P. Gorazd Cetkovský, O.Carm.
Each of us reacts to certain names with keen attention. This was also the case for me when I was leafing through an old book some time ago and found an article written by Romano Guardini. I have translated a portion of the text and would like to offer it to you (I will present it in italics) along with my short reflection.
According to the perspective of early Christianity, Christian existence is based on a constantly continuing (emerging) action of God. This action constitutes the "holy history," which takes place amid the history of the world. Its content is that every Christian secretly becomes a new person, secretly "new heavens and a new earth" come into being until the hour when the Lord comes again and everything will be revealed. The most perceptible revelation of this development is represented by the liturgy.
So, you can already guess why I thought to title this reflection with the question: "To whom does the world belong?" It belongs to God; He is the most important one in it, He acts in it: the work of creation, redemption, and sanctification. The work of God, opus Dei. He brings forth dawn and gives a new day, He sustains all creatures, He bestows faith and grace, He leads to prayer and pours out His Spirit; it is He, He, He. Thus sings the psalmist, thus resonates from the hymns of the Liturgy of the Hours, composed in late antiquity, thus speak the saints and simple holy people who are not canonized.
This has changed in modern times. The modern age, including the contemporary believers, no longer sees the world as a work that immediately emanates from God's hand, but as something that, while created by God, now operates according to its own laws. Consequently, the focus of religious life shifts away from the mystery-filled action of God in the world, directed towards the end when everything will be revealed, and turns inward, to the thoughts, feelings, and mentality of the individual person. The liturgy is no longer the most important venue and a constantly shining revelation of those "holy histories," but is perceived as a means serving education.
The object of attention and the presumed center of events has become ourselves. This does not always have to manifest itself in a primitive and arrogant atheism; oftentimes, it is merely "practical atheism," which does not deny God but simply does not consider Him. "The world belongs to us" (I am borrowing this slogan from Voskovec and Werich, without engaging in any debate over their film of the same name). We are now at the center of events. The morning means awakening to our concerns, to our haste; we plan this or that; we must pray; we must not forget many things; we would like to help here or there and meet this or that person, serve them; we must manage our strengths well; and we would also like to attend Mass if possible. None of this is wrong; it is part of our life; it is necessary, valuable, and beautiful. But if in all of this He is missing—the attention to God, the turning to Him, the surrender, the effort for a firm and lasting relationship with Him—we greatly impoverish ourselves.
It seems, however, that a change has taken place some time ago. The self-assured certainty of the modern view of the world has been shaken. People now perceive even what has been pushed into the background in their existence; they experience that not everything can be anticipated and that they cannot foresee the limits of what they are capable of. Reality is experienced in an elementary way, and the weight of mere knowledge and experience diminishes. The decisive factor in the question of God is not how we can think about God or feel Him, but how He Himself testifies of Himself and how He acts in the lives of believers. It seems that the future of Christian existence depends on how intensely one learns to see God at work in such an intensely real world: to perceive God as even more powerful and more real than this world; to place the world back into God's hands and to understand oneself as the fruit of God's creative activity.
Doesn’t this remind you of the Carmelite emphasis on contemplative prayer? To me, that longing expressed in the beautiful image: "to place the world back into God's hands" resonates deeply with the ideals of Carmel. Romano Guardini further speaks about how this change in worldview is also manifested in the fact that instead of overemphasizing speculative thinking, there is now a new appreciation for sensory experiences and perceptions of the world. True knowledge of reality and contact with it are not matters of relying on elaborate abstract concepts. To achieve true knowledge of reality, all the senses and the entire being of a person must engage with it, not just the mind. Only then can a person grasp reality in all its breadth, depth, and height.
Thus, the liturgy takes on an entirely new urgency. Its task is not to clarify the teachings of faith, educate feelings, or mediate pious aesthetic experiences. The liturgy is a living event in which God's governance is presented to the eyes, ears, and hands of a person. It is a space of being into which a person is accepted and [in which] is transformed into a new life. The liturgy is primarily action. The decisive element in it is the event. The individual is invited into this event and based on it comes to understand themselves. They are grasped and transformed by it.
Romano Guardini published this article, from which I quote, for the first time in 1942.1 Much has changed since then; you may have read many of these thoughts expressed more accessibly by later authors. However, since the liturgy is the daily or at least weekly bread for us all, I am sincerely grateful for this reminder of its fundamental view of the world. The world belongs to God; He continues to carry out His work in it. And we perceive, praise, and participate in this work through our liturgical prayer. With attentive and living faith, which we then strive to maintain throughout the rest of the time when we "bear the burden of the day and the heat" (according to Matt 20:12).
