Joseph Ratzinger in his The Spirit of the Liturgy locates a theology of liturgy within the expansive vista of Late Antique cosmology inherited by early Christian thought. Contrary to their Neo-Platonic pagan contemporaries however, the Fathers did not view the cosmos as metaphysical tragedy, the product of a disintegrating ‘monos’ which emanates out (exitus—πρόοδος) and will eventually reintegrate itself (reditus—ἐπιστροφή) thereby dissolving all things into the unity of undifferentiated being. Rather, union with the source of all subsists in a loving communion between creature and Creator for the cosmos itself
“is meant to be a space for the covenant, the place where God and man meet one another.”
The Spirit of the Liturgy, 26
Thus man finds his authentic life in this divinizing union of love with the source of life (cf. Ratzinger, 28) wherein becoming a doxology to the glory of God (cf. 17, citing St. Irenaeus). Cult gives form and expression to this life-enabling encounter that lies at the center of all morality and authentic human realization—the totality of which we can call worship (cf. 26). The cosmos itself is this place of offering and is not fully realized until the Great Offering is accomplished.
Thus in biblical thought, authentic life, both personal and social, is found in and through the life-creating will of God (Law); the liberation of Exodus is always the freedom to worship. For, in establishing a right relationship with God we become rightly ordered with ourselves and with society.
“Law is essential for freedom and community; worship—that is, the right way to relate to God—is, for its part, essential for law.”
Ibid. 21
Worship is God-directed and community enabling; the latter is dependent upon the former (cf. 24-25). It flows from Divine encounter and its form is determined by that encounter. For,
“creation and history, creation, history, and worship are in a relationship of reciprocity. Creation looks towards the covenant, but the covenant completes creation and does not simply exist along with it…[worship] saves mankind but is also meant to draw the whole of reality into communion with God”
Ibid. 27
Authentic worship is always a revelation. Self-created worship, like self-created humanity, is a groping in the dark (cf. Acts 17:23) which ultimately amounts to “mere self-affirmation” (21-22).Sacrifice is central to this worship as the human attempt to overcome the insurmountable alienation between man and the transcendent wherein authentic life is realized. Taken up in covenantal worship, however, its meaning is fundamentally transformed from an assertion of illusory autonomy from forces mankind seeks to manipulate or placate, to an act of acknowledged dependence upon God (cf. 32-34). Thus transformed, sacrifice
“has nothing to do with destruction. It is an act of new creation, the restoration of creation to its true identity” and becomes a divinizing “healing of wounded freedom, atonement, purification, [and] deliverance from estrangement“
Ibid. 34, 33
Running through the Old Testament however is a persistent critique of the sacrificial system: Sacrifice can be separated from the totality of the god-ordered life it symbolizes (cf. 39, 46-47). Creation in its calmative return to God as self-gift remains painfully incomplete…until the Paschal Mystery of Christ. In Christ’s perfