August 7, 2015

Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends…

Christ worked many wonders during His earthly life, demonstrating a great compassion and tender-heartedness for the poor, the grieving, the sick and neglected. These were signs of God’s love for humankind, to the very least of the Lord’s sisters and brothers.

The Communion of the Apostles

Yet on our Lord’s own words, the greatest act of His love was not any of His acts of teaching, healing, or even raising from the dead. Rather, all of these signs of love point to His supreme act of love, laying down His life for His sheep. There is no greater love than this act of self-abandonment. “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life [John 10: 17].”

The liturgy of the Church, according to Sacrosanctum concilium (the constitution on the liturgy of the Second Vatican Council), is an exercise of Christ’s high priesthood. That is to say, it is a re-presentation of this supreme act of love. We who are His Body, enter into this act of self-offering to the Father for the sake of the world when we enter into the liturgy. Here is a quote from paragraph 7:

Every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree. [emphasis added]

This superlative construction parallels our Lord’s own words that the greatest love consists in the laying down of one’s life for one’s friends. Can it be that our celebration of the liturgy is this action, is this love?

Answering that question depends on active participation. I don’t mean this in the sense in which it is frequently taken, that everyone at the liturgy needs to be speaking, gesturing, helping at the altar, and so on. The Actor is Jesus Himself, not us; we are strictly participants, and we participate–take part–in our “spiritual worship [Romans 12: 1]” when we see, with spiritual eyes, what is actually taking place at the liturgy and its implications for how our lives must change, that we become the sorts of persons who show compassion for the poor, the grieving, the sick and the neglected.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

That is to say, in the liturgy “we live Christ,” we are conformed to Christ and become His crucified and resurrected Body. The acts of service that flow from becoming Christ are always a function of being sent, being Apostles who have witnessed the Lord’s sacrifice and resurrected Presence, and wish to point others to this same reality. Just as our Lord’s earthly ministry is meant to help us understand the meaning of His sacrifice on the Cross and point to it, but cannot replace it, our loving service of others must flow from our encounter with Christ at the Cross (meaning at the liturgy), and must be a sign to others to come to believe in the saving power of God in Jesus Christ. Our loving service should draw others to the liturgy (e.g. first of all baptism). This is what the Church means when she says that the Eucharist (the central act and meaning of all of the liturgy) is the “source and summit of the Christian life [CCC § 1324; “fount and apex” as Lumen gentium 11 puts it].”

It remains for us to broaden and deepen our understanding of the liturgy. I have been reflecting mostly on the deepening part over the past several weeks. What do I mean by broadening? I will answer this question in the next post, God willing.

What is the Liturgy?

August 10, 2015

At one point in yesterday’s Oblate meeting, we discussed the difference between devotional pictures and icons. This discussion took place in a conference based on Pope Benedict XVI’s The Spirit of the Liturgy. And so it was noted that icons and devotional pictures might share themes, and composition. Pictures might even be of icons. But icons are always liturgical. The way an icon is prepared, the fasting that an iconographer undergoes, the forty days that an icon traditional rests upon a consecrated altar, and the final blessing of the icon by an ordained priest using holy water marks this object as part of the liturgy. A reproduction of an icon, such as those that adorn our home page, are not liturgical objects in this sense, but are devotional. As such, they extend from the liturgy and should lead us back to the liturgy. Reverence for an icon is a liturgical act, pious thoughts and prayer before a devotional picture is not–though these are perfectly good, even necessary, activities when one is not able to attend the liturgy itself.

Corpus Christi Procession: the liturgy goes out into the world.

I open with this reflection to draw attention to the breadth of what we mean by the liturgy. In the previous post, I noted that I needed to say something about what the liturgy is. I’ve spent a good amount of time explaining the liturgy’s interior, spiritual reality. From this vantage point, the liturgy is the work of Christ the high priest, bringing us to the Father in the Spirit, mediating for us and by means of us, His Body, for the salvation of the whole of the cosmos.

But how does this happen, and how do we know that it is happening? The liturgy also has an exterior, incarnated reality, in that it takes place by means of certain types of persons (the baptized generally, the ordained ministers in a more specific sense), at certain times, in certain places (mainly churches, but also anywhere that the faithful gather in Christ’s name), by means of certain texts and ritual actions, and with certain instruments (bread and wine, water, oil, stone, incense, vestments, icons, crosses, candlesticks, wax, etc.).

