St. Aidan's Anglican Church, Kansas City - Weekly Talks

Liturgy means work (worship) of the people … it implies participation over merely spectating. Worship is not a passive activity … like watching tv, for example. Liturgy calls us to employ our bodies in standing, kneeling, making the sign of the cross, bowing and the like … all pointing to something transcendent. Catechesis? Another word for discipleship, spiritual formation Catechesis is the way the faith is taught and caught. Outside a classroom setting, our liturgy in all it’s forms, from morning and evening prayer, compline, baptism, ordination, eucharist … call us to participate in the mystery of Christ. The annual liturgical cycle, centered around the life of Christ, is a powerful form of embodied catechesis … for we learn to center our lives in Christ. Embodied? Our personhood is a unity of body, soul and spirit … the unity of exterior and interior. Thus, what we do with our bodies matters, because matter matters. Today’s NT reading in Romans 12 exhorts us to offer our bodies as living sacrif