Search Results (18)

Medieval liturgical exegesis presents a striking interpretative paradox: Advent, the opening season of the liturgical year, falls within the autumn–winter period and yet is frequently understood as a tempus renovationis, a time of renewal analogous to spring. This study argues that such an association is not merely a poetic metaphor, but the result of a liturgical and theological reconfiguration of time grounded in the adventus Domini. Focusing especially on the liturgical commentaries of Prepositinus of Cremona and related exegetical traditions, the article examines how the symbolic code of spring, widely attested in medieval cultural and poetic sources, is assumed and transformed within the liturgical sphere. It then considers chant as one of the principal media through which this renewed temporal condition becomes perceptible in ecclesial practice. Particular attention is given to the introit Ad te levavi, read as the sung threshold of the liturgical year, in which prophetic promise, ecclesial response, renewed breath, and ascensional movement converge. The analysis is finally extended to manuscript culture, where enlarged initials, figural programs, and the notated shaping of the incipit contribute to the visual and aural articulation of the same theological logic. The study concludes that the “spring” of Advent is best understood not as a merely seasonal analogy, but as a coordinated symbolic and liturgical phenomenon articulated across exegesis, chant, and manuscript mediation. Full article

The Israel–Hamas War, which erupted with the horrifying events of 7 October 2023, stands as one of the pivotal breaking points in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict since its inception. Both sides have been left battered, pained, and devoid of any trust or hope for peace. Among the local immediate social grassroots responses to repairing the fractured relationship was the production of a special prayer booklet focused on coexistence and shared life liturgy produced by the Reform Movement in Israel, a non-Orthodox Jewish community. In this article, I analyze four prayers for peace included in this booklet, written by Israeli female religious leaders. I examine how these women crafted prayers to promote a message of peace. The texts establish a maternal dialogue to foster a space of trust and security, aiming to replace the exclusive focus on the God of Israel with a deity encompassing all nations. Through these liturgical creations, the authors challenge both the Israeli Orthodox establishment, which excludes non-Orthodox identities and expressions, and the hegemonic national order, which suppresses discussions of coexistence during times of conflict and marginalizes women’s political involvement. Therefore, I conclude that the creators of these prayers emerge as significant gendered political actors in an era marked by distrust, anger, hostility, and fear. They demonstrate that a message of coexistence can resonate within the religious sphere. Full article

This article analyses underground memory and the critique of capitalism in the newspaper A Folha (1972–1981), which was associated with the diocese of Nova Iguaçu under the leadership of Dom Adriano Hypólito. In the midst of the authoritarian context of the military dictatorship and the social vulnerability of the Baixada Fluminense, the newspaper went beyond its liturgical function and took on a counter-hegemonic role by articulating a religious discourse that criticised the prevailing social and economic structures. By analysing selected sources from the journal and Michael Pollak’s theory of social memory, we examine how the newspaper constructed a counter-memory that challenged hegemonic narratives by mobilising critiques of capitalism. We also seek to understand how the diocese, guided by the principles of Liberation Christianity as articulated by Michael Löwy—as a movement emerging through grassroots pastoral practise—adopted a political stance aimed at overcoming inequality and defending human dignity. Full article

This article explores the intersection of time and eternity as it is expressed in the liturgical theology and the theology of John’s Prologue. Drawing on a “thesis–thesis” methodology that juxtaposes scriptural and liturgical theologies, the study offers an interdisciplinary dialogue between these disciplines. While biblical scholars such as Bernadetta Jojko and Raymond Brown elucidate the Johannine vision of divine preexistence and Incarnation as a movement from eternity into time, liturgical theologians such as Alexander Schmemann and Odo Casel describe the Mass as a movement from time into eternity. Through a comparative reading of John 1:1–2 and 1:14 alongside classical and modern liturgical sources—including Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, Casel, and Guardini—the article seeks to identify a mode of eternal–temporal simultaneity that challenges the claims of analytic philosophers like William Lane Craig. Ultimately, the liturgy is shown to be both a sacramental representation of Christ’s temporal sacrifice and a real participation in the eternal heavenly liturgy. Full article

The relationship between Scripture and the Liturgy remains one of the most extensively debated subjects in theological discourse. In the wake of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, a divided Christendom witnessed the rise of a dichotomy between Scripture and Liturgy, as well as between the Word and the Sacrament. This dichotomy, however, is absent from the patristic thought, which perceives the unity and complementarity between Scripture and Liturgy, owing to their shared belonging to the one life of the Church—broadly defined as Tradition—and to the way they are understood and experienced as interconnected modes through which the singular Mystery of Jesus Christ is communicated to the faithful. The present study aims to demonstrate this unity by drawing on a substantial body of patristic writings, highlighting the fact that the life of the Church is one and is lived both as the rule of faith and the rule of prayer, and that through it, one and the same Christ communicates Himself to the faithful both through the Word and through the Holy Sacraments. For the Church Fathers, the Christian faith is not an abstract doctrine about Christ, but a real and personal encounter and communion with Him in the life of the Church. This patristic approach may offer a starting point for contemporary Christianity in addressing the current liturgical crisis and in rethinking and renewing future ecumenical dialogue. Such renewal presupposes a movement beyond secular formalism and nominalism, which have fostered excessive conceptualization and an antithetical view of Scripture and Liturgy, Word and Sacrament. Full article

