Deus Misereatur

While pondering a recent conversation I had with an acquaintance on the topic of sacred space {it may be helpful for you to review what I’ve written on this already, by going here and here ), I tripped over a statement made by C.S. Lewis in his little work titled “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer” that gently and perceptively speaks to the subject: “It is well to have specifically holy places, and things, and days, for, without these focal points or reminders, the belief that all is holy and “big with God” will soon dwindle into mere sentiment. But if these holy places, things, and days cease to remind us, if they obliterate our awareness that all ground is holy and every bush (could we but perceive it) a Burning Bush, then the hallows begin to do harm. Hence both the necessity, and the perennial danger, of “religion”” (Letter XIV, p. 75). Lewis has hit on at least two risks that accompany the subject. But he has also proposed a healthy way forward. The first risk is t...

Transubstantiation, Zwinglian or Real Participation I was quite pleased while reading Joseph Ratzinger’s (now Pope Benedict XVI) piece “On the Meaning of Church Architecture” in his Dogma and Preaching , “We could summarize this finding in the formula: Jesus, the Crucified and Risen One, has replaced the Temple. Or, in a way that more clearly applies to our question: What the Temple was for the Old Testament is supplied for the Church, not by any building, but rather by a man--the God-man Jesus Christ” (235). Though he will continue to make the case, based on transubstantiation, that a church building must “express the fact that inside there is God’s presence, an incursion of the eternal into time” (238), nevertheless, his admission that the temple is replaced by Christ Himself, is significant as we think of sacred space for worship. [To see why Ratzinger's admission that the Church building is not a Temple is important see my previous post Sacred Space 1 ] To put the issue pr...

Temple or Meetinghouse? I’m thinking about space. Not really about “outer-space” with starships, x-wing fighters and all that (though sometimes my family and friends think I‘m a bit spacey), but worship space. As our congregation begins to plan and plot how to remodel and renovate our worship area (Nave and Sanctuary for you liturgy-Nazis), I am going to think out-loud here a bit. It seems to me that there are two major extremes with regard to worship space. On the one hand, there are those with a heavy sacerdotal bent who look on the worship area as something like the divinely instituted Temple. That’s tempting mainly because of the depth of reverence and awe that such a thing evokes. I once visited a Serbian Orthodox Church years ago. As I went through the doors I still remember being struck by a heart-pounding anticipation that came on me all of a suddenly, that I was entering into the august presence of God. There was something about the “otherness” of the Nave, the iconostasis...