Ealing Abbey: Rev Dr Gergely Bakos, OSB gives St Bede Lecture

Dom Gergely Bakos, OSB

This year, the seventh St Bede Liturgy Lecture, hosted by Ealing Abbey, was given on July 7th by Rev Dr Gergely Bakos, OSB, Chair of Philosophy, Sapientia Theological School of Religious Orders, Budapest, Hungary. He took as his theme 'Philosophical Contemplation Towards Fruitful Participation in the Mystery of Christ', reflecting on Vatican II's Constitution on the Liturgy which calls for faithful participation 'in such a way that the people are active, that they know what is going on, and that they will receive benefit' (11; see also 48). Dr Bakos, following Wittgenstein, suggests that contemplation is a matter of being attentive to things as they are, being conscious of what we are doing.

Taking his cue from a vignette in the film Ghandi where Ghandi expresses his shock at the fact that Christians purport to drink Christ's blood, Bakos argues that the phrase 'this is my blood' only makes sense in the context of the sort of behaviour we call ritual. We have to ask how religion actually works: what sort of training it demands; what sort of pictures it depends on; and how these inter-relate.

Following Wittgenstein, Bakos suggests that liturgy is validated not by so-called inner experiences but simply by how we practice this attentive looking, and how it works out in our lives. Having celebrated a ritual, are we thus more sensitive to belonging to a community? Are we growing in our support for the poor and needy, or for the oppressed? To create the heightened experience needed for liturgical celebration demands taking time and the solemnity created by silence: to come out of Mass idly chattering is an inappropriate diminishment of what we have just done. Quoting Wittgenstein he concludes that when we talk of liturgy, 'Practice is the word that makes sense'.

LINKS

Ealing Abbey: http://ealingmonks.org.uk

Ealing Abbey parish: http://ealingabbeyparish.org.uk