Drawing on performance studies and sacramental and liturgical theology, Ruthanna B. Hooke develops a theology of proclamation grounded in the body’s experience of preaching. The author explores the claim that preaching is a sacramental event of communion with the triune God by comparing the steps involved in voice production with the fourfold shape of the Eucharist. This comparison yields a description of preaching as an event of self-offering that allows space for the humanity of the preacher and as an encounter with the Holy Spirit that is communal and prophetic. Preaching draws participants into Christ’s dying and rising, and hence into a mode of power known in vulnerability. Calling hearers into the eschatological event of the resurrection, preaching inherently moves toward proclamation on political and ethical issues. Hooke uses this theological framework to offer ways of preaching on environmental crisis and on racism. The author calls preachers to embodied engagement with preaching and describes a way for preachers to bear witness to Jesus Christ not only in the content of their proclamation, but in their way of being in the preaching event.

The second biannual congress of the Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology (LEST II, Nov. 3-6, 1999) was dedicated to a fundamental theological reflection on the question of how to conceive of 'sacramental presence in a postmodern context'. This volume contains the main lectures presented at the conference, as well as the formal responses to those lectures and a selection of supplementary papers. These papers examine the Christian claim that God is present in human history, in the light of the contemporary rethinking of the relationship between transcendence and immanence. In addition to an extensive introductory paper by L. Boeve, contributions include, among others, M.-C. Bingemer, L.-M. Chauvet, G. De Schrijver, K. Hart, W. Jeanrond, F. Kerr, J.-Y. Lacoste, T. Merrigan, P. Moyaert, D. Power, I. Verhack and G. Ward.

Theology after Heidegger must take into account history and language as constitutive elements in the pursuit of meaning. Quite often, this prompts a hurried flight from metaphysics to an embrace of an absence at the center of Christian narrativity. In this book, Conor Sweeney explores the "postmodern" critique of presence in the context of sacramental theology, engaging the thought of Louis-Marie Chauvet and Lieven Boeve. Chauvet is an influential postmodern theologian whose critique of the perceived onto-theological constitution of presence in traditional sacramental theology has made big waves, while Boeve is part of a more recent generation of theologians who even more wholeheartedly embrace postmodern consequences for theology. Sweeney considers the extent to which postmodernism a la Heidegger upsets the hermeneutics of sacramentality, asking whether this requires us to renounce the search for a presence that by definition transcends us. Against both the fetishization of presence and absence, Sweeney argues that metaphysics has a properly sacramental basis, and that it is only through this reality that the dialectic of presence and absence can be transcended. The case is made for the full but restless signification of the mother's smile as the paradigm for genuine sacramental presence.

Christianity Today Book Award Winner This work argues that the heart of patristic exegesis is the attempt to find the sacramental reality (real presence) of Christ in the Old Testament Scriptures. Leading theologian Hans Boersma discusses numerous sermons and commentaries of the church fathers to show how they regarded Christ as the treasure hidden in the field of the Old Testament and explains that the church today can and should retrieve the sacramental reading of the early church. Combining detailed scholarly insight with clear, compelling prose, this book makes a unique contribution to contemporary interest in theological interpretation.

This is the first comprehensive book on the architecture and imagery of late medieval sacrament houses, those dazzlingly complex microarchitectural structures designed for the paraliturgical reservation and display of the eucharistic and 'real present' body of Christ. The study is embedded in a discussion of sacramental theology and devotion, and traces the development of this genre of furnishing from the introduction of the Corpus Christi feast in 1264 to the first decades of the Counter-Reformation, from the Low Countries to Hungary and the Saxon settlements of Transylvania, from the Swedish island of Gotland to the Swiss Canton of Graubunden. Much of the argument is devoted to such major sacrament houses as those in Leuven's Pieterskerk (1450) or St. Lorenz in Nuremberg (1493-6), though provincial solutions like the dugout tabernacles of the Brandenburg Marches are equally considered. The book is intended as a contribution to the study of both Gothic microarchitecture and the role of the visual in late medieval devotional culture.

