The perfect supplement to high school religion classes, Confirmation preparation, and parish youth programs, this resource provides an understanding and exploration of the parts of the Mass.

Source and Summit

Jesus’ saving Paschal work continues today in the liturgy and sacraments. They have the power to sanctify and beatify those who engage the liturgy with proper minds and hearts. In this comprehensive and accessible book, Christopher Carstens opens up the ritual elements mystagogically: that is, he leads participants from what they can sense—a calendar day, a musical instrument, and word—to what is otherwise undetectable: Jesus Christ. He examines the core meaning of each liturgical element in creation, in the culture, in the Old Testament, in Christ, and in heaven. This book is an excellent resource for pastors, seminarians, permanent deacons and deacon candidates, lay ministers, and parish liturgy coordinators.

As an ancient Christian community, the Mar Thoma Church with its vibrant life of mission and sacraments, has a pride of place in the Christendom. The evangelization process and constant migration made this church a global Church, which has encountered multi-cultural and multi-ethnic atmosphere and assimilated various cultural practices and faced faith confrontation in its own geographical regions. This confrontation has caused a renewed view of nature, identity and mission of the Church in a positive manner. Mission is, in fact, the lifeblood of the Church. Through its mission-work and revised liturgy, the Mar Thoma Church took a pioneer role in the formation and nurturing of new Christian communities in India and different parts of the world. Hence, this book reflects on the role of liturgy and its influence on the missionary undertakings of the MTC. It elucidates how the revised liturgy functions as a basis for mission and recounts how liturgy and mission are connected. Further, the diverse mission centres of the Church and its cultural specialties, an integration of liturgy and evangelism, importance of liturgicalorientation and training, are also dealt with in detail. Added to this, the various challenges of the Church in its mission fields and diaspora regions are studied in the framework of the liturgy. The scope of liturgical renewal is looked into where the liturgical adaptation and possibilities of contextual liturgies in the Church are studied. This study concludes with some of the pertinent liturgical proposals for the furtherance to sustain the life and mission of the Church. With a living experience and profound theological understanding, this ancient but reformed Church has something unique to offer to the whole Christendom.

"The Sacred Liturgy is not a hobby for specialists. It is central to all our endeavors as disciples of Jesus Christ. This profound reality cannot be over emphasized. We must recognize the primacy of grace in our Christian life and work, and we must respect the reality that in this life the optimal encounter with Christ is in the Sacred Liturgy." With these words Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon, France, opened Sacra Liturgia 2013, an international conference in which he brought together over twenty leading liturgists, cardinals, bishops and other scholars from around the world to emphasize the centrality of liturgical formation and celebration in the life and mission of the Church. "The New Evangelization must be founded on the faithful and fruitful celebration of the Sacred Liturgy as given to us by the Church in her tradition - Western and Eastern," Bishop Rey asserted. Sacra Liturgia 2013 - the proceedings of which this book publishes - explored questions of liturgical art, architecture, music, the ars celebrandi, the importance of ritual in human psychology, truly pastoral liturgy, the place of the older liturgical rites in the New Evangelization, liturgical formation, liturgical law, the role of the diocesan bishop in respect of the liturgy, and more. Sacred Liturgy - The Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church is an important resource in ongoing liturgical formation for clergy, religious and laity, and makes a significant contribution to that renewal promoted in the Pontificate of Benedict XVI. That is the renewal which embraces the riches of liturgical tradition as valuable treasures, seeks to read the Second Vatican Council according to a hermeneutic of continuity, not rupture, and is in no doubt that, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger once wrote, "the true celebration of the Sacred Liturgy as the center of any renewal of the Church."

The word "liturgy" usually refers to what goes on inside a church building - prayers, songs and chants, recital of the creed, proclamation of the word, the eucharist. But St John Chrysostom, source of one of the best-known Orthodox liturgies, spoke of two altars: one within the sanctuary, one outside in the public square. The author unfolds the way in which the liturgy itself resonates with an understanding of the church as both gathered for worship and sent out to the ends of the earth, refreshed by the eucharistic bread and wine - "food for pilgrims" in their everyday struggles. He then goes on to show the relevance of this missionary vision, not only for Orthodox churches facing new contemporary challenges but also ecumenically.

