LABOR DAY LITANY
A Litany for Labor Day
Almighty God, Judge and Umpire in our competitions and rivalries, teach us to be fair in all our economic relationships.
Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.
We are severally buyer and seller, lender and borrower, agent and client, employer and employee, server and served, supervisor and supervised.
Let justice roll down like waters.
Lend Thou the spoken word or implicit understanding, the binding power of sign and seal; safeguard our good faith against the legal loophole.
Make righteousness flow like a mighty stream.
Verify our weights and measures; withhold the exaggerated claims from our advertising; reveal the just price when market conditions confer the unearned advantage.
Let justice roll down like waters.
Save us from the arrogance of economic prowess; cause us to walk humbly; forbid that we should think to purchase status with money or use it to force our opinions and ways upon the unwilling.
Make righteousness to flow like a stream.
Make us collectively responsible for the employment of all who seek work, lest, unfeeling, we shut up any to thievery or beggary or the dole.
Let justice roll down like waters.
Guard us from extravagance and waste; make us good stewards of things in limited supply; help us to carry our own weight when we are able, and to accept assistance with grace when we are not.
Make righteousness flow like a stream.
Direct our worship toward Thee; rebuke us when we make idols of our purchasing power.
Let us see the glory of the Lord.
Accept our praise, 0 God, for all the ways our economy works to our well-being.
And let us be rich toward God. Amen.
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-THOMAS H. GRAFTON, Presbyterian Outlook, Vol 16 #29
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LAST THOUGHTS BEFORE I GO
in the Presbyterian Youth Triennium newsletter, Summer 1985
Last Thoughts Before I Go
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It is the sunset of my life.
Daylight fades. The dark of night quickly settles in. Here I lie surrounded by a foreign world of IV tubes, sterile sheets, hospital gowns, mashed potatoes, Jello, broth and tea.
My mind wanders to other scenes of this boy who stands before me now. I waited in a hospital at another time with other anxious fathers till finally the word came...
No sweeter message ever came from nurse’s lips — I had a son, A SON!
I see you now a babe in nursing arms.
You grow so quick.
A diapered toddler running round till down they fall.. .and you as well!
A birthday cake at 3... we might as well have iced your face!
Tenderly I have watched you stoop to pluck a
dandelion from its roots;
And hold it forth in your dirty paw.
Then blow.. .and jump in awe
At this small eden-wonder discovery.
Every boy needs a pet.
Do you remember the new little dog you so cleverly named “Puppy”?
What a joy to see you both romp together.
You’re 6 now and off to school. Learning to spell
and add. The apron string loosens.
At night I still go in to make sure you are tucked in well. You know how parents are.
Friends come over now to spend the night.
It’s hard for a parent to see peer-influence grow.
Then the night of the accident.
How many sleepless nights we watched
and waited
and prayed
and waited.
Our second time with you in the hospital,
Only this time with why-us pain.
Finally you are given back to us, reborn as it were.
The grief potential in our hearts turns to joy.
Do you remember the father-son fishing trips?
What a joyous getaway to nature!
Joyous even if we come up bare-hooked... and come home empty-handed.
Why were the trips so few?
Business. Business. Busy-ness.
So quick the boy grows man-size.
Six inches in a year according to the pencil marks on the closet door!
Old car shiny new. Big date. Nervous smile.
The apron string is almost out.
Is that a mustache beginning or a dirty upper lip?
I laugh.
One-way joke.
I embarrass you.
And feel for you and through you the pain of teen years past.
“Sweet-sixteen” may describe a daughter, but hardly an adjective to describe you!
“Rascal” perhaps.
But we made it through those generation-gap, terrible-teen years still friends.
You got your independence without cutting off a dependent old man.
And I thank you.
College!
Not bad for the unacademic type.
Letters are rare, so your mom and I welcome even long-distance phone calls collect.
You graduate... after 2 senior years.
But we are proud.
The lemonade-stand entrepreneur has grown up and gotten a job.
Who are you dating now?
Would she be a good wife?
