The Point of Lutheran Liturgy…

A cradle Catholic, I had not once darkened the door of a church outside my own for the first 18 years of my life.  So, perhaps my adamant resolve to attend Valparaiso University, a historic and prominent mid-western Lutheran institution, for my collegiate experience, was a strange choice.  Yet, compelled by its honors college and proximity to my family’s origins on the shores of Lake Michigan (the part where steel mills and nuclear power plants dot the shore line of crushed concrete), I chose Valparaiso.

While there, I became immediately involved in my (Roman Catholic) Newman Center, and began loving church music.  At the same time, I began having interesting conversations with my new Lutheran friends, which required me to supply answers such as “No, I don’t think Catholics worship Mary.”  And, I particularly recall asking my new Lutheran friends (in complete sincerity), “What is the point of Lutheran liturgy?”

I shudder.

And yet, over months-turned semesters-turned years, I began to discover the “point” of not just “Lutheran liturgy,” but thinking about the liturgy at all.  As my interest in church music prompted me to adopt the major, it was now unavoidable to begin learning, experiencing, and—for the first time—to be ensconced in a world where the liturgical life and care for the church’s worship and its music was central and compelling for vocation and for faith.

I quickly found that my Lutheran classmates found joy in worship.  They found joy in the music, in doing it well, and in doing lots of it.  My teachers were models of both academic excellence and committed service: I had the honor of learning from Lorraine Brugh, John Bernthal, David Truemper, John Brian George, and many others.  I felt the wondrous delight around “Advent-Christmas Vespers,” was awed by the rendition of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and felt my mixed feelings stretch as Dr. Brugh firmly supported “Praise music” as well as “traditional Matins choir” (I was not a “praise” fan—too much PTSD from “Our God is an Awesome God” in Catholic youth group).

I had never—and perhaps never will again—experience Holy Week with such electric intensity of anticipation as I did amongst my fellow “Chapel rats” at Valparaiso University.  And I am grateful for it.

No wonder I was surprised by my encounter with liturgical liveliness at Valpo. Little did I know, when I came to the campus, that Valparaiso was a historic location for liturgical renewal.  Little did I realize that my teachers and mentors would give me the tools not only to pay my room and board for graduate school through my emerging organ skills, but give me the vision that the Church’s worship might bring joy—and even transformation—to the hardest of hearts. 

So welcome, North American Academy of Liturgy, to Valparaiso University.  Say hello to the Chapel of the Resurrection.  Pray for all the students there now, of years past, and for the future, that they might continue to find inspiration from this place which gives even cradle Catholics a home—cradle Catholics who now point to this Lutheran liturgical landmark to say, “this is where I learned to love the liturgy.”