More on the upcoming liturgy conference at Oxford.

[Please help promote this worthy retreat-course.]

I want to draw your attention, if you are not already aware of it and might know someone who would be interested, to an event taking place in Holy Week/Easter 2007 at St Benet's Hall, Oxford.

COSMIC LITURGY is a prayerful educational and spiritual retreat devoted to the meaning of the Liturgy. We will draw our inspiration from Pope Benedict's book The Spirit of the Liturgy, together with the writings of Romano Guardini, Jean Corbon and Maximus the Confessor (together with the Eastern Christian traditions), with the help of a distinguished group of priests and teachers. We hope that out of this retreat, with the experience of a beautiful Easter Liturgy, will come refreshment of spirit and a renewed energy to serve God in the world.

If you are able to draw attention to this retreat in your parish or diocese, or through your community, or support it in some other way, we would be grateful. Please let me know if you could use some flyers for distribution to interested people. Further information can also be obtained from our web-site, www.ressource.co.uk.

You will also find there information on other courses during the year, including practical Art classes for those who want to learn Iconography or naturalistic drawing, faith and culture visits to art galleries, a summer school at St Benet's on Shakespeare and the Renaissance ('Brave New World', with Clare Asquith and Prof. Edoardo Rialti), and a pilgrimage to the Recusant houses of England with Fr Peter Milward SJ. Please let me know if you want me to send further information on any of these events.

Stratford Caldecott
Editor, Second Spring (www.secondspring.co.uk)
6a King St, Oxford OX2 6DF
Tel. 01865 552 154

PROVISIONAL SCHEDULE for 'COSMIC LITURGY'
(For details of speakers see www.ressource.co.uk/sem/coslit.htm)

Tues 3rd April 2007

3 pm: Orientation by Stratford Caldecott and David Clayton
3.30: Introduction to Chant
Eve: Talk by Fr Leo Chamberlain OSB, Master of St Benet's

Wednesday 4th

10.30 am: Vivian Boland OP, Spiritual Warfare in Holy Week
3 pm: David Clayton on Icons of Easter: Imagination in Prayer
Vespers at Blackfriars
Eve: Penance service and confessions

Thursday 5th

9.30 am: Tenebrae at Blackfriars
10.30: David Fagerberg, The Eucharist: Meaning and Centre of Time
3 pm: Richard J. Ounsworth OP, The Mystery of the Priesthood
Stratford and Leonie Caldecott, Active Participation in the Sacrifice
Maundy Thursday Mass at the Oratory

Good Friday 6th

9.30 am: Tenebrae at Blackfriars
10.30: David Fagerberg, The Sacrifice of the Mass
12 noon: Stations of the Cross
pm: Liturgy of the Passion at the Oratory
Sacrament of Reconciliation available

Holy Saturday 7th

9.30 am: Tenebrae at Blackfriars
10.30: Discussion of Adrienne von Speyr and the Descent into Hell
3 pm: David Fagerberg, Resurrection and Deification
Easter Vigil Mass at the Oxford Oratory

Easter Day 8th

am: Easter Morning Liturgy
pm: tbd
Later: Benediction service at Oxford Oratory
Easter Monday 9th
10 am: Connie Lasher, Romano Guardini and the Liturgy
3 pm: Alcuin Reid, The Post-Conciliar Reform and Liturgical Tradition
Tuesday 10th
10 am: Adrian Walker, The Orthodox Mystagogy of Maximus
3 pm: Adrian Walker, Maximus and The Spirit of the Liturgy by Benedict XVI
Wed 11th
10 am: Adrian Walker, Maximus and The Wellspring of Worship by Corbon
3 pm: Stratford Caldecott, Liturgy, Kingdom, Cosmos: Mystagogy in the 21st Century

Thursday 12th

am: tbd and departures

FEES

Total for ten days, accommodation and meals at St Benet's Hall: £950. Students with ID: £600.
En suite rooms and standard rooms are charged at the same rate, on a first-come first-served basis. However it may be possible to reserve an en suite room for an extra charge of £15.
We can offer a reduction £5 per day on rooms of any type to those who share their accommodation.

BACKGROUND

In 1996 the Centre for Faith & Culture in Oxford organised a conference on the reform of the reform movement within Catholic Liturgy. Its closing statement summarising the aims of that movement, the "Oxford Declaration on Liturgy", was widely quoted - including by the then Cardinal Ratzinger - as a sign of hope (www.secondspring.co.uk/spirituality/declaration.htm). The conference gave birth to a book, Beyond the Prosaic (T&T Clark, 1998). Since that time, of course, the movement to restore genuine liturgical sensibility, spirituality and form has gathered momentum and authority. Through the present retreat, we want to understand more deeply:

· The vertical dimension of the Liturgy (and the Church herself) as containing at its heart the sacrifice of the Cross, joining earth to heaven.

· The sacrificial dimension of the sacred Liturgy, tied to a greater sense of the meaning of Holy Eucharist, the Christian priesthood, etc.

· The eschatological dimension of the Liturgy, as a making present of eternity in time, an actual drawing up of the mundane into the realm of the divine.

· The relationship of the external forms of the Liturgy to catechesis, to interior formation and disposition. The place of beauty, structure, symbol, cosmic orientation, language and music in divine worship.

· The Liturgy as something received, something objective, and not something we are can engineer. The essential role of tradition as a vehicle for the Holy Spirit and the organic development of liturgy and community.

· The intrinsic relationship of contemplation to action, of love for God to love for neighbour, in the Liturgy itself. The nuptial anthropology that makes Mass the consummation of a wedding between divine and human nature.