Sometimes I think we load the Sunday liturgy with too many expectations. We treat it as if it were the only place we go to encounter God.
This is a distorted view. The Sunday service alone cannot bear the burden of sustaining a Christian's life in God. There must be more, of which the Sunday service is a part, a critical element to be sure, but still only a (privileged?) moment in a continuum. This is true for every member of the church, clergy and laity alike.
I always remember the writing of the late fr. Alexander Schmemann who called this phenomena as "the Sunday church" meaning exactly that same: members of the church no longer attend services but sundays and doing that loose something essential from the life of Church.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, Teo. Would you happen to remember where that quote appears?
ReplyDeleteNow, being said that, it might have appeared somewhere else too, but here is one link where that expression appears:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jacwell.org/Fall_Winter99/Fr_Schmemann_The_liturgical_problem.htm
That article has originally appeared in SVTQ 1964, Vol. 8, #4