LITERATURE TO LINK LITURGY AND LIFE

It is easy to make public worship an isolated event. We can disconnect bidding prayers from their anchors in real life. Because I lead liturgical prayer I look constantly to connect communal prayer with communal concerns. Because I am a member of the Passionist religious community, I always am alert to how the Passion of Jesus continues in our society. I have only one goal in my life, in ministry, and in academic study: how can baptized Christians develop a spirituality for the marketplace. My reading and thinking, praying and communing with people lead me to places where the Passion of Jesus dwells today. These include people with disabilities, the Passion of the earth, the poor, and instances of our church relating to American society. The following summer reading selections dwell in places where passion is felt.

Nancy L. Eiesland's The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability addresses the story of people with disabilities and their relationship with God, Christ crucified, and the Christian community. She also looks at ways the disabled and the temporarily able bodied share in sacramental life. A good book to begin appreciating the visibility of disabled persons in our midst.

Dianne Bergant's The Earth is the Lord's: The Bible, Ecology, and Worship is a short essay on creation and our responsibility for the Passion of the Earth today. If you've never read anything on ecology and environment, here is a good place to start.

Another good read is Steven J. Holmes's The Young John Muir. An Environmental Biography. Muir played a big role in the development of America's national parks. This biography shows his personal and religious quest, as well as his vision of nature as an icon of the sublime.

Rebecca M. Blank's It takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty addresses American poverty in a lucid, compelling way. She defines poverty, identifies who the poor are, and looks at how the economy and policies are changing. She then speaks about antipoverty programs, pubic and private charity, and recommends directions for the future. I learned a lot from this book.

My doctoral dissertation is on Monsignor George G. Higgins and what he wrote about economic citizenship, worker-justice, and organized labor. Higgins is a native of Chicago; he is a man involved with labor unions, interracial justice, and Catholic-Jewish relations. Higgins is a player in a vibrant Catholicism that birthed groups such as CFM, the Christian Family Movement begun in Chicago by Pat and Patty Crowley. Jeffrey M.Burns deftly chronicles the history of CFM between 1949 and 1974 in Disturbing the Peace. Burns shows how this dynamic movement touched married couples and their family environments. CFM became the seed bed for lay involvement in parishes, the beginnings of ministry by all the baptized, and lay participation in leavening and transforming our world.

Finally, Jesuit historian Mark S. Massa's Catholics and American Culture looks at the last half-century of American Catholicism. Massa touches on all the critical elements of religion in the 1950s and 1960s, such As Fr. Leonard Feeney, religious revival and Thomas Merton, the anti-Communism of Joe McCarthy and Bishop Sheen, the radicalism of Dorothy Day, and JFK. He concludes with Notre Dame as university and football club.

Enjoy your summer reading!