Words matter. These are the best Liturgy Quotes from famous people such as John Irving, Kevin DeYoung, Richard Morris, Jane Welsh Carlyle, Rick Perlstein, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn’t terribly painful. I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs.
We use the Heidelberg Catechism in our worship. Sometimes we read it responsively. Other times I’ll work it into my communion liturgy. I’ll quote it in my sermons from time to time. I’ve seen the Catechism used effectively as Sunday school material.
Music had always been the handmaid of the Roman liturgy.
I wonder that among all the evils deprecated in the Liturgy, no one thought of inserting flitting. Is there any worse thing? Oh no, no!
Leaders are for calling people to their better angels, for helping guide them to a kind of sterner, more mature sense of what we need to do. To me, Reagan’s brand of leadership was what I call ‘a liturgy of absolution.’ He absolved Americans almost in a priestly role to contend with sin. Who wouldn’t want that?
Liturgy is like a strong tree whose beauty is derived from the continuous renewal of its leaves, but whose strength comes from the old trunk, with solid roots in the ground.
You have the women sitting on the left and the men sitting on the right. Everything is to keep your mind focused on God… To me the most beautiful thing anyone on earth can experience, other than maybe marriage and child-bearing, would be the Orthodox Liturgy.
As regards my own ‘philosophy,’ I continue to be inspired by the music, liturgy and architectural tradition of the Anglican Church in which I was brought up. No one can fail to be uplifted by great cathedrals – such as that at Ely, near my home in Cambridge.
The Eucharistic mystery stands at the heart and center of the liturgy since it is the fount of life by which we are cleansed and strengthened to live not for ourselves but for God and to be united in love among ourselves.
Liturgy, in truth, is an event by means of which we let ourselves be introduced into the expansive faith and prayer of the Church. This is the reason why the early Christians prayed facing east, in the direction of the rising sun, the symbol of the returning Christ.
Then suddenly the Roman liturgy disappeared as we knew it.
The real ‘action’ in the liturgy in which we are all supposed to participate is the action of God himself. This is what is new and distinctive about the Christian liturgy: God himself acts and does what is essential.
It is uncomfortable to be reminded that the Catholic church only removed the reference to ‘perfidious Jews’ from the Good Friday liturgy in 1960.
The language of the Catholic Church – the liturgy, the prayer, the gospels – was in many ways my first poetry.
We cannot build up the idea of the apostolate of the laity without the foundation of the liturgy.
Second, we also got a more authentic liturgy of the people of God, in the vernacular language.
Liturgy and worship were never meant to be confined to the cathedrals and sanctuaries. Liturgy at its best can be performed like a circus or theater – making the Gospel visible as a witness to the world around us.
It is important to be in the ‘we’ of the Church, in the ‘we’ of the life of the Liturgy.