Catholics are apt to the of the Mass when someone says, “liturgy.” And this is a good impulse, though a truncated one. The liturgy’s center is indeed the Eucharist, but to reduce the liturgy to Mass is quite problematic. The liturgy includes all of the sacraments. It also includes the whole Divine Office. This is not an obligatory part of the liturgy for the laity. However, since it is the liturgy, the Divine Office possesses an efficacy for uniting us in spirit to God that non-liturgical prayer does not have (I plan to write about how to pray the rosary in a ‘liturgical’ manner, and why this is the deeper spirit of this beautiful–almost indispensable–devotional prayer).

But…I’m still not finished listing the events that make up the liturgy. Blessings pronounced by a priest are part of the liturgy, and blessed objects retain a connection to the liturgy. So what I said above about icons falls in here. So do meals (!). Exorcisms, processions, religious professions, oblations and promises are all part of the liturgy. The marriage act itself is liturgical, since it is intrinsic to the confection of the sacrament of matrimony (this is also why same-sex marriage, whatever merits there might be to bestowing recognition on a stable partnership of love, cannot be considered Christian marriage).

The anointing of the sick, another action of Christ the mediator.

So the liturgy is actually quite extensive. In the West, we have had a tendency to shorten and narrow what we mean by the liturgy, as I mentioned above. This has some problematic effects. The good news, however, is that recovering the richness of the liturgy can be a life-altering project, a real point of foundational renewal for the Church, and the basis any genuine ecumenical effort. As I mentioned in the last post, the corporal works of mercy are not therefore dispensable. They will be efficacious, I would suggest, to the extent that those ministering in this way are clearly grounded in the liturgy. The acts of healing and love, the active life, will be seen to be the work of Christ Himself and not simply that of human do-gooders. In fact, we can throw ourselves into all kinds of activities, without fear of falling into Pelagianism, if our source of energy and strength is Christ Himself, uniting us to Him and to each other in the liturgy, He “Who has made the two one.”

From this standpoint again, we have a way of understanding the Church’s traditional teaching on the centrality of the consecrated life, especially the contemplative life. Contemplatives have the duty to live the liturgical life to the fullest, to invite others to the vision of the liturgy, and to give witness to Christ’s triumph and mission of reconciliation. “A monk is he who directs his gaze towards God alone, and who, being at peace with God, becomes a source of peace,” said St. Theodore the Studite. Christ made peace by the blood of His Cross [Colossians 1: 20], that is, by the unique sacrifice which is extended and re-presented at every liturgical event. And immersion in this reality changes us into eschatological persons.

Mass is often seen merely as an obligation, and the notion that even the laity would benefit from regular attendance at yet more of the liturgy is, in my experience, often shrugged off as an inconvenience, taking them away from more pressing concerns. From the perspective that I am outlining here, I hope that it is clear that this dismissal is skewed somewhat. Yes, Mass is obligatory for a baptized Catholic, but if we knew the gift of God that is the liturgy, we would welcome opportunities to participate more frequently, as our state in life permits. We would also learn to connect all of our prayer to the liturgical celebrations, to the vocabulary, priorities, and sentiments of the “work of God.” Then all of our prayer would be transforming us into women and men of Christ, into saints. Thus it is that the liturgy is the foundation for one of the most crucial insights of Vatican II, the universal call to holiness.

The Rosary and the Liturgy

August 12, 2015

In 2001, the Congregation for Divine Worship put out an important document, the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy. Paragraph 5 of this important document is worth quoting at length:

The correct relationship between these two expressions of faith must be based on certain firm principles, the first of which recognises that the Liturgy is the centre of the Church’s life and cannot be substituted by, or placed on a par with, any other form of religious expression. Moreover, it is important to reaffirm that popular religiosity, even if not always evident, naturally culminates in the celebration of the Liturgy towards which it should ideally be oriented.

I have made brief mention, at a few points in my ongoing catechesis on the liturgy, of the connection of the rosary with the liturgy. In my previous post, I indicated that the rosary is not, strictly speaking, part of the liturgy. It is a popular devotion. In my estimation, it is the most important popular devotion in Catholicism at present and merits this place by its unique structure. This structure is deeply imbued with liturgical connections.