Why do children wait so long to marry these days? You know how parents are. Parents are ready to be “grand” and hold a new bundle of joy in their arms.
Finally, a bride in white.
We would have liked her sooner, but we are thrilled to have her at all!
Worth the wait, we say.
And then 2 beautiful grandchildren.
The cycle of life seems good.
What will these 2 grow up to be?
I shall never know for now I face the unknown,
as I lay here hospital-gowned.
The sun is going down.
I go to face my Maker.
Thank-God I am known to Him. He calls my name.
(I hope someday your mansion will be next to mine.
I will check on that when I arrive. You know how parents are.)
The unknown shore is less frightening now.
I remember His visit to this shore.
Farewell for now. Until.
Sun-set
Son-rise.
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-STEVE REMBERT
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LENT - HUFFING
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HUFFING AND PUFFING
By George Kroupa III
It is the middle of Lent and I am gritting my teeth and clenching my fists. I find that I am slugging my; way through the season in hopes that I will be a "better disciple" in a deeper relationship with God.
Like many others, I tend to bring into this time of reflection and self-denial a prize fighter's mentality as I pump spiritual weights and jump rope in order to achieve wholeness. Perhaps by the time the Easter bell rings, I will step out of the boxing ring of Lent as a new person.
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But this year the simple words of Paul are packing more power than all my struggling: "For it is by his grace that you are saved, through trusting him; it is not your own doing."
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God offers salvation (wholeness) as a graceful gift to all who trust in him. This concept is dancing around my Lenten punching
bag and gently touching my tired shoulders. Just as my arms begin to feel like cement, God in love offers the relief of healing grace and reaches into the narrow spaces of the self that my awkward boxing gloves cannot touch.
In the quiet contact with God's words in Ephesians I discover that I cannot always lace up the gloves and thump away at issues that threaten my growth and closeness in Christ. The closer I get to Easter, the more I realize that I do not have the muscle to push away the obstacles to wholeness that I encounter as I take a long Lenten look at my life.
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Paul unlocks a different approach to deeper discipleship and health: a trusting release of the self in God's presence where his people can be in touch with resources beyond themselves. It seems that when I try too hard to be the "better disciple" (whatever that is), I feel out of touch with God's surprising grace.
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In Merton's Palace of Nowhere, James Finley recalls how Merton once told him to "quit trying so hard in prayer. He said, 'How does an apple ripen? It just sits in the sun.' A small green apple cannot ripen in one night by tightening all its muscles, squinting its eyes and tightening its jaws in order to find itself miraculously large.... like the birth of a baby or the opening of a
rose, the birth of the true self takes place in God's time. We must wait for God, we must be awake; we must trust in his hidden action within us."
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Lent is a time for discovering that we are God's handiwork of grace and love, and that while the struggle to be a better disciple can be good and productive, the ripening of the self is more the result of the Spirit's "hidden action within us" than of our own huffing and puffing.
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in The Presbyterian Outlook, 3/21/88
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LESSONS AND CAROLS (at Princeton Theological Seminary
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PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
A CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL SERVICE
OF LESSONS AND CAROLS
Miller Chapel
16 December, 1980 8:00 p.m
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Organ Prelude: "Noel Suisse” Louis-Claude D’Aquin
Call to Worship
Processional Hymn: "Once in Royal David’s City" Irby
(Congregation stands when choir enters and joins in singing stanzas 4, 5, and 6.)
4. For he is our lifelong pattern;
Daily, when on earth he grew - -
He was tempted, scorned, rejected, Tears and smiles like us he knew.
Thus he feels for all our sadness, And he shares in all our gladness.
5. And our eyes at last shall see him,
Through his own redeeming love;
For that child who seemed so helpless
Is our Lord in heaven above;
And he leads his children on
To the place where he is gone.
6. Not in that poor lowly stable,
With the oxen standing ’round,
We shall see him; but in heaven,
Where the saints his throne surround;
Christ, revealed to faithful eye,
Set at God’s right hand on high.
