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The Liturgy (or “service”) of the Word can be traced back to the Jewish exile following the destruction of the first Temple.  By reading the scriptures, God’s chosen people could maintain their identity even in exile.  With the Temple gone, these scriptural readings evolved into synagogue worship. Because the earliest Christians were predominantly Jewish, it [...]

This is even harder to define than the term “High Church”.  Both have very subjective connotations to different people, but I have to say I was surprised at how difficult it was to pin down specifics on just what would constitute emerging worship.  Let’s see what some emerging worship oriented websites say: The Presbyterian Church [...]

It’s hard to pin down a real definition of these terms.  In the original sense of the term High Church, what was meant was a preference for the liturgical ritual and ceremony of the Roman Catholic service — particularly the Tridentine Mass, a solemn liturgy which originated following the Council of Trent and involved a deacon [...]

I asked this question a couple of weeks ago . . . the response was not overwhelming. But, as we head into our last week of our hastily constructed study of worship, liturgy and the church year (and, not coincidently, the last week of the church year — at least by the reckoning of the [...]

If we had time, we could consider transitional days and the Sanctoral Cycle in separate posts.  But in the interest of giving you time to consider these before class on Sunday, I’m going to combine them into one post. Certain occasions in Ordinary Time (remember . . . counting by “ordinals”, e.g., First Sunday After [...]

We discussed Christmas, Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord (Dec. 25, Sunday before or on Jan. 6, and the following Sunday) in our last class.  There are five other feast days that we observe through the year that relate to, or are dependent on, the date of Christmas.  They are: The Anunciation — March [...]

What about the rest of the week?  In the early church there were daily morning and evening services in the larger cities — generally limited to a cathedral.  These services, which were attended by people going to and coming from their daily occupations, came to be referred to as “Cathedral Prayer”.  In addition to this [...]

The Greek word from which we derive “ecclesiastical” is a combination of two words: “ek”, meaning “out”; and “kaleo”, meaning “to call”.  It originally referred to the assembly of citizens “called out” to govern the city.  This political term was deliberatedly chosen by the early Church to refer to itself — the subject of Christ’s [...]

Christmas doesn’t date back as far as Easter does in the Christian Year.  The Epistles, which are generally viewed as pre-dating other parts of the New Testament, make little mention of the birth of Jesus, but focus instead on the central mystery of our faith — his death and resurrection.  The earliest of the Gospels, [...]

Easter is to the year what the Lord’s Day is to the week.  It is significant that Christ was crucified and rose again at the time of the Jewish celebration of Pascha (Passover).  This was a time when God’s people celebrated deliverance from bondage in Egypt and the early Christians realized that now there was [...]