Consecrating the World: On Mundane Liturgical Theology

ISBN: 1621381684

Author: Fagerberg, David W.

Condition: New

What has liturgy to do with life? The sacred with the secular? This study proposes that the liturgy calls us, in the words of Aidan Kavanagh, to do the world as the world was meant to be done. The sacramental liturgy of the Church and the personal liturgy of our lives should be as a seamless garment.Consecrating the World continues David Fagerbergs exploration of the Churchs lex orandi (law of prayer) by expanding two major themes. The first considers liturgy as the matrix wherein our encounter with God becomes an experience of primary theology. The second illustrates how a believer is made ready for this liturgy through asceticism in both its faces-the one negative (dealing with sin), the other positive (dealing with sanctification). This book turns these two themes outward to a liturgical theology of the cosmos-a mundane liturgical theology of the consecration of the world and the sanctification of our daily life.David Fagerberg invites us, with the urgency of the gospel, to see God the Trinity in every created thing, and to offer to God as a joyful sacrifice of praise the good things He has made, rather than cleaving egocentrically to these good things. When, through the Dove (the Spirit), Christ frees us to do the world in this way, we become the liturgical priest-kings we were meant to be; we learn how to live and die on the ascending path of Christ. Steeped in the spirituality of the Orthodox East and the Anglican West, enriched by the Catholic masters of Ressourcement, Fagerberg shares his vision in everyday language for all to hear. Just when it seemed that spiritual masters no longer roamed university hallways, God has raised up a true spiritual guide for our time. Open this book, awaken from spiritual slumber, read and rejoice.-MATTHEW LEVERING, Mundelein SeminaryConsecrating the World takes up where David Fagerbergs masterful On Liturgical Asceticism left off, providing a key to living the liturgy in every moment and aspect of human life. That this is indeed an everyday task takes nothing away from its divine content and sublime finality. Fagerberg is rightly regarded as one of the foremost liturgical theologians of our day. His engagement with the tradition is both fresh and fruitful.-DOM ALCUIN REID, Monastre Saint-BenotConsecrating the World is no ordinary book. It is a course in re-training the mind and the senses to perceive the world in a new way. Like the ancient Fathers, David Fagerberg sees all material things as sensible signs leading us to heavenly realities. Like Maximus and Dionysius, he shows us that the cosmos is itself a liturgy, calling us to consecrate ourselves and our work, our passions and the world to God-to sanctify the temporal order. This is a theology most visionary, joyful, and passionate.-SCOTT HAHN, Franciscan University of SteubenvilleIn David Fagerbergs new book, his trademark genius for integrating liturgical theology, ascetical theology, and the theology of creation is on full display, but here developed in a new, pneumatological direction that seems to lift it all up on the wings of the Holy Spirit. This book fully corroborates Fagerbergs reputation as one of the most creative and inspiring liturgical theologians of our time.-JOHN C. CAVADINI, University of Notre DameThis book succeeds as an imaginative, at times provocative paean to the total integration of liturgy and life, by carrying to the utmost the logic of the Incarnation and the radical challenge of the Ascension. Can God become flesh, as it were, in all the aspects of life? And can the whole of creation really be raised up on high, as a sign, even a foretaste, of the heavenly liturgy? Fagerbergs arguments lead us to see the urgency of rediscovering the full symbolic richness, the splendid beauty, of traditional liturgy as the means by which we must glorify God and divinize our lives in this world.-PETER KWASNIEWSKI, Wyoming Catholic College