A practicum designed to prepare ordination candidates in the Roman Catholic Church for the liturgical ministry of confessor in the celebration of the Rite of Penance.

A practicum designed to prepare ordination candidates in the Roman Catholic Church for the ministry of liturgical presidency. Students will meet twice a week (once for theory and once for practice) as well as in small groups and for videotaping.

Open to all students who are interested in singing. Participation in one weekly rehearsal and chapel service, including any special concerts/events/tours that may come up during the semester. Please note: students who are employed by the Seminary Singers may not take the course for credit 

Audition required. Schedule includes Sunday worship in Marsh Chapel and several major concerts.

An introduction to the theology and practice of preaching within the context of Christian ministry and worship. Students develop skills necessary for preparation, composition, delivery, and critique of sermons. Required of all M.Div. students in the Pastoral Ministry track. 

This will be an introduction to the practical art of preaching in the Unitarian Universalist tradition and other free church traditions. Participants can expect to begin the process of finding their own voices in their preaching and worship leadership, all in the context of supportive peers. 

This course examines the Ecumenical Movement--a "defining fact" of Christianity in the 20th century--and its implications for the life of the churches in the 21st century. The class will treat major streams of interchurch engagement including mission, faith and order, and life and work, and will give attention to ecumenical questions regarding worship and sacraments. In addition, the course will consider contemporary models of Christian unity as well as Christian dialogue with other faith traditions.

(Requires knowledge of Greek or Hebrew.) An introduction to the principles of preparing relevant biblical sermons. Lectures and exercises cover a stage-by-stage explanation of how preachers think as they prepare to preach. Recitation sessions provide opportunity for students to preach with critique by the professor.

(Requires previous preaching course.) Building on PR601, students will interact with the biblical material to prepare sermons that relate to a modern audience. Students will preach with critique by the professor.

This course will equip students to construct and deliver sermons in a way that cultivates reconciliation and unity in their congregations or ministry milieus. Students will be given the theological, theoretical, and practical tools to analyze themselves, their contexts, and the congregants they shepherd. Particular emphasis will be given to addressing ethnocentrism, sexism, classism, and political partisanship in the pulpit. PR601 is a prerequisite for the course.

This course will explore the leadership of music in the public rituals of religious, liturgical, and social movements, drawing on historical research, current practice in local communities, and students’ own experience to answer questions about the role of music across religious and spiritual traditions as well as in movement-based activism. How does music inspire, connect, celebrate, and console? Where is the boundary between performance and prayer/meditation/worship? How does a song interact with its text to enhance and define the ritual space? Students will learn practical tools in leading song with their voices or musical instruments through the study of hymns, psalm chanting, and other folk and popular music traditions. The course is designed for students interested in ministerial or other ritual leadership who would like to expand their knowledge of musical literature, its current practice, and the history of music in the development and practice of religious traditions.

Carrying forth the preaching pedagogy of Rev. Peter Gomes, this course focuses on the practice of textual preaching from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. The course is taught by Rev. Daniel Smith (Senior Minister, First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, UCC). It emphasizes exegesis, worship context, sermon content and delivery. Participants will be expected to prepare and deliver three essays and three sermons. The course is limited to 8 students. If more than 8 students show for the first class and wish to take the course, a list of admitted students will be posted later that day.

This course engages students in historical, theological, and practical study of preaching and worship in the Black Church tradition.  Readings in black homiletics and practical theologies of worship introduce students to a variety of approaches for the development and delivery of sermons and for the construction and ministerial leadership of worship within black Christian church contexts.  The course considers these proposals for ministry practice against the backdrop of the social, political, economic, and cultural dynamics that shape the contemporary context of black communal life in the United States.  The purpose of the course is to increase students' ministerial capacity through the incorporation of theological and practical wisdom from the Black Church tradition into their own understandings and uses of ritual and rhetoric.

This course will explore the structures, content, theology, and ethos of the Church's liturgical life. It will also provide a brief but inclusive glimpse of the historical evolution of the liturgical rites. Furthermore, the Liturgy will be studied from pastoral, spiritual, and theological perspectives. The course seeks to provide the student with basic theological criteria for the comprehension of the whole liturgical tradition of the Church.

A liturgical practicum designed primarily to help the candidate for ordination develop a liturgical ethos, style, and presence. The course offers an analysis of the structural elements of the divine services and instruction on the use of the liturgical books of the Orthodox Church. The course is especially concerned to help the student develop skills for the proper conduct and celebration of the divine services. The class allows for role-playing and analysis. Teleturgics II delas specifically with the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil and Chrysostom as well as the Pre-sanctified Liturgy. Special attention will be given to how one conducts the liturgy when a hierarch is serving. After this the class will deal with Baptism, Christmation, Marriage, Ordination, Confession, Unction, Funeral and various other blessing services.

A liturgical practicum designed primarily to help the candidate for ordination develop a liturgical ethos, style, and presence. The course offers an analysis of the structural elements of the divine services and instruction on the use of the liturgical books of the Orthodox Church. The course is especially concerned to help the student develop skills for the proper conduct and celebration of the divine services. The class allows for role-playing and analysis.