The cultural renaissance in 20th-century India has fostered an aesthetic integration of contemplative mysticism with popular religious practices, influencing various artistic and theological movements. This paper examines Christian artist Joy Elamkunnapuzha’s use of Indian classical and mythical elements in his religious artworks, particularly in two North Indian churches. These intercultural icons, which incorporate symbols from Hindu traditions like mandalas and mudras, have been central to the worship practices of local Catholic communities for over three decades. Through ritual ethnography, the study reveals how these visual representations mediate ritual affectivity and communal imagination, impacting identity formation and spiritual engagement in a multi-religious context. Respondents—including worshippers, ministers, and religious students—attest to the transformative impact of these images, as they negotiate between Christian metaphors and Hindu aesthetic traditions. The research is grounded in practical theology, liturgical theology, and ritual studies, contributing to the works of Indian Christian cultural activists like Jyoti Sahi. By exploring the creative dynamics of visual approach, visual appeal, and visual affinity within worship spaces, the study elucidates the complex processes of meaning making through symbolic mediation in interreligious environments. Full article

The period between 1080 and 1160 saw an explosion in monastic construction throughout Western Europe. The textual sources from this period document this building boom and explicitly tie construction and refurbishment to monastic reform and the creation of spaces for spiritual renewal. Newly built or remodeled monasteries and churches were richly decorated with wall paintings and monumental sculpture and inscriptions. A new form of sculpture emerged during this period of increased construction—the historiated capital. Despite their small size, capitals in the eleventh and twelfth centuries were frequently decorated with figures of humans or animals, and these images usually referred to a narrative, with lapidary inscriptions serving as commentary to the images. This article will compare two capitals depicting the Sacrifice of Isaac to consider how location and movement around the capitals direct the interpretation and understanding of the narrative scenes and accompanying epigraphy. One capital is in the narthex of Saint-Seurin at Bordeaux, while the other is in the choir of Sainte-Foy at Conques. My analysis involves making connections between the location of the capital within the architectural space and its relationship to other sculpted imagery, monastic interpretations of their spaces, and the liturgical events that took place within those spaces. Full article

The Tridentine Latin Mass (TLM) is rapidly growing in popularity. The movement that has formed around it has grown so attached to it as to threaten the unity of the Catholic Church. I attended TLMs in multiple distinct settings, studied the worshippers’ ordinary theology, and proceeded hermeneutically using the Circle Method. The most useful insight to emerge from this is that the theological aesthetics of the post-Conciliar Mass could be more deeply symbolic and synergistic with Conciliar intellectual theology. The TLM’s aesthetics offer worshippers assurances of certainty, but these assurances are empty. Therefore, parishes should facilitate the self-expression of the faithful, both to foster engagement with mystery and to inspire liturgical aesthetics. From these expressions, contextually meaningful symbols will emerge, which, through communal discernment guided by the Holy Spirit, may prove worthy to the task of enhancing liturgical aesthetics. Full article

This article examines the use of contemplation in the religious poetry of John Lydgate, a fifteenth-century Benedictine monk and poet from England. While our understanding of Lydgate as a Benedictine poet has gained scholarly momentum, his paraliturgical writings have received less sustained attention. In this article, I argue that Lydgate democratizes the millennium-old monastic practice of lectio and meditatio by introducing a new contemplative mode for lay- and non-Latinate people in the vernacular, which I refer to as a performative lectio domini. This lectio is on an image instead of scripture and takes place within the context of the liturgy. Lydgate offers directions for participation in a liturgical ritual, enabling his readers to fully inhabit the surplus of materiality, somatic movements, and figurative language emanating from the liturgy in order for them to abandon themselves to contemplation in the crux of the rite. By looking at the poem On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est as a case study, I demonstrate how for Lydgate the liturgical kiss becomes a threshold of encounter with Christ through the incarnation. Rather than producing an emotive response, as is often characterized, the liturgical kiss fosters an intellectual illumination and deeper knowledge of Christ crucified. Full article

This article sets out to trace the trans-religious journey of two objects in the western Mediterranean at the end of the fifteenth century. The expulsion of Jews from all Spanish territories in 1492–1493 instigated the movement of objects from Jewish to Christian hands. Among these were a pair of Torah finials that belonged to the Jewish community of Cammarata, Sicily, where they were set on top of the rods around which the Torah scroll was rolled. These two finials were sold in Sicily and, through a chain of merchants and ecclesiastics, arrived at the Cathedral of Palma and were incorporated into the local Christian liturgy, a process that continued well into the twentieth century. This article analyzes the use and performance of the finials in their different liturgical settings and examines their conversion from Jewish ceremonial objects to ecclesiastical implements. It concludes with a discussion of temporality in studying converted objects, a factor that played a key role in the finials’ migration between socio-religious contexts and resulted in the creation of multifaceted objects. Full article

