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The Wellspring of Worship
The Sacred Liturgy, declares Vatican II, is the font from which all the Church's spiritual power flows. In his modern classic work The Wellspring of Worship , Fr. Jean Corbon explores the meaning of the Liturgy as the wellspring or source of the Church's life and worship of God. The Liturgy itself is a sharing in the mystery of the Triune God and in the Incarnation, Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus. Corbon writes that it is "the mystery of the river of life that streams from the Father and the Lamb", into which believers are to be drawn. In this way, the divine river waters their entire lives, renewing and transforming them. The Wellspring of Worship is a masterful reflection on the mystery of God's Trinitarian life and how the Church's members participate in that life through the Liturgy.
262 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 28, 2022
Probably one of the most spiritually enriching books I've ever read. The depth of prayer into which the LORD led me by means of these pages was truly novel. I will most certainly be returning to this book throughout my lifetime.
May the Gracious LORD who pours out His very self upon all of us by His Word and Spirit draw each of us back to Him as both our origin and source and our purpose and fulfillment.
May the Gracious LORD who pours out His very self upon all of us by His Word and Spirit draw each of us back to Him as both our origin and source and our purpose and fulfillment.
February 26, 2025
You could reread this a dozen times and still find new depths in Fr Corbon's understanding of liturgy and the life of the Christian. Practically every line could sustain months of meditation and prayer.
March 7, 2022
One of my top 3 best books I have ever read.
October 1, 2024
Just didn’t hit for me Jean. Don’t know what virginal power is and I don’t know if I want to find out.
March 9, 2021
A little too dense for my taste.
July 25, 2024
Likely to be the most influential book I read of 2024, probably the best read of the Spirituality Year as well. It is the Antithesis of Communion/Mass/Liturgy as a “circular” table Fellowship where we share stories & have a meal, & Jesus is present in there somewhere too. It goes WELL BEYOND (leaves in the dust, actually) Christianity as JUST a Revolutionary Ethical Leap Forward for humanity. By Chapter 2, I was scratching my head about how an atheist could even fathom or grapple with this book. I still cannot fathom how any Modern Man could have thought & wrote like this, it feels like a Church Father wrote it circa 400 AD. And yet Jean Corbon, a French priest living in Beirut in a time of hostile unrest, wrote this in the 1970s.
I can’t even recall which Rite of Eastern Catholic he is, but the Eastern Christian Mysticism is palpable on every page. In fact in my limited experience, this seems to be a trend that the Mysticism of the East is far quickly more accessible to a beginner than any Western Spirituality Counterpart. With Eastern Mysticism there feels to me a more “instant-full-submergence” into the Spiritual Depths of Liturgy, prayer, Scripture, etc; while in the West to just APPROACH a Depth takes a certain amount of “Leveling up” & unlocking. Perhaps it is because the Eastern mind & then the Eastern heart thinks & feels more Wholistically & Symbolically & Imaginatively, whereas the Western mind (since bureaucratic Rome) has always been more legalistic, compartmentalizing, scientific & dissecting, analytical, which creates more Stark layers & categories the East does not bother with or want. Having read this book, most particularly my Imaginative Spiritual Muscles (wonder, enchantment, sensing & seeing Beyond Realities) flex & grow stronger. Then when I go back to prayer practices & meditations of Western Spiritualities (like Ignatian), I now more clearly see the best qualities of Eastern Mysticism are in fact there & have been this whole time, I can just now tap into it better having only dipped a foot into Eastern Spirituality. I find this to be a crude, but applicable example of Eastern & Western Christianity’s ability to enrich each other.
Now onto what I learned: The read was incredibly dense, so an exhaustive list of topics is not possible as I have not exhausted the book. The mark of a True Classic is you learn or experience something new with every read. But here is a survey of topics that stuck with me & shall likely continue to influence me. Of course there is the River of Life from the End of the Book of Revelation quenching our spiritual & then physical thirsts to partake in the Divine Life. The River being the outpouring of Trinitarian Love bubbling up in the world through the title Wellspring(s) of Worship: such as Jesus, His Bride the Church & in Her Sacraments, & ultimately from the Heart of a deeply transformed believer (which could even be you or me).
