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Franciscan at Home

Forming those who form others

Helping Our Students Worship

Fr. Stravinskas argues that young people today are looking for a form of worship that is ennobling and uplifting, based on traditional forms of liturgy.

We hear a great deal today about ‘culture’: the youth culture, the culture of life, theculture of death, the anti-culture. And so, I would like to begin my reflections by demonstrating the connection between culture and worship. As a die-hard Latin teacher, I want to establish the etymological linkage. The word cultura (culture) comes from the word cultus (cult, as in ‘worship’). To enter into a language is to enter into the mindset of a people.

Thus, one can say that for the ancient Romans, ‘culture’ was rooted in ‘cult’ or worship. We can smirk at the Greeks and Romans of old with their thousand little gods and goddesses inhabiting the Pantheon but, for all that, they still lived within a transcendental horizon. In other words, the individual human being was answerable to a higher and ultimate authority. And within that horizon, those peoples forged impressive cultures. Similarly, within the Christian scheme of things, we find that what historians have dubbed ‘TheAge of Faith’– the high middle ages – produced a nearly unimaginable font of literature, art, music and architecture – unrivaled to this very moment.

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The Very Reverend Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S. T.D., founded The Catholic Answer in 1987, editing that periodical for seventeen years.  In 2004, he founded The Catholic Response. He is the author of thirty-six books and more than 600 articles.  He is also the founder and superior of the Priestly Society of the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, a clerical association of the faithful, committed to Catholic education, liturgical renewal and the new evangelization.  Father Stravinskas is also the executive director of the Catholic Education Foundation, an organization providing financial assistance to Catholic high school students and serving as a resource for heightening the Catholic identity of Catholic secondary schools. This article is based on an address given to the religion department chairmen of the high schools of the Archdiocese of New York at Cabrini High School in Manhattan on 18 November 2009.

This article is from The Sower and may be copied for catechetical purposes only. It may not be reprinted in another published work without the permission of Maryvale Institute. Contact [email protected]

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