A Volley from the Canon, Number 100 Liturgy

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 101

“Liturgy”

Shamelessly adapted from a sermon by the Rt. Rev. Catherine Waynick
Camp Allen, Texas, June 3, 2011

When you go to seminary, you learn important stuff, like the origin of words in Latin and Greek. For example, you learn that the word liturgy comes from Greek, liturgia, and that, while it means “a work of the people,” it originally referred to a public work produced at private expense. If a wealthy man traveled a certain route often, he might have a bridge built across a stream. That bridge would be for everyone to use, but he paid for it. Or one might have a play produced to honor Dionysus, but the public would be invited. That sort of thing.

So public worship is the work of the people, not the performance of the clergy. All of us are the actors: Heaven is the audience. That is important for us to know if we are to understand why we do this common act in the ways that we do.
However, there is a deeper, more theological origin for liturgy that renders it even more meaningful. Jesus, an individual of means, if you will, wanted to build a bridge, not for his own use, but for the benefit of the public. The entire public. Anyone who cares to cross. That bridge leads from earth to heaven, with all that entails in this life and the next. That bridge is himself, in the miracle and the sacrament of Incarnation. It is a work for the public, paid for by an individual.

Whenever we participate in our liturgy, we might find it even richer and more meaningful for us if we first remember HIS liturgy.