Bishop Barron's the Mass Weekly Topics Display
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St. Catherine of Siena Liturgical Renewal Effort: September 2018 – May 2019 Join us in our many activities! BISHOP BARRON'S THE MASS This video series provides a once-a-month way to slowly digest and discuss a renewal of our practice of the liturgy. All are invited to our "viewing parties" held in the chapel with refreshments and discussion immediately following in the gathering space. See the website for a complete calendar of events. WEEKLY TOPICS These topics are a way for us to more regularly, once a week, dive into important aspects of the liturgy from start to finish. We will present a one-page explanation of each topic in three ways: 1. We will read it to the congregation immediately before mass starts, at every mass; 2. It will be printed in the weekly bulletin; 3. We will post the entire series of topics on our website. DISPLAY COMMUNICATIONS You will see several banners for display in the entrance and gathering space, emphasizing our renewal effort. This artwork will be used as a graphic on the bulletin and the website. SPEAKERS Several nationally known speakers will help us kick off and continue the renewal effort. Tim O'Malley will speak on September 13th and serve as our kickoff speaker. We will engage a second speaker for some time around March 21, 2019. BOOK GROUPS All are encouraged to start or join book groups. See the back of this flyer for our book recommendations. Parish council members and our priests will jointly lead open-invitation book groups for each book. SOCIAL MEDIA NUGGETS The Campus Ministry will promote our weekly topics, sayings from the book group texts, and events to underscore the renewal effort from Sept 2018 – May 2019. PETITIONS AT MASS Every week, Parish Council will offer a petition for the deepening of our relationship with Christ through the liturgy. St. Catherine of Siena Newman Center Fall 2018 Book Club Recommendations This fall, the Parish Council and Campus Ministry are leading a parish-wide effort of deeper reflection on the meaning of liturgy. The books below are recommended for book clubs. Parish Council members will also be leading weekly book clubs open to everyone. Easy Bored Again Catholic: How the Mass Could Save Your Life by Tim O’Malley We want the Mass to entertain, make us laugh, give us foot tapping music and sound-bite theology, and get it done in under an hour. Yet every Sunday many of us tune out. Author Tim O’Malley, in a series of easy-to-digest reflections on every part of the Mass, challenges us to turn the idea of boredom on its head, calling boredom the good boredom that opens us to the quiet interior space where we can encounter God a sweet gift. It is there that full participation in the Mass becomes possible the potential to be transfixed by a ritual, to contemplate the readings, to savor the Eucharist. To be fruitfully bored again. OPEN BOOK CLUB: Mondays @ 7pm with Fr. Lukasz Medium The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth by Scott Hahn This book describes how the early Christians’ key to understanding the mysteries of the Mass was the New Testament Book of Revelation. With its bizarre imagery, its mystic visions of heaven, and its end-of- time prophecies, Revelation mirrors the sacrifice and celebration of the Eucharist. Written in clear, direct, enthusiastic language, bestselling Catholic author Scott Hahn’s new book will help readers see the Mass with new eyes, pray the liturgy with a renewed heart, and enter into the Mass more fully. OPEN BOOK CLUB: Tuesdays @ 7pm with Fr. Marcin Difficult The Wellspring of Worship by Jean Corbon, OP For those not afraid to dive into deeper theology, Jean Corbon’s watershed book explores the poetic, transcendent language of the Church, especially the Greek words describing the liturgy. The primary writer of Section 4 (On Prayer) of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Corbon’s deeply theological and accessible writing has been praised by St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. This rewarding read is sure to positively influence and deepen your understanding of the liturgy and God. OPEN BOOK CLUB: Tuesdays @ 7pm with Fr. Jacek Week 2: What is the Liturgy? At the beginning of our six-month journey to beer celebrate the liturgy, we must ask ourselves a queson. What exactly do we mean by the word “liturgy”? We oen think of this term and the word “mass” to mean the prayers and rituals we do here on Sunday – what Protestants would call a “service.” But is that all it is? Christ became man to open up a true communion with God. His mission was not to simply give us a new philosophy, new gestures and new prayers to say together. The pagan world in Jesus’s me had plenty of rituals already. We Catholics believe that God humbly became man in order to share his very self, his deep mysteries, his boundless love for his creaon. Liturgy is what God established for us to have a relaonship with him. The mass is our deepest celebraon of the liturgy. I’d like to repeat that. Liturgy is the very means God established for us to have a right relaonship with him, and the mass is our deepest celebraon of the liturgy. One of the books currently being read in our Newman Center book clubs is called Wellspring of Worship, and in it the Dominican author, Jean Corbon, writes poecally about how liturgy is like a river flowing from and returning back to God. You can imagine that if you step into the river of the liturgy, you are carried by its current, and when you emerge, you are in a new place. Liturgy is transformave. Does it inspire awe in you that we have access to the creator of all things right here in this chapel? And yet, do you ever find yourself distracted or dozing off? I would like to re-ignite my amazement over the liturgy we celebrate together. L et us today allow ourselves to be awed by the fact that God is present here in the prayers, readings, and Eucharist. Week 3: Sanctity of the Chapel Father Romano Guardini, perhaps the most influential Roman Catholic writer on the renewal of liturgy, wrote his important book Spirit of the Liturgy in 1918. He writes: “The primary and exclusive aim of the liturgy is not the expression of the individual’s reverence and worship for God. It is not even concerned with the awakening, formation, and sanctification of the individual soul as such… In the liturgy God is to be honored by the body of the faithful, and the latter is in its turn to derive sanctification from this act of worship.” It is hard for modern Americans like us to think that something we are going to do isn’t about us – that this thing isn’t even concerned with our individual long-term benefit. We live in a world where we make thousands of choices each day – most of them driven by what gives me some type of benefit. Of course, we believe that going to mass DOES give us some benefit in the end, but this isn’t the GOAL of the liturgy. So why do we participate in the liturgy? In Guardini’s words, it is to be a part of the greater body of souls, the Church with a capital C, that honors and worships God. Nothing more - it’s simply to worship the great creator. The first step is to enter the chapel, the special sanctuary of Christ and the liturgy, and stop thinking about ourselves. This takes effort. We often see those we know and love, and want to say hi, maybe share a story from our week. But this is what the gathering space is for – before and after mass. The chapel is a place specifically made to honor and worship God, to unite ourselves with Christ’s great sacrifice. It looks different than other spaces – everything in the room is oriented to the sacrificial altar. The ceiling is raised as a way to bring our prayers closer to God. The Blessed Sacrament is kept in a place of honor in the tabernacle. Where else in our world do we encounter such a markedly different space? How can you and I today consider and honor the special place of the chapel? Each week, as we enter this space, we are given the opportunity to shed the cares and preoccupations that chain us to our daily worries. We have the chance to turn our complete focus to something so much greater than ourselves. Week 4: Entering the Chapel and Blessing Ourselves Do you ever wonder what to do with yourself before mass starts? Are you the type of person, like many of us, who likes to time it just right and get to mass just before the entrance procession? If we see mass as another appointment during our week, this makes sense, but if we begin to revere this time to actually encounter our Lord, the short time before mass can become an important moment, not to be rushed. When we Catholics enter our sacred space – this chapel – we perform three important actions that we call rituals. We bless ourselves with holy water, we genuflect before the tabernacle, and we say a silent prayer to prepare ourselves for the mass. I invite you today to think about how these rituals prepare you for the awesome liturgy that’s about to happen, and to do them intentionally each week.