Introduction of the Berakah Recipient

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

community in every aspect of her life from that time until now. One of her earliest written works was published in 1971 for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio. That report was the beginning of a journey into academic scholarship on liturgy and liturgical formation that grew into a robust catalog of publications that has enriched the Roman Catholic Church, significantly contributed to the body of liturgical scholarship, and advanced the ecumenical liturgical dialogue of the wider Church.

Consistent with the charism of her order, Joyce’s academic passion and attention has been diligently dedicated to the liturgical practices and spirituality of the Roman Catholic Church. In this regard, the high standard of theology and practice that she desired for the Church she supported through teaching in churches, missions, undergraduate and graduate school contexts in the United States and Canada. And when she could not find just the right article, chapter, or book for her students and her objectives, she just said, “I’ll write it myself!”

And write she did. After exactly two decades of writing articles and chapters for journals, book series, encyclopedic volumes and writing her own books, she established the Institute for Liturgical Ministry, an institute dedicated to liturgical formation in order to improve excellence in liturgy. The following year she published the first volume of Liturgical Ministry, and many of the contributors were and are some colleagues among whom we sit this evening.

Joyce’s contributions to liturgy officially grew beyond the Roman Catholic context when in 2002 she was invited to participate as a Delegate to the Catholic-Reformed Dialogue, a position that she would hold for eight years. In the same year, Joyce became the editor of NAAL’s journal Proceedings. In 2005, the breadth of Joyce’s ecumenical influence and scholarship would expand when she became a worship grants advisory board member of the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship. In her tenth year on the board of the Calvin Institute of Christian worship, she was elected Vice President of the North American Academy of Liturgy. Among her editorial and presidential positions within NAAL, Joyce has served the academy for fourteen years, over one-sixth of her professional career.

Big things with great capacity and great breadth, fine scholarship and deeply committed faith can sometimes be found in small packages.

And in the midst of all of her very public life and service, she also took and continues to take time to mentor graduate and doctoral students, take some Precious Blood sisters in her community to doctors’ appointments, visit other sisters in the infirmary, make Linus blankets for children, and make her own Christmas cards.

For the gifts and talents and skills that Joyce has so freely given to the whole Church and to the academy, we are grateful.