Decent, affordable housing and secure housing tenure remain elusive for Africa’s urban majority. The urban majority is expected to live in self-help housing, reflected in the fact that 62% of African urban dwellers live in urban informal settlements. The inability to access safe, decent, and secure housing, and the reality that Africa’s urban majority is perpetually precarious, have a severe impact on Africa’s urban households and the well-being of individuals, families, and neighborhoods. This article articulates housing as a critical and urgent Christian social practice in African cities—an extension of the church’s pastoral and missional concern. It considers housing both as a product and a process: people need housing to live secure lives; yet, the process of housing is as critical as the outcome. It then proposes housing, as a Christian social practice, being engaged in (i) supporting precarious households; (ii) preventing homelessness; (iii) creating housing; (iv) supporting rights-based land and housing movements; and (v) centering housing pastorally–liturgically. The article grounds itself in Jean-Marc Ela’s insistence on God’s presence ‘in the hut of a mother whose granary is empty’ and in Letty Russell’s ‘household of freedom’. Full article

The prevalence of dementia is increasing globally as populations grow older. Moderate and severe dementia are the main reasons for older people entering long-term care in Finland, and the vast majority of nursing home residents have it. Regarding mild dementia, religiousness is known to slow the progress of the disease, offer solace, and maintain a life-long identity. However, we know practically nothing about the religiousness of people with severe dementia. This study sought to fill the gap by interviewing Lutheran chaplains working in Finnish nursing homes. The data were subjected to qualitative content analysis to understand: (I) how people with severe dementia may express their remaining religiousness and (II) how the chaplains asserted the religiousness of people whom their words often did not reach. The clearest expressions of religiousness found were bodily, including expressions of emotions and fumbling liturgical movements. The chaplains utilized prayer services, active presence, and generational intelligence to respond to residents’ religiousness. The main conclusion is that people with severe dementia can express their faith and are eager to practice it when opportunities are provided to do so. Our research challenges care providers and religious communities to better acknowledge the religiousness of people with severe dementia. Full article

Formed alongside the arrival of the first Korean immigrants in Hawaii in 1903, the Korean American Protestant Church has played a significant role in the social, political, and religious lives of Koreans in the United States. However today, membership is declining and the newer generations represent a smaller part of the movement leading the Korean American Protestant Church to review and reform its current respective practices of ministry in terms of language, teaching, preaching, worship, and theological orientation. This article focuses on the critical issues that the Korean American Protestant Church is facing and examines the current common practice of Korean American worship. Additionally, this article proposes theological and liturgical suggestions that could be utilized to help realize the goal of Korean American intergenerational worship. These suggestions are formed against the background of five notable characteristics of the Trinity—flexibility (innovation), communication (sharing and empathy), interconnection, ubiquity, and holistic artistry—which are essential to achieving intergenerational worship and its design. As a sample liturgy, worship combined with a meal invites children and young adults, born and raised in the United States, to participate in leadership roles with first-generation adults, which directly correlates with the aforementioned characteristics. As such, in essence, liturgies like these will lead worshippers to experience the embodied theology of intergenerational worship, based on a practical and theological concept of interdependence and awareness. Full article

The Misa Criolla by Ariel Ramirez is a symbol of liberation theology in South America. Written between 1963–1964, this musical work is the result of the decisions made on the sacred liturgy at Vatican II and the Indigenous Movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It became popular around the world and helped bring attention to the indigenous poor of South America through its indigenization of the Roman Catholic Mass text and music directly after the Second Vatican Council. The Misa Criolla, however, can only be fully appreciated by understanding its process of localization, from its historical context, theological underpinnings to its musical attributes. From a liberationist perspective, it represents the compromise of the openness, liturgically and theologically, of Vatican II and more conservative movements afterwards through the localization of the Catholic Mass liturgy. Full article

What has the pandemic taught us about worship? Reflecting on religion in quarantine, Heidi A. Campbell observed that while many churches have embraced a new medium of worship (digital), the underlying approach to worship has remained centered on the worship event. Campbell criticizes this event-based focus as being out of step with the networked age in which we live. Is Campbell right, or is there still a place for the worship event, even in this networked age? Drawing on the work of liturgical theologians and network theorists, I revisit the role of the liturgical event in the wider life of the church, arguing that the liturgical event remains a central element of the church’s mission, but that the liturgy is meant to take worshippers beyond itself. I suggest that pandemic reflections on liturgy should lead the church to emphasize that Christians are a sent people, even during a time of restricted movement. This shift in emphasis from gathering to sending out redefines the church more broadly and helps us reclaim a more expansive vision of worship beyond the mere event. Full article