1) Liturgy – theology of the body
“What is most spiritual always takes place in the most corporeal” (Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body, xii). We see this statement enfleshed in the Church’s rites of initiation into the Body of Christ as well as in the rites that accompany the lifeless body of a Christian to the grave. Yet in the celebration of the Eucharist, the corporeal has often capitulated to the cerebral especially in the practices surrounding the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion. This topic explores the theology of the body expressed in the rites of initiation, Christian burial, and Eucharist.
Possible resources for addressing this topic:
- Chauvet, The Sacraments
- Fiorenza, Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives
- Johnson, Rites of Christian Initiation
- Lathrop, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology
- Mitchell, Cult and Controversy: The Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass
- Rutherford, The Death of a Christian: The Rite of Funerals
- Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology
2) Liturgy – theology of word
In the Incarnation, the Divine Word was joined to the matter of human life so that God’s free self-communication could be heard, understood, and received, making the life of Jesus the sacramentum Dei. Thus, the word of God spoken by human tongues at every sacramental event “effects what it says [and] brings what it announces” (Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology, 77). The word event in a sacrament is not limited to the sacramental formula alone but includes the proclamation, preaching, prayer, petition, and even the post-sacramental mystagogy. For this reason, all the words we use in liturgy bear a symbolic weight. This topic explores the implications of a contemporary sacramental theology of word for those who preach and those who teach catechumens.
Possible resources for addressing this topic:
- Chauvet, The Sacraments
- Emminghaus, The Eucharist: Essence, Form, Celebration
- Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents
- Johnson, Rites of Christian Initiation
- Lathrop, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology
- Ramshaw, Reviving Sacred Speech
- Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology
3) Liturgy – anamnesis and the Eucharistic controversies
“Christianity is lived under the regime of memorial, not of anniversary or mime” (Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body, 158). In every Christian celebration, what is memorialized is the saving work of God through the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, a past event made present and effective today by the Holy Spirit. Yet this memorial is not an intellectual exercise or a dramatic re-enactment; it is symbolic in the deepest sense of the word. It is this anamnetic participation in the sacramental symbols through the epicletic prayer of the Church that not only engages us with the past but proleptically carries us into the future glory promised by the Paschal Mystery. Thus any movement from a symbolical to an allegorical interpretation of the sacraments, or from an anamnetic to a dramatic participation, raises soteriological concerns. These concerns were part of the ninth- and eleventh-century debates regarding the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistic elements.
Possible resources for addressing this topic:
- Chauvet, The Sacraments
- Emminghaus, The Eucharist: Essence, Form, Celebration
- Kasper, Jesus the Christ
- LaVerdiere, The Eucharist in the New Testament and Early Church
- Lathrop, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology
- Mitchell, Cult and Controversy: The Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass
- Ramshaw, Reviving Sacred Speech
- Taft, Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding
- Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology
4) Liturgy – Mary
Devotion to the Virgin Mary holds a prominent place in the Church’s liturgical life. Her name is proclaimed at the heart of every Eucharist, her song becomes our hymn of praise to mark the end of every day, and her presence orders the central feasts of the liturgical calendar. In fact, many of the feasts of the Lord are paralleled by feasts of Mary, implying that what happens to Christ happens to Mary. She is “a wholly unique member of the Church…occupying a place in the Church which is the highest after Christ and also closest to us” (Lumen Gentium, 53-4). Thus examining what the Church prays and believes about the Mother of God reveals something of what it believes about itself.
Possible resources for addressing this topic:
- Adam, The Liturgical Year
- Chupungco, ed., Liturgical Time and Space
- Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents
- LaVerdiere, The Eucharist in the New Testament and Early Church
- Ramshaw, Reviving Sacred Speech
- Taft, Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding
5) Systematics – theologies of grace
“When God’s word and God’s glory (shekinah) are present to human beings, they do not ‘represent’ an absent God; instead, they present the manner in which God is most intimately present within the human person” (Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology, 7). This intimate presence can simply be called “grace.” Yet the language of grace and how the Church understands God’s intimate relationship with humanity has changed throughout the years. Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Rahner offered different perspectives that were influenced by the background theories of their respective times. This topic examines how these various conceptions of grace have influenced the Church’s ethical and liturgical praxis.
Possible resources for addressing this topic:
- Chauvet, The Sacraments
- Fiorenza, Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives
- Gula, Reason Informed by Faith
- Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation
- Haight, The Experience and Language of Grace
- Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology
- Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology
6) Systematics – Christology
Through the gift of the Spirit, the Church is the ongoing incarnation of Christ on earth that continues Christ’s work of unifying all creation into the final qahal / ekklesia—“convoked gathering”—in the embrace of God. However, the Church itself is not Christ, for it is “at once holy and always in need of purification (Lumen Gentium, 48). Yet, through this imperfect instrument, Christ speaks and acts in the world. Thus, as are Christ and the Church bound together by the Spirit, so too are Christology and ecclesiology inseparable. This topic explores that relationship, both its insights and its dangers.
Possible resources for addressing this topic:
- Chauvet, The Sacraments
- Fiorenza, Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives
- Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents
- Kasper, Jesus the Christ
- Lathrop, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology
- Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith
- Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology
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