Wednesday, November 13, 2019

The Cosmic Liturgy

I want to take a side trip from our sidetrack into Dunning-Kruger because now I'm preoccupied with another book, Volume III of the Collected Works of Joseph Ratzinger, Theology of the Liturgy. I'm 130 pages into this 600 page volume, and if I don't capture the sparks as they fly off the page and into my head -- i.e., blog about them in Real Time -- they'll likely just cool off and fade away.

I'm tempted to just highlight certain passages that banged my gong. I was in an unusual frame of mind while reading it, but I'm not sure if the space I was in made me read it in a different way, or if the material itself vaulted me into the space. Although the writing is "intellectual," like art, it has a kind of primordial power. Of course, the transmission of the power presupposes a receptor (not to mention a power line), which is one of the most compelling proofs of the higher Intellect.

Speaking of which, here is one description of how it might take place: "God wants to speak to every person" such that "his word becomes a light that enlightens every man." That isn't a poetic description, but nor is it literal, since the light of physics is not the Light of God or Intellect.

However, to the extent that it is a metaphor, its purpose is not "lateral," but rather, to deploy a lower reality to illuminate a higher one. Once that is accomplished, then we see that the lower is actually a descent of the higher -- that mere biological sight is a distant echo of Vision as such. For example, God obviously "sees," but not with material eyes. See?

"Neither reason nor faith can operate independently of the other and arrive at its proper destination. Reason and faith are preserved from dangerous pathologies by reciprocal correction and purification." Emphasis mine. Why? Because human intelligence, like any other organ, is ordered to a proper end; and failure to achieve that end is the very definition of pathology.

Which is precisely what renders pathology -- including both psychopathology and pneumapathology -- an objective study, not a matter of mere opinion. To cite one obvious example, relativism in any form is a mind and soul sickness. So too are materialism, scientism, Marxism -- anything that denies the Absolute, and therefore the ground and guarantor of truth. In short, deny intelligence its proper object, and it is ultimately just another form of stupidity.

Now, there is a kind of truth that results from logic or deduction; these are indirect means, just as proving the existence of eyes is not the same as seeing. And some truths -- the most important ones -- are seen directly with eyes not made of flesh. This comes to mind in Ratzinger's description of what occurs during the liturgy, through which "Christ unceasingly becomes contemporary with us, enters into our lives." Is this Presence something that is seen with biological eyes, something that could be photographed?

Schuon mentions somewhere that God (for us) is Truth and Presence. If you really dwell on the meaning and implications of these words, you'll understand what he means. Indeed, a person is someone for whom Presence is present. It's why with God, you're never really alone, even when you've abandoned him, for oneness is always threeness. Aphorisms:

--God is not the object of my reason, nor of my sensibility, but of my being. Therefore,

--God exists for me in the same act in which I exist (that act being I AM).

--God does not reveal with discourses, but by means of experiences. The sacred writer does not transmit a divine discourse; his words express an experience given to him (i.e., the Presence).

--In certain moments of abundance, God overflows into the world like a spring gushing into the peace of midday.

--If we believe in God we should not say, “I believe in God,” but rather, “God believes in me” (again, light from Light).

St. Irenaeus describes the Great Cosmic Circle: "The glory of God is the living man, but the life of man is the vision of God."

This one banged my gong so hard that I've made it a permanent comment above the comment box:

"The cosmos is not a kind of closed building, a stationary container in which history may by chance take place. It is itself movement, from its one beginning to its one end. In a sense, creation is history."

Later he writes that "For Christian thinkers, the circle is seen as the great movement of the cosmos," except that it isn't a closed circle, rather, more like "an upward flying arrow" spiraling toward a target the archer cannot see.

Another bang:

[I]n the Christian view of the world, the many small circles of the lives of individuals are inscribed within the one great circle of history as it moves from exitus to reditus. The small circles carry within themselves the great rhythm of the whole, give it concrete forms that are ever new, and so provide it with the force of movement...

In these circles, the mystery of beginning is repeated again and again, but they are also the scene of the end of time, a final collapse, which may in its own way prepare the ground for a new beginning. The two -- the great circle and the small circles -- are interconnected and interdependent.

Bottom line for today, courtesy of Sr. Dávila:

Everything in history begins before where we think it begins and ends after where we think it ends.

21 comments:

River Cocytus said...

In light of that let's listen to some Palestrina, whose music for mass demonstrates these ideas in musical form:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot6Cv8T3pAs

Polyphony is interesting because every voice is personal; it is not merely there to provide harmony to the melody. It is a melody itself. Of course, this is a symbolic process: most 'voices' are sung by multiple people (except in Byrd's masses, they appear to have been written for very limited choirs!)

