Servants of the Mysteries

John F. Baldovin, SJ, is professor of historical and liturgical theology at the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry. He served on the advisory committee for the Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy of the USCCB (1989-1993) as well as the advisory committee of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) from 1994-2002. He is past president of the North American Academy of Liturgy as well as Societas Liturgica. He is former president of the International Jungmann Society for Jesuits and the Liturgy and the author of Reforming the Liturgy: A Response to the Critics published by Liturgical Press.

“In his conclusion to this careful study, John Baldovin acknowledges that the understanding of the ordered priesthood he soundly constructs through its fundamental relationship to church and sacrament has required attention to ‘difficult and delicate questions.’ Indeed so. And he has done so in admirably even-handed fashion. Baldovin’s approach—historical, doctrinal, pastoral—places him solidly in the lineage of the earlier Jesuit so instrumental to the liturgical renewal, Josef Jungmann, even as he commands contemporary advances in scholarship. The book is a genuine contribution toward realizing, in thought and practice, the assembly of the baptized as the active subject of the Eucharist and thus, priestly sacramental ministry as service to the people’s participation, as members of Christ’s Body, in the paschal mystery.”Bruce T. Morrill, SJ, Distinguished Professor of Theology, Vanderbilt University Divinity School