Inside ML

What will Eucharist be like in another 1,000 years? As we prepare to celebrate the first Easter of the new millennium, Rufino Zaragoza suggests we also look back to the turn of the last millennium to gain some perspective. Then, like now, the church was in the midst of great change. In the first of three articles (“A New Millennium: Bread and Book,” page 12 of the printed edition of ML), Zaragoza says, “Non-Christian forces were attacking _ on every side.” That sentence could apply as easily to either millennium. The second millennium saw our symbols diminished and minimized to the point of unrecognizability. At the threshold of the third millennium, the Second Vatican Council has mandated a liturgy that requires the full, conscious and active participation of all the faithful. Susan Walker (“Encountering the Easter Symbols,” page 6) explores what the effect of powerful but simple symbols is on participation in the Easter liturgies: 

We recognize the power of symbols in our prayer life. Liturgy is literally crammed full of symbolism: small items or actions or tastes or smells that evoke a vast storehouse of meaning for us. If we don’t listen to the whispers of these symbols, we miss something; our hearts know it long before our heads tell us. Because we cannot see or comprehend God, we need touchstones — nothing complicated, mind you. Simplicity and ordinariness are the keys.

In another 1,000 years, ML or whatever its descendant is, will be beamed through the cybersphere, perhaps directly to chip receptors in the brains of subscribers. An e-writer will have created a holographic presentation explaining the ancient use of electronic books and JPEG files in transmitting God’s word and the liturgical texts back in the “old days.” But what was true at the end of both millennia will remain true at the end of the third: the need of humans to worship using tangible, touchable, smellable, recognizable things that have meaning for us in our everyday lives. Samuel Torvend asks in his “Shaping the Ritual” column (page 25), “Is it any wonder, then, that God comes among us as bread to be shared, as wine to be sipped from a common cup?” No wonder at all, in this era or any other.

ML

What do YOU Think?
Send an e-mail to ML Editor
or post an entry on the ML Current Issue Discussion Board. (All submissions become the property of RPI and may be edited for length.)