A Bishop celebrating the Divine Liturgy in a Greek Catholic Church in Prešov, eastern Slovakia.

A liturgy is the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions. The word may refer to an elaborate formal ritual such as the Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy and Catholic Mass, or a daily activity such as the Muslim salat (see Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, p. 582–3) and Jewish services. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy is a communal response to the sacred through activity reflecting praise, thanksgiving, supplication, or repentance. Ritualization may be associated with life events such as birth, coming of age, marriage, and death. It thus forms the basis for establishing a relationship with a divine agency, as well as with other participants in the liturgy. Methods of dress, preparation of food, application of cosmetics or other hygienic practices are all considered liturgical activities. Repetitive formal rites, in some ways similar to liturgies, are natural and common in all human activities such as organized sports venues.

[edit] Christianity

Frequently in Christianity a distinction is made between "liturgical" and "non-liturgical" churches based on the elaboration and/or antiquity of the worship, but this obscures the universality of public worship as a religious phenomenon.^[1] Thus, even the open or waiting worship of Quakers is liturgical, since the waiting itself until the spirit moves individuals to speak is a prescribed form of Quaker worship, sometimes referred to as "the liturgy of silence."^[2] Typically in Christianity, however, the term "the liturgy" normally refers to a standardized order of events observed during a religious service, be it a sacramental service or a service of public prayer.

[edit] See also

• Book of Common Prayer
• Divine Liturgy
• Eucharist
• Lutheran Book of Worship
• Mass
• Roman Rite
• Sacrament

[edit] References

• Bowker, John, ed. (1997) Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-213965-7.
• Jones, Cheslyn, Geoffrey Wainwright, and Edward Yarnold, eds. (1978) The Study of Liturgy. London: SPCK.
• "What Do Quakers Believe?". Quaker Information Center, Philadelphia, PA, 2004.

[edit] External links

• Catholic Encyclopedia article
• Orthodox Tradition and the Liturgy
• Jewish Encyclopedia: Liturgy
• Contemporary Christian Liturgy Website History, theory, practice
• The Indult Tridentine Rite of Mass
• Work of the People
• Liturgical Studies-Korean Online Community
• Dictionary of Catholic Liturgy