Author: Jakob K Rinderknecht
-
What Stories Shape us This Week?
As we once again start down the path of Holy Week, it is a good opportunity to ask ourselves what assumptions we bring along with us. What narratives are shaping the ways in which we hear these readings and experience the liturgies? These narratives are often operating in the background in ways that we may…
-
A Sacramental Imagination — Without the Superheroes
Last week, I wrote about two tempting primrose paths in thinking about the sacraments. If you didn’t read that one, I’d encourage you to go back and start there. Between the Superhero and the Deist imaginations, I’d like to sketch out what I think we mean when we speak of the sacramental imagination. It has…
-
The “Sacramental Imagination” — and Superheros
Catholics use the language of “sacrament” very frequently. We are a sacramental people, with a sacramental imagination. But what exactly that means is something that it can take a long time to understand. Sometimes, it can sound to others like a kind of magical thinking, or like a kind of generalized appreciation for the beauty…
-
Ordering the Body: 1. Unity in Difference
The first of a series on the Sacrament of Order. This piece begins to consider why the sacrament has that name and why the latin name is singular (“order”) and not plural (“orders”).
-
St. Benedict’s Raven
A sacramental understanding of the church is necessary to any contemporary reform movement because without it we cannot separate loyalty to the institution from fidelity to Christ, even when those institutions become poisonous.
-
Pope Francis at the World Council of Churches
Today Pope Francis made a visit to Switzerland that he has described as an “Ecumenical Piligrimage.” It has been a full day of meetings and liturgies, but I’d like to reflect on the fact that the Pope termed this trip a pilgrimage, and highlight some of his comments about ecumenism related to the term. The…
-
Lex Supplicandi
As we enter into another Holy Week and bring our Lent to a close, it is worth considering to what extent the church’s posture, its lex supplicandi, has formed our lives and our communities.
-
Review: Speaking With Aquinas, by David Turnbloom
David Turnbloom’s impressive study of how Thomas Aquinas understands the Eucharist to produce it’s effects, and what those effects are, is both an important new work of sacramental theology and an important investigation of how differing theologies can profitably dialogue.
-
Whose Incarnation are We Preparing For?
Paying attention to what it means to call God “creator” forces us think some really odd things. Doing so can help us prepare to celebrate the upcoming celebration of the Incarnation.