November 9, 2016

Baptizing the Dead or Burying the Baptized: The Need to Recover the Link Between Baptism and the Funeral

by  Rebecca Spellacy,B.A, M.A, ThD, ABD. Trinity College.

The Episcopal Church’s funeral liturgy wants to locate the funeral in the context of Easter, of the Paschal Mystery. While much can and has been made of that link, there is another, equally as important link that is made in the liturgy, that is the link between the baptism of a Christian and their funeral. This is based on the claim that the body of the departed has worth because of baptism. This presentation will argue that the way to address this situation is to highlight the liturgical link between baptism, the Paschal Mystery, and the funeral and to view them as a liturgical triplet.

April 1, 2016

The Transept Doors of the St. Michael’s Cathedral Restoration Project 

by Farhad Nargol-O'Neill, sculptor

 

The Ontario born and raised sculptor, Farhad Nargol-ONeill, has been commissioned to create two Marian double doors, carved in bas-relief and cast in bronze, as part of the restoration of St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto. Nargol-O’Neill was born in Unionville, Ontario, grew up in the York Catholic school system, studied music at York University, and ran a successful sculpting studio in Belfast, Ireland for ten years before returning to Canada. His work has been shown in exhibitions around the world; his commissions can be found in private, public and diplomatic collections. Since 2014 he has been creating twenty bronze Rosary-themed panels for two monumental transept doors, “The Joyful and Glorious Mysteries” and “The Sorrowful and Luminous Mysteries.” 

 

March 3, 2016

The Grammar of Silence in Liturgical Language

by  Rev. Dr. Eileen Scully, Director of Faith, Worship and Ministry for the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC).

The Rev. Dr. Eileen Scully (PhD, St. Michael’s College, 1993) is Director of Faith, Worship and Ministry for the Anglican Church of Canada [ACC]. She has also served as Chair of the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation, Associate General Secretary for Faith and Witness with the Canadian Council of Churches, with numerous liturgical and theological bodies both in the ACC and the worldwide Anglican Communion, and has lectured widely in Church History, Theology, and Christian Education and Formation.

November 25, 2015

Play, Symbol & Festival in Worship Design

by  Dr. David H. Pereyra,  OCAD University & St Michael’s College University

The German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer throughout his work asserts, “The experience of the beautiful in art is a form of knowing.” To confirm this argument, he works on three basic concepts of his philosophical aesthetics: “play,” “symbol,” and “festival.” In this presentation Pereyra will explore the application of those concepts to the design of Christian churches. Sacred spaces are capable of moving and transforming us because of their particular language of beauty. He will argue that by designing a sacred space with Gadamer’s concepts of play, symbol, and festival in mind, we can enhance our knowledge of beauty through the art of liturgical design. He will explain Gadamer’s three concepts, describe how they can applied to the design of Christian churches, and consider their potential effects. The reality of beauty, as a transcendental quality of being, invites one to enter the world of contemplation wherein beauty gives herself freely and without personal regard. The beauty of the liturgy and the place where it is celebrated must converge in an experience that transforms worship space into Sacred Space.

David H. Pereyra is a seasonal professor at the Faculty of Theology at the University of St Michael’s College in Toronto, and the coordinator of the Liturgy Seminar, at the Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto. He has a degree as an architect at the University of Buenos Aires, a Master in Arts in Theology, and a degree of Doctor in Philosophy of Theology, both at the University of St Michael’s College. For several years he has been a lecturer of Church Design at the Catholic University in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has presented his work in international conferences in Argentina, Austria, Belgium and United States. Right now, he works at the Inclusive Design Research Centre, at Ontario College of Art University in Toronto (OCAD U). His research examines inclusivity and accessibility throughout welcoming space.

October 21, 2015

Music, servant of text? Liturgical deliberations at Vatican II

by Dr. Michael O’Connor. Senior Lecturer. St. Michael’s College University

Michael O’Connor is a Senior Lecturer at the University of St. Michael’s College. His areas of expertise include Cajetan, music and liturgy. Dr. O’Connor’s academic scholarship and practical music-making overlap in the theory and practice of liturgical music.  He has recently published, "The Liturgical Use of the Organ in the Sixteenth Century: the Judgments of Cajetan and the Dominican Order" and has a monograph due out next year on Cajetan's biblical exegesis. In addition to teaching in the college undergraduate programs at St. Michael’s he runs a weekly Singing Club on campus and directs the USMC Schola Cantorum. Dr. O’Connor is a board member of the Royal School of Church Music Canada.

