This chapter anchors the insights gleaned from John of the Cross and Thérèse of Lisieux in biblical perspectives on sacrifice, as developed by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Matthias Joseph Scheeben. Contemporary criticism of sacrifice (proposed by René Girard, feminist authors, and Robert Daly) are also addressed.

Parental shared reminiscing and positive parenting are important for the development of autobiographical memory and narrative identity. Yet, even though parents influence the content and structure of narrative identity throughout the lifespan (Camia et al., 2021; Köber & Habermas, 2018), it is understudied whether narrative themes such as agency and communion are associated with experienced parenting and whether this sustains beyond early childhood. Therefore, we investigated the influence of parenting on agency and communion in life stories provided at ages 26 and 32. Narratives with and without parental topics scored similarly on agency and communion. However, agency in narratives with mentions of parents was supported by an increased understanding of parents and by opposing parents’ advice. Communion in narratives mentioning parents was supported by positive evaluations of the parental relationship and by an increased understanding of parents. These results suggest that parents not only are part of the content of personal narratives but also influence narrative themes well into adulthood.

Panama’s most important festivity, the annual Corpus Christi processions, featured the performance of gender and ethnicity. Celebrations involved Congo, Biafara, Bran, and other Black confraternities, as well as a longstanding dispute for precedence between members of the ship-builders’ and the stocking-makers’ guilds, who struggled for proximity to the monstrance. The most dramatic dispute in the Cathedral, however, entailed a battle for precedence between the wives of the city councilors and the spouses of the royal judges. Controversy over seating arrangements enabled the judges and city councilors to submit conflicts over their respective status to the king, who eventually allowed the judges’ wives, and even their mothers, to receive communion in the main chapel.

Thomas Pott takes as a point of departure the gospel’s unmistakable call for the unity of the Body of Christ. This leads him to reflect on several issues over which there is division in the Church. However, none of these issues is capable of endangering the fact that the liturgy bears, manifests, and transmits ecclesial unity uniquely and fundamentally.

Patrick Prétot comments on the individual parts of which the celebration of the Eucharist consists. For that, he takes as his point of departure the script of the Order of Mass, which is used in the Roman Catholic Church but which shows many commonalities with other liturgical and ecclesial traditions.

This chapter explores christological underpinnings to eucharistic theology. It delineates transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and three versions of impanation in the effort to offer an incarnational model of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.

This chapter of the handbook discusses the role of mind perception in the categorization of individuals as moral agents and moral patients. Moral agents are defined as individuals that can commit morally wrong actions; moral patients are defined as individuals that can be morally wronged. It is generally agreed that the attribution of moral agency and moral patiency is linked to the attribution of mental capacities and traits. The chapter surveys a variety of models of mind perception, some of which focus on the representation of mental capacities, some of which focus on the representation of mental traits. The dominant model of mind perception in moral psychology is the experience-agency model, which divides the space of mindedness into experiential capacities like sentience and self-awareness, and agentic capacities like deliberative reasoning and self-control. Reviewing the empirical literature on moral categorization, the author argues that neither the experience-agency model nor any of the major alternatives to it captures all the factors to which everyday attributions of moral agency and moral patiency are sensitive.

Covenant, community and communion are ways in which God’s means and God’s ends are identical. Covenant is not the ‘Plan B’ after the failure of creation in the fall; it is the fulfilment of the reason for creation, and the anticipation of the true covenant, the incarnation itself. God’s love for Israel goes far beyond any instrumental goodwill: Israel is God’s child, God’s spouse, God’s companion forever. Communion is the centre of the Christian faith: being with but also being together. Communion and community name the two aspirations of church. The one is about being in, and bringing others into, relationship with God; the other is about relating civilly, cordially and sacrificially with one another, and attending to the things that need doing to function humanly. When Jesus talks of the realm of God, he is talking about this communion and community becoming a reality for all people.

I address three questions. First, how do Eastern theologians configure the way the incarnation is rendered as God’s original intention, and how significant is that insight? The answer is that this is central to their portrayal of God’s purpose. Second, what precisely is God’s purpose in the incarnation? The answer lies in the notion of deification, our being made divine, a concept pivotal to Eastern theology – and yet one that seems in significant respects problematic. Third, are there ways in which Eastern theologians portray God’s purpose that are less problematic, yet equally integral to their notion of God’s original and constant purpose? The answer is, yes there are. I conclude with three key motifs that I find more transferable yet nonetheless wholly authentic to the Orthodox theological imagination: communion, participation and transfiguration.

The Laudian view of the sacraments as the places where Christ’s presence in its church reached its apogee and of the altar as the site of the most intense divine presence in the church are expounded. The Laudians placed the reception of the sacrament at the centre of the collective worship of the church and of the life of faith, and thus made the altar the focal point of divine worship. The life of faith was defined in sacramental terms as a journey from font to altar, and stress placed on the need to give physical expression to these views and priorities through bowing towards the altar and worshipping towards the east. The Laudian altar policy, which placed railed-off communion tables altarwise at the east end of the church and reoriented worship towards them was the logical expression of such views. Through a case study of the church at East Knoyle, the communion room and altar are shown to have been that part of the church where the Laudians conceived the church triumphant and church militant came into closest contact in this life; something rendered explicit by their repeated insistence that angels attended the reception of the sacrament.

This chapter seeks to identify the doctrinal content of Trent’s decrees on the Eucharist, and to understand its engagement with Protestant teaching, in three areas: Christ’s presence in the Eucharist; communion in both kinds; and the Eucharist as sacrifice.

It is now recognized that important interpretative insights are to be gained from reading Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works in tandem with the upbuilding writings, especially where these are closely connected in time or subject matter. In the case of The Sickness unto Death, a journal entry by Kierkegaard (NB13:79) indicates that the Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (“The High Priest,” “The Tax Collector,” and “The Sinful Woman”), published in autumn 1849, “respond to” Anti-Climacus, pseudonymous author of The Sickness unto Death. How do they respond? Kierkegaard writes: “I must have a place of rest, but I cannot rest on a pseudonym; and they respond to Anti-Climacus, and [to] the situation. The discourses for the communion on Friday are once and for all envisaged as the authorship’s place of rest.” This comment invites us to see the discourses as offering a kind of dialectical counterpoint to the argument of The Sickness unto Death, and the chapter explores in detail what this means and, specifically, what Kierkegaard means by “a place of rest.” In addition to the Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays the chapter also draws on An Upbuilding Discourse (1850) and Two Upbuilding Discourses (1851) that are thematically connected with the discourses of autumn 1849.