The Liturgical Year

Title: THE LITURGICAL YEAR
Author: Joan Chittister
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
2009
ISBN: 978-0-8499-0119-5
Genre: Inspirational/spirituality

THE LITURGICAL YEAR is not a subject I know anything about, since my beliefs have never studied this. But I have heard a lot about it recently so I decided to pick up this book to learn something about this topic.

In THE LITURGICAL YEAR, the author attempts to show us that ”the liturgical year is an adventure in bringing the Christian life to fullness, the heart to alert, the soul to focus. It does not concern itself with the questions of how to make a living. It concerns itself with how to make a life.” (from the back cover)

We all go through stages of life, all marked by years – infanthood to childhood, childhood to adulthood, adulthood to old age, and according to the author, in the center of all of this is the liturgical year.

In THE LITURGICAL YEAR, you will learn such things as:

. how following the liturgical calendar helps us meld our lives with the life of Christ
. the role that asceticism plays in liturgy
. the four major kinds of celebrations, from Sundays to saints’ days
. how even non-holy days have a place in the liturgical routine.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about the book. I did learn quite a bit about THE LITURGICAL YEAR in this book, but I think I would like to do additional study about the subject.

This book is not very conversational, but reads rather like a lecture. Still I enjoyed reading it and learning something about the topic. I think I am going to go back through the book slower and maybe it will help me to absorb a little bit more about the topic. $17.99 hardcover. 215 pages.