In the context of Christian worship, music is often said to be a "servant of the text" (or a "servant of the rite"). This is found across denominations and centuries -- e.g., among Calvinist reformers and twentieth century popes. This presentation will first of all consider the implications of this assertion and then the surprising decision, at the Second Vatican Council, to omit it from the Constitution on the Liturgy. The presentation will conclude with some reflections on the consequences of this decision, which remain to be worked out in practice.

March 20, 2015

Grace Art Glass Treasures of Toronto: a FREE tour of Art Glass 

Led by Sarah Hall, RCA

 

Sarah Hall was born in Dundas, Ontario, Canada in 1951.  She studied in the Architectural Glass Department at Swansea College of Art in Wales, UK and followed this with an internship with Lawrence Lee, master at the Royal College of Art in London.  After completing studies in the U.K., Sarah spent a year in Jerusalem studying Middle Eastern techniques in glass. Her work has received numerous awards for outstanding liturgical art. The American Institute of Architects has awarded Sarah several ‘Honor Awards’ in light of her challenging and creative installations within contemporary church architecture.

 
In 2002, Sarah was elected into membership of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art.  Her exceptional contribution to the built environment was honored in 1997 by the Ontario Association of Architects “Allied Arts Award.” In 2005, Sarah received a Chalmers Arts Fellowship to research and integrate photovoltaic technology (solar energy collection cells) into her art glass installations. This unique fusion of art and technology is the first of its’ kind in North America.Sarah has established her studio in Toronto and keeps a busy schedule with lectures, exhibitions and projects which span a wide range of communities and architectural settings.

February 25, 2015

The Hegelianized Calvin:
Re-Examining Calvin’s Place in the Separation of Art from Religion

by Dr. Rebekah Smick. Associate Professor of Philosophy of the Arts and Culture
Institute for Christian Studies in the Toronto School of Theology. BA (Brandeis University). MA (Columbia University). PhD (University of Toronto)

Rebekah Smick specializes in pre-Kantian art theory and criticism, in particular the relation of early modern visual arts theory to poetics and rhetoric in the Western tradition. Her research and teaching investigate the aesthetic values of beauty and grace in the early modern period, the link between knowledge and imagination, the aesthetic function of metaphor, and the place of compassion. She is especially interested in delineating the connections made during the early modern period between aesthetics, metaphysics, ethics, and theology. She is author of Antiquity and Its Interpreters (Cambridge UP, 2000) and is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà as Image in the Theology and Aesthetics of Compassion.

 

January 28, 2015

Grace in a Place

The Sacramental Facilitation of Physical Access for People with Disabilities in Ecclesial Spaces

by Michael Alexander Walker, M.T.S., Th.M. Th.D. Candidate (Knox College)

Christians with disabilities often find ecclesial spaces inhospitable, because such places are created with only normalized body-types in mind. For instance, steps and hard surfaces can hinder or constrain people with mobility issues, while hymnals lack Braille and large print for those who are blind or visually impaired. Nonetheless, as a Christian constructive theologian with cerebral palsy, I assert that these physical conditions can change. Baptism and Holy Communion can facilitate dialogue about physical access to ecclesial spaces for people with disabilities: they allow Christians with various levels of ability, conversing passionately across difference, to explore the capacities of people with disabilities to receive dignity from the spaces that we inhabit, and to give dignity back to our communities using our gifts.

 

The sacraments can create this space for material access. Because baptism represents human equality in Christ (see Galatians 3:28), it can attest the importance of universal-design principles for church sanctuaries. All people, particularly people with disabilities, possess the right to buildings with ramps, non-slip flooring, and adequate lighting. Furthermore, Holy Communion entails vulnerability to and solidarity with the plight of people who are oppressed, those who suffer unduly in the world. By pointing out the needs of those who hunger or lack clothing or shelter, Communion demands that Christians provide all users of their spaces with satisfactory food, heat, and light. God’s love can flourish in accessible ecclesial spaces where people with and without disabilities can feel communal and transformative acceptance. 

