Vatican II and the loss of the sacred

I wonder if the loss of the sacred may have been an accidental victim of Vatican II and its desire to encourage the full participation of the whole assembly in the liturgy. This ‘togetherness’ by its very nature is completely opposite a style that would allow the sacred to bloom. It’s as though the style of the Liturgy of the Word washed over the Liturgy of the Eucharist. 

In his book In Search of the Sacred, Josef Pieper says that it is important to distinguish between the Liturgy of the Word and the sacred acts. “Proclamation, instruction, teaching, preaching, etc. these are all part of the everyday world.” But at its heart the liturgy is “not common meal or an assembly for instruction, etc. It is the sacred action that brings about the true presence of God among us.” 

Structured rituals provide “the unique opportunity for the individual to transcend the confines of his own subjective self precisely by accepting the communal challenge and entering into the objective form of a structured and stately ritual. The sacred action takes the solemnity of its stately form, transcending all individual peculiarities.” And “The consecrated enclosure establishes explicit boundary lines between the area of the ordinary and everyday life ‘outside’ and an ‘inside’ where different norms of behavior obtain. And when a church is consecrated the altar is consecrated. It is a table for the ritual meal and a ‘stone of sacrifice’ upon which the sacred mysteries are celebrated.”

Yet if you think the Mass it just about a ‘common meal’ and the ‘proclamation of the word’ then you don’t really see the need for all that ‘sacred mystery’ stuff. But that’s the very thing we’re missing.

Tags: loss of the sacred, Vatican II