For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy, by Alexander Schmemann

MARS HILL AUDIO presents the first available audiobook of Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s classic work on theology and liturgy, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy. Fr. Schmemann begins his essay into the sacraments of the Church with the observation that man is a hungry being and that the world is presented to him as his food. Man must eat in order to have life. From this observation, Fr. Schmemann follows with the question: “Of what life do we speak, what life do we preach, proclaim, and announce when, as Christians, we confess that Christ died for the life of the world? What life is both the motivation, and the beginning and goal of Christian mission?” Throughout the book, Fr. Schmemann confronts challenges of clericalism and secularism and identifies subtle dualities between the spiritual and the religious, the active and contemplative, Word and sacrament, and finally sacrament and liturgy. As he walks through the Church’s life by way of the sacraments, Fr. Schmemann off