Let’s begin with the traditional form of fifteen mysteries, over each of which are recited ten Hail Mary‘s. This makes 150 Aves, if one prays the entire cycle of the rosary. This number 150 is also the number of Psalms, and the custom of praying the Hail Mary 150 times derives from the monastic liturgy. Saint Benedict urged his monks to pray all 150 Psalms in a week, noting that the Desert Fathers often strenuously recited all 150 each day. The monastic reformers of the Cistercian order put a greater emphasis on manual labor than had the increasingly wealthy Benedictines of the twelfth century. This had its curative effects, but it also made full attendance at the Divine Office almost impossible. In this circumstance arose the institution of lay brothers, as distinguished from the choir monks. Both groups were monks, but the choir monks were the only ones bound by the full recitation of the Office. The lay brothers did the greater part of the manual work, and in place of the duty of Psalmody, were often permitted to recite a Hail Mary in place of each Psalm (this they could do without recourse to the use of written Psalters; lay brothers did not usually receive the same education as choir monks, and so could be illiterate).

This custom eventually passed, by a mysterious route, further outside the monastery, among confraternities of popular prayer, such as arose in great numbers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Somewhere around the year 1500, the fifteen Mysteries were added to this basic structure (various precursors had been around since much earlier, but it was in the early sixteenth century that the Mysteries were stabilized). Note that the Mysteries are a mixture of events in the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary. In this, the pious ‘realism’ of the popular movements finds expression. There is a certain drift from the celebration of a more ‘mystical’ Christ, enthroned in heaven, present in the hearts of the faithful, to a more ‘historical’ reading of Christ’s life. We can see this when we compare the list of Mysteries to a list of of the old “Double First Class” Feast Days. I will list the feasts (that were current in the 1564 Roman calendar), along with select Double Second Class Feasts, and hope that you remember what the fifteen mysteries are…

Annunciation
Visitation
Nativity
Purification/Presentation

Epiphany (inc. Baptism of the Lord & Wedding at Cana)
Transfiguration

The liturgical celebration of Epiphany traditional refers not exclusively to the visit of the Magi, but also the Baptism and the Wedding at Cana.

Corpus Christi

[Holy Thursday]
[Good Friday]
[Holy Saturday]

Resurrection
Ascension
Pentecost
Assumption
Holy Trinity

Birth of John the Baptist
Ss. Peter and Paul
St. Michael the Archangel
All Saints

(Bold celebrations do not have a corresponding Mystery; I have grouped these according to the now-four groups of Mysteries, the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, and Glorious; the Sorrowful present certain interesting problems, which is why I did not put the Triduum in bold, nor did I leave this section blank.)

There is a lot to ponder here. A few notes to begin with, and then I will return over the coming week or so to some other observations.

Much as I love Saint Dominic, and much as I am fond of the Dominicans’ love of the rosary, our great saint ‘received’ the rosary more in spirit than in historical reality.

First of all, had St. Dominic in fact invented the rosary, according to the traditional legend, we might expect the Mysteries to match the liturgy even better than it does. That said, the correspondences are pretty good, especially after St. John Paul II’s addition of the Luminous Mysteries, four of which correspond to important liturgical celebrations, two of which (Epiphany and the Transfiguration) have gotten somewhat short shrift in the Western Church of the past millennium.

The focus on the life of Christ and an historicization of His life accounts for the Sorrowful Mysteries not quite corresponding to anything specific in the liturgy, aside from the correspondence of Good Friday and the Crucifixion. That said, it is worth noting–and this will be the subject of the future posts of some sort–that the longish meditation on Christ’s suffering really does have an important correlate in the liturgy of Triduum, especially the celebration of Tenebrae.

Finally, for today, it is of interest that the life of Christ in the rosary does not branch out beyond Pentecost into the life of Christ in the Church. That the feast days of saints an angels find no analogy in the rosary might be considered a real deficiency in the connection of the rosary to the Eucharist. Whereas the meditation on the Mysteries of the rosary clearly functions to prepare us for a more full and active participation in the liturgy of the Church, it does not prepare us all that well for the celebration of saints’ feast days, days in which the we celebrate Christ’s ongoing presence in the healing and pedagogic examples of the saints. Nearly all of the omitted Double Second Class feasts are of saints, especially the Apostles (who are understood to be present in contemporary bishops).

The structure of the rosary is not a matter of infallible teaching, and St. John Paul has already given us a certain opening for rethinking the Mysteries. What would happen if we supplemented the present twenty Mysteries with other Mysteria, the sacred mysteries of the liturgy, that do not presently find expression in the rosary? I don’t really know, and I write that to be slightly provocative. I’d be quite interested in readers’ thoughts.

