Sacred Mysteries

'Sacred Mysteries' opens by reflecting on the continual process of reform in the church and on the foundational principles for all liturgical action. It then moves to a discussion of each of the sacraments, with particular reference to the way they are ritualized in the assembly. A final chapter addresses practices that can cloud the experience of mystery during liturgical celebrations and thus inhibit rather than enhance the power of the rite.

We Evangelicals struggle with mysteries. Answers are sought, meanings defined, and theology put in nice, neat boxes for clarification, or simply to justify our denominational notions. As Augustine notes, we are talking about God, after all. Why is it surprising that we do not understand? If we did understand, then it would not be God. Mysteries remind us that God is bigger than our preconceived ideas about his involvement with those created in his image. Divine Mysteries: Concise and Thoughtful Ancient Biblical Wisdom addresses some of these mysteries in a provocative and succinct manner.

Zeus and the other gods of shining Olympus were in reality divine only by popular consent. Over the course of time Olympian luster diminished in favor of religious experiences more immediate to the concerns of people living in an increasingly cosmopolitan ancient world. These experiences were provided by the mysteries, religions that flourished particularly during the Hellenistic period and were secretly practiced by groups of adherents who decided, through personal choice, to be initiated into the profound realities of one deity or another. Unlike the official state religions, in which people were expected to make an outward show of allegiance to the local gods, the mysteries emphasized an inwardness and privacy of worship within a closed band of initiates. In this book, Marvin W. Meyer explores the sacrifices and prayers, the public celebrations and secret ceremonies, the theatrical performances and literary works, the gods and goddesses that were a part of the mystery religions of Greece in the seventh century B.C. to the Judaism and Christianity of the Roman world of the seventh century A.D.

It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.

The Most Holy Rosary is one of the greatest prayers in the history of the Church. Garnished as it is with the testimony of saints and Popes for the last thousand years, the only greater prayers the Mass and the Divine Office. It is a prayer for the people, to be said over and over, and yet, many still seek ways to enter into the deeper mansions of spiritual richness to be found in this devotion.