George Steiner in his subtle and richly suggestive essay, Real Presences, sees in the origins of modernism a breaking of the covenant between word and world which he regards as the significant characteristic of the decades following 1870. For Steiner, this sundering of continuities constitutes ‘one of the very few genuine revolutions of spirit in Western history’. Mallarmé and Rimbaud represent the beginnings of a genuinely new aesthetic, ‘a parting of the semantic ways’. Before this time, he argues, we could have presumed upon a logocentric order, a Logos-aesthetic, which included the assumption of correspondence, understood as something ‘strictly inseparable from the postulate of theological-metaphysical transcendence’. Such a world presupposes ‘real presence’.

While there is much to appeal in this argument, I wonder whether the Christian tradition has always had a more healthy suspicion of the innocent collusion of word and world than Steiner allows. The monist ontology at which Steiner hints does not allow for the rich sense of mystery that confronts us in the world of which we are a part: things as things stand over against us, ultimately unfathomable. There are aspects of the Nominalist agenda deeply rooted in the Christian tradition and rightly so. We come to what is real by way of the particular. Steiner, of course, is far from unmindful of this and comments with some force:

This paper is the result of reflection upon both my doctoral thesis and my present research. There is a four-fold structure: first an emphasis on the voice of people on the margins; this is followed by an indication of how the collection of empirical data was facilitated by listening, dialogue and conversation and the theological significance of these elements; thirdly I give a brief indication of how the mystery of God at work amongst the marginalised is a feature of certain contemporary ecclesiology; and finally I indicate how the dimension of listening may be facilitated through a contemplative imperative, how this is in accord with the spiritual tradition and is a potential source of enrichment for the church.

There are striking features about those who are marginalised. Very often they are in a position where they are not involved in the central factors which determine their lives. Dependency is an inevitable development, as they are educated to believe that others will always know best, and that some “professionals” in social security, or housing, or education or local planning, or possibly anybody other than themselves, will have the next determining voice in their lives. From the beginning then, possibly at the early age of childhood, they cease to be participatory subjects in life, but rather form objects of concern for one or another agency. Such a process ongoingly undermines the value and self-worth of an individual and progressively renders them more and more inadequate to cope with life. Considered economically irrelevant, and increasingly impoverished, marginalised individuals and groups present a shocking discontinuity to mainstream society.

In this paper, I propose to deal with various sacred realities that helped the people of Israel deepen their relationship with God over the years: die Aik of the Covenant, the desert Tabernacle, the Temple, the Sabbath and other feasts, the synagogue, religious meals and creation itself.

Of all the sacred objects of Old Testament Religion, the one that must have ranked among the most sacred was the Ark of the Covenant. It was constructed at Sinai, according to the instructions of the Lord, from acacia wood (Ex. 25.10ff.). It was a box two and a half cubits long, one and a half cubits wide and one and a half cubits high. It contained the two tablets of the law (1 Kings 8.9), a jar of manna and Aaron’s rod (Ex. 16.33; Heb. 9.4). It was covered by a gold plate called the kapporet (die mercy seat) at either end of which, facing each other, there were cherubim. The Aik was not only a powerful symbol of the Sinai covenant, it was also a location of divine presence “There I will meet with you...”(Ex. 25.22).

The cultures surrounding Israel provide some insight into the culdc thought that lay behind the construction of the Ark. In the Ancient Near East there was a custom whereby a treaty document was often placed in a container which served as the footstool for a deity. Thus the decalogue was placed in its container, the Ark, and this then became God’s footstool.

The Tabernacle

The aik was housed in the Tabernacle or the Tent of Meeting.

The sacraments raise controversy at every turn, no matter which one of the seven we think of. There is no end to hot debate on pastoral issues.

For example, why has Penance taken a back seat of late? Is it because we sin less? Or do we have less sense of sin? If so, why should it be so? Or are we more forgiving and therefore take it for granted that God is more forgiving? As to the Eucharist, why cannot any one receive communion, whether they are baptised Catholics or believing Christians or outright pagans? Would it not do them good, whatever their condition? Does Marriage really matter? Why does Ordination rule out Marriage? How often can the Last Sacrament be given? Why is Ordination the only gender-exclusive sacrament? I have left out Confirmation and Baptism, but we can ask why the Catholic Church institutes seven sacraments, while some Christian congregations just have Baptism, and others, Baptism and Confirmation, and some take everything in the world to be a potential sacrament?

I want to take the last two questions together, women priests (why not?) and the seven instituted channels of grace (why seven?), together with the claim of the Church to be universal. Universal means standing above local bias, resisting temporary pressures, recognizing a passing fashion for what it is, and thus standing for permanent truths for all times and places. The universal Church is old, but not a fossil, she must develop; truth is revealed gradually, the doctrines have to be unfolded. I understand that the work of the Holy Spirit is to safeguard doctrine and practice.

We use the word figure in many ways. We speak of figure-skating, of cutting a figure, of a fine figure of a man, the fuller figure, a figure of fun, figuring things out, figures of speech and being good with with figures. These are all current senses. In the past, figure has had other meanings. When, in The Merry Wives of Windsor Mistress Ford encourages Mistress Page to ‘scrape the figures out of your husband’s brains’, she does not mean that he has been worrying about the mortgage, but that his head is full of mistaken ideas or fantasies.

Figure comes from the Latin figura. In 1944 the German literary critic Erich Auerbach published an influential article entitled Figura. He showed the wide range of meanings that figura has in classical Latin, and how these developed further in Christian usage. Fran the earliest records, figura could mean ‘the shape of a thing’, just as we now speak of a person’s ‘figure’. But it could also mean a shape representing something else. Sculptors, for instance, make figurae of human beings; in our dreams we see figurae of people who are dead.

Christian writers developed this second sense in a new and important way. For them, figura could refer to an object or event belonging to a particular point in time that represented something in the future. For Tertullian, Isaac, Joseph, Moses are all figurae of Christ2; the marriage of Adam and Eve is a figura of Christ and the Church3 (Theologians are familiar with this way of looking at history, though we usually call it by a word of Greek origin, typology.)

Perhaps the most crucial single utterance of the Second Vatican Council, at least in terms of impact on our shared experience as Catholics, occurs at paragraph 14 of the Council’s constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. This was the first of the conciliar documents to be promulgated, and in many ways its most bloodily contested production. The paragraph in question runs like this:

“Full, conscious and active participation”, pastoral energy and liturgical pedagogy: these were momentous notions, laden with an agenda whose implications were sketched out in the rest of the document, and which were embodied in the reforms which followed. The summons to “active participation”, indeed, a phrase which occurs sixteen times in all, was singled out subsequently as the main refrain of the document.