Worship as a Revelation - by Laurence Paul Hemming (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A probing study on the history and meaning of the liturgy that also questions how Christian worship will change in the future.

The publication by Benedict XVI of the motu proprio has put the question of the historyand meaning of the liturgy back into centre stage, not just for catholics but for many other christians as well. Dr. Hemming seeks to provide an intelligent background to the Pope's decision, addressing himself to a number of questions about the nature and character of catholic worship that opens a much wider historical discussion which will inform and persuade a wide audience.

The chapter on liturgy and revelation is the turning point in the book and shows how an understanding of time that is presumed in all modern philosophical thought, is challenged by the understanding of divine self-revelation. This then forces us to ask what our relation to liturgical events are and how we experience them. Hemming advocates a `high` theology of the liturgy with the profoundest understanding of the spiritual and the enigma of faith.

How will Christian worship change now, asks the author in his concluding chapter? He offers a sketch of what may happen in the coming decades, long after the Papacy of Benedict XVI.

Review Quotes

"This is a book that must be read and studied and read again. It will challenge and it will inform...this is a book the claims of which must be taken very seriously" --Alcuin Reid Doct., Mass of Ages

"An intriguing account of the doctrine of transubstantiation ... Hemming's book is provocative [...] and that is to its benefit. It gets at the root issues of liturgical reform ... It repays several times over having read it and contemplated it." --Antiphon

"[An] important and cogently argued book." --Church Times

"A very readable book with a clear, single idea behind it...Worship as Revelation is thought-provoking and worth reading, the work of a first-class theological mind." --Francesca Murphy, University of Notre Dame, Scottish Journal of Theology

About the Author