The Liturgical Year : Making Christ's Past Present in View of the Future. Franz Anton Staudenmaier and Prosper Guéranger on the Liturgical Year

Abstract

This article discusses two very widespread and still famous works on the liturgical year, which appeared halfway through the nineteenth century: one by Franz Anton Staudenmaier (1800-1856) and the other by Dom Prosper Gueranger (1805-1875). The dissemination and influence of their reflections on the liturgical year, not only in a scholarly context but also in pastoral and popular circles, can hardly be over-estimated: Staudenmaier’s Der Geist des Christenthums dargestellt in den heiligen Zeiten, in den heiligen Handlungen und in der heiligen Kunst was reprinted more than 8 times. Gueranger’s L’Annee liturgique was reprinted more than twenty times and translated in five languages. After introducing these two Catholic theologians and their work on the liturgical year, this article ventures into a more elaborate discussion of their reflections on past, present, future and the liturgical year. As such this article discusses the purpose and method of these highly influential volumes, but also pay’s attention too Staudenmaier’s and Gueranger’s theology of the liturgical year. For these authors the relation between the liturgical year, anamnesis and the real presence leads up to the transformation or theosis of the faithful. At the end of my article, I will formulate some thoughts on what contemporary theology can learn from these nineteenth-century thinkers.