The liturgy that built the West: Cosima Gillhammer’s illuminating new book
Max Lau• June 8, 2025
Cosima Gillhammer’s new book about the liturgy may well foster a renewed appreciation for what has, for many, become routine; Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy has certainly taken its place on my list of books to recommend to anyone curious to learning more about the Christian Faith.
Whether to a cradle Catholic who never really had the rigorous formation that a catechist receives, or someone just star ting their journey, Gillhammer’s work will sit alongside George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic as one to highlight the riches to be found in Christianity, and which Christianity has given to wider culture.
The book is divided into thematic chapters, with most based around human emotions: Love, Hope, Suffering, Grief and Joy, together with more conceptual ones like Petition, Revelation, Time and Space. In each of these, Gillhammer brings to life the ancient and medieval origins of the liturgy, and then how that liturgy has shaped human culture in the centuries since. I say “brings to life” rather than “describes” for multiple reasons: in the first place, the book investigates multiple reproductions of artistic depictions from antiquity through the Renaissance to the modern day which derive from the liturgy.
The implications of examples such as the fainting Madonna at the foot of the Cross are teased out so that both veteran art historians and comparative novices all have much to gain. Likewise, whole pages are devoted to side-by-side translations of not only liturgy but also poetry, whether from Latin, Old English or other European languages. Gillhammer has gone a step further here and also recommends accompanying music, which she provides on the book’s website.
These are not dry descriptions; many chapters open with an evocation of the original context of what is being described – for example, the description of a Rorate service: “Let us picture the scene: a dark church, before the break of dawn. The air is wintry and cold, and the only source of warmth are the candles on the altar and the many tapers the congregation carry.” It gave me a new perspective on the oft-heard complaint about how cold churches can be – that feeling of chill and dark at the start of a morning service highlights the change when the church warms and brightens by the end, and so being cold is actually part of the experience.
Likewise, the opening of a chapter on Death: “Somewhere in medieval Europe, in some remote monastery on a cold winter’s evening, a monk sitting in his lonely cell decided what death sounds like.” The chapter goes from the musical genius of the Dies Irae to how it has affected music since, processing through Gustav Holst’s The Planets to culminate in a list of modern film scores: Jaws (1975 ), Star Wars (1977), The Shining (1980), The Lion King (1994), Mulan (1998), The Lord of the Rings (2001-3) and Watchmen (2009). Likewise, when exploring Grief, Gilhammer explains how the liturgy (rather than strict biblical quotation) inspired Michelangelo’s Pietà, and how that too has been found in media from Marvel Comics to James Bond.
Gillhammer does an excellent job of demonstrating how liturgy has influenced Western culture – though in merely using that phrase this book also highlights a truth that may be inconvenient for some. The geographical area usually associated with Europe does have a common culture which was previously labelled Christendom; as Gavin Ashenden put it a few years ago, when discussing Tom Holland’s Dominion on a Herald podcast, we exist in a Christian goldfish bowl when it comes to values and culture.
Light on Darkness is in no way ideological about this in the modern sense, but it will be striking to some that this “untold story” now appears ideological in only relating the cultural history that runs up to the present about the West and Western culture. It also manages this by beginning with first principles: explaining the basics of Christianity and its beliefs through the Apostles’ Creed in the introduction, which are of course essential to understanding every thing that follows.
This is especially why this book is to be highly recommended to anyone who wants to know more about actual Christianity, rather than what many might assume it to be. Gillhammer explains how Christianity is still endemic to our lives: how the idea of a small renunciation for long-term gain, such as a student forgoing an evening out so that they are more likely to pass an exam, is described as “making a sacrifice” – at its root, a reference to an animal offered on an altar.
Nor does the book shy away from complexity: the contradictions inherent in liturgies that acclaim Mary as the daughter, mother and spouse of God simultaneously (through her relationship to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit), or the concept of felix culpa – the necessary and happy sin whereby St Ambrose and St Augustine reasoned that God thought it better that good come out of evil, than evil had been prevented in the first place through the original sin of Adam. The fact this is accompanied by references in culture since then, from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Milton’s Paradise Lost to the poetry of Walt Whitman and the songs of Kate Bush, make it all the more remarkable.
The final two chapters are more conceptual. The one on Time highlights how the Mass is not merely a play re-enacting the Last Supper, but an actualisation of those historical events with the present tense used rather than the past: “Christ is Risen!”, “This is the Night”, and so on. She quotes Nicholas Wolterstorff: the priest actually blesses and speaks as an instrument of Christ, while the congregation actually gives thanks, rather than merely plays the role of disciples giving thanks. Thus the liturgy breaks down the barriers of linear time. The chapter on Space deals with the multi-sensory experience of the liturgy, which includes sights, smells, sounds and movement.
Overall, Gillhammer argues for the importance of ritual, and therefore for why liturgy matters. She notes the particular care of Catholicism to commemorate the departed, and how saying the same words that they said connects us to them. GK Chester ton called tradition the “democracy of the dead”, noting that in maintaining it we refuse “to submit to the arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about”. Gillhammer notes that in saecula saeculorum, though often translated as “world without end” in English, can also be rendered as “unto the ages of ages”.
“Each age will always bring its own novelties, challenges and surprises, but through all of these praise for God will last,” Gillhammer concludes; at Easter, reports of those being received into the Church reached enouragingly high levels. With praise to God lasting through every age, the liturgy must surely be given a bright future. For anyone minded to do so, this book would be an excellent place to start.
Photo: Pope Leo during his Inauguration Mass in St Peter’s Square, Vatican, 18 May 2025. (Credit: Getty.)
Dr Lau is editor of Crux Alba, a journal of the Order of Malta, and a researcher at Worcester College, Oxford. Dr Gillhammer’s website is liturgybook.com.
Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy by Cosima Clara Gillhammer is available from Reaktion Books, £15.99, 288 pages.