John Colwell presents a robust sacramental theology for Protestant churches. He maintains that a doctrine of the Trinity leads us to conceive of God's gracious engagement with his creation as one that is mediated through that creation. And this lies at the foundation for an understanding of the sacraments. Colwell further argues that the Church and Scripture confer context, definition, and validity on all other sacramental events. The final section reconsiders the seven Sacraments of the Catholic tradition in the light of the understanding of sacramentality developed earlier in the book: baptism, confirmation, the Lord's Supper, cleansing, healing, ministry, and marriage. Colwell discusses the Sacraments from an evangelical perspective but with a committed ecumenical intent.

Winner of a first-place award for popular presentation of the faith and second-place in pastoral ministry, catechetical resource from the Catholic Media Association. Many Catholics don’t believe that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist. Rather, they see the bread and wine of Holy Communion as mere symbols of Christ’s body and blood. Is that disbelief just a misunderstanding or is it a blatant rejection of one of the central beliefs of the faith? In Real Presence, University of Notre Dame theologian Timothy P. O’Malley clears up the confusion and shows you how to learn to love God and neighbor through a deeper understanding of the doctrine of real presence. A 2019 study by the Pew Research Center found that almost seventy percent of Catholics don’t believe that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist. O’Malley offers a concise introduction to Catholic teaching on real presence and transubstantiation through a biblical, theological, and spiritual account of these doctrines from the early Church to today. He also explores how real presence enables us to see the vulnerability of human life and the dignity of all flesh and blood. O’Malley leads you to a deeper understanding and renewed faith in Catholic teaching about transubstantiation and real presence by helping you learn how the doctrine of real presence is rooted in divine revelation and how the Church’s teaching regarding transubstantiation is spiritually fruitful for the believer today; how to make your own the doctrine of real presence by worshipping Christ in the Eucharist and therefore making a real assent to real presence; how the Eucharist, although not the exclusive presence of Christ in the Church’s liturgy and mission, is crucial in growing our capacity for recognizing those other presences; and the important relationship between Eucharistic communion and adoration.

God is to be found in the simplest of our daily activities and especially through total surrender to whatever is His will for each of us. That is the message of this 18th-century inspirational classic by Jean-Pierre de Caussade. Its encouragement to ""live in the present moment,"" accepting everyday obstacles with faith, humility and love, has guided generations of believers to holiness and spiritual peace. This special volume of the famous spiritual treatise also includes the many insightful letters of Father de Caussade on the practice of self-abandonment. These numerous letters provide a great additional source of wisdom and practical guidance for how to grow in abandonment and to deepen our union with God in our daily lives. De Caussade shows that this practice of self-abandonment to God's will is the key to attaining true peace and virtue, and that it is readily available to all people - from beginners to those well advanced in the spiritual life. He also shows how to determine what God's will is for us. He reveals that it is not extraordinary feats that God expects for our growth in holiness, but rather heroic attention to every detail in our lives and humble acceptance of our daily lot in life as coming from His hand. The rich spiritual lessons in this book have stood the test of time, offering real and practical assistance to all people because its message is simple and clear, one that the reader will find to be a rare treasure of inspiration and direction to be referred to again and again.

Offering a decisive challenge to the older reception of Pusey as a paragon of backwards scholarship, Tobias A. Karlowicz argues that Pusey is properly understood as a penetrating and original theologian whose work anticipated contemporary conversations about the nature of theology, and a pivotal figure in the history of Anglican theology. Karlowicz locates the heart of Pusey's project in a theological perception which looks through the physicality and concreteness of language, to discern Christ at the centre of both Scripture and the physical creation. This 'sacramental vision,' which grew from Pusey's critique of Christianity's decay and his formative engagement with patristic hermeneutics and ontology, forms his teaching on the sacraments as vehicles for a Christian life of eucharistic self-oblation in union with Christ, and demonstrates the relevance of his thought to contemporary theology.

Christian proclamation, says Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is the living Christ walking among the people. Preachers know that Jesus is the living Word, and that the Spirit of Jesus animates the preaching event. Preaching is an epiclesis, an invocation of the Holy Spirit over God's holy people. As such, it must touch their imagination. Pastro proposes that preaching is the living ecclesial presence of Jesus Christ, Sacramental Word of the God of the poor. The Word speaks from the imagination of the poor-the economic poor, but also the "new poor" of the twenty-first century: entire indigenous cultures, women, those marginalized because of their sexuality, undocumented immigrants in dominant cultures, and many others. All Christian preachers in every context are called to solidarity with the poor.