The Catholic Church teaches that the celebration of the liturgy is the “source and summit of the Christian life” (Lumen gentium, 11). Participating in the liturgy—the Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, the sacramental rites, blessings, and other official rites—is the most important act of Catholic Christians, for it is through the liturgy that the faithful give praise to God, thank him for his blessings, and go forth strengthened and challenged to life as Christ’s disciples in the world. This easy-to-read resource explores what it means to call liturgy “source and summit.” It will help the Catholic faithful to understand the meaning of the liturgy and its importance to our life of faith, experience Christ’s four-fold presence in the various Church rites, come to a deeper relationship with God, and reflect on the transforming power of the liturgy to change the world.

Missiology "A robust and practical theology that integrates worship and mission into a seamless whole." Anglican & Episcopal History "A very useful and insightful text. . . . A remarkable synthesis of most of the best insights liturgical scholars and missiologists have gained regarding the relationship between mission and liturgy over the last decades." George R. Hunsberger — Western Theological Seminary "Ruth Meyers brings a deep grasp of what's at stake in the rediscovery of mission as the essence of the church, together with a generous mastery of liturgical traditions, to provide vision for seeing these two dimensions of the church's life as one. . . . This is the handbook that should accompany every Christian community on its worshiping, witnessing journey." Stephen B. Bevans, SVD — Catholic Theological Union "A wonderful, faith-filled meditation on the missional heart of worship. . . . A new classic in liturgical studies and in missiology as well." Todd E. Johnson — Brehm Center, Fuller Theological Seminary "Ruth Meyers's approach to the issues surrounding worship and mission is spot-on. Instead of approaching worship from a missional slant, or mission from a liturgical perspective, she takes both topics back to their biblical and historical roots — the nature of the church. . . . In practical and insightful ways Meyers demonstrates how a church's ministry in the world and its regular offering of worship reinforce one another. Her careful, direct, evenhanded approach is a breath of fresh air to much of the current theological discourse." Taylor W. Burton-Edwards — Worship Resources, Discipleship Ministries of The United Methodist Church "Seminarians, pastors, deacons, and worship leaders seeking to understand, articulate, or imagine how the basic and most enduring structures of Christian worship `engage worshipers in the mission of God' will discover in these pages both Meyers's wise and challenging counsel and many wonderful companions for the journey." International Bulletin of Missionary Research "A helpful and timely new resource. . . . In Missional Worship Meyers does excellent work developing the notion that mission and worship are inseparably and integrally related." Anglican and Episcopal History "A very useful and insightful text, particularly for those just beginning to explore the field of liturgical studies. The book is a remarkable synthesis of most of the best insights liturgical scholars and missiologists have gained regarding the relationship between mission and liturgy over the last decades." Church Times "[Myers] deserves to be read, because we need to hear this message in all parts of the Church of England today."

It’s been said that prayer is the vocabulary of faith. This book offers a wealth of resources from forgotten places to help us create a new vocabulary for worship and prayer, one that is located amidst the poor and the major issues of violence and destruction around the world today. It is a collection of prayers, songs, rituals, rites of healing, Eucharistic and baptismal prayers, meditations and art from four continents: Asia-Pacific Islands, Africa, Americas, and Europe. Liturgies from Below is the culmination of a project organized by the Council for World Mission (CWM) during 2018-2019. Approximately 100 people from four continents worked with CWM, collaborating to create indigenous prayers and liturgies expressing their own contexts, for sharing with their communities and the rest of the world. The project was called “Re-Imagining Worship as Acts of Defiance and Alternatives in the Context of Empire”. The author and others spent weeks living in each of four communities for several weeks/months, getting to know the people, and then facilitating the people’s own creation of prayers and liturgies. The author, other scholars, pastors, artists, activists and students all came from radically different ethnicities, races, sexualities, churches and Christian theologies. The people in each location were poor, living in very challenging communities, living in oppressive and seemingly hopeless situations. After some time, they wrote prayers and stories of their experience trying to live the Christian faith in utterly abandoned places. What we have here is an immensely rich and varied collection of liturgical sources from various communities dealing with issues of violence, immigration/refugees, drugs, land grabbing, war on the poor, attack on women, militarization, climate change, and so on.

In this Urbana Onward minibook, Sandra Van Opstal argues that culturally diverse worship practices create a space for us to encounter the mission of God. Such a missional approach to worship, she promises, will renew the church's vision and witness, proclaiming that the kingdom of God is here, accomplishing reconciliation, justice and shalom.