I will share with you some of my own practices regarding praying the rosary, and how I find it helpful to underline the connections with the liturgy. Much to write about here!

Liturgical Preparation

August 14, 2015

Reader Dave sent the following quote from Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s book Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism. I find it interesting that he made the connection between liturgical strangeness and preparation. This is because, as anyone in formation in our monastery will tell you, I harp on the theme of preparation as integral to the spiritual and liturgical life. Schmemann:

We must realize first of all that preparation is a constant and essential aspect of the Church’s worship as a whole. It is impossible to enter into the spirit of the liturgy, to understand its meaning and truly to participate in it without first understanding that it is built primarily on the double rhythm of preparation and fulfillment, and that this rhythm is essential to the Church’s liturgy because it reveals and indeed fulfills the double nature and function of the Church herself.

Fr. Schmemann

On the one hand the Church herself is preparation: she “prepares” us for life eternal. Thus her function is to transform our whole life into preparation. By her preaching, doctrine and prayer she constantly reveals to us that the ultimate “value” which gives meaning and direction to our lives is at the “end,” is “to come,” is to be hoped for, expected, anticipated. And without this basic dimension of “preparation” there simply is no Christianity and no Church. Thus the liturgy of the Church is always and primarily a preparation: it always points and tends beyond itself, beyond the present, and its function is to make us enter into that preparation and thus transform our life by referring it to its fulfillment in the Kingdom of God.

Yet, on the other hand, the Church is also and essentially fulfillment. The events which gave her birth and which constitute the very source of her faith and life have taken place. Christ has come. In Him man was deified and has ascended to heaven. The Holy Spirit has come and His coming has inaugurated the Kingdom of God. Grace has been given and the Church truly is “heaven on earth,” for in her we have access to Christ’s table in His Kingdom. We have received the Holy Spirit and can partake, here and now, of the new life and be in communion with God.

One of the things we insist on when men enter our monastery is that they do lectio divina on the Propers of the Liturgy. Why? Because this becomes their personal (and our communal) preparation for the Divine Liturgy. Without this kind of intensive, and quite frankly often mundane, preparation, many aspects of the liturgy will simply go over our heads. This is not because the liturgy is too difficult, intellectual, or aesthetically elitist. It is because the liturgy comes to us from the future, from the end of time, from heaven, and we begin this encounter as persons in time and in the world. The liturgy is our training to be in the world but not of it, in time but eschatological, citizens of heaven still on pilgrimage.We will better realize the fulfillment of time and the cosmos to the extent that we prepare for the work of the liturgy. All of us are invited to do this, at whatever level is appropriate to our place in the Church, and we all benefit each other to the degree that we become new persons, that we “partake, here and now, of the new life.”

Does Chant Style Matter? Part 1

October 21, 2015

Pray Tell Blog recently posted my review of Benedicta, a CD collection of Marian chants sung by the monks of Norcia. It’s really two reviews in one. One part of me admires the lovely singing, the warmth of tone, and the ringing intonation of the brothers’ voices. On this level, the recording stands up with the better chant recordings I’ve heard. The other part of me is uneasy, however, about some choices the monks made. Among these choices was their use of the “Solesmes method” of interpretation (which, as I understand, is no longer used even at Solesmes Abbey itself), which I identified as part and parcel of the larger problem of presenting the chants without context. The lone comment on the blog suggests that it shouldn’t matter whether the Solesmes method or some other approach is used. What matters is that the music is beautiful.

Even before reading the comment, I was puzzling over what I take to be the importance of getting past the Solesmes method. Is my position truly defensible? Or is it a personal preference? I believe that my position is rational, and therefore to be preferred to a ‘pre-rational’ assessment.

But defending my position will take some work. Let me give an example of the uphill battle we’re talking about here.

I was at a reception after Vespers recently, speaking with two members of our own Schola Laudis. I mentioned to them that one of the things driving my interest in chant and Renaissance music at the liturgy is that I was seeking a rational way to go forward with the composition of church music. I meant by this that we should have reasons for choosing one type of music over another. When it comes to church music, it seems that we are usually content with saying that we want music that is beautiful. Fair enough. Would it be too pedantic of me to ask why we consider some music to be beautiful and other music to be maudlin, ugly, or overly sentimental? Some people consider “Send in the Clowns” to be a beautiful song (me…not so much, though I get its appeal). I personally find the Prelude to Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde to be quite beautiful, in its way. These are not, and should not (I think) be models for church music. Many people, on the other hand, find Gregorian chant dull, elitist, hard to understand, difficult to sing with any connection to one’s emotions, etc. Yet church documents make very clear that this style is the basis of our sacred music tradition.