This course is a systematic introduction to the basic theory and notation of the Psaltic Art. It will provide a solid foundation for a further study of the liturgical repertoire of the Greek Orthodox Church. Topics to be covered include the history and function of the notation, a thorough examination of key musical concepts (e.g. note, interval, scale, tempo, rhythm, genus, mode, tetrachord, etc.), and a study of the role of music in Greek Orthodox worship. By the end of the semester students will be able to sight-read and perform simple hymns written in the New Method of Analytical Notation in both parallage (solmization) and melos (melody).

This course is a systematic study of the theoretical and practical aspects of the First and Plagal Fourth Modes of the Psaltic Art within the context of the Anastasimatarion. We will study the resurrectional hymns of the liturgical book of Octoechos or Parakletike of the aforementioned modes in both parallage (solmization) and melos (melody). Additionally, we will examine the characteristics of the diatonic genus and the heirmologic and sticheraric styles of chant. Prerequisite: Byzantine Music I.

This course is a systematic study of the theoretical and practical aspects of the Second, Plagal Second abd Varys Modes of the Psaltic Art within the context of the Anastasimatarion. By the end of the semester, students will be able to perform the resurrectional hymns of the liturgical book of Octoechos or Parakletike of the aforementioned modes in both parallage (solmization) and melos (melody).

The St. Romanos the Melodist Byzantine Choir is a vocal ensemble that performs faithful and spiritually uplifting renditions of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine sacred musical works in the traditional style created and preserved at the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople. The choir regularly performs in liturgical services as well as at concerts, conferences, lectures, fundraising events, state and national holiday celebrations, and school cermonies both in Boston and throughout the United States. In addition to Byzantine chant, it performs Greek folk music, poular and arts songs, as well as modern English adaptations and original settings of sacred texts. The choir meets weekly to study and rehearse the repertoire for upcoming performances.

This course is a study of the standard hymns ( Lord I have Cried, daily Prokeimena, God is the Lord, Great Doxology, Antiphons, Trisagion, etc.) of vespers, orthros, divine liturgy, and the sacraments for practical use. All of the hymns will be studied in English in all of the eight modes with the aid of various musical settings.

This course is a systematic study of the hymns chanted during the Great and Holy Week and the Feast of Pascha in the Orthodox Chutch. The tepettoite includeshymns in all eight modes and in all three melodic styles (heitmologic, stichetatic and papadic). Additionally, we will study the structute and rubrics of Holy Week and Pascha services .

This course is a systematic study of the papadic genus of the Psaltic Art in all eight modes with a great emphasis on hymns for the Divine Liturgy (trisagion, cherubic hymn,communion hymn, etc.). We will also briefly study slow doxologies, Triodion hymns and kalophonic heitmoi. Prerequisites: Byzantine Music I-V

The material taught in this course is equivalent to the material taught in the 5th year of Greek conservatories and provides comprehensive preparation for the final examination required for a Holy Ctoss Certificate in Byzantine Music. Students are expected to become competent in perfoming more technically demanding repertoire, including Petros Bereketis' eight-mode composition Theotoke Parthene, the Athenian funeral

Trisagion, kalophonic heirmoi and kratimata in all eight modes, and a selection of verses from Koukouzelis' Anoixantaria.



Prerequisites: Byzantine Music I-V

Although open to all students, this semester-long course is required of all seminarians. The class aims to improve individual voices while working with a class. The fundamentals of chanting/singing will be used, which include: attitude, posture, control of breath, attacks and releases, the jaw (neck and throat), registers, resonance, enunciation, etc. It is recommended that seminarians take the course during their first year.

Although open to all students, this semester-long course is required of all seminarians. The class aims to improve individual voices while working with a class. The fundamentals of chanting/singing will be used, which include: attitude, posture, control of breath, attacks and releases, the jaw (neck and throat), registers, resonance, enunciation, etc. It is recommended that seminarians take the course during their first year.

A required practicum for those enrolled in PAST 7201 in the current/previous semester.

The broad purpose of this course is to help students transform words of liturgy into words of prayer. We will focus our attention on the weekday Shacharit service because it offers a foundation for understanding many other Jewish tefillah liturgies and because it is the primary tefillah experience we will engage in together at Hebrew College. We will spend some time on liturgical variations for Shabbat and holidays. We will use Ashkenazi liturgy as our base text because it is the most common liturgy used in North America, though we will note some moments of liturgical variation with other liturgical traditions.  

Students will study the classic liturgy for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, including the history of the mahzor and close reading of piyyutim (liturgical poetry). Texts will be taught in Hebrew.    

This course provides the student with a systematic introduction to the Western liturgical patrimony of the Catholic Church. It examines the historical, theological, canonical, and pastoral realities which undergird the celebration of the liturgy. In the first part of the course, the student will come to understand the origins of the liturgy and its major eras of development and reform. In the second part, the principal liturgical books of the Roman Rite are examined in detail, since these are the texts which a candidate for Holy Orders will encounter most frequently in the work of ministry. In the third part, pastoral considerations for the contemporary celebration of the liturgy are discussed.