Original scientific paper
Contemporary liturgical theology: sign and ritual realisation of the mystery
Ivan Šaško
; KKatolički bogoslovni fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Abstract
The article is an attempt to acknowledge the new movements in the special branch of theology – liturgical theology – by emphasising the anthropological dimension of the ritual and the need for the revaluation of the ritual system and its symbolic structure. It also points to some difficulties that have occurred recently; such as the specific “desymbolisation”, the loss of horizons of sense encouraged by post-modern movements that lack holistic approach. This approach is the basic feature of rituality. Liturgical celebration in the variant of Christian distinctiveness includes the realisation of the wholeness of the encounter with God by force of dynamics of Christ’s incarnation. That is why the author sees our pastoral practice with the need for something he calls “theological-anthropological hygiene” of the ritual, for symbol is “vindictive”. Any attempt to determine the symbolical impoverishes liturgy, turning it into trivial ceremonialism. The force of symbolical realisation of Christian salvation makes liturgy the alternative to so-called ordinary life; it interrupts it to enable a person to go back to this order “unordinary”, which is the closest synonym to Christian term “consecrated”. Liturgical theology aim mainly at the investigation of the event of salvation “sub specie celebrationis”.
Keywords
Liturgical celebration; language of liturgy; sign; mystery; ritual; liturgical theology; liturgical holism
Hrčak ID:
40190
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2003.
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