{"id":2591,"date":"2007-03-12T16:35:43","date_gmt":"2007-03-12T16:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/beautiful.html"},"modified":"2007-03-12T16:35:43","modified_gmt":"2007-03-12T16:35:43","slug":"beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/beautiful.html","title":{"rendered":"Beautiful"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fr. Dwight Longenecker on 40 Hours in his parish:<\/a><\/p>\n

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To the outsider I know this seems arcane, irrelevant and difficult to understand. To many Catholics it seems the same. They wonder why worship cannot be more ‘relevant’ and more easy to understand. Perhaps they wonder why the worship cannot be more joyful, more upbeat and more ‘with it’. I cannot explain.<\/p>\n

I cannot explain in the way I cannot explain a Mozart aria, a Beethoven quartet or a Raphael Madonna. I cannot explain the lift and surge of liturgy as I cannot explain the heft of a poem or the fullness of the silence in the rest of music. I cannot explain the transcendence of beauty,the knowledge of eternity electric in the frail physical things. I cannot explain the connection with the infinite in the interstices of the psalms, the intimacy of goodness in the rapt face of a child in worship, the contact with reality in the smoke of incense, the deep rumble of the organ, the delicate dance of light or the poignant harmony of plainsong. I cannot explain the certainty of sanctity known in the wrinkled hands of an old woman in prayer, or the certainty of grace in a teenaged boy kneeling in silence–a smile of joy impressed upon his face as if by an unseen power.<\/p>\n

I cannot explain any of these things, but I can invite you to the feast.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fr. Dwight Longenecker on 40 Hours in his parish: To the outsider I know this seems arcane, irrelevant and difficult to understand. To many Catholics it seems the same. They wonder why worship cannot be more ‘relevant’ and more easy to understand. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}