Proceedings of the North American Academy of Liturgy 2020

Introduction of the Berakah Recipient Rev. Lisa M. Weaver, Ph.D. Lisa M Weaver is Assistant Professor of Worship at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

It is my honor to introduce our Berakah Award recipient, Joyce Ann Zimmerman.

Big things can sometimes come in small packages.

When designing a building or a bridge, engineers must consider the capacity that those structures will hold and determine the sizes of beams and columns sufficient to support them. Calculations for dead load, live load, wind load, snow load, and earthquake load are performed to account for the various conditions in which those structures will be used. And sometimes when we, as non-engineering people, look at buildings under construction and the scaffolds of these structures (or even the finished product), we are amazed that beams and columns and joists (sometimes so small) can have and bear such great capacity.

Big things can sometimes come in small packages.

The employment of an engineering example appears (perhaps) misplaced in the introduction of the recipient the Berakah Award, an award given to, according to Policies and Procedures number 3.6.1.1, “a liturgical scholar or person of an allied vocation in recognition of distinguished contribution to the professional work of liturgy.” Before responding to God’s call to religious life, Joyce was actually planning on becoming an engineer. God won. However, the application of those skills of planning, detail, and precision have served her, her community, liturgical scholarship, our academy, and the whole Church well over the course of a career that spans almost sixty years. But, to confuse our recipient’s stature with a kind of demureness that attends or suggests a kind of passivity or unwillingness to respond to a challenge is a mistake . . . for any who have ever found themselves holding an opposing view on anything about which Joyce felt strongly soon learned . . . big things can sometimes come in small (and feisty) packages.

Joyce Ann Zimmerman is a native of Dayton, Ohio, who focused on mathematics and theology in her undergraduate career. In 1964 she entered the novitiate and made her final profession as a member of the Sisters of the Precious Blood community in 1970. She has lived out that Precious Blood/Eucharistic spirituality of her