Okay, most of you have never heard of him, but for those of us who have it is as big a loss as Eugene Peterson. RIP Fr. Robert Taft, S.J.
https://aleteia.org/2018/11/02/fr-robert-taft-feisty-ecumenist-and-liturgical-historian-dies-at-86/?fbclid=IwAR3cPF_07TYHF_6kitIl2lWbwmnO1gFnZ75PvP9SsfRhGOFx-Fx7poxBpUI
Orthodox Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."
Thank you for sharing I have only read a little of his but it is a great loss to us.
-dan
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Thank you MJ Smith for the link. An interesting read.
Like I said I have read only a little of him and there is none of his most prominent works in FL yet I thought I would share a few phrases from his writing as others have before:
The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, Robert Taft writes: “Liturgy … reminds us of the powerful deeds of God in Christ. And being reminded we remember, and remembering we celebrate, and celebrating we become what we do. The dancer dancing is the dance.”8
8 See Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1986), 345.
Kevin W. Irwin, What We Have Done, What We Have Failed to Do: Assessing the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II (New York; Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2013), 15.
Robert Taft, S.J., describes the early Christian experience this way:
Christians by faith had the supreme joy of knowing that they lived a new life in Christ, a life of love shared with all of the same faith. What could have been more normal, then, than for those who were able to gather at daybreak and to turn the first thoughts of the day to this mystery of their salvation and to praise and glorify God for it? And at the close of the day they came together again to ask forgiveness for the failings of the day and to praise God once more for His mighty deeds. In this way the natural rhythm of time was turned into a hymn of praise to God and a proclamation before the world of faith in His salvation in Christ.2
2 Robert Taft, S. J., “Thanksgiving for the Light: Toward a Theology of Vespers,” Diakonia 13 (1978): 43–4.
Leonel L. Mitchell, Praying Shapes Believing: A Theological Commentary on The Book of Common Prayer (New York; Harrisburg, PA; Denver: Morehouse Publishing, 1985), 36.
Liturgy: A Work of the Church in Robert Webber, Twenty Centuries of Christian Worship, vol. 2, The Complete Library of Christian Worship is, if I am not mistaken, an article that is a 2 page extract from The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West. I did not want to quote such a large piece. but thought I would acknowledge it's existence.
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux in perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace.
Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor...
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MJ? Life so sucks sometimes. But we know in Christ this is not our final home. Sorry to here about Fr. Taft.
mm.