A personal favorite topic of mine that cannot go unmentioned is Kenosis; just from the definition to begin the book “he emptied himself” or even more extreme & heart-throbbing “annihilated himself.” The Father at Creation, the Son on the Annunciation & Good Friday, the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And then we are called daily to pick up our Crosses, so that we too can self-empty & be raised up on the Tree of Life. And what does our Kenosis lead to? Not an identity-less vacuum of Shadow like some Ringwraith in Lord of the Rings, but instead to Galatians 2:20 “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Now THAT’s a Wellspring of the River of Life, & that quote was written by St Paul who CLEARLY maintained & actually enhanced his identity the more he self-emptied for Christ. Yes, Kenosis then leads to Divinization by the Holy Spirit, Ascension into partaking of the Trinitarian Love, the goal of life.
For a book about Liturgy, it refreshingly goes into almost NO particulars of anything—let alone aesthetic tastes, preferences, & practices. The goal is to present Liturgy as a Wellspring of the River of Life FOR us so that we may become Wellsprings ourselves for others. Thus, this book is not about how to conduct “good” liturgy, it is instead about how do we so let the liturgy transform us, that we then go & liturgize “regular”/secular life with the goal of bringing all to Divine Love. I love too the idea that this world—this reality—is passing away as the Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, & Pentecost are not just singular events that happened once & are now only memorialized on a regular basis. Instead, we live in the “Last Times” where these events keep happening (re-presenting) over & over again with every Liturgy and through events in the lives of believers, to the point we are participating in these events, & this world is being transformed, & the Kingdom of God is mystically breaking in. Note what I said about unlocking imaginative muscles. Since the time of reading, this re-presenting these events over and over again in my own life has become more vivid and tangible thanks to experiences like the 30-day retreat and the Eucharistic Congress.
I can’t even recall which Rite of Eastern Catholic he is, but the Eastern Christian Mysticism is palpable on every page. In fact in my limited experience, this seems to be a trend that the Mysticism of the East is far quickly more accessible to a beginner than any Western Spirituality Counterpart. With Eastern Mysticism there feels to me a more “instant-full-submergence” into the Spiritual Depths of Liturgy, prayer, Scripture, etc; while in the West to just APPROACH a Depth takes a certain amount of “Leveling up” & unlocking. Perhaps it is because the Eastern mind & then the Eastern heart thinks & feels more Wholistically & Symbolically & Imaginatively, whereas the Western mind (since bureaucratic Rome) has always been more legalistic, compartmentalizing, scientific & dissecting, analytical, which creates more Stark layers & categories the East does not bother with or want. Having read this book, most particularly my Imaginative Spiritual Muscles (wonder, enchantment, sensing & seeing Beyond Realities) flex & grow stronger. Then when I go back to prayer practices & meditations of Western Spiritualities (like Ignatian), I now more clearly see the best qualities of Eastern Mysticism are in fact there & have been this whole time, I can just now tap into it better having only dipped a foot into Eastern Spirituality. I find this to be a crude, but applicable example of Eastern & Western Christianity’s ability to enrich each other.
Now onto what I learned: The read was incredibly dense, so an exhaustive list of topics is not possible as I have not exhausted the book. The mark of a True Classic is you learn or experience something new with every read. But here is a survey of topics that stuck with me & shall likely continue to influence me. Of course there is the River of Life from the End of the Book of Revelation quenching our spiritual & then physical thirsts to partake in the Divine Life. The River being the outpouring of Trinitarian Love bubbling up in the world through the title Wellspring(s) of Worship: such as Jesus, His Bride the Church & in Her Sacraments, & ultimately from the Heart of a deeply transformed believer (which could even be you or me).
A personal favorite topic of mine that cannot go unmentioned is Kenosis; just from the definition to begin the book “he emptied himself” or even more extreme & heart-throbbing “annihilated himself.” The Father at Creation, the Son on the Annunciation & Good Friday, the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And then we are called daily to pick up our Crosses, so that we too can self-empty & be raised up on the Tree of Life. And what does our Kenosis lead to? Not an identity-less vacuum of Shadow like some Ringwraith in Lord of the Rings, but instead to Galatians 2:20 “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Now THAT’s a Wellspring of the River of Life, & that quote was written by St Paul who CLEARLY maintained & actually enhanced his identity the more he self-emptied for Christ. Yes, Kenosis then leads to Divinization by the Holy Spirit, Ascension into partaking of the Trinitarian Love, the goal of life.
