Quotes About Liturgy

The whole concept of God taking on human shape, and all the liturgy and ritual around that, had simply never made any sense to me. That was because, I realized one wonderful day, it was so simple. For people with bodies, important things like love have to be embodied. That's all. God had to be embodied or else people with bodies would never in a trillion years understand about love.

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

I am enormously susceptible to religious environments - the music, the liturgy and the prayers.

Liturgy, literally the work of the people, is the intergenerational stronghold in Christian history.

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.

Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don't try and mean it. Nor prayers. The liturgy is best treated and read as if it's someone announcing the departure of trains.

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.

Prayer is, for me, like that - a state of being together with God. It's not usually triggered by liturgy or special needs. It's more like what the Bible instructs us to do: Pray without ceasing.

The language of the Catholic Church - the liturgy, the prayer, the gospels - was in many ways my first poetry.

God's desire today is for worship that is centered more on relationship than liturgy.

The Bible, the liturgy, creeds, doctrinal pronouncements and personal testimony—these are all simply diverse symbolic expressions of the one revelation of God in Christ.

Once the Mass is restored to its rightful place, we will again see choirs being developed.

So the Eucharist -- in its sumptuous liturgical setting, surrounded by music, art, the word of God, and the prayer of the community -- does more than sustain the divine life in us. It delights us, as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

Thanks to Archbishop Cranmer and a fleet of committees who thoughtfully revised his Prayer Book, Anglicanism has a liturgy whose dignity and solemnity can act as a sure support through choppy waters. Seek out Cranmer's Evensong, hearken beyond its beautiful choral performance to some ghostly tut-tutting from a dead archbishop, and enjoy the way in which the past mocks our dogmatism and asks us to think again.

J.R. Dupuche, 'Sufism and Hesychasm', in B. Neil, G. D. Dunn and L. Cross (eds.), Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church III: Liturgy and Life (Strathfield, NSW, 2003), 335–43.

The Liturgy is Christ praying.

the Liturgy is accomplished faith, lived faith. It plunges us into the full reality of the truth of faith; it creates the spiritual space in which the world of faith or, more correctly, the world disclosed by faith penetrates every pore of our being, in which we breathe the supernatural air; it brings us to the ultimate reality which, in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in the sacraments, we even touch ontologically.

The Liturgy may be considered a school for acquiring four fruits: the presence of God, sorrow for sin, joy, and prayer.

beyond all the obvious ways of testing the truth of Orthodox doctrine – conformity with the sacred Scriptures, with the witness of the Holy Fathers, with the creeds, with the dogmas proclaimed at the Œcumenical Councils of the Church – there is another, more immediate test: Does what we believe find its counterpart in the way we pray in the divine liturgy?

The ritual of tea, Willow thought, is like a liturgy itself, comforting because it's so familiar.

I believe baseball and the Church are deeply kindred spirits—both feature obscure rules that make sense only to initiates, both have communions of saints, both reward patience, and in both, casual fans can dip in and out, but for serious devotees the liturgy is a daily affair.

What it leads to is the mischief of confusing liturgy with magic -- of imagining there are only a handful of properly effective formulas for conjuring up the mystery, when in fact the mystery is always at work, independent of any formula whatsoever.

I distrust pious phrases, especially when they issue from my mouth. I try militantly never to be affected by the pious language of the faithful but it is always coming out when you least expect it. In contrast to the pious language of the faithful, the liturgy is beautifully flat.

It was splendid,' said Dame Perpetua in the Abbess's room. 'You made it splendid.' 'It wasn't I,' said Abbess Catherine. 'It is splendid. That is the blessing of the liturgy, it wipes out self.