 

November 19, 2014

Prayer, Praise and Postcoloniality: Rethinking Liturgy in Canada

by Dr Sarah Travis (Knox College)

Postcolonial theories have been brought into dialogue with many fields in recent decades, including biblical and theological studies.  Even more recently, liturgical scholars have begun to wonder about the relationship among postcolonial theories and worship practice.  This seminar will ponder this relationship with specific reference to the contemporary Canadian context.  What critiques and cautions are brought into the space of worship from a postcolonial perspective?  In what sense does liturgy interact with key postcolonial themes such as identity and hybridity?                                    
 
Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis is Minister-in-Residence at Knox College, where she also teaches courses in the areas of preaching and worship.  Her forthcoming book will be published by Wipf and Stock and is entitled Decolonizing Preaching: The Pulpit as Postcolonial Space.

October 29, 2014

Singing, Prayer, and Sacrifice
The Neo-Platonic Revival of Musica Humana
in the Swiss Reformation

by Dr Hyun-Ah Kim (Trinity College)

Dr Hyun-Ah Kim is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies in the University of Toronto and teaches at Trinity College in U. of T. and the Toronto School of Theology.

September 17, 2014

From Vancouver to Busan: Promises and Challenges in Ecumenical Worship since 1983

by Dr. Andrew Donaldson (Consultant in Worship and Spirituality, WCC, Geneva)

The worship that took place in the tent at the 6th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver in 1983 opened up fresh possibilities in ecumenical liturgy and global song. This presentation will sketch some key turning points in the use of global song in North America since 1983. We will also consider some of the changes – the new possibilities and the fresh challenges –  that global song has brought to ecumenical liturgies.

Dr. Andrew Donaldson, Worship Consultant to the World Council of Churches
Co-editor of The Book of Praise for the Presbyterian
 Church in Canada and a past-president of the Hymn Society in the U.S. and Canada, Andrew received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree
 from Knox College in 2007 for his work in congregational song.

 Andrew works with the World Council of Churches in the area of worship and spirituality. Last year, along with Dr. Lim Swee Hong, he helped create and facilitate daily worship at the world-wide gathering of the WCC in Busan, Republic of Korea.

February 28, 2014

Let us sit and tell sad stories of the deaths of Kings: How to Bury a Medieval King in 2014

by Douglas Cowling MA - Musical Dramaturge for the Tallis Choir

*Special TST Liturgy Seminar and Concert  in collaboration with the Tallis Choir of Toronto

The discovery of the bones of Richard III in 2012 unleashed a flood of interest in medieval funerary customs and a spirited public debate about where and how the much-maligned king should be reinterred. As part of the historical commemoration of the event, the Tallis Choir is recreating a requiem mass as it may have been celebrated by Richard III's sister, Margaret of Burgundy. He may have been buried secretly in England, but he had a royal funeral in Burgundy. The polyphonic requiem was invented by the Franco-Flemish school of Ockhegem and Brumel and gives students of the liturgy an opportunity to hear the lavish obsession with death that seems to overwhelm the late 15th century.  

Douglas Cowling is a writer, musician and educator in Toronto who has written on the relationship between medieval liturgy and English religious drama. He is the co-author of Sharing the Banquet: Liturgical Renewal in Your Parish and a contributor to Let Us Keep the Feast. He edited two collections of global music for liturgical use in Let Us Make Music Together, and his own music has been published by CHC in the USA. His children’s symphony show, Tchaikovsky Discovers America was recently performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. He is Director of Music at St. Philip’s Church, Etobicoke, and musical dramaturge for the Tallis Choir of Toronto.

Concert: “Requiem for Richard III” with the Tallis Choir of Toronto, Saturday, March 1, 2014 7:30pm, St. Patrick’s Church, 141 McCaul St (north of Dundas). For more information see:

http://www.tallischoir.com/currentseason.html#RichardIII   

February 19, 2014

May The Angels Lead You Into Paradise: Medieval Liturgical Expressions of Eschatology

by Rebecca Spellacy (Trinity College)

*A joint session with the TST Patristics Seminar. 

