Liturgy as a Form of Cultural Memory
Ivica Novakovic

The church in its daily liturgy remembers the one who is its origin, presence and the hoped future, that is, it remembers Jesus Christ. Viewed from that perspective, it functions culturally as a community that nurtures and is nurtured by a particular form of a complex and liturgically enacted memory. My question is whether the conceptual apparatus developed in the study of collective memory, especially the concept of cultural memory as recently introduced by Aleida and Jan Assmann, can be productively used in liturgical studies to describe the structure and function of this form of complex memory. I will examine potential contributions and possible limitations of interpreting the liturgy as a medium of cultural memory. In this context I will focus particularly on the concept of cultural memory, but will also analyze the distinctions between ritual and everyday life, between textuality and orality, and the role of memory sites in the formation of cultural memory. I the conclusion, I will try to show that the distinction between functional memory, which is connected to the concrete bearers, and storage memory, which does not require such bearers, can help clarifying the distinction and connection between liturgy and liturgics (liturgical studies).