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.

Framed around one ordinary day, this book explores daily life through the lens of liturgy, small practices, and habits that form us. Each chapter looks at something author Tish Harrison Warren does in a day—making the bed, brushing her teeth, losing her keys—and relates it to spiritual practice as well as to our Sunday worship.

Worship is at the heart of the Christian faith. This applies equally to all denominations. For that reason it is all the more important that the ordering of worship and its place in the life of the church is regularly rewritten and reinterpreted. This volume--based on the third, completely revised German edition from 2013 by two of the foremost liturgical scholars in Germany--offers a contemporary, comprehensive introduction to the foundations for the study of liturgy today, one from which scholars and students in the English-speaking world can also profit. Beyond appealing to students of liturgy and theology, this book reaches out to everyone who wants to know more about the liturgical essence and dimensions of the church.

Father Anscar Chupungco fondly recalls his first class as a student at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in 1965. Professor Salvatore Marsili 'famed theologian, liturgist, and cofounder of the institute 'entered the lecture hall, and after a prolonged and awkward silence finally asked, And so, what is liturgy?" This seemingly simple question underlies Chupungco's untiring love for liturgy and his lifetime of searching for answers. His is a passion deeply rooted in tradition, which is evident in this volume. Relying on Scripture, patristic writers, and conciliar and postconciliar documents 'and with great skill, prudence, and the fundamental virtue of obedience 'he carefully examines current liturgical trends that are the subject of fierce debate. At a time when we focus so intently on the debate itself, Chupungco cautions us to remember: "At the end of the day what matters are not personal opinions but what truly contributes to making the prayer of the Church an encounter with the person of Christ." It is this most sacred encounter that is at the heart of What, Then, Is Liturgy? And it is this encounter that will lead us day by day to the ultimate heavenly liturgy, our eternal and perfect offering of praise to God. Anscar Chupungco is a Benedictine of the Abbey of Our Lady of Montserrat in Manila. He is former president of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in Rome, where he taught history of the liturgy and liturgical inculturation. Chupungco was Executive Secretary of the Philippine Episcopal Commission on Liturgy for eighteen years and is currently Secretary of the Asian Liturgy Forum. He has served as consultor to both the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education, was a member of the Advisory Committee of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) for ten years, and for some time served as Chair of ICEL's Translations and ReVisions Subcommittee. Chupungco edited the five-volume Handbook for Liturgical Studies and is author of Liturgical Inculturation (both published by Liturgical Press), Cultural Adaptation of the Liturgy, and Liturgies of the Future. "

“I am increasingly convinced that the decisive question that demands an answer from us is not so much how believers experience the liturgy, but whether believers live from the liturgy they celebrate.”With these few words Goffredo Boselli captures the essence of this present work. Believers can celebrate the liturgy throughout their lifetimes without ever really drawing their lives from it. And this is true of all believers—laity, clergy, or monastics. More than a century after the start of the liturgical movement and half a century after the start of the postconciliar liturgical reform, we must ask the difficult question of whether the liturgy has or has not become the source of the spiritual life of believers. For only by living from the liturgy can they receive the nourishment necessary to maintain a life of faith in today’s world. In The Spiritual Meaning of the Liturgy, Goffredo Boselli—one of Europe’s foremost liturgical theologians—offers an accessible and important guide for both scholars and interested laypeople to understand the meaning that permeates the liturgy and its implications for daily living. Readers will find here a resource to help understand the liturgy more fully, interiorize it more effectively, and live it more authentically.

New Softcover Edition with Index! Considered by Ratzinger devotees as his greatest work on the Liturgy, this profound and beautifully written treatment of the "great prayer of the Church" will help readers rediscover the Liturgy in all its hidden spiritual wealth and transcendent grandeur as the very center of our Christian life. Among the many liturgical issues that he covers in this work, Cardinal Ratzinger discusses fundamental misunderstandings of the Second Vatican Council's intentions for liturgical renewal, especially the orientation of prayer at the Eucharistic sacrifice, the placement of the tabernacle, and the posture of kneeling. Other important topics he discusses include the following: the essence of worship; Jewish roots and new elements of the Christian Liturgy; the historic and cosmic dimensions of the Liturgy; the relationship of the Liturgy to time and space; art, music, and the Liturgy; active participation of all the faithful; gestures, posture, and vestments. "My purpose here is to assist this renewal of understanding of the Liturgy. Its basic intentions coincide with what Guardini wanted to achieve. The only difference is that I have had to translate what Guardini did at the end of the First World War, in a totally different historical situation, into the context of our present-day questions, hopes, and dangers. Like Guardini, I am not attempting to involve myself with scholarly discussion and research. I am simply offering an aid to the understanding of the faith and to the right way to give the faith its central form of expression in the Liturgy." - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, from the preface

Everyday worship practices—from praying the rosary to moments of recognizing the beauty of God's creation, from being moved by the power of music to praying Vespers on an iPad—not only take place at different locations and during different days of the week but also dynamically interact with one another. The Liturgy of Life examines the interrelationship between the practice of Sunday Eucharist and the many nonofficial worship practices that mark the everyday lives of Christians who continually negotiate the boundaries of official teaching on liturgy. Drawing on the writings of theologians and sociologists of lived religion and data from an ethnographic research project, this timely work stretches the contextual horizon of liturgical scholarship and presents a provocative and dynamic paradigm of Christian worship for the twenty-first century.