higher nature or a sense that the possibilities of existence do not limit themselves to what we ordinary experience. In order for this sense to be awakened in people, they need to have an experience of forms which by themselves refer to nothing of the mundane. While elements of the physical world are always involved –otherwise no experiences of it would be possible– they are set aside from the natural order to which they originally belonged and consecrated in order to render present realities of another order.17 As Louis Duprè emphasizes, the purpose of a ritual act is not to repeat the ordinary action which it symbolizes, but to bestow meaning upon it in a higher perspective. A reduction of ritual gestures to common activity would defeat the entire purpose of ritualization, which is to transform life, not to imitate it.18 While it is difficult to generalize across the entire Western world, certainly in the English speaking parts of it, the liturgical practices have been quite problematic since at least the 1970s. What Pope Benedict calls pastoral pragmatism or bringing God down to the level of the people, parish tea party liturgy and sacro-pop music has been a dominant part of any Catholic child’s experience of liturgy over the past 40 years. Until these problems are resolved the Christological dimensions of Western culture will continue to be weak because the sacramental order will not be sufficiently embedded in the personal. Not only will our youth not love the Eucharist but their intellects will not be very receptive to the work of the Holy Spirit because their memories will not include within them something like a Transfiguration moment. Their liturgical and sacramental experience will not have sufficiently liberated them from the mundane. Their choices will appear to be
New Evangelization
«Until these problems are resolved the Christological dimensions of Western culture will continue to be weak because the sacramental order will not be sufficiently embedded in the personal. Not only will our youth not love the Eucharist but their intellects will not be very receptive to the work of the Holy Spirit because their memories will not include within them something like a Transfiguration moment».
(…) Within this tradition there is a most sacred place, but it exist beyond time in the eternity of the New Jerusalem; while in the period between the first Easter and the consummation of the world, the Eucharist unites the universal and the particular in a multitude of sacred places across the globe.
17 J. BORELLA, The Sense of the Supernatural, T & T Clark, Edinburgh 1998, 59. 18 L. DUPRE, Symbols of the Sacred, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 2000, 12.
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