Ducked out to the Chrism Mass at St. Pat's. Found an out of the way bench in the quasi-transept under an image of O.L. of Guadalupe. Was thinking about the historicity of the church, and what it meant that the Christian sacraments were being celebrated in a post-Enlightenment city. Amid the rabid fundamentalism found in dark, primitive places like the television national news and the Pentagon.
It just seems that the society is increasingly dominated by imitation and repetition, and there's very little serious thought about the way things are. We are in the midst of the technological and civilizational fruits of the Enlightenment, which had a lot to do with Christian notions. Hospitals, skyscrapers, planned suburbs. Very different from some other nations and cultures. Christian nations are generally more economically developed, all else being equal. (Oil wealth makes for some exceptions.) Part of that is the historical accident of being in Europe and America, but still.
And yet, there are some rather bad things going on in these Western cities.
Thoughts that went through my head as I sat under the image of the BVM, remembering hearing the calls to prayer as I sipped kefir and read philosophy in Bosnia.
Part of acknowledging the historical reality is keeping the door open to the other world. Repeated ritual can become rote, or just matter for comforting repetition. But this is where the rift is for us. And if, even in the churches, we begin to think that the present reality is all there is, we've lost.
Heidegger was walking with Arendt in the mountains. They stopped in to a small Catholic chapel. As they left, Heidegger genuflected. Arendt turned to him, very surprised, and asked why. (He had long been lapsed from the faith.) He thought for a moment, and then said deprecatingly, "Well, one must take the historical view of things."
These are events extending far through time. Mind-independent realities that have shaped nations and millions of individual souls. If it seems humdrum in the worship multipurpose room, look out the window (the one that John XXIII cracked open) at the centuries of the past, and the strange and sometimes deeply problematic forms that have resulted from them.
This is what we would be in the midst of, if we attempted to ground ourselves in a true understanding of the time. But it's much easier to watch television.