sense of the sacred: On Pilgrimage

Sunday, November 28, 2010

On Pilgrimage

Im going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. What a wonderful way to celebrate a sacerdotal anniversary!

3 comments:

GeraldNovember 29, 2010 at 11:21 PM
Happy priestly anniversary Father! Thanks for being a priest. Please do remember us while you are in the Holy Land.
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EkangDecember 2, 2010 at 6:09 AM
when will that be? that must be really exciting. for you, what's the most important thing a human being should know?
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SiniculusDecember 6, 2010 at 9:59 AM
Father, we miss you! Please bring pasalubong, hehehe. Holy 'land', as in lupa or alikabok, will do.
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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 )