Quotes about Liturgy

It is more important that our churches have tables that are relationally correct than liturgically correct. Rules aren't "truth"; we don't follow out of slavish obedience to something absolute. We follow preestablished rules because we want to signal our love of community….

It is more necessary than ever to intensify liturgical life ... by means of an appropriate formation ... of all the faithful.

The only thing that we ever do in this world that is real participation in the life we hope to live forever is to worship with Christ at the Liturgy.

Even the darkest moments of the liturgy are filled with joy, and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the lenten fast, is a day of happiness, a Christian feast.

We cannot build up the idea of the apostolate of the laity without the foundation of the liturgy.

Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings.

I've practiced centering prayer. I've contemplatively prayed. I've prayed liturgically... I've benefited from each, and I still do. In ways you'll see, elements of each style are still with me.

Unspontaneity is of their essence. In these rites I discover that something is approaching me here that I did not produce myself, that I am entering into something greater than myself, which ultimately derives from divine revelation. This is why the Christian East calls the liturgy the "Divine Liturgy", expressing thereby the liturgy's independence from human control.

Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. Such attraction fades quickly - it cannot compete in the market of leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms of religious titillation.

Deeper understanding of the matter is bound to recognize that the Temple, as well as the synagogue, entered into Christian liturgy.

In one way or another, it is evident that the Jerusalem liturgy celebrated the kingship of Yahweh.

In practice, I suggest that it is the liturgy that is to enact the settled coherence of church faith, and the sermon that provides the "alien" witness of the text, which rubs against the liturgic coherence.118 There can, in my judgment, be no final resolution of the tension between the systemizing task of theology and the disruptive work of biblical interpretation. It is the ongoing interaction between the two that is the work of interpretation.