“Who I was, you are. Who I am, you will be. Pray for me”. This Medieval admonishment from the dead to the living reminds all who would read it of two very important things, the inevitability of death, and the necessity of prayer for the departed.  This presentation will concern itself with the liturgical prayers around the death of a Christian in the Middle Ages and how the prayers for the dead reflected the theology, both popular and established, of the day. It will demonstrate a development and continuity of the related liturgies in relationship to the eschatology of the time that still allowed for local adaption. Ultimately, it will attempt to show that the prayers for the dead exhibit a deep ecclesial and personal response to an eschatology that could at times prove both hopeful and hopeless.

January 29, 2014

The Eucharistic Celebration of the Didache: A Jewish Apocalyptic Messianic Banquet

by Rev. Dr. Harold E. Shepherd (Anglican Archdioceses of Toronto)

A joint session with the TST Patristics Seminar.

November 20, 2013

The unforgiven: Judaism’s struggle with forgiveness and the implications for liturgical expression

by Rabbi Steven Saltzman (Adath Israel Congregation)

Unlike Christianity and Islam, religions with well defined notions of forgiveness, Judaism lives with an excruciating ambivalence about the real possibilities of forgiveness. The very definition of forgiveness is debated in biblical and rabbinic sources and Jews today in North America struggle to understand the real possibilities of forgiveness both in daily life and in national terms especially with regard to the Shoah. This tension between forgiveness as a real possibility on the one hand and forgiveness as an impossibility on the other hand informs our liturgy which on a daily basis avoids the polar extremes in favour of a practical approach to forgiveness.  We will explore some of these issues in the seminar.
 
Rabbi Steven Saltzman serves as a Senior Rabbi of Adath Israel Congregation. He holds a doctorate in Hebrew literature from JTS and is a Fellow at both the Shalom Hartman Institute and Harvard Divinity School.

October 30, 2013

Women and the Diaconate

Biblical & Patristic Perspective

by Rev. Marcos Ramos O.P., B.A., M.A., M.Div, Th.M., Ph.D. cand. (St. Michael’s College) and Ramana Konantz M.T.S. cand. (St. Michael’s College)

The issue of the ordination of women as deacons has again come to the fore in the theological and liturgical reflection of several Christian denominations. For this conversation to be fruitful, it is necessary to be mindful of the history of the Christian tradition and the undeniable evidence of the existence of women deacons in both the Eastern and Western churches until the twelfth century. This presentation will give a brief overview of scriptural references to women deacons, the existence, ministry and ordination rites of women deacons in the Eastern and Western Churches, and reasons for the disappearance of the official ministry of women deacons in the Middle Ages.

Rev. Marcos RAmos, BA, MA, M.Div, is a doctoral candidate at St. Michael's College and Dominican Friar, superior of the Dominicans’ Aquinas House in Toronto. 
Ramand Konataz. is M.T.S. candidate at St. Michael's College. Ramana did her thesis on women and the diaconate, specifically on the figure of the "apostle" Junia in Romans.

October 2, 2013

The Flash Mob as Postmodern Ritual: Implications for Liturgy

by Rev. Jennifer Weetman, BA, MDiv, STM  (Doctoral Student in Homiletics, Emmanuel College)

Is ritual in postmodernity dead? Have examples of ritual been reduced to mere ritualized behavior, like the rush hour commute, or limited to explicitly religious ritual like liturgy? Does ritual itself have the ability to carry any weight, any depth of meaning and affective impact, in a secular postmodern context? And, if so, what can we learn from it that translates into faithful and effective liturgical ritual? Join us, as we explore these questions (and more!) through the lens of the flash mob.

Rev. Jennifer Weetman, BA, MDiv, STM, is a doctoral student in homiletics at Emmanuel College and a Lutheran (ELCA) pastor. Following theological studies at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, she served congregations in New Jersey, Georgia and California. She was the winner of the national David H. C. Read Preacher/Scholar Award, and wrote her STM thesis on biblical hermeneutics, preaching, and the ways in which sermon audiences hear pericope texts in worship. 

March 13, 2013

The setting of Asian hymns in recent American hymnals by Swee Hong Lim

by Dr. Swee Hong Lim,  (Deer Park Assistant Professor of Sacred Music Director of Master of Sacred Music, Emmanuel College)

This examination of the place of Asian hymns in US-based hymnals published in the last few years will include a discussion of the trends of hymn selection and an exploration of implications, such as the relationship between the lingua franca of the United States and the ethnic language of the hymns, and the lack of representation of certain ethnic groups.