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By Joanna Kozakiewicz
Christian liturgy has developed over time and continents. Initially influenced by Jewish rituals and Greco-Roman culture, the liturgy has developed non-linearly across churches throughout the world. Today, liturgy continues to form and be formed by individual communities of Christians.
Fr. Erik Sorensen, SJ, is the Associate provincial assistant for religious life and liturgy for the Jesuits of Canada. In this new role, created a year and a half ago under Fr. Jeffrey S. Burwell, SJ, he helps focus on matters pertaining to the celebration of the liturgy across the province, in its works and communities. In this article, he discusses the challenges and opportunities within his sector.
What does your role entail as the Associate Provincial Assistant for Religious Life and liturgy?
My role is to help the province focus on matters pertaining to the celebration of the liturgy, whether it is in our works or in our communities. I also help by paying attention to details that promote a robust and healthy liturgical life in the province.
For instance, I help produce the liturgical calendar for the year, and I also consult more broadly on questions that arise about the liturgy. As Master of Ceremonies, I help to organize the annual presbyteral ordinations and the Saint Ignatius Day celebration — essentially all major provincial liturgies.
Where do we currently stand in this sector within the Jesuit Province, particularly in relation to the Jesuits’ mission?
We can give more emphasis to the role that liturgy plays within the province thanks to the creation of this position. Liturgy is one of the places where we encounter God in a very specific and concrete way. Reflecting on how we celebrate liturgy in a way adapted to our time, place, and circumstances helps both Jesuits and those we serve to encounter God.
Within the Jesuit mission, liturgy becomes one way of helping people encounter God. Therefore, investing time and attention in developing beautiful celebrations that respond to the signs of the times is a practical way of engaging with people.
How do we adapt liturgy to a particular situation?
For instance, the liturgy of Fr. Brian Strassburger, SJ, who is celebrating at the US–Mexico border, will look very different from our ordination liturgy. Likewise, the liturgy at a cathedral is going to look very different from a liturgy in one of our parishes.
We adapt the liturgy to these individual circumstances in a way that communicates to the assembly what is actually happening in the liturgy.
And it also helps to put the liturgy at the centre of the life of every Jesuit, which is one of the cornerstones of our daily life and of our prayers.
What about the UAPs?
I see how my role relates to the UAPs in terms of adaptability, whether we are focusing on youth, or the environment, or marginalized communities. How does liturgy help us serve these groups, and how does our prayer raise our awareness of their reality?
For example, how does our liturgy remind us of our need to care for creation? Recently, the Vatican produced the texts for a Mass for the care of creation. Part of my role would then be, once those texts have been approved for use, to send them out to our network and to help promote that resource.
Liturgy is a way of forming us to be engaged in those UAPs, and the same goes for the care for the marginalized and the work with youth. We need to look at liturgy in those contexts.
For example, I do a lot of personal work and liturgy with Indigenous people. How is our liturgy with Indigenous people attentive to their culture and their way of life? We reflect on those practices and what they teach us.
The same goes with youth: How do we celebrate liturgy in our schools so that students feel engaged and able to take ownership of the celebrations? So that they are not simply watching us celebrate Mass for them, but are active participants.
We can use the liturgy to form people to engage more actively in the UAPs. And then, when we are working with groups targeted by the UAPs, we can ask ourselves how liturgy serves that community in a very practical way that reflects where they are.
What is your perspective on the future of this sector?
It is interesting because liturgy — the celebration of Mass, or liturgy more broadly — is a place where the polarization of opinions is felt very sharply. There is a large divide around how we celebrate Mass. For example, should we be celebrating it in Latin?
I see the future of the sector in this role as a way of forming Jesuits to respond to that polemic — to be able to meet people where they are in the liturgy as well.
Regardless of the Jesuits’ personal preferences for a particular liturgical style, we need to be able to enter any celebration of the liturgy as a way of opening a dialogue with the people we are serving.
My perspective on the future is centred on formation; it is essential to understand the “why” of the liturgy more deeply. We need to provide deeper formation around the liturgy for Jesuits and the people with whom we work.
What elements of the liturgy can be adapted?
Liturgy includes the liturgy of the hours or any sacramental celebration of baptism, but if you want to think about the celebration of the Mass, there are very specific things that are fixed, like the text of the Eucharistic prayers. However, there is also a great diversity of prayers available that are rarely used. Part of adaptability is familiarity with the breadth of available resources.
There are also parts of the liturgy that can be more flexible, for example, in:
- the music,
- the language (e.g., proclaiming a reading or the Our Father in an Indigenous language),
- the choice of certain celebrations (e.g., Saint Kateri Tekakwitha’s feast is significant in Indigenous communities),
- the prayers of the faithful, which can be tailored to the community.
These are what we call liturgical soft spots — places where we have freedom to expand or contract and adapt. It is about finding ways toward liturgical inculturation: how the liturgy and the culture of the congregation enter a fruitful dialogue.
What are the challenges in this sector?
One of the biggest challenges is working in places where there is a rigidity around the idea that liturgy must be this way and no other way. And that is across the spectrum.
The challenge is helping people understand that there is not one right way. Yes, there are non-negotiables, things we cannot change. But saying, for example, that only the pre–Vatican II Latin Mass is valid or, on the other extreme, that any celebration of a Latin liturgy should be suppressed are both rigid positions that deny other people’s liturgical experience.
We need to meet each community with what will nourish them best — meeting them where they are — and helping break down tensions so people can see the beauty of the liturgy, however it is celebrated. Liturgy is beautiful in itself and needs to reflect the community participating in it.
