Book Review: Celebrating Liturgical Time: Days, Weeks, and Seasons

Abstract

Celebrating Liturgical Time: Days, Weeks, and Seasons. By J. Neil Alexander. New York: Church Publishing, 2014. viii + 160 pp. $20.00 (paper).This third and most recent installment in Church Publishing's Celebrating series of ceremonial guides focuses on what the author refers to as the of in accordance with the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Written by a well-respected liturgical scholar and experienced priest and bishop, this book includes history, theology, and practical guidance concerning the Episcopal Church's liturgical observance and celebration of the Sundays, major feasts, and seasons of the liturgical year, as well as of the Daily Offices. This book will be useful and of interest to pastorally- and practically-oriented seminarians, clergy, and lay liturgical ministers. The author's accessible and often conversational writing style, and his approach to the celebration of liturgical time as a fundamentally spiritual practice, makes this book a valuable resource for parish adult education purposes as well.In the first chapter, the author positions the church's ritualization of time as a practice of prayer, the effect of which not to change time, but to more clearly recognize God at work in (p. 4). The author's commentary and ceremonial advice throughout the remainder of the book reflect his conviction that the prayerful ritualization of time has the potential to be powerfully meaning-making and faith-shaping when thoughtfully and carefully performed.Chapter 2 provides an overview of the structure, origins, development, and predominant themes of the Sundays, principal feasts, and seasons of the liturgical calendar. The author provides enough historical information and theological commentary to satisfy readers who want to know not only when and how but why the Episcopal Church observes and celebrates liturgical time in the ways that it does. The Revised Common Lectionary serves as the template for highlighting the biblical foundations and theological meanings associated with the Sundays, feasts, and seasons that constellate around the principal moments of incarnation and resurrection within an overarching paschal narrative that is celebrated each Sunday. The authors ceremonial commentary invites the reader to consider ways in which the performance of certain ritual elements can tend either to clarify or to confuse those meanings.The author skips over the special liturgies for Ash Wednesday, Holy Week, and the Great Vigil and reserves relatively brief treatment of these liturgies to the fourth and final chapter. This way of organizing the material is unfortunate, because it interrupts the discussion of the liturgical year with an abrupt shift to a discussion of the Daily Offices in chapter 3. …