Sacramental Mysteries: A Byzantine Approach - Softcover

THE SACRAMENTAL MYSTERIES: A Byzantine Approach

Paperback. Zustand: FAIR. 415pp. 8vo, sewn binding in glossy printed French-flap wraps. Covers fairly tattered, spine cocked but binding holding sound. Text clean and unmarked. Printed in Belgium in an edition of 3,000 copies. Designed by Jose De Vinck. 'Only rarely does a book appear, through a happy combination of insight and research, to have a marked impact on liturgical life. Father Kucharek's Sacramental Mysteries will have such an impact on liturgical studies, because it gets down to basics--to the origin and primitive meaning of the sacraments, the core of early Christian life. Christian writers and churchmen today are attempting to make the sacramental liturgy relevant to troubled, desacralized modern man. Contemporary problems, grave as they may be, are dwarfed in comparison with those of the ancient Church. Immersed in a completely pagan world, the early Church faced overwhelming difficulties, understood them, solved them. Twentieth century Christians will benefit greatly from the study of ancient religious wisdom and Sacramental Mysteries will help them do this. The book is divided into three parts. Part I explores the genesis and meaning of the mysteries in both pagan and Christian contexts, the problems solved by the early Fathers, and thus offers new insights into their writings. Part II traces the origin of the sacraments, their meaning and their ritual in the early Church. Based on documentary sources of the first five centuries, this survey distinguishes their essential rites from auxiliary ceremonial introduced to make their meaning more explicit to the early Christians. Part III deals briefly with the present sacramental theory of the Church, both Eastern and Western. It is ecumenical, stressing that most of the discrepancies between the Orthodox and Roman Catholics are merely a matter of focusing on differing facets of the same truths. Different mentalities rather than different theologies separate the two great Christian bodies. Understanding one another's viewpoint means coming closer to each other in thought and heart: it means drawing nearer to that final embrace of oneness in Christ. Far from sermonizing or rhapsodizing about the mysteries he details, Father Kucharek's mat-ter-of-fact scholarship uncovers for the average reader depths of liturgical theological and spiritual insights seldom contained in a dozen volumes. Its impact is equally great!'. Artikel-Nr. 513973

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