Bidding prayer and the Lord’s Prayer
(all remain standing.)
First Lesson: Genesis 3;8-15
(Following each lesson, the reader will say, ”The Word of the Lord”, and the congregation responds, "Thanks be to God!”)
Carol: "Omnis Mundus Jocundetus" Michael Praetorius
(Earth this glad day rejoices) (Musae Sioniae, 1607)
Second Lesson: Isaiah 40:1-11
Carol: ”The Blessed Son of God" Ralph Vaughan Williams
(from "Hodie”)
Third Lesson: Micah 5:2-4 Forest Green
Hymn: HB171 "0 Little Town of Bethlehem"
(descant by Thomas Armstrong)
(Congregation stands and joins in singing.)
Fourth Lesson: Isaiah 9:2-7
Carol: ”A Babe is Born in Bethlehem” Traditional German
(setting by J.H. Schein)
Fifth Lesson: Luke 1:26-38
Reading: "Annunciation” John Donne
Motet: "O Magnum Mysterium” Thomas Lucisda Victoria
(0 Wondrous Mystery)
Sixth Lesson: Luke 2:1-7
Reading: "The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour” Christopher Smart
Carols: "Lute-Book Lullaby” W. Ballet
"See Amid the Winter’s Snow" John Goss
(arr, by David Willcocks)
Seventh Lesson: Luke 2:8-20
Reading: "Star Witness” Beth Merizon
Carol: "The Shepherd’s Farewell" Hector Berlioz
(from "L’Enfance du Christ")
Eighth Lesson: Hebrews 1:1-12
Carol: "Nativity Carol” John Rutter
Ninth Lesson: John 1:1-14
(All stand for the reading of this lesson and join in singing
the hymn following the reading.)
Hymn: WB 538 "On this day earth shall ring" Piae Cantiones, 1582
A Prayer of Thanksgiving
(Remain standing)
Processional to Front Steps: HB 170 "O Come, All Ye Faithful” Adeste Fideles
(Descant by David Willcocks)
Carol Singing on Miller Chapel Steps
Benediction
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The Princeton Theological Seminary Madrigal Singers, Kathleen Tresham, conductor
The Princeton Theological Seminary Chapel Choir, James Litton, conductor
Carol Singing on Chapel steps led by Chapel Deacon, Allen Fisher
Readers: Lesley Davies
David Hunt
John Lawson
Susan Chang
Jim Logan
Ann Collins
Katherine Bauman
Cappie Fleuchaus
John Silbert
Medvis Jackson
Kathleen Tresham
Stephen McConnell
Conrad Massa
Arlo Duba
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LIGHT - SHINE
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Let Your Light Shine
By Martin Pike
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I never kissed my grandmother on the lips. I always aimed for a point high on her cheek. Grandmother dipped snuff. She was not unique. Many of her contemporaries did the same. It seemed the thing to do. It may be that this is the reason I always feel a touch of nostalgia when I see a display of snuff cans in the supermarket. I never did know when grandmothers ceased to dip snuff, and when football and baseball players took it up. I just know that somewhere along the line grandmothers quit and professional athletes started.
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Though my grandmother was strong on truth, she had a way of circumventing it when it came to the matter of snuff. She would have gone to the poorhouse before she would have made a commercial acknowledging that she dipped snuff.
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I have known a few folk in my time who chose to treat their faith as grandmother treated her snuff; as if it were some kind of top secret that nobody was ever supposed to learn. I can understand about the snuff. I can't understand about the faith.
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"Let your light so shine ..." is the biblical recommendation. When it came to her faith, grandmother did just that.
Martin Pike is a retired minister in the Disciples of Christ (Christian Church) living in Kingsville, Texas.
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LITURGY
Liturgy - The Church's 'Work' of Praising God
By Carol Luebering
Ask half a dozen Catholics what the Church's work is, and you'll get the same number of answers. One will tell you the Church
is supposed to be saving souls; another will speak of upholding moral standards in an immoral world. A third will speak of
teaching, especially children. Someone else will mention tending human needs, particularly the needs of the poor and
suffering; yet another of reshaping society, building the Lord's Kingdom of justice and peace on earth. And one will mention
praising God and—maybe—liturgy.
