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 but 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 to 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.
(Ratzinger, J. (2000). The Spirit of the Liturgy (J. Saward, Trans.; pp. 60–61). Ignatius Press.)
- Even though the Incarnation fundamentally changed the relationship between human nature and the Divine, we still require effective entry into this mystery. For that reason, the liturgy makes use of sacred time, space and symbols. One would even argue that the Incarnation – far from eliminating the need for symbols – has made time, places, and the material world itself even more potent in their ability to transmit deeper layers of meaning.
- These symbols are not just something to help us meditate abstractly on the mysteries of faith, however. They are the real passage to encounter with the mystery, the “opening to the heart of God.”
- And so, the liturgy expresses the rich symbols of our faith, but not just to propel each person individually into their own subjective experience of what it means to believe. The liturgy, by using the forms and words prescribed by Christ Himself, propels us into the same real contact with the mystery of our Redemption. In the liturgy, everyone doesn’t “get something else” out of it – even if each one remains particularly attached to his own way of encountering the symbols. Everyone receives Christ in the liturgy, to the extent they are disposed and prepared – in the Word and in Sacrament.
