The Mystery of Christian Worship

A Benedictine monk at Maria Laach, Odo Casel was a major force in the movement for renewal of liturgy in this century. He objected to rationalistic or anthropocentric interpretations of the Christian religion that would reduce it either to a collection of doctrines or to a moral code. Instead, he insisted that the core of Christian faith is the worship of a sacred mystery. For Casel, liturgy means "the making real of the mystery of Christ in the new alliance throughout the whole church, in ...