Unsearchable Riches: The Symbolic Nature of Liturgy

"This study has two aims. The first is to relate studies on symbolism and its modes to an understanding of the liturgy. The second is to relate these studies to the renewal of the liturgy in a time of crisis. Since the first aim is affected by the second, it may be well to say something about the nature of the crisis at this point . . . "The crisis as it touches on liturgy is twofold. First there is a crisis of vision and second a crisis of hope. The churches are forced to ask how well the vision of reality, or the world view, projected in liturgical celebration expresses a sense of being in time and a sense of the holy that are pertinent to contemporary fact and contemporary models of reality. This is the crisis of vision. At the same time, the churches are part of a humanity which lives in a time of disintegration and destruction, a humanity continually compelled to consider whether there are any hopes by which it is possible to face the future. The despair of the age is represented in the twofold holocaust of the century. There is the holocaust of the Jewish people under the Nazi regime, and there is the imminent nuclear holocaust which threatens the entire world. Can those who profess faith in Jesus Christ profess it in such an age?" --from the Introduction