Reverence for our past, including its expression in art, architecture and music, and appreciation of its still-living strength, is a widespread theme in this virtual parish, and very rightly. And right-ordered liturgy can be a path to renewal in other areas, just as orders of religious have always found that a renewed commitment to their founding rule and to the Liturgy of the Hours makes the correction of other faults easier. The stupefaction that we feel when hearing horror stories of the kind that Amy Wellborn collected last week isn't born only or even chiefly of nostalgia (the saccharine and muddled and bathetic have always been with us in some measure), it's from the knowledge that an opportunity for prayer and praise is being, if not profaned, then at least trivialized. Enough of it. Amy's right:



"And I think that's the cri de coeur we're hearing from all over in regard to liturgy: Just pray. Just lead us in prayer. Stop standing in the way of our prayer. Just pray."



It's not only in Catholicism, of course. Dr. James Montgomery Boice, who held the pulpit of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia for more than thirty years, long-time host of radio's Bible Study Hour, appalled at the celebration of self that he saw as a growing problem in the liturgy of many evangelical churches, wrote more than a dozen hymns with Dr. Paul Jones in the last two years of his life. They're gathered into a collection called Hymns For A Modern Reformation and, while his theology isn't entirely mine, there is no doubt that they are expressing and teaching a theology, worshipping and praising God.



Open Rev. George Rutler's Brightest and Best and you get a sense of the depth of meaning in the hymns that are, to our loss, no longer a part of the church's worship. Or read the moving stories that lie behind the composition of some widely-known hymns . The stories themselves are sermons.



We aren't content with the watered milk that is too frequently our portion because there isn't nourishment in it, or sustenance.