For a book about Liturgy, it refreshingly goes into almost NO particulars of anything—let alone aesthetic tastes, preferences, & practices. The goal is to present Liturgy as a Wellspring of the River of Life FOR us so that we may become Wellsprings ourselves for others. Thus, this book is not about how to conduct “good” liturgy, it is instead about how do we so let the liturgy transform us, that we then go & liturgize “regular”/secular life with the goal of bringing all to Divine Love. I love too the idea that this world—this reality—is passing away as the Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, & Pentecost are not just singular events that happened once & are now only memorialized on a regular basis. Instead, we live in the “Last Times” where these events keep happening (re-presenting) over & over again with every Liturgy and through events in the lives of believers, to the point we are participating in these events, & this world is being transformed, & the Kingdom of God is mystically breaking in. Note what I said about unlocking imaginative muscles. Since the time of reading, this re-presenting these events over and over again in my own life has become more vivid and tangible thanks to experiences like the 30-day retreat and the Eucharistic Congress.
April 27, 2020
At the beginning of the course for which I read this book, the professor warned his class of Latin Rite Catholics that this exploration of the liturgy, written by a French priest of the Byzantine Rite, was rather "gooey." Indeed, it is. In fact, it was slow going through this book not because I was not enjoying it but rather because it was so rich and dense and full that I often had to put it down and sit a spell with what I'd just read.
Reading this consideration of the liturgy in concurrence with Ratzinger's Spirit of the Liturgy was highly beneficial. The takes were so different—yet theologically in accord—that I do think my understanding of the Sacred Liturgy has expanded in a balanced way.
The book is broken up into three parts: The Mystery of the Liturgy, The Liturgy Celebrated, and the Liturgy Lived. It is Corbon's contention that the liturgy is the conduit by which Living Water flows to mankind—the wellspring of worship. The image of the river of life and the source of all life runs through this book. This provides a helpful anchor in what can occasionally become a bit meandering in its expression.
The language is simply exquisite. Here is a sample from near the end. Corbon is writing of the presence of the Lord that inhabits our hearts in prayer "as on an altar on which the Holy Spirit places and engraves the eternal Gospel." He then writes:
This book is a treasure trove of lyrical and helpful reflections on sacramental theology, and I do believe it is one I will return to again and again.
Reading this consideration of the liturgy in concurrence with Ratzinger's Spirit of the Liturgy was highly beneficial. The takes were so different—yet theologically in accord—that I do think my understanding of the Sacred Liturgy has expanded in a balanced way.
The book is broken up into three parts: The Mystery of the Liturgy, The Liturgy Celebrated, and the Liturgy Lived. It is Corbon's contention that the liturgy is the conduit by which Living Water flows to mankind—the wellspring of worship. The image of the river of life and the source of all life runs through this book. This provides a helpful anchor in what can occasionally become a bit meandering in its expression.
The language is simply exquisite. Here is a sample from near the end. Corbon is writing of the presence of the Lord that inhabits our hearts in prayer "as on an altar on which the Holy Spirit places and engraves the eternal Gospel." He then writes:
The most beautiful service the Church renders to this world is to come to the tomb and stand at the altar of the heart, not now to embalm the body of Jesus but to heal the dead who throng the earth by offering them even now the hope and pledge of the Resurrection. (p. 211)
This book is a treasure trove of lyrical and helpful reflections on sacramental theology, and I do believe it is one I will return to again and again.
July 10, 2023
This was a book that was required reading for my course on the Source and Summit. At first, I thought this was over my head, but I sat quietly, and reread certain passages, and now there are parts of the Mass and passages from this book of love from Fr. Corbon that will stay forever with me. His writing on the Mass is beautiful, and must be savored. This is not a book that can be read quickly. He goes through all parts of the Mass, and truly shows us how heaven descends and we ascend to Heaven. As he writes, "The liturgy which is celebrated at certain moments but lived at every moment, is the one mystery of the Christ who gives life to men."
September 28, 2024
A study of liturgy as a revelation of the inner life of the Trinity.
Corbon presents liturgy as a synergy of human and divine energies, the sacrament of which is the Incarnation.
The theme of synergy runs throughout the text and serves to elucidate abstract concepts as well as more practical questions about the sacraments.
