Worship as catechesis - Knowledge, desire, and Christian formation

This essay seeks to develop an understanding of Christian catechesis as a p ractice, or set of practices, informed, at heart, by doxology. The acquisit ion of "knowledge" that variously constitutes the catechetical or educative enterprise within Christian communities is bound up entirely with the prai se and adoration of God within the Eucharistic fellowship of the body of Ch rist gathered together in worship. To "know", in this way, is to be changed , remade, transformed. To know rightly, as Augustine would teach us, is to desire God - just as to desire God is to know rightly. On this view, catech esis occurs, first and foremost, not as exposition apart from the liturgica l community, but performatively within it.