Calendar: Christ 's Time for the Church - Laurence Stookey

Laurence Hull Stookey’s book, Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church, seems to be written for a primarily Protestant readership. There are many clues to this, but perhaps none more telling than the Appendix subtitled This Book in a Nutshell. As I go through each of the pairs of ideas, I find that my upbringing and training has concentrated more on the right column (the column Stookey invites readers to consider as an alternative) rather than the ...
...think about how the ‘assumed teaching’ came about in some traditions, but not my own. Certainly there are historical, developmental reasons for this. As evidenced in class discussions, there can still be a great deal of resistance to ideas such as lectionary cycles or liturgical years. These things seem natural to me, however, and would be greatly missed if not present.

Stookey does not delve too deeply into the historical minutiae ... more

Laurence Hull Stookey’s book, Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church, seems to be written for a primarily Protestant readership. There are many clues to this, but perhaps none more telling than the Appendix subtitled This Book in a Nutshell. As I go through each of the pairs of ideas, I find that my upbringing and training has concentrated more on the right column (the column Stookey invites readers to consider as an alternative) rather than the ‘assumed teaching’ column. Thus, one of my tasks was to think about how the ‘assumed teaching’ came about in some traditions, but not my own. Certainly there are historical, developmental reasons for this. As evidenced in class discussions, there can still be a great deal of resistance to ideas such as lectionary cycles or liturgical years. These things seem natural to me, however, and would be greatly missed if not present.

Stookey does not delve too deeply into the historical minutiae of how different denominations’ calendrical cycles were shaped. While he does discuss differences in catholic, orthodox and protestant practices at times, these are relatively few in number, and even more rarely presented as part of a developmental line. Does this indicate a anti-catholic bias in the author (which I consider unlikely) or in the potential readership? (Stookey’s own preferences sneak into the text occasionally, such on page 143, where rather than stating that Charles Wesley has a separate day from John Wesley in the United Methodist sanctoral cycle, he states that ‘Charles is rightly given a separate commemoration…’ [emphasis added to the word 'rightly'].)

The overall theological framework for the discussion of the calendar is set out in the first chapter. ‘As Christians, we ought continuously to be aware that we live at the intersection of time and eternity.’ (p. 17) How this is lived out involves forging a connection with a creator who is always active in creation, not a remote observer. How this is enacted liturgically involves anamnesis and prolepsis. In my Anglo-Catholic tradition, the idea of anamnesis, that ‘the liturgical observance of past events somehow brings them into our own time’, is strongly maintained in the way the Eucharist is understood as being the real presence, and that the communion service is not simply a memorial or even a re-enactment, but an ongoing participation. (p. 29) The same holds true for prolepsis, that the future is already made real for us in liturgy. ‘Liturgical anamnesis and prolepsis constitute a primary means by which we maintain contact with past and future.’ (p. 33)

Stookey talks about the yearly cycle, beginning with a discussion the week and of Sunday. Stookey mentions the daily office, but fails to speak of it as a possible practice for those outside of cathedral/monastic settings. Stookey presents Sunday as

‘…the first day of the week and the eighth day of the week are the same day. Yet even in that there is meaning: The creation of the cosmos (which God began on Day One) and the new creation are not antagonistic to each other; we do not have to leave the physical world in order to participate in the new creation in Christ…’ (p. 41)

Stookey argues for a consideration of the recovery of the Hebraic way of reckoning days (with the day beginning at sundown, rather than sunrise, or some point in the middle of the night), particularly for Sunday.

‘Such a reordering of Christian thinking, contrary as it is to prevailing cultural customs, could be the beginning of a new way of seeing the whole of Christian faith as a reinterpretation of commonly accepted ideas and values.’ (p. 48)

Could Saturday be seen in terms of being a true Sabbath, and Sunday, beginning the sundown before, as a true day of the Lord? At my monastery in Michigan, Sunday is considered to have begun at sundown Saturday. The evening meal is thus somewhat grander in fare, and things become more relaxed as the community prepares to celebrate the Lord’s day the next day. This is easier to accomplish in a monastic community than in a parish or even within a family practice, but is worthy of consideration in such settings.

Stookey’s framework of the film, Places in the Heart, and his use of hymn texts throughout help shape and support his argument that liturgy is a pattern in which we are connected, past, present and future, to the community and to the divine. ‘Events that occurred only once nevertheless become contemporaneous with us because the Risen One holds all time in unity.’ (pp. 31-32) This connection can only be lived out in connection with the community (however this may get refined in actual practice), the communion of saints past, present and yet to come.

This is a useful book for Catholics and Protestants to gain a basic understanding of liturgical cycles and calendars 

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