Book Review
Why go to Church? The Drama of the Eucharist
by Timothy Radcliffe OP
Published by Continuum £9.95 ISBN 978-08264-9956-1
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book for 2009 stands in a class by itself. This latest book from the pen of Timothy Radcliffe OP is unlikely to suffer the fate of so many Lent Books to be found as back numbers on bookshelves. The recent Master of the Dominican Order has published a full length study of the Eucharist, seen as drama, that with spiritual insight opens up many fresh vistas, and on almost every page these are illustrated by a wealth of memorable quotations from masters of the spiritual life.
Fr Radcliffe’s main thesis is that the Eucharist is capable of engaging our human existence and making it creatively meaningful within movement of its dramatic action, so that we are formed as people who have faith, hope and love, the theological virtues that are skilfully linked with the movement of the Eucharistic Rite, from Ministry of the Word to the Dismissal.
By listening to the Word of God, faith is enkindled and affirmed in the Creed; we then proceed to the second act of the drama, from the preparation of the gifts to the end of the Eucharistic Prayer and are renewed in a hope that culminates in love in Holy Communion, and then to be dismissed as signs of God’s love in the world. It is when one is caught up and engaged in what Fr Radcliffe describes as “the unobserved drama in the core of our humanity,” that “going to church” will not be a boring or pointless experience but “our duty and our joy”.
It will require more than one Lent to fully appreciate this extensive and penetrating study, and this reviewer would guess that it will become a classic.
Canon Terry Palmer, Candlemas 2009