The Drama of Faith: Priestly Sub-Creation

A priest raises the chalice as he celebrates Mass in honor of Sts. John Paul II and John XXIII in the ski resort Kasprowy Wierch in Poland's Tatra Mountains April 27, 2014. (CNS photo/Agencj a Gazeta/Marek Podmokly, Reuters)

The Drama of Faith: Priestly Sub-Creation | Mark P. Shea | Catholic World Report

The gamble that God took in becoming human was the willingness to risk that we would approach creation sacramentally

Both liturgy and drama are stylized representations of reality that mediate to us an encounter with the human and the divine. That’s because human beings are born to be priests. A priest is nothing more or other than a go-between, mediating man to God and God to man. We must live out our priestly role. It is our nature, since we were made by God to do it and continue to do it, in some form or another, even after the Fall. Therefore, we do it both through art and religion—as well as in every other sphere.

So when a man becomes a father, he mediates the image of God the Father to his children, whether he will or no. That’s why Paul tells us that the Father (Pater) is the one from whom all fatherhood (patria) is named (Ephesians 3:14). A father is an image of the Father. He may be a very debased image, but the mediation happens nonetheless. Likewise, teachers, bosses, authority figures, politicians, baseball players, scientists in lab coats, rock stars and so forth are all “looked up to”. Why do we “look up”? Because they are “on a pedestal”: you know, where the statue of Zeus used to be. We crave a priesthood that will mediate ultimate reality to us and tell us who we are—and who we might be. Not for nothing is the show called “American Idol”.

This conflation of the arts with revelation is nothing new.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.