bridging the chasm

in literary criticism, it's called in trendy terms "the disconnect": the rampant modern problem (or gnostic) problem of words and actions not being in accord. the easiest example to use, of course, is promiscuity, where people speak the language of permanent love and commitment for transient impersonal pleasure.

the beauty of poetry and, indeed, all true literature, is that it not only reveals the way that fallen men act in our fallen nature, but it also has the potential to show the way that spiritual, supernatural truths accord with the natural world. for instance, the ideal man is the chivalrous knight because the noblest parts of a man's nature are to battle for good against evil, protect the non-warriors so they can fulfill their roles, cherish and respect women, and be dashing and manly doing it. the knight's lady is often portrayed in art as a beautiful woman in a bower, because it is equally latent in all women to cultivate beauty, to be faithful and loyal to her absent lover, to create a peaceful home where her warrior can rest and be safe.

since the fall, obviously, both of these things cease to come quite so easily. we rebel against what is in our nature to do. sin widens the gulf between what should be, and what actually is. because Christ is The Word, the enemy seeks to destroy the integrity of words, which means widening the gulf between the two things that create and identify reality: word and action. the deconstructionists and relativists have had a heyday with this, capitalizing on the imperfection and limitation of speech to adequately explain the underlying realities of existence, and using this as an excuse to promote inconsistency in what we say and what we do. Integrity, in simple terms, mean that our actions accord with our words, that they prove the truth of what our words claim.

so what does this have to do with liturgy? when i was growing up, i assumed that the Mass was a sacrifice of the resurrected Christ to the people. no one ever said so, certainly. it was just what i assumed, because our church had a resurrexifix, and the priest faces the people and raises the Eucharist to the congregation during the Consecration. caveat: i think the novus ordo Mass is probably valid. i do not think that the Tridintine Mass is the answer to solve all the world's, or even the Church's, problems, as nasty things have happened throughout the Church's history even when the Tridentine Rite was the norm. my concern right now is strictly the integrity of the actions of the rite (order?) and the reality it claims to represent. i maintain at this point firmly convinced that the novus ordo Mass (which, by the way, there is no such thing as a liturgical "order," so i'm not really sure where that term came or what it's supposed to mean), while it may have other virtues, exacerbates the dichotomy so prevalent in post-modern thinking between words and actions. we do not like literature or art that does not accurately represents what is or what should be. why do we settle in this most imporant area of all?