Please note: If you landed here because you are looking for Reverend Mason Beecroft – you aren’t going to find him here. I’ve noticed a lot of y’all are searching for him. (At least that’s what my stats show) I wish I knew where he was, but I do not. He was a mentor of mine for a while and I too cared about him as many of you. He is a brilliant theologian. For now, he is under the radar. I trust when he wants to come back, he will. In the mean time, grant him his peace and respite from all that entangles.  — God’s blessings, Deana

The Liturgical Year: the spiraling adventure of the spiritual life

Written by: Joan Chittister

Book Description

A journey of the soul through the map of Christian time.

The liturgical year, beginning on the first Sunday of Advent and carrying through the following November, is the year that sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus, the Christ.

This book sets out to open what may at first seem to be simply an arbitrary arrangement of ancient holy days, or liturgical seasons, to their essential relationship to one another and their ongoing meaning to us today. It is an excursion into life from the Christian perspective, from the viewpoint of those who set out not only to follow Jesus but to live as Jesus lived and to think as Jesus thought.

It proposes, year after year, to immerse us over and over again into the sense and substance of the Christian life until, eventually, we become what we say we are-followers of Jesus all the way to the heart of God. It is an adventure in human growth; it is an exercise in spiritual ripening.

My Review

How do you solve a problem like liturgy?

How do you explain to someone in the modern world the value of living a liturgical life without sounding pious?

Meet Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, Benedictine nun, international speaker, author of “The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life.” and you answer both of those questions. Joan is well educated and everything but pious. She is humble and very transparent. She is able to answer those questions because she asked them herself and lived to talk about. Joan writes from the heart.

I have to admit that once I started reading The Liturgical Year, my own inadequate knowledge of real liturgy hit me square between the eyes. That was shocking to me because Missouri Synod Lutherans ARE Liturgical.

I’m not Catholic, I’m Lutheran. I’m part of a church plant and I prefer Praise and Worship to Liturgy.  This book and the author’s gentle and pursuasive argument for the spiritual adventures found within the full liturgical year, brought me back again and again to the same question:

Am I missing something in my worship?

Being a member of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, there are parts of her book that I do not understand or agree with. However, I’m giving this book 5 stars. Why? It made me hungry for more. This book resonates within my own spirit therefor, my husband and I are making the personal sacrifice of getting up earlier on Sunday and attending a High Liturgy LCMS Congregation for early service for one full Liturgical year, (we started the first weekend in Advent) so that we can learn more.  My husband, the praise and worship leader at the mission start, wants to learn more as well.  This extra worship service is on top of our regular church services across town. We will attend both churches for one full year.

Let the adventure begin.

I am a member of Thomas Nelson’s Book Review Blogger program. If you would like more information on this program see http://brb.thomasnelson.com/

.