Juliette J. DAY. Hearing Our Prayers: An Exploration of Liturgical Listening. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2024. pp. 225. $49.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8146-6941-9. Reviewed by Stephen S. WILBRICHT, Stonehill College, Easton, MA 02357.  

The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, demands that the “full, conscious, and active participation” of all the faithful in liturgical celebrations of every kind is to be the guiding principle for renewal. This is well known by liturgical scholars and pastors alike. However, what has largely escaped scrutiny in defining what constitutes real “participation” is the dimension of active listening. For many, speaking or singing denotes active engagement, while listening is deemed a passive exercise. In her work, Hearing Our Prayers, Juliette Day seeks to dispel this misconception. As she states from the outset, “That which we say or sing is not just an exclamation, but is directed to another whom we invite to hear it; it is only when the sound is received that the communicative act is complete” (2).

Hearing Our Prayers is composed of eight chapters, divided essentially into three sections. The first three chapters examine the “sonic environment” of worship. In Chapter One, Day concentrates on studying the overall liturgical environment, which she defines as a “soundscape.” Within this discussion, she provides a helpful investigation of three types of sounds: intentional sound, non-intentional sound, and noise. Chapter Two turns to the receptive aspects of sound, namely hearing and listening, where the author studies the rigorous effort made in the project of deep listening. Chapter Three moves beyond the individual hearer to explore how listening is conducted as a communal, ritual activity. As she states quite simply, “What is important in ritualized listening is not only what is heard, but the act of listening itself” (61). Thus, how we listen as an assembly matters.

The book’s second section, chapters 4-6, explores the nature of the various sounds, both desired and unsought, that are a part of ritual. The titles of these three chapters capture well the types of sounds to be encountered in ritual: “Listening to Speech and Music,” “Listening to Silence,” and “Hearing Noise.” Regarding the first topic, Day works extensively to manifest the connection between the word that is spoken and the word that is sung, maintaining the importance of both requiring a bodily investment. Chapter Five is particularly significant, as the author discusses the nature of liturgical silence. She writes: “Liturgical silence is a ritual performance like speech, music, or gesture, because it requires particular skills and techniques to perform, hear, and experience it” (109). Undoubtedly, much formation is needed in training worshipers how to listen profoundly to silence. Chapter Six probes a counter perspective to the art of listening to silence, namely, what to do with unexpected noise? Just as noise has increased in everyday life, so does worship call for developing an ability to discern unwanted sound.

The final two chapters of Hearing Our Prayers are particularly salient to appreciating hearing within the liturgical arena. First, Chapter Seven, “Paying Attention,” invites participants in worship to actively learn how to pay attention to all the sounds described above. The author calls this skill “aural attentiveness.” Day suggests that the heart of this attentiveness is relational; it is about moving beyond the confines of the self. She writes: “Attentiveness denotes a focus beyond oneself through which comes the realization of something more, and by which one acquires knowledge of the reality of the other” (146). Just as Day explored the idea of “soundscape” in the first chapter, in the final chapter of the book, she returns to the totality of the liturgical environment and argues for the need to be attentive to the interactions of all the sounds made in the place of worship. Striving for a desired acoustical outcome for any liturgical space will undoubtedly create challenge and call for compromise.

The contribution of Hearing Our Prayers to the study of liturgy is captured in the first sentence of the book’s conclusion: “Listening is not the same as hearing” (183). This book, filled with many examples from a variety of liturgical traditions and supported by research into sources grounded in aural sciences, helps the reader to see that deep listening takes prodigious work. We need to train ourselves to truly listen. Ultimately, the listening that is sought in all liturgical prayer is that of identifying the ongoing revelation of Christ in the world. It should be noted that Hearing Our Prayers provides a worthy companion to Day’s earlier work on the textual nature of liturgy, Reading the Liturgy (Bloomsbury / T&T Clark, 2014). This present work demonstrates that liturgical texts demand to be heard, or rather, listened to with great attentiveness.