Alan Hommerding has been with World Library Publications (WLP) since 1991, most recently as Liturgical Publications Editor for the WLP division of GIA Publications. He is also a composer of numerous published choral and instrumental works, and is well-known as an author of hymn texts. Alan has served the North American Academy of Liturgy as convener of the liturgical music seminar, and as a member of the executive group for the Catholic Academy of Liturgy. He has been a regular contributor to the PrayTell blog since 2016.
Each year, as we enter Holy Week, I inevitably recall two individuals for whom I continue to have a great amount of admiration. Both were RCIA participants, and both—a few days before the beginning of the Paschal Triduum—declined to be baptized, and left the process.
Read more
This book is for anyone who understands that we are living in a moment of, as the foreword expresses it, “planetary crisis,” and wishes to proclaim, pray, and sing with texts that acknowledge this.
Read more
I got to wondering to what extent “workism” has infected my own life, work, and ministry.
Read more
Even with as many ministerial miles as I have in the rear-view mirror, there’s still much progress to be made.
Read more
For those of us who focus our ministry in the area of liturgy, it can be tempting to think that what is occurring at this moment in regard to the sexual abuse crisis and cover-up has little, if anything, to do with us.
Read more
Vatican II did not envision “liturgy” and “Sunday eucharist” to be identical terms.
Read more
There is a temptation in these post-Baptism Sundays to view our liturgical work as something of a breather between our “real” work during the Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter seasons.
Read more
For us as liturgists and musicians, a principle to recall and observe in the preparation of Marian liturgies is that “Mary always stands with the saved.” I also like to state it in a less elegant manner: in the economy of salvation, there are ultimately only two categories … God and not-God.
Read more
…how can we still be impatient for the coming of Christ, even for the celebration of the Incarnation on December twenty-fifth?
Read more
What I am most intrigued about in regard to the pet-blessing upswing is the quickness with which it has become detached from its origins in the feast of Francis, and how the world of pet-related commerce seems to have led it along.
Read more