Rediscovering Joy: A Liturgical Spirituality for Life

“Life is best understood as a pilgrimage of joy, the Church's liturgical life in action ”

Team Members/Contributors

Neal Presa Village Community Presbyterian Church, International Theo. Seminary, & Univ. of the Free State Contact Me

About this pastoral study project

"Rediscovering Joy: A Liturgical Spirituality for Life" proposes that the Christian life is best understood as a lifelong pilgrimage of joy being lived out as the Church's liturgical life in action. That is, as people of faith live out what we pray and what we praise in the context of the Church's worship as a gathered community, that liturgy is then lived out Sunday through Saturday. That engagement with God in the worship gathering and in the witness of the Church out in the world is no less than engagement with the One who is the source of our life's joy, who is Joy itself.

This project involves an action-reflection model of three pilgrimages: a 5 week pilgrimage in the summer 2020 on the Camino de Santiago in Spain involving two intergenerational pilgrims -- myself and my teenage son -- as we discern with the community of fellow pilgrims and in churches along the Camino route what it means to be pilgrims grounded in joy in our respective seasons of our lives, a 2 week pilgrimage to my parent-land of the Philippines in the summer 2020 as recalibrating our heritage of family and faith as Filipino Americans within the community of Union Theological Seminary in Dasmarinas, Cavite (Philippines); and then finally three weeks of focused conversation, theological and critical reflection and writing at Princeton Theological Seminary with one of the key participants of Yale's Theology of Joy and the Good Life project who was instrumental in the sub-project on joy, adolescent faith and flourishing.