Quotes About Liturgy

The author chuckles at the resistance to using a prepared, written liturgy in prayer. He compares it to being unwilling to dress in any clothing we did not make ourselves, or being unwilling to drive a car we did not construct entirely by ourselves.

The 'contemplation of nature' can give spiritual flavour to our lives even if we lay no claim to be in any way 'mystics' in the rather particular sense that this word has acquired in the West. A little loving attention in the light of the Risen Christ is enough. The humblest objects then breathe out their secret. The person becomes the priest of the world at the altar of his heart, celebrating that 'cosmic liturgy' of which Maximus the Confessor speaks.

In the battle of ascesis and the offering of creatures to God in the cosmic liturgy, our will must cooperate with divine grace. But the ultimate knowledge, the love-knowledge of the Trinity, takes hold of us by grace alone. We prepare for it by a stripping away of our being until we become nothing but expectation.

To put it bluntly but also imploringly: we Christians need more silence in our services and liturgies. Just how this might be realized, just how we

In sum, passing over to Buddhist spiritual practice has taught me, and can teach my church, that all our words, whether in Christian theology or Christian liturgy, must arise from and lead back to Silence. Only then do they have something to say.

I like a prayer book and liturgy to guide me in my faith rather than falling back into my comfort zone of controlling reality with my learned and carefully chosen words, and without leaving it up to me to come up with what to say here and now when I just may not feel like it.