Much of what we take to be beautiful depends on our cultural upbringing and, one hesitates to point it out, on our level of achievement in virtues like moderation, chastity, and humility. Lacking such virtues might lead us to prefer ecstatic music to sober music, manipulative music to ordered music, or simply music that we liked as children to music that adults tell us we’re supposed to like when our tastes develop a bit more.

Therefore, simply saying that music ought to be beautiful is not specific enough. Church music needs to be beautiful to certain types of persons. And those of us who are not yet those sorts of persons need to be able to make an act of faith that the beauty of such music will become more apparent as we grow in virtue and knowledge. Furthermore, I think that it is reasonable, based on experience, to hope that exposure to “virtuous” music will actually assist us in growing in virtue (this argument goes back at least to Plato, though it is much contested). We have more likely been exposed to the opposite phenomenon, someone descending into vice accompanied by depressing, libidinous, or cruel music.

What remains, then, is for me to explain why the approach taken by the Norcia monks is delightful on one level, but, in my opinion, does not quite approximate the beautiful in the fullest sense. Furthermore, I should be able to show that their recording falls somewhat (not entirely, mind you) short of what it could have been because of specific choices that they made: the use of the Solesmes method, and the somewhat random manner in which the chants were selected (random with regard to liturgical rationales). These proofs will have to wait for a later post.

Bonus tracks: Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde…music that is not quite chaste, deliberately eliding tonal boundaries in a manner uncomfortably parallel to the elision of marital boundaries in Wagner’s personal life at the time of its composition. He was falling in love with Mathilde Wesendonck, and perhaps carrying on an affair with her. Wagner’s indiscretions resulted in his separation from his wife Minna.

Here’s my example of ‘ecstatic’ music, “Giant Steps” by John Coltrane, a piece not without its own kind of beauty and order, yet clearly not in any way a model for church music.

And surely you didn’t think I’d leave you without “Send in the Clowns…”

Going to the Father 8: God’s Welcome

July 24, 2015

When I was appointed prior of our community in 2004, one of my tasks was to work out realistic plan to build a genuine monastery cloister. We have been living in a former parish rectory and convent for twenty-four years. Most of that time, the space has been quite adequate. But as we have increased in number to ten, the need for better living quarters has become much more apparent. That said, the plan needed to be conceived from a long-range vantage point. The cost of construction is not trifling, and we are still a young community. Renovation and construction are psychologically straining, and we need to prepare ourselves well for this kind of work.

The magnificent choir of Westminster Abbey. Nothing quite so impressive for us! But one sees the architectural significance of the choir in a monastic church.

Thus, it seemed to me from early on that the first priority was the renovation of the church building. Take care of God’s house and let him take care of our house! The church is a public space, the place where most people learn about who we are. Now the structure of our church was conceived for the needs of a medium-sized parish, rather than for a small monastery. While we have been able to use the building profitably, we have long been aware of the ways in which the church’s architecture nudges us away from our professed goal of being a cloistered, contemplative community.

Renovation began in earnest two years ago when we commissioned our iconostasis and began work on the altar. The most important step, however, was certainly going to be the construction of a real monastic choir. Monks can spend over three hours a day in choir, and having a choir that meets the demands of the full Benedictine office would not only be a plus for us, but would also help visitors grasp that this is not a parish anymore, that it fulfills a different ecclesial function.

So we began the discussion of building a new choir. What would be our requirements for this improvement?

We have a beautiful neo-gothic church. The new choir must be appropriate to the space, with a design that doesn’t conflict with the gothic motifs that we already have. We were fortunate to discover New Holland Church Furniture in Pennsylvania, who have designed an absolutely beautiful and noble, yet functional, choir. It fits perfectly in the transept.

Our old choir had nineteen stalls, enough for our daily liturgy, but not enough when we hosted meetings, or when we invited Schola Laudis to join us for Solemn Vespers. The new choir has thirty-two stalls, adequate for both of these recurring needs.