Written in a poetic or mystical style, but the subject matter is presented in a systematic way.
The poetic stylings were sometimes frustrating, but the text provides a wealth of material for prayer and reflection.
Corbon presents liturgy as a synergy of human and divine energies, the sacrament of which is the Incarnation.
The theme of synergy runs throughout the text and serves to elucidate abstract concepts as well as more practical questions about the sacraments.
Written in a poetic or mystical style, but the subject matter is presented in a systematic way.
The poetic stylings were sometimes frustrating, but the text provides a wealth of material for prayer and reflection.
January 3, 2018
This book was required reading for a class I took with the Avila institute. It is a very challenging read but so full of insight. It is s book that I will go back to over and over. I have marked it up with many notes. It was good to have someone guiding me through it as it is very deep.
May 29, 2025
A rich and powerful work of amazing depth, locating the Liturgy at the heart of the Christian life; I only scratched the surface in a single read.
August 7, 2025
"The new thing which the liturgy accomplishes is the restoration of the wonderful oneness of life” (157)."
February 11, 2025
This work has salient and powerful points that are worth returning to.
Sadly, Cordon's idea are weighed down by his plodding writing style. Plowing through verbose and repetitive paragraphs to extract meaning was almost physically painful. This could have been a 100-page 5/5 instead of the 200+ page slog that it is.
A note worth mentioning: there are occasionally strange and unexplained claims in this work that left me wondering, such claim that the Scholastics are to blame for fundamentalist Protestants being afraid of the Sacraments. More distracting is his claim that the classic exegesis of Lk 10:38-42 is wrong. Sorry Cordon, I'm going to trust the Church fathers over you on that one.
Sadly, Cordon's idea are weighed down by his plodding writing style. Plowing through verbose and repetitive paragraphs to extract meaning was almost physically painful. This could have been a 100-page 5/5 instead of the 200+ page slog that it is.
A note worth mentioning: there are occasionally strange and unexplained claims in this work that left me wondering, such claim that the Scholastics are to blame for fundamentalist Protestants being afraid of the Sacraments. More distracting is his claim that the classic exegesis of Lk 10:38-42 is wrong. Sorry Cordon, I'm going to trust the Church fathers over you on that one.
March 1, 2011
This is an excellent book indeed. This book cannot be read haphazardly or like any other novel. It is very challenging for those who want to really understand the Christ and His Paschal mystery, the Church - as the Body of Christ and finally, what the Liturgy is all about.
Corbon enters deeply into the mystery of the Liturgy; he includes profound statements on every aspect of the Liturgy itself.
I recommend this book for those who want to grow in the understanding of the aspects mentioned above. I frequently stopped and prayed.
I have around 50 pages of notes!
Corbon enters deeply into the mystery of the Liturgy; he includes profound statements on every aspect of the Liturgy itself.
I recommend this book for those who want to grow in the understanding of the aspects mentioned above. I frequently stopped and prayed.
I have around 50 pages of notes!
September 30, 2007
Corbon delivers an excellent exploration of the Catholic sense of Liturgy as the fullness of the Christian experience. The language is colorful and metaphorical and it throws you a bit at first, but the approach is not simply intellectual. Rather it engages both the mind and the spirit in the analysis.
August 2, 2011
Even though this was assigned reading for class (Eucharist), i found this to be a powerful read as I used this as my spiritual reading during our weekend of Eucharistic Devotions...shows liturgy as synergistic with the work of the Trinity...aahhh, good stuff
Currently reading
January 18, 2013Reading for course about the Litergy. A challenging read, which will require at least another time through. Just allowing the words, feelings and thoughts to flow over this first time through.
I've decided to approach it as I would a challenging piece of poetry.
More later
I've decided to approach it as I would a challenging piece of poetry.
More later
January 23, 2016
Beautiful, very reverent reflection on the sacred liturgy. Giving it four stars now, but will give it 5 when I re-read it. Took a while to get a hang of his writing, but well worth the effort. Beautiful!
April 17, 2012
Read for my liturgical and sacramental theology class. very inspiring book, though sometimes his order and method is difficult to follow
November 2, 2013
Brilliant. Profound. Thought provoking. Illuminating.
The Eastern world view takes the mystery of the liturgy to another level.
The Eastern world view takes the mystery of the liturgy to another level.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews