the.com/liturgy
The script that turns a room of strangers into a congregation.
means A set, communal order of worship — the words, actions, and rituals a religious group repeats together rather than improvises.
from From Greek 'leitourgia,' meaning 'public service' or 'public work' — built from 'laos' (the people) and 'ergon' (work). In ancient Greece it originally meant a civic duty wealthy citizens performed for the public good, like funding a festival or a warship. Early Christian Greek borrowed it for the 'work' of worship — the communal service owed to God — and the word kept that sense of labor done on behalf of, and together with, everyone present.
- original sense
- paying for public works, not praying
- eastern christianity
- the liturgy usually means the Eucharist itself
- secular echo
- still means fixed procedure, like a surgical liturgy
- root word
- laos, people, plus ergon, work