Liturgy and Presence

Abstract

This chapter emphasizes that the experience of Christ's presence often occurs in the context of liturgy. The chapter explains that it makes present the Christ who instituted the Eucharist, suffered and died, and rose from the dead. The liturgical year further includes feast days that commemorate events from Christ's life. The chapter provides a context in which the past is made present and the Christ of biblical narrative becomes manifest. As the chapter highlights, liturgy and sacrament provide the setting in which Christ is most ordinarily recognized as present. But as the chapter suggests, the cycle of liturgical feasts, which bring back memory of past events, was less important in our sources than liturgical services seen as occasions for Christ's manifestation in the present.