Holy Echoes in an Age of Novelty

Sanctity of Repetition

We are a culture allergic to repetition. The scroll, the stream, the push for innovation — all preach novelty as salvation. Repeating yourself is a sin in the grammar of progress. But within the Church — and within the rhythms of human life — repetition is not only tolerated, but sanctified. What the world calls redundancy, the Church might name as liturgy. What is often dismissed as “sameness” may, in the divine register, be the echo of eternity.

In the Rule of St. Benedict, the rhythm of prayer punctuates the day and night: seven times a day I praise you (Psalm 119:164). The same Psalms return. The same readings are heard. The same responses are given. Yet no monastic would say they pray the same way each time. Repetition in the spiritual life is not mechanical replication. It is a form of deepening — an entering again, from a new place, with a new self.

Liturgically, this is the genius of the Church’s calendar. Every year we celebrate the Triduum. Every Sunday we proclaim the Resurrection. Every Mass, the anamnesis — do this in remembrance of me — returns us to the same mystery, but never with the same heart. The act is repeated; the grace is renewed.

Congar once described the Church’s task as a “creative fidelity” — holding fast to the same truth, but letting it breathe afresh in every age. The sanctity of repetition does not lie in freezing the form, but in faithfully returning to what we dare not outgrow.

Repetition also sanctifies the body and mind. For many neurodivergent people, repetition is not pathology. It is peace. Stimming, echolalia, repeated routines — these are ways of grounding oneself in a world that often moves too fast. From a theological perspective, these patterns are not simply coping mechanisms. They are embodied liturgies.

There is something Eucharistic in this — the presence of grace in what is done “again and again,” not despite its sameness but because of it. It is not a stretch to see in these repetitions a sacramental logic: the visible sign of an invisible reality, made present through rhythm.

This is where repetition becomes a holy resistance. To insist on returning — to the same prayer, the same psalm, the same pew — is a refusal to believe that novelty is the measure of meaning. In autistic theology, the value of repetition is not just affirmed — it is revealed as a site of encounter. Rapley writes that for many autistic Christians, liturgy offers a kind of “safety and predictability” that allows for deeper spiritual attentiveness. When the form is known, the heart is free to listen.

At the heart of creation is a God who repeats. Let there be — again and again. Morning and evening. Sabbath and work. Death and rising. God is not embarrassed by repetition. The whole of salvation history echoes with covenant refrains: I will be your God, and you will be my people.

In Christ, the ultimate repetition: not the cycle of sin, but the eternal return of love. Every Mass does not re-sacrifice Christ, but re-presents the same sacrifice. And every act of mercy, every return to prayer, every movement of repentance is not “starting again” in failure, but participating again in grace.

This, to me, is what sanctifies repetition — it is God’s way of showing us that nothing is wasted. That coming back again, even in weakness, is still coming back. That love doesn’t tire of returning.

In the Benedictine tradition, the dismissal at the end of Compline is always the same: May the almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless and preserve us. Amen.

It is said every night.

It is never said without meaning.

Perhaps this is the true sanctity of repetition — not that it brings new information, but that it slowly brings us into alignment with what has always been true.

In an age of scrolls and swipes, we are invited to sit still and say it again.

And again.

And again.

Until we are changed.