Pursuing the Intrinsic Relationship between Liturgy and Ethics: Practical-Theological Promise in Poverty of Spirit

This article examines whether and how sacramental liturgy and the Christian life-ethic are intrinsically related, a fundamental problematic in theory and practice in the decades since Vatican Council II. The first half of the essay examines the state of the question, starting with a brief articulation of the normative tradition based in scripture and the council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, followed by a selective review of the theological discussion, centered on Don E. Saliers’s virtue-ethics approach. The second half, building on a thesis of Johann Baptist Metz, argues for poverty of spirit as the key virtue for practically bonding liturgy and ethics.