This year’s annual Kavanagh Lecture will be given by Teresa Berger, Professor of Liturgical Studies and the Thomas E. Golden Jr. Professor of Catholic Theology (emerita as of June 30, 2025) at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School.

The event is sponsored by the Kavanagh Lecture series and Liturgy Symposium series. The Kavanagh Lecture, presented by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, is named for the late Professor Emeritus of Liturgics Aidan J. Kavanagh O.S.B., and given in conjunction with Convocation Week at Yale Divinity School.

This presentation focusses on an underappreciated liturgical motif, namely that all creation sings. Often thought of as poetic exaggeration or as merely metaphoric, the motif is an ancient one. From the claim that morning stars broke into song at the dawn of time (Job 38:7) to today’s creation-attuned new hymns, the conviction that all creation sings has endured in the Christian tradition. The poetic nature of hymnody, in which this conviction is most prominently embedded, shielded this particular motif from more anthropocentric tendencies that begin to manifest in liturgical texts with the onset of modernity. Today, in an intriguing twist, the ancient motif also aligns with newly emerging scientific insights. Whether it is the recognition that other-than-human creatures communicate through sound (e.g., “whale song”) or NASA’s project to “sonify” the universe (for human ears, that is), lines of inquiry have opened that enable a re-reading of this ancient motif, in the face of unprecedented ecological devastation.

Free and open to the public.

This event will be livestreamed.

Speaker bio:

Teresa Berger is Professor of Liturgical Studies and the Thomas E. Golden Jr. Professor of Catholic Theology (emerita as of June 30, 2025) at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School. She holds doctorates in both theology and in liturgical studies. Originally from Germany, Berger taught ecumenical theology at Duke Divinity School for many years before moving to Yale. Recent publications include an edited volume, Full of Your Glory: Liturgy, Cosmos, Creation (2019), and a monograph titled @ Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds (2018). She is currently working on a book that seeks to re-root a theology of liturgy in God’s primordial activity in creation.

Contact: Katya Vetrov

Photo credit: Mara Lavitt