Rood screen in Southwold Church

We needed some sense of separation from the rest of the nave, without giving the impression of being distant or unwelcoming. Some brothers were even interested in a grille or rood screen. Ultimately we decided that this was too much separation. We decided on a low wall for the choir, and two additional low walls separating the choir from the nave. These look like small portions of a communion rail, though they are really stylized versions of a rood screen.

I mentioned in the previous post that our work on the altar and iconostasis, as well as our custom of celebrating Mass ad orientem could cause a kind of theological imbalance, implying God’s distance and undermining a sense of His welcoming immanence. Our design of the choir needed to address this.

Traditionally, the choir is part of the sanctuary. This means that in some monastic churches, for example, most Trappist churches, the sanctuary can end up stretching out over nearly the entire church. We had not capitalized on the possibilities of using the full, extended sanctuary to “close the gap” between clergy and laity. Again, the old parish architecture tended to form our imaginations in such a way so that we thought of the old, narrower sanctuary (all the way to the eastern apse, on the other side of the choir) as the sanctuary proper and the choir as something else. And the choir tended to act as something of a barrier between the laity and the distant sanctuary.

The grille separating the nuns of Regina Laudis from the rest of the abbey church.

Then one of the brothers got a splendid idea. To express it best, let me quote from the General Instruction of the Roman Missal.

The Chair for the Priest Celebrant and Other Seats

310. The chair of the priest celebrant must signify his office of presiding over the gathering and of directing the prayer. Thus the best place for the chair is in a position facing the people at the head of the sanctuary, unless the design of the building or other circumstances impede this: for example, if the great distance would interfere with communication between the priest and the gathered assembly, or if the tabernacle is in the center behind the altar…[emphasis added].

With our new, rather massive choir in the center of the church, putting the presider’s chair in the old sanctuary up near the altar would definitely interfere with communication between the priest and the assembly. So we put the presider’s chair on the west side of the transept, between the choir and assembly, where the priest will sit during the Liturgy of the Word. For the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the priest will make the long walk through the choir, up the old sanctuary steps, up the new predella steps, to the new altar and icon.

The altar of St. Nicholas’s Basilica in Bari, Italy. Note the three steps. This graded platform is known as the predella.

I describe this movement of the priest quite deliberately. Another strategy we have used for bridging the gap between the lay faithful and the monks is the copious use of processions. For example, when we process from the entrance of the church, through the nave, to the choir, part of what is expressed is our being called forth from the gathered assembly to our particular place in the church as monks. We go forth, as it were, to lead our lay brothers and sisters rather than slipping in from the sacristy and departing without having any ‘communication’ (and I intend this word in its full theological sense) with other members of the Body of Christ.

Most radically, this unusual placement of the presider’s chair helps to illustrate what I take to be the meaning of facing east. Now, when we turn to the East for the Kyrie and Gloria, as has been our custom, the monks will have their backs to the priest! We actually tried this out last Sunday, when the old choir stalls had already been removed and we were making do with wire chairs. The meaning was quite clear. We were all turning to face a common direction, and there was nothing particularly ‘clerical’ about the priest’s orientation, since he was very much in the middle of everything rather than far away.

The construction is finishing up today. We will have many photos available soon, and hopefully these will include photos of the actual liturgy in progress. We welcome any questions or comments!

Liturgy as Everyday Life

May 13, 2018

[The following is from the program notes from our last celebration of Solemn Vespers.]

The Sixth Sunday of Easter is not the flashiest of liturgical events. We’re a good ways out from the euphoria of Easter, but not quite at the Ascension yet. It seems like a good time to step back at think about the liturgy in general.

Radical Witness and Saint Lawrence

August 10, 2018

Monks in the modern world are daily confronted with incongruities. We dress in tunics and scapulars that were the workaday clothing of sixth-century peasants. We pray the Psalms, composed some three thousand years ago in a language that does not translate into contemporary idioms very well. Many of our customs date from the early Middle Ages (suddenly a controversial era!), presupposing a worldview that is unfathomable to many of our neighbors in Chicago.

Solemn Vespers at the Monastery, July 28

July 24, 2018

Our next celebration of Solemn Vespers with Schola Laudis will be this Saturday, July 28. What follow are my program notes for the occasion. For more information, click here.

Why Monks Sing

May 26, 2018

Yesterday, I received an email from Jon Elfner, a friend of mine. The email read, in part: