25. Our Prayer and Our Deification | A Lecture by Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P.

Lecture recorded on Thursday, April 30, 2026, at the Church of St. Catherine of Siena
(Q&A begins at 53:29)

What does it mean to become "partakers of the divine nature"? How does the Church's prayer draw us into the very life of God?

Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P., coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Deification (Oxford University Press, 2024), explores the profound connection between Christian prayer and the mystery of deification.

In the Christian tradition, deification (or divinization) refers to the transformative gift of God's grace by which we are made participants in the divine life—not by nature, but by adoption and communion.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, "The Word became flesh to make us 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Peter 1:4)... 'For the Son of God became man so that we might become God'" (CCC 460).

Drawing from the Church's liturgical tradition and theological heritage, Fr. Hofer reflects on the liturgy as the privileged place of this transformation, with insights from his edited volume Divinization: Becoming Icons of Christ Through the Liturgy.

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