The Adoremus Bulletin has published an article which features an interview with our director, Dr. Donelson-Nowicka, about the upcoming Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit.
Some highlights:
We’re wanting to gather people for a mountaintop experience, the summit experience. When we share together experiences shaped by the utmost that we can muster in terms of liturgical celebration, great preaching, amazing music, the best talks—that that sort of experience produces a number of important spiritual results that we see as a need for people today.
One thing the conference offers is contact with the source and summit of the Christian faith, the sacred liturgy at the most beautiful level that we can muster. This experience then shapes our orientation for all that we do and the decisions we make in our own parishes and schools. It gives us a true north for our compass.
How do we get to where we’re going? First, you have to know where you’re going, and we intend for this to be orientational in that aspect. A lot of times priests and church musicians don’t see what is possible in their parishes and schools because they have a limited, real experience of amazing liturgies.
Maybe a more beautiful liturgy is just something they’re reading about on the Internet, and they know that they want it for their parish and for their people. After they experience it in person, it can give shape to a lot of decisions and the harnessing of resources. That sort of mountaintop experience captivates the imagination and shapes the spirit.
That’s the model that Christ gives us in the Transfiguration. He leads the disciples up the mountain for this amazing experience of the reality of who he is so that they can then descend down the mountain and abide with him on the Via Crucis.
And in the conference talks, we are bringing together people who have profound ideas and are able to communicate them in a compelling way, providing another kind of opportunity for the encounter with Christ, through the persuasive splendor of the truth of what people say. There also is the experience of comradery we offer in how we have meals together, how we interact with each other, and how we build each other up. It’s sharing ideas like how “I did this in my parish and it was really successful,” or “I did this and it didn’t work so well.” Building a network of people who are striving for the same thing as you are helps you feel supported along the way in real world friendships. Online interactions are a good that God gives us, but we have bodies and we need to be together in the same space to really build those friendships.