35th Annual Conference

"You are Invited"...

This year's conference will examine the Lord’s Day from the specific question of how cult and culture interact. What does it mean to take seriously the obligation to keep the Lord’s Day? What challenges does cult present to culture, and what opportunity does culture present to cult? Aidan Kavanagh wrote in On Liturgical Theology that "Christians rapidly gave the Lord’s Day, Sunday, a definite structure which became more detailed and elaborate as the lives of believers organized themselves in communal form…" He is saying that Sunday has become a Rite. A liturgical act "is the convergence, meeting, entwining, and melding of Christian worship and belief," and this is a thing called rite. "Rite can be called a whole style of Christian living …"

This June we want to look at Sunday in light of cult and culture. Sunday is not just the day on which Christians do something, Sunday is something Christians do. Sunday is creative of Christian culture.

Toward that end, our plenary addresses will draw on the five dimensions of the Lord’s Day described in John Paul II's 1998 apostolic letter, Dies Domini. Each of these headings can be treated as a starting point for considering how keeping the Lord's Day implies a stance vis-à-vis elements of contemporary culture:

Dies Domini - The Celebration of the Creator's Work

Dies Christi - The Day of the Risen Lord and of the Gift of the Holy Spirit

Dies Ecclesiae - The Eucharistic Assembly: Heart of Sunday

Dies Hominis - Sunday: Day of Joy, Rest and Solidarity

Dies Dierum - Sunday: the Primordial Feast, Revealing the Meaning of Time

You are warmly invited to attend!