The purpose of this article is to highlight how different methodological approaches and ecclesiologies can influence how the church year is presented and understood and to discuss the constructive contribution of a liturgical-theological understanding of this topic. The article presents five different models of the church year. These heortological models are: 1) the secular church year, 2) the pedagogical church year, 3) the pietistic church year, 4) the cultic church year, and 5) the sacramental church year. The models are presented with examples from research and other empirical material. The study highlights the importance of liturgical-theological research about the liturgical year and shows that liturgical-theological perspectives, and more specifically the so-called “Eighth day,” can contribute constructively to handling contemporary challenges and problems. The constructed models of the church year reveal a multifaceted field of research. The models can be used as tools for analysis and interpretation.
This article is about lectionary usage in the Church of England during the Prayer Book proscription of 1645–60 from the perspective of John Evelyn's Diary . After the Prayer Book was outlawed, those loyal to the Prayer Book liturgy found several ways to circumvent Parliament's restrictions. Key among those coping mechanisms was preaching. John Evelyn's Diary records the dates and texts of the sermons he heard in this period, allowing readers to follow whether preachers were using the lectionary. This article argues that, while it was an important ancillary liturgical text, the lectionary did not form the source of the Scripture used in the majority of conformist sermons Evelyn heard during this period. Rather, a different ancillary text—the calendar—was central to conformist preaching. As a result, the liturgical calendar played a bigger role in an emergent Anglican identity in this period than the practice of lectionary-based preaching.
Strict definitions of the liturgical assembly limit it to the eucharistic gathering. More expansive approaches recognize some of the characteristics of “assembly” so defined—shared intention, shared space, shared memory, sending out—in non-eucharistic gatherings of worshiping communities. This article considers a possible extension towards accidental and not intentionally liturgical gatherings. It proposes that the integrity and significance of shared experiences, shared hopes, and orientation towards a future that lies beyond the gathering deserve serious consideration. To that end, it provides as a central study the train journey that is the subject of Philip Larkin's poem, “The Whitsun Weddings” (1958). Partly based on fact, and partly on imaginative reconstruction, the poem meditates on the lives of a dozen newly married couples who board at various stations, but share the last hour of the journey, before disembarking in London. Obvious cautions apply in extending the concept of “assembly” to this event. If they are respected, however, terms for valuing some of the increasingly prevalent forms of extra-ecclesial gathering may begin to emerge.
The space given by God to man is the instrument that connects man with things, with others, and with God. It constantly fulfils what it signifies, as at World Youth Day in Paris in 1997, when the young people gathered around the Pope visibly formed the Body of Christ. The liturgical space must also be designed to signify the liturgy that takes place there: to enter into relationship with other faithful, with God, and to make Christ present among us. For this, we need to return to the origins of church buildings and create, for each place and with each community, the liturgical space that will allow it to best bear witness to its life and faith, within the liturgy that gathers it, far from any predefined scheme.
The 1970 Missale Romanum provides three liturgical formularies for the unity of Christians which are an important source for understanding Catholic attitudes to ecumenism after the Second Vatican Council and for considering the role of liturgical prayer in forming ecumenical perspectives. This article analyzes the orations of these masses, showing how the texts draw on ancient patterns of prayer as well as the constitutions and decrees of Vatican II. Of the nine orations for the unity of Christians studied here, two are lightly adapted from pre-existing prayers, while the remaining seven are new compositions which draw to varying degrees on the Latin euchological tradition. The new compositions have a variety of thematic and textual sources, notably including several documents of the Second Vatican Council: the Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis redintegratio , the Constitution on the Liturgy Sacrosanctum concilium , and the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen gentium .
