Toward Ritual Transformation: Remembering Robert Hovda

In Toward Ritual Transformation renowned liturgist Robert W. Hovda, and other distinguished liturgists who have followed his lead, challenge the Church to continue a pilgrimage toward beauty and justice, the inseparable components of Christian liturgy and life. Father Hovda's bishop once accused him of having a "messiah complex." Hovda replied: "I thought we were supposed to." Hovda's "messiah complex" was the idea of a church "never finalized or finished, never an accomplished fact but always on pilgrimage, seeking, growing, and helping the world grow toward what Scripture calls the reign of God. This faith community comes to realize gradually, with the help of the Word of God and the signs of the times, that its ministry in the world is the liberation and unification of the human race, because the God of the Bible is a God who is living, whose creative work is ongoing, and whose call beckons us always to move beyond where we are at any given moment." Essays and their contributors are "A Tree Planted by a Stream, " by Gabe Huck; "The Sacred: Silence and Song, " by Robert W. Hovda; "Liturgical Prayer: Twenty-five Years of Change, " by Virgil C. Funk; "Ritual Transformations: Principles, Patterns, and People, " by J. Michael Joncas; "Being Beautiful, Being Just, " by Nathan D. Mitchell; "The Transforming Power of Music: Tales of Transformation, " by James Savage; and "All at Once the Music Changed, " by John Foley.