The limit to this being literally true can be seen in Tallis' Spem in Alium wherein although there are forty parts, it becomes impossible to make them out in the immense wall of sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT-ZAAi4UQQ

Sacred Harp music also gives us this impression, although its aesthetic is different:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QABA9Bxxj_8

julie said...

Neither reason nor faith can operate independently of the other and arrive at its proper destination.

Thus, by their fruits you shall know them.

julie said...

Everything in history begins before where we think it begins and ends after where we think it ends.

For some reason, this reminds me of the tale of the Japanese soldier who was left on a jungle island somewhere for a couple of decades, and so never knew World War II had ended. For him, it was still ongoing for all that time.

Petey said...

And even then, WWII was a continuation of WWI, as the Cold War was a continuation of WWII. I heard it said the other day that there's just one nonlocal cosmic war with local flashpoints.

julie said...

Yes, there's a whole lot of truth to that.

Anonymous said...

Good Evening, sweet people of the Internet. Have you had a splendid day? I did. The slanting autumnal sunlight is a treat.

WWII is still active, in fact never ceased. News of the end of WWII was spurious. Elements of the Waffen SS including a company from the Totemkompf Division, a squad from the Hitlerjugend, and three men from Einsatzgruppen South are currently active in the US. There may be, in addition, Wermacht regulars from the Grossdeutchland Division numbering in the scores clustered near Boise, Idaho.

These men have carried out a host of subversive activities for decades and are being hunted high and low but are exceptionally wily. A few have been caught.

About 3-5 Imperial Japanese Navy personnel and their recruits are active in the Seattle area. They have 2-3 operational watercraft including one semi-submersible armed with a 7.62 mm machine gun on a swivel mount. This craft has been seen flying IJN colors.

History is a sticky and tenacious substance, much like taffy. It pulls into long strands which can be followed.

There's my two tarnished cents. Now its off to other things, things you don't want to know about and don't need to know about.

-Sticky Wicket

River Cocytus said...

Petey / Julie

and they say that America's involvement in any of these conflicts is just an extension of her internal politics, and that's just a prolongation of the English Civil War...

Christina M said...

Arrows shooting from the center. Red strings attached from a center point to shoe soles (souls!). Polyphony weaving sound. Glowing ribbons weaving a tapestry.

We are little mobile tabernacles. In receiving the Eucharist, we carry Him with us everywhere we go.

During a mass in Darmstadt, I once saw the Eucharist as a flaming ribbon. Everyone partook of the Eucharist and as they walked back to their pews, they trailed flaming ribbon that flowed from the priest, and then the people wove flaming ribbons back to their places. and Then as they walked out of the church, the flaming ribbons flowed out with them as they went out into the world. weaving a tapestry of flowing ribbons.

I told this story to someone before mass a few years later in TN and then we went into the mass. In the midst of the mass, I happened to focus on the lady standing in front of me. I couldn't believe it! She was wearing a sweater crocheted or knitted with shining satin ribbon. It was not yarn. It was ribbon!

I love Cardinal Ratzinger. He allowed me to return to the Catholic Church with his "Dominus Iesus" and his writings contra Liberation Theology. Thank you, PBXVIE

julie said...

Christina, how lovely!

River Cocytus said...

Christina: the vision of the ribbon is definitely important. If you take a look at angels, at least in Orthodox iconography, you will notice a detail: they are all wearing ribbons (usually to tie up the hair.) Someone once explained the importance and significance of the ribbons symbolically to me but I've naturally forgotten the details and retained only the image.

River Cocytus said...

I just recalled a poem, fortunately for me I keep a record of all of them in case I need to recall them. How many years old is it? Perhaps as old as my eldest son.

"Remains"

The solid fact of your person remains
It is not, like graffiti or dirt on a wall
That must be wiped and cleared to call
It clean? Even after all of the stains
Are gone, it is not entirely smooth
Not a record without a groove
Some have thought that just because
All men are men, they be all reduced
To one face? Need it be traduced?
A part is not a whole, and other flaws
Make pause, and nor is there not
A face behind each muddy blot
A heinous facade it is and perhaps
We know the mask is of our make
But we cannot remember how to take
It off - and so soundless, lapse
Into thinking the painting be the stains
But the solid fact of the person remains.


(the title is a play off of 'remains' in the sense of relics of people which retain their character and sometimes miraculous gifts. "Solid fact" is a play off of the word 'hypostasis' [that which stands under] - the 'concrete person'. "Heinous Facade" is a term used by Hierotheos Vlachos to distinguish the 'personality' from the 'person'.)

julie said...

I broke down and bought the book yesterday; reminds me why I like to think of him as Father GoodWord.

