The Liturgical Mystery

Abstract

This chapter argues that the heart of the ‘mystical’ in the Christian faith is inalienably liturgical. Despite the fact that modern use of the ‘mystical’, and especially ‘mysticism’, is concerned wholly with the experience of the individual, whether in the context of the sacramental life or outside it, the root meaning of the mystical in Christian understanding is bound up with the sacraments, and pre-eminently the eucharist, the divine liturgy. It is argued further that the eucharist is to be seen less as a text than an action, or movement, and an action performed by Christ: on the cross, eternally in heaven, and now in the eucharist. He is coming to draw the whole cosmos into unity with him and his offering himself to the Father. This is an act of reconciliation and love, with entailments, ascetical, ontological, metaphysical, and cosmic.