Postscripts From The Catholic Spitfire Grill

The pastor of my parish is being transferred and is packing up his household goods in preparation for a move he really didn't think he'd have to make. Priests in our parish are not customarily transferred to new assignments after they reach a certain age. Our pastor is that age but a personnel crisis in our diocese (an order of monk is finding it necessary to leave the parish to consolidate their resources) means that some are being asked to sacrifice. Today at Mass, our pastor announced that he was thinning his personal library in preparation for the move and had left some books on a table at the entry of the church. "Please take any of them that you would like," he said. I might have taken more than my "polite share." Ask me if that bothers me. [grin]

So the first book I started reading is The Liturgical Environment: What the Documents Say by Mark Boyer. (Relax...I like what I've read so far but I am not giving this "must buy" status.) Chapter one discusses the Church itself and here I found this little gem:

Among the symbols with which liturgy deals, none is more important than...the assumbly of believers. It is common to use the same name to speak of the building in which those person worship, but that use is misleading. In the words of ancient Christians, the building used for worship is called domus ecclesiae, the house of the Church.

Oh I like that so much. I have never liked calling the building with the same word that I used for the assembly of believers. I should have known that somewhere in the past, the right term existed. Domus ecclesiae. Perfect.