Part 2: Time an Space in the Liturgy Chapter 1: The Relationship of the Liturgy to Time and Space: Some Preliminary Questions
In the first sentence Joseph Ratzinger asks: Can there really be special holy places and holy times in the world of Christian faith? In this chapter we have a further exploration how the temporal or historical time and the eternal intersect, specifically in the Cross and the Resurrection. It also manifests itself in the liturgy and specifically in the Eucharist. One of the aspects of his writing is style is that he often gives a great summary at the end of the chapter. So I will let him speak.
Now if we put the two three-part processes together – the historical abd the liturgical – it becomes clear that the liturgy gives precise expression to this historical situation. It expresses the “between-ness” of the time of images, in which we now find ourselves. The theology of the liturgy is in a special way “symbolic theology”, a theology of symbols, which connects us to what is present but hidden. In so saying, we finally discover the answer to the question with which we started. After the tearing of the Temple curtain and the opening up of the heart of God in the pierced heart of the Crucified, do we still need sacred space, sacred time, mediating symbols? Yes, we do need them, precisely so that, through the “image” , through the sign, we learn to see the openness of heaven. We need them to give us the capacity to know the mystery of God in the pierced heart of the Crucified. Christian liturgy is no longer replacement worship by the coming of the representative Redeemer to us, an entry into his representation that is an entry into reality itself. We do indeed participate in the heavenly liturgy, but this participation is mediated to us through earthly signs, which the Redeemer has shown to us as the place where his reality is to be found. In liturgical celebration there is a kind of turning around of exitus and reditus, of departure to return, of God’s descent to our ascent. The liturgy is the means by which earthly time is inserted into the time of Jesus Christ and into its present. It is the turning point in the process of redemption. The Shepherd takes the lost sheep onto his shoulders and carries it home.
Chapter 1: The Relationship of the Liturgy to Time and Space: Some Preliminary Questions
In the first sentence Joseph Ratzinger asks: Can there really be special holy places and holy times in the world of Christian faith?
In this chapter we have a further exploration how the temporal or historical time and the eternal intersect, specifically in the Cross and the Resurrection. It also manifests itself in the liturgy and specifically in the Eucharist.
One of the aspects of his writing is style is that he often gives a great summary at the end of the chapter. So I will let him speak.