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For those keenly aware of the roots of the word liturgy, that last answer comes closest to the truth: The "work" of the Church is
liturgy. The word liturgy has grown familiar to Catholics since Vatican II and, in common parlance, usually refers to the Mass.
But to the ancient Greeks who coined the term, liturgy meant "public work," that is, any work undertaken in service of the
general populace. The word referred, for instance, to the efforts of the shipbuilder who equipped a warship to defend
their shores, to the service given by civic leaders and to the work of the folks who underwrote the Olympic games. Centuries ago, when the Church was still in its infancy, the same word was applied to Christian worship—and the name has stuck. Liturgy—worship—is the Church's "public work." Liturgy isn't the only work the Church does, of course (those other
answers are also valid), but worship is the Church's central activity, the work which serves the people by affirming who
they are.
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Liturgy is all those rites—words and actions—through which the Church publicly praises God in Jesus' name. It includes the
Mass, of course, baptisms, weddings and all the other sacraments. It also includes the Liturgy of the Hours and many other rites, such as Christian burial, the consecration of churches, vow ceremonies for religious, the blessing of water, palms, ashes and the like. Its focus is the event which has changed human history: the Easter event, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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This Update will explore this "public work," focusing on the twin centers of liturgical activity: the Eucharist and the Liturgy
of the Hours. These two stand at the center of Catholic worship and inspire our prayer and the good work we do.
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How is liturgy 'work'?
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Most people find it curious to speak of worshiping God as work (except, perhaps, reluctant teenagers who find Sunday Mass a chore). We Americans are accustomed to thinking of work as "heavy labor"— as an effort which yields some tangible result.
Liturgy doesn't seem to fit any part of that definition. Getting to church on Sunday morning—even participating wholeheartedly—doesn't take the same kind of effort as cleaning out the garage or standing behind a sales counter. As for the result—well, we speak of grace, but that elusive quality is harder to measure than the number of parts moving off an assembly line or the shine on a kitchen floor. Sometimes we don't even seem to get results. We pray for peace on earth and go home to read the morning headlines. We raise our voices at Evensong (the Church's evening prayer) and wonder if God is still listening when we cry out from pain or anxiety.
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If liturgy is work, then obviously it must be work of a different sort than what we face when the alarm clock goes off. And
indeed it is: The work of liturgy—the work of the Church—is giving praise to God through Jesus Christ. Not because God
needs our praise; God could manage very well without us. We are the needy ones, incomplete creatures who look for
meaning in our lives. That's why we can apply that old Greek word liturgy to our worship: It serves us by turning our
attention to God. By drawing us ever deeper into the death and resurrection of Jesus—his "work" in praise of God—liturgy
draws us into the holiness that is God's. And, as St. Irenaeus put it centuries ago, the highest praise of God is a holy—fully
alive—person.
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We don't, of course, praise God only at liturgy. We worship in the quiet prayer we whisper at dawn or the agonized "Help!"
uttered in the course of a hectic day, in the awe we feel when the setting sun streaks the sky with color or changes the face of red-rock canyon walls. We praise God alone and in small groups, in the intimate circle of family or friends.
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Our daily efforts are also fitting praise. Whenever we build tiny communities of love within our homes, comfort the sorrowing
or visit the shut-in; when we work for understanding between races, raise our voices as advocates of the poor or the unborn,
or speak out for justice in society and peace on our planet—whenever, in other words, we help build God's Kingdom on
earth, we are offering worship to the King.
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In these many ways we carry on the work of the Church—praising God—apart from the liturgy, so to speak. But it is at
liturgy that we do this work most publicly.
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How is liturgy 'public'?
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Liturgy is public in the same sense a beach or a rest room or a golf course is public: open to all. Admission is free (more
accurately, prepaid, purchased for us on Calvary). The right to participate is ours by citizenship—and citizenship is ours by
Baptism. We need no special knowledge, no devotion to a particular saint or fondness for a particular form of prayer to
participate on the Church's liturgy, only membership in Jesus' living Body.
