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• The Spirit of the Liturgy 

  Please join us Thursdays from 7:00-8:00 pm via Zoom for our Faith Series on Pope Benedict VXI's (formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) book Spirit of the Liturgy. Starting on Thursday, February 3, and continuing for eight or nine Thursdays, Fr. Matthew will be offering a book-club type faith series, working through the first two sections of Pope Benedict XVI's Spirit of the Liturgy. The plan is to read a chapter a week, about 11 pages each, reflecting on them together. It's a treasure trove of history and insights into the Mass, community celebration, and the sacraments. It's not a simple work, but neither is it a sledgehammer. 
  
  A snippet from the beginning: "We should mention another aspect of this theory of play, something that brings us closer to the essence of the liturgy. Children’s play seems in many ways a kind of anticipation of life, a rehearsal for later life, without its burdens and gravity. On this analogy, the liturgy would be a reminder that we are all children, or should be children, in relation to that true life toward which we yearn to go. Liturgy would be a kind of anticipation, a rehearsal, a prelude for the life to come, for eternal life, which St. Augustine describes, by contrast with life in this world, as a fabric woven, no longer of exigency and need, but of the freedom of generosity and gift. Seen thus, liturgy would be the rediscovery within us of true childhood, of openness to a greatness still to come, which is still unfulfilled in adult life."
  
  To order the book from Ignatius Press, click here.
   

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