sense of the sacred: Transfiguration and the Priesthood

Friday, February 26, 2010

Transfiguration and the Priesthood

Blessed Ildefono Schuster wrote on the choice of the Transfiguration as reading for the Ember Saturday of Lent: "The solitary height on which Jesus clothes himself is typical of the sacerdotal state, which demands a complete detachment from earthly things, an intense interior life, and a sublime spirit of contemplation. As in heaven, God in his majesty is seated upon the Cherubim, so, on earth, their sublime office is filled by his priests." (I. Schuster, The Sacramentary: Historical and Liturgical Notes on the Roman Missal, 77.)

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We ought to get back the dimension of the sacred in the liturgy. The liturgy is not a festivity; it is not a meeting for the purpose of having a good time. It is of no importance that the parish priest has cudgeled his brains to come up with suggestive ideas or imaginative novelties. The liturgy is what makes the Thrice-Holy God present amongst us; it is the burning bush; it is the Alliance of God with man in Jesus Christ, who has died and risen again. The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment, but in rendering tangible the Totally Other, whom we are not capable of summoning. He comes because He wills. In other words, the essential in the liturgy is the mystery, which is realized in the common ritual of the Church; all the rest diminishes it. Men experiment with it in lively fashion, and find themselves deceived, when the mystery is transformed into distraction, when the chief actor in the liturgy is not the Living God but the priest or the liturgical director. - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Chile, 1988)

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. - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Spirit of the Liturgy )