ABSTRACT
The purpose of this book is to offer an approach to Christian liturgy for the twentyfirst century which takes seriously and highlights its mystical, symbolic and aesthetic constituents. Although largely rooted in my hopes for the future of Roman Catholic liturgy, I trust my position will have important ecumenical and indeed, interfaith implications for the practice of worship. Unlike those who argue that relevance and adaptation to cultural norms are integral to any reinvigoration of liturgy at the present time, the position taken here centres on an aesthetic understanding of worship which releases a transformative movement of the self through liturgical form, allowing an endless and unsatiated encounter with the Unknown. I contend that it is the task of the liturgical Church to offer the embodied presence of the resurrected Christ to the world, a body once disfigured but restored to glory, a body of beauty. Such a task demands an imaginative performance of ritual which encourages worshippers to see the self and the world in a new Christological way, entailing the enactment of a drama of beauty which enthrals and attracts. What is required, I argue, is a capacity to symbolise and image the shape of Christ’s life through worship, in the hope that an anagogical movement towards an unlimited horizon of the divine will take place. I seek to show that Christian ritual performances must proceed from a symbolic reappropriation of the Christian narrative, which reflects a theology of beauty and a spirituality rooted in apophaticism.