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Liturgy is public in another sense, too: It is ritual, a set of words and actions with universal meaning. Liturgy celebrates God's
presence in the most ordinary human things. The miracle of birth, the bonds of love, a healing touch, a shared meal—these
human experiences are recognizable in the sacraments: Baptism, Matrimony, Anointing of the Sick, Eucharist. A visitor
from Germany can recognize the breaking of bread in Jesus' name whether the Mass is celebrated in English or Japanese.
The music may be African drums or Gregorian chant, songs accompanied by guitar or by organ; the church may be an
oriental shrine or a medieval French cathedral or someone's living room. In richly diverse ways, Christians everywhere do
the same thing: They give thanks to God in Jesus' name.
Even Protestants can find some sense of home in Catholic liturgy. One of the strongest testimonies to the unity which endures among Christians in spite of centuries-old doctrinal quarrels is the remarkable similarity in public worship. One would be hard-pressed to distinguish between Roman Catholics and Anglicans celebrating the Liturgy of the Hours. Even Churches whose "Communion Sunday" is a monthly event use a Eucharistic Prayer that would startle Catholic ears with its familiarity; Roman Catholics and many major Protestant denominations follow the same sequence of Sunday Scripture readings.
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Liturgy is public in still one more sense: It is open to view—as open as the church building itself. However strange Sunday
morning goings-on may be to nonbelievers, even casual observers know that Christian worship is what Christians do. In the Church's infancy, that public recognition was dangerous. The Roman persecutions drove believers underground—literally—into the catacombs. Throughout the centuries, legal prohibition or the neighbors' prejudices have made believers wary of attracting too much attention. Even in these United States, where the freedom of worship is written into the Constitution, old-timers in some areas tell stories of buying land under false pretexts in order to build their churches. And build them they did. They had to—just as their ancestors had to file into the cemeteries under Rome's streets, just as small groups in oppressed countries today must find ways to come together for liturgy. Because it is at liturgy that Christians both affirm and discover who they are.
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Liturgy makes us who we are
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Our American sense of work is not so out of tune with the "work" of the liturgy after all; it brings us to the very heart of why we do this "work." We know full well that what we do is an essential part of who we are. That's why it's part of getting acquainted. "What do you do?" we ask the newly introduced stranger. Or the question full-time homemakers hate slips through our lips: "Do you work?" We exchange introductions in the same way: "What a great workshop/kitchen/sewing room/computer system/garden! I've got a project going myself...."
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At liturgy, Christians define themselves by what they do. Vatican II put it this way: "The liturgy is the means whereby we
express and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church" (Constitution on the Liturgy,
#2). In other words, liturgy is our self-expression of who we really are: a people who take time out from all the pressures of
earthly life to rejoice in God's nearness. The "work" of liturgy is much more like play—a celebration of who we are because of
all that God has done for us.
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Celebrating a new view of history: Eucharist
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"There's nothing new on the face of the earth," we say. And the observation that "history repeats itself" is older than written
history. When a band of Hebrew ex-slaves made their way into Canaan, they saw that a cyclic view of history ruled the lives of
their new neighbors. Those neighbors were farmers locked in the cycle of nature. To them the turn of the seasons and the
earth's fertility were life-and-death matters reflected in their religious practices. Canaanite worship was, by our standards,
obsessed with fertility. Their god was Baal; their rites reminded this god to fertilize the earth each year by presenting human
sexual activity as a model.
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When our Jewish ancestors settled in Canaan, they brought with them not only a different God, but a different sense of
time. Their God was not a prisoner of nature but had interrupted history and set it on a new course. Delivering a people from slavery, leading them across the desert and giving the Law from the top of a thundering mountain, the God of Israel gave time a new meaning. Instead of being slaves to an endlessly recurring cycle of events, this people was in the vanguard of ascending time—time ruled by the Lord of history and destined to proceed toward full intimacy with God.
