Category Archives: Illuminating Liturgy

LitBit Commentary – Rowan Williams on the Eucharist 11

Posted on by

LitBits Logo - 2

“To take ‘the world’ in the eucharistic elements and name them as signs of Jesus, signs of creative love and reconciling gift, is to recognize the possibility of the world’s transfiguration, in the name and power of Jesus, into a world of justice and peace; not to allow this possibility to be realized, not to act in such a way that our belief in transformed relations is made evident, is to be convicted of unbelief.  We do not trust the risen Jesus: which means that we do not trust ourselves to be forgiven or others to be forgivable.”

Rowan Williams, Resurrection, p.115f

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – James Torrance on Worship 3

Posted on by

LitBits Logo - 2

“As the head of all things, by whom and for whom all things were created, [Christ] makes his Body, and calls us to be a royal priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices.  He calls us that we might be identified with him by the Spirit, not only in his communion with the Father, but also in his great priestly work and ministry of intercession, that our prayers on earth might be the echo of his prayers in heaven.  Whatever else our worship is, it is our liturgical amen to the worship of Christ.”

James Torrance, Worship, Community and the triune God of Grace, p.2

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – Rowan Williams on the Eucharist 10

Posted on by

LitBits Logo - 2

“… when the Church performs the eucharistic action it is what it is called to be: the Easter community, guilty and restored, the gathering of those whose identity is defined by their new relation to Jesus as crucified and raised, who identify themselves as forgiven.  What happens in the Eucharist is, among much else, that the Church assembles simply to make this identification in praise and gratitude, and to show in concrete form its dependence on Christ.  It is an action which announces what the community’s life means, where the roots of its understanding and its possibilities are, and as such it is a transforming, a re-creative act – a human activity radically open to the creative activity of God in Jesus.”

Rowan Williams, Resurrection, p.58f

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – Alexander Schmemann on Preaching

Posted on by

LitBits Logo - 2

“Witness to Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit is the content of the Word of God, and this alone constitutes the essence of preaching: ‘and the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth’ (1 Jn 5:7). The ambo is the place where the sacrament of the word takes place, and therefore it must never be turned into a tribune for the proclamation of even the most elevated, most positive, but only human truth, only human wisdom.”

Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist, p.78

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – James Torrance on Prayer 2

Posted on by

LitBits Logo - 2“The gift of sharing in the intercessions of Christ is that when we do not know how to pray as we ought, the Spirit makes intercession for us.  Whatever else our faith is, it is a response to a Response already made for us and continually being made for us in Christ, the pioneer of our faith.”

James Torrance, Worship, Community and the triune God of Grace, p.18

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – Alexander Schmemann on Worship and the Church 1

Posted on by

LitBits Logo - 2

“We need to be thoroughly aware that we come to the temple not for individual prayer but to assemble together as the Church, and the visible temple itself signifies and is but an image of the temple not made by hands. Therefore, the ‘assembly of the Church’ is in reality the first liturgical act, the foundation of the entire liturgy; and unless one understands this, one cannot understand the rest of the celebration. When I say that I am going to church, it means I am going into the assembly of the faithful in order, together with them, to constitute the Church, in order to be what I became on the day of my baptism – a member, in the fullest, absolute meaning of the term, of the body of Christ.”

Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist, p.23

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – Rowan Williams on Confession

Posted on by

LitBits Logo - 2

“Belief in Christ involves (if our discussion has been on the right lines thus far) a vision of the entire human world as a network of oppression and privation, in which no one is wholly free from the responsibility of making victims: so that penitent awareness is indispensably part of reconstructed humanity.”

Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.55

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – James Torrance on Prayer

Posted on by

LitBits Logo - 2

We can only pray ‘in the name of Christ’ because Christ has already, in our name, offered up our desires to God and continues to offer them.  In our name, he lived a life agreeable to the will of God, in our name vicariously confessed our sins and submitted to the verdict of guilty for us, and in our name gave thanks to God.  We pray ‘in the name of Christ’, because of what Christ has done and is doing today in our name, on our behalf.
James Torrance, Worship, Community and the triune God of Grace, p. 35

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – Timothy Radcliffe on the Eucharist 1

Posted on by

LitBits Logo - 2

The Eucharist is a mystery not because it is mysterious, but because it is a sign of God’s secret purpose, which is to unite all things in Christ.  In the Eucharist we celebrate that the mess of human history, with its violence and sin, its wars and genocides, is somehow, in ways that we cannot now understand, on its way to the kingdom.  It is God’s will that we be gathered into unity, reconciled with each other.  And so we begin the Eucharist asking the forgiveness of our brothers and sisters, the angels and the saints, the whole vast community of the kingdom.  It is a sign that we are willing to be gathered into God’s peace with the rest of creation.

Timothy Radcliffe, Why Go to Church? p.19

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - Commentary
« Older Entries Recent Entries »