Seasons of Celebration: Meditations on the Cycle of Liturgical Feasts by Thomas Merton (review)

92 Antiphon 13.1 (2009) primarily the result of changes in the manner of reception of Communion following the Second Vatican Council is a different question. One must beware, however, of drawing incorrect inferences (post hoc ergo propter hoc): changes in eucharistic praxis (reception of Communion standing and in the hand) are not necessarily the principal cause of this decline in understanding and reverence. One could equally point to a failure in catechesis and preaching rather than to the particular practices themselves as the culprit. Or, perhaps quite reasonably, it is a combination of both; after all, teaching and praxis do have reciprocal effects (witnessed in Prosper’s chestnut, Legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi ). However, one can find Catholic parishes in any number of places where Communion is received standing and in the hand and still with the utmost reverence, care, and awareness of the eucharistic mystery. Perhaps it is in these places where a catechetical breakdown has not occurred: communities where the wealth of the Church’s wisdom and reflection of the mystery of the Lord’s Body and Blood have been imparted to the faithful through right teaching and preaching, and cultivated liturgically with a profound reverence and devotion. If Schneider is correct, and a return to these earlier forms of reception is to be pursued, such a change in praxis alone will be insufficient to engender the reverence due the Lord’s Body and Blood if it is not undergirded with clear teaching and effective catechesis. Rev. Michael Heintz University of Notre Dame South Bend, IN Thomas Merton Seasons of Celebration: Meditations on the Cycle of Liturgical Feasts Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2009 To the person who approaches this book casually, say, picking it off the shelf at a popular bookstore chain, I can imagine the book having two strikes against it. I should like to overcome those twin causes of hesitancy, because I think this book is worth the read. The first hesitancy might be that it was originally published forty years ago, and contains essays older than that. In comparison to the rapid changes that liturgical practice has undergone in those four decades, not to mention the lightning-fast world of blogging, this book might look antique. It is the reprint of a collection of essays being done today by Ave Maria Press, and soon to appear (I read an advanced manuscript for the publisher), and no one is taking their hand to 93 Book Reviews updating the articles from their first appearance immediately before and immediately after Vatican II. To the person with his nose into the wind, sniffing for the next major shift in the liturgical scuffles, the age of the book makes it irrelevant. The second hesitancy might be that the author of these essays is the Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1914-68). The hypothetical shelf-browser mentioned above might wonder if it had been misfiled, for Merton’s name is associated with spirituality, mysticism, monasticism, poetry, social criticism, and a little Buddhist dialogue at the end of his life. Could Merton’s 15 essays on topics such as liturgical time, liturgy and social personalism, Advent, Ash Wednesday and Easter, the Virgin Mary, the Name of the Lord, communal pardon, and the liturgical renewal be possibly relevant to us today? Yes. C. S. Lewis said it is important to read old books because every age has its own outlook, and we need books that will correct the mistakes of our own period; contemporary writers usually share the contemporary outlook, no matter on which side of it they stand. Although Lewis was speaking about even older books, viz., the value of reading patristic and medieval material, there is truth in what he says even in the span of half a century. Merton reads as if from another era, and it is important today to remember that era. People who were not specialists in the liturgy were in that era welcome to comment on the liturgy, under the conviction that the liturgy is the heart of the body and pumps blood to every corner of the Church. Merton fearlessly crosses borders that our specializations have closed, connecting liturgy to time, asceticism, spirituality...