Anyway, this struck me as a powerful observation:

There was no Temple any more, no public and communal form of divine worship as decreed in the law. Deprived as she was of worship, Israel was bound to feel immeasurably poor and pathetic. She stood before God with empty hands.

What a shocking experience that must have been. Most religions throughout the world turned to sacrifice in one form or another as an almost instinctual need; almost as a form of trade, really: I give god/ gods this valuable thing I think it wants, and in exchange god gives me that other thing that I want. A quid pro quo, as it were. Yet here comes Christ, who gives Himself, a sacrifice literally unmatchable by any act of mankind, and all we can give is our empty hands and hearts, along with our faith and our hope. It doesn't ever seem remotely adequate, but there it is.

Gagdad Bob said...

This book puts the divina into the lectio. Let us know if it tweaks your consciousness.

julie said...

Had an odd thought earlier today, that in the act of worship/ liturgy as the moment when present and eternity come together, when what has exitused has reditused, so to speak, that eternal moment takes the shape of a torus with a centerpoint, (of course); but more precisely like a network of synapses, with each connection being an individual person instead of just a neuron, and perhaps not so coincidentally would bear in form a strong resemblance to a crown of thorns.

Or maybe I just need to smoke a bowl, I dunno...

Anonymous said...

Hello All:

I've been enjoying the string of comments and have nothing of interest to add, but just wanted to say I appreciate all of you. And thank you Dr. Godwin for creating and sustaining this blog.

Julie, I thought you smoked the bowl before writing the comment; it was pleasingly psychedelic. I do get what you are describing. Perhaps these synaptic connections form the Body of Christ, which may take forms above and beyond the human body.

Happy toking to all. I have in possession a gram of Old Family Purple, very high in myrcene, and I thank the Lord for His soothing herbal gift. What dreams may come tonight? I hope they are heavenly.

-Peaceful Meadow

Anonymous said...

Peaceful Meadow, now it's time for something far more important.

Our current pope, this Francis, has yet to appoint a Vatican exorcist who would respectfully replace Ratzinger's own Reverend Amorth. Departed in ’16, the beloved Reverend had personally witnessed the demonically possessed who’d “vomited metal the size of a human finger” while “others have vomited rose petals”.

Is there a meaning to the different materials vomited? I don't know and this is beside the point.

My point is that I sometimes wonder if it would be possible to exorcise somebody virtually, as in over the internet. Maybe an organization. One of the Russian troll farms, perhaps? Or more specifically, one of my Facebook friends whose "life adventures" are coming across as just a bit too annoyingly materialistic and braggardly pompous. I wonder what they'd vomit up.

Gagdad Bob said...

Julie: I know what you mean: in the margin I wrote a note to myself that says "in the liturgy time is collapsed and we are nourished by God."

Later in the book Ratzinger notes that for ancient Jews, "remembrance" means to "make present," not just the past but the future. Thus, "do this in remembrance of me" = "do this in order to render me present."

Petey said...

Eternity assumes time so that time may assume eternity. The now looks back in gratitude and reaches forward in hope, which anticipates the completion of the circle.

julie said...

Another set of ideas is worth mentioning, as well:

Early on, he discusses the necessity of a common set of laws for a people (emphasis mine):

First of all, on Sinai the people receive not only instructions about worship, but also an all-embracing rule of law and life. A people without a common rule of law cannot live. It destroys itself in anarchy, which is a parody of freedom, its exaltation to the point of abolition. When every man lives without law, every man lives without freedom.

Reading that the other day immediately brought to mind the current state of affairs in America, where the law is under attack from those who would use it selectively against one group, but not another. Who has any faith or trust in the legal system as a system of genuine justice right now? Anyone? Bueller?

Going back to the book, though, Ratzinger's observation also has implications for the liturgy, where he discusses a lot of the popular changes in recent years, which tend to throw out some of the deeper symbolism (which few people understand anymore):

Nothing is more harmful to the liturgy than a constant activism, even if it seems to be for the sake of genuine renewal.

Even in little ways, this becomes apparent for anyone who attends Mass weekly. At our Parish, if you go at the same time each week, the music is pretty consistent and people can follow along. Every now and then, though, it changes (usually because the main music guy is out), and the substitute uses a different set of music. It is disjointed (to my ear), doesn't really follow the words and phrasing very well, and nobody can keep up with it. A little thing, but it changes the tenor of the Mass in subtle and often frustrating ways.

Anonymous said...

Julie I aver that a good, consistent choir is important in ensuring a good Mass. In fact it would be sensible to try different churches until you find the one with the best choir, even if it means driving further.

Van Harvey said...

"In short, deny intelligence its proper object, and it is ultimately just another form of stupidity."

Just another form of stupidity, yes, but with the additional power to stupefy others.

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