Liturgy and the Spirit of Man

Abstract

The phenomena of liturgical and sacramental life can only puzzle the uninformed unbeliever. A series of sensible signs reminiscent of long-dead religions, men bent in adoration before what appears to be bread and wine, sprinklings of water, repetition of verbal formulae crystallized for centuries even if now at last translated into modern languages, solemn gestures and movements of various kinds, hymns and chants, incense, and all the other elements of liturgical worship seem curiously out of place in our everyday modern world. And indeed, they are out of place in a world which has lost the sense of the sacred and the holy at the heart of reality, which sees only a world of things to be used for the better well-being of an entirely autonomous man, which is no longer aware of the all-penetrating and all-powerful presence of God who sustains us and all that is in being at every moment.