<p class=”” data-start=”81″ data-end=”504″>In the church calendar, Monday marks the commemoration of Dom Gregory Dix, who passed away on 12 May 1952 at the age of 51. Dix’s seminal work, The Shape of the Liturgy, remains influential across various Christian denominations, especially within the Anglican tradition. It was a text I encountered as an ordinand, but also as a poet, and its profound impact continues to resonate in both my spiritual and artistic life.
At the heart of Dix’s 750-page treatise is the book’s title: the liturgy is not simply a series of actions or a list of things to remember. Instead, it is a meticulously designed vessel, continually replenished with meaning and significance. Each celebration of the Eucharist offers an opportunity to be filled to the brim and beyond, with the abundance of divine grace. Yet, the liturgy is not only something we receive. It is, in fact, something that shapes us—transforming our experience and bringing us into deeper alignment with the salvific story it tells.
Dix identifies what he calls the “four-fold action” in the Last Supper—offertory, consecration, fraction, and communion—which he argues underpins the structure of all Christian Eucharistic liturgies. This sequence is not just about the transformation of bread and wine in the hands of the priest. Over the course of our lives, these actions reflect what happens to us spiritually: through participation in the Eucharist, we enter into the life of Christ. In that sacred communion, the blessed and broken body of Christ, as well as His freely offered blood, become integral to who we are, and we, in turn, are drawn into Christ’s life.
As a poet, I found Dix’s exploration of shaping particularly compelling. A poem, in its own way, is something shaped with care and intention. Through the act of reading a poem, the reader is drawn into its form and meaning, only to find that the experience itself shapes their perceptions. The Shape of the Liturgy reshaped my approach to celebrating the Eucharist, teaching me that the poet within could be as engaged and present as the priest. Even if I failed to write a poem that was truly transformative, I could still participate in the grand liturgical poem, a sacred act that has the power to shape and transform my community and me.
Another passage in Dix’s book stands out, one that blends liturgical scholarship with poetic inspiration. Though it’s impossible to capture its full depth in this brief reflection, here is a taste of its eloquence:
“Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need— from infancy and before it, to extreme old age and beyond, from the pinnacle of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold… for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover… while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk… And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei — the holy common people of God.”
In these words, Dix captures the timeless and universal nature of the liturgical act. It is a ritual that has endured across centuries, cultures, and circumstances, touching lives in moments of triumph and despair alike. Through it, we are shaped and sanctified as part of the ongoing story of salvation.