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Christian belief affirms an even more startling departure from the cyclical turn of pagan time. Our God entered human history
in a new way as one of our own kind, the human Jesus. Broken in death on Calvary, Jesus rose on Easter morning, and the
world has never been the same. Ever since his resurrection, his followers have conceived history in terms never before heard
on earth. We live in the final age, we say; we strain forward to the Lord's return in glory and the end—the perfection—of time.
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Living in the final age makes us a kind of time travelers. At Eucharist, the event we see as the peak of past history—the
death and resurrection of Jesus—is a present moment. At Eucharist we step back into an event which has rent the fabric of
time like a worn-out shirt. There we remember Jesus' dying and rising not only as his story, but also as our own. With him, we
are propelled into a new age, a new creation. Eucharist is our food for that journey into the future; the Liturgy of the Hours is
our ongoing response of praise to the God who daily leads us into freedom.
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A Resurrection-based calendar
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The liturgy resounds with a sense that the time we measure by clocks and calendars is moving us toward a glorious future.
Easter morning stands at its peak, shaping our weeks, our years and our days.
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The week: The first Christians gathered to break bread in Jesus' name on Sunday, the "little Easter." (Daily celebration of
Eucharist is a centuries-later practice.) The day the Lord rose gave a new shape to the week, to the endless turn of everyday
life. This day was different from any other day (even though, in the first century, Sunday was just another working day). The day of resurrection stood (and stands) at the center of Christian belief that time is not circular after all, but ascending moments
leading believers face-to-face with God.
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In the sense of time inspired by faith, the week and the year are holy; our public prayer "hallows" them—that is, proclaims and
reveals to us the holiness of the time as we know it.
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The year: Easter, the day of the Lord's resurrection, stands at the peak of time and at the peak of the Church's year. From that
peak, believers viewed the rest of the year and, over the centuries, developed what we now know as the Church year. The season we know as Lent was the first of the liturgica l seasons to take shape as a time of preparation for Baptism. Then (as now, in the new Rite of Christian Initiation), catechumens moved deeper into the life of the community, learning the Creed and the Lord's Prayer in preparation for Baptism at the Easter Vigil.
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The Church year we now know developed over many centuries. Today we mark its beginning on the first Sunday of Advent with a curious mix of anticipations: waiting for the long-ago birth of the Messiah and for the Lord's future return in glory. The
Church year continues with the beginning of Jesus' ministry of teaching and healing, slows in Lent to recall the meaning of
discipleship, follows him to death and risen glory at Easter, and picks up his life in the season of "ordinary time" until we
celebrate his Lordship over heaven and earth on the last Sunday of the year, the feast of Christ the King.
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The day: If the week and the year are holy, so too is each and every day. That conviction takes ritual form in the other major
element of the Church's liturgy: the Liturgy of the Hours.
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Celebrating the day: Hours
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Hours is considerably less familiar to laypeople than Eucharist. Apart from an occasional parish celebration of Morning Prayer
and Evensong, we know it better as the "Office" priests and religious are supposed to recite each day. But it was first the
daily prayer of all Christians.
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Borrowing from the habits of their Jewish ancestors, the first Christians marked the hours of the day with prayer. They came
together to stretch their experience of the Eucharist—that moment of suspended time which they celebrated on Sundays—over the everyday turn of the clock. They marked the rising and setting of the sun—and all the hours between—by praying the Psalms and exploring Scripture.
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When the persecutions of the early centuries ended and it was no longer a crime against the state to believe in Jesus, believers came out of the catacombs and thronged into the newly-built basilicas to praise God throughout the day, especially at dawn and at sunset. Meanwhile, others fled to the desert in search of a more rigorous holiness. Although they lived as hermits, they could not shake the urge to communal worship; they raised their voices in praise at the same hours as the inhabitants of neighboring caves.
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Eventually, desert hermitages were replaced by monastic communities whose primary purpose was to mark the hours of
the day with prayer. Over the centuries, the "office of readings" became the daily prayer of all priests and religious. In time,
Hours was perceived as belonging to those who celebrated Eucharist frequently. (This was an era when ordinary believers
approached the Lord's table so reluctantly that the Church had to legislate yearly Communion as an "Easter duty.")
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Since the Second Vatican Council taught us to think of the Church as the whole "people of God," laypeople have been
rediscovering the beauty of the Liturgy of the Hours. The abridged breviary with its cycle of psalms and readings has
replaced the old prayer books for many people. In the privacy of their rooms or around the family table, countless believers
join their voices to the Church's daily prayer.
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Morning Praise and Evensong (Vespers) are also finding a place in parish life. Where the priest shortage has made daily Mass an impossibility, weekday congregations are filing into churches for Morning Praise and Communion. Instead of yesterday's novena and Benediction, parishioners light the Easter candle against night's approaching darkness and celebrate Evensong.
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Those two moments—Morning Praise and Evensong—are the "hinges" of Hours, which also includes prayer during the day
and during the night. The ritual structure is simple: hymns and psalms, scripture and readings from religious writers of every
century, a canticle (Zechariah's, Luke 1: 68-79; Mary's, Luke 1:46-55; or Simeon's, Luke 2:29-32), prayers of petition, the
Lord's Prayer and, at Evensong, the sign of peace.
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Whose work is liturgy?
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In spite of its growing place in Catholic worship, the Liturgy of the Hours remains unfamiliar to most laypeople. As long as this
kind of distance exists between the liturgy and the laity, the question of whose work liturgy is remains without a satisfactory
answer.
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That's not so surprising when you realize that, not too many years ago, we thought of the Eucharist as the priest's work which the rest of us watched. As the reforms mandated by Vatican II took root, we began to think of Eucharist as something all of us did. No longer do Catholics immerse themselves in private prayer behind a priest's back and follow his prayer in a Latin/English missal. Now we "participate": We sing, we respond, we make the Eucharistic Prayer our own by our Amen.
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The difference has even changed our vocabulary. Once we spoke of the priest who "said" Mass. Then we began to call him
the "celebrant." Today we know that the entire body of worshipers are "celebrants" and the priest is the "presider" or the leader who conducts an orchestral hymn of praise. When the term presider penetrates our understanding, we will truly understand why the Council called the liturgy the summit of Christian worship. Praise gladly given to God is our destiny, the "work" of heavenly rest.
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(Side-note: Three focal points of the liturgical calendar
1. The day. Each day is made holy through liturgical celebrations of God's people, especially the eucharistic sacrifice and the divine office....
2. Sundays. The Church celebrates the paschal mystery on the first day of the week, known as the Lord's Day or Sunday. This follows a tradition handed down from the Apostles, which took its origin from the day of Christ's resurrection. Thus Sunday should be considered the original feast day....
3. The Easter triduum. Christ redeemed humankind and gave perfect glory to God principally through his paschal mystery: by dying he destroyed our death and by rising he restored our life. The Easter triduum ("three days") of the passion and resurrection of Christ is thus the culmination of the entire liturgical year. What Sunday is to the week, the solemnity of Easter is
to the liturgical year.
​The Easter triduum begins with the evening Mass of the Lord's Supper, reaches its high point in the Easter vigil, and closes with evening prayer on Easter Sunday. —From the Roman Calendar)
Carol Luebering is a part-time book and homily services editor for St. Anthony Messenger Press and a former member of the Cincinnati Archdiocesan Commission on Worship. Her books include What Do You Ask for Your Child? Exploring the Reasons for Baptism; Your Child's First Communion: A Look at Your Dreams; Planning the Funeral Liturgy: A Guide for Families and Your Child's Confirmation: Reflections for Parents on the Sacrament of Christian Identity. Published with ecclesiastical approval. April 1987
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LOVE
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Quotable Quotes
Love and time—those are the only two things in all the world and all of
life that cannot be bought, but only spent.
—Gary Jennings, Aztec (Atheneum) Reader's Digest, March 1986
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