All tagged prayer

The St. Thomas Mass

For years now, the Mikael Agricola Church in Helsinki has been packed every Sunday evening at six o’clock. It is the hour for the St. Thomas Mass, celebrated under the name of the apostle who seemed to have more questions than answers in his faith. This Lutheran worship service has been influenced by old liturgical traditions of the church as well as by the spirit of ecumenism. The service takes two hours and it requires a team of seventy to a hundred people, all volunteers. Usually the teams differ from Sunday to Sunday, because each Sunday is a project of its own…

Review of "Four Birds of Noah’s Ark" by Thomas Dekker

I begin with a confession: the point during the worship service when I am most likely to yawn, get distracted, get plagued by phantom itches, or decide I have to go the bathroom is during the Prayers of the Church. This makes me a terrible person and a worse Christian. Nevertheless, there it is, prayer bores me far more often than it should. Which is why Four Birds of Noah's Ark is such a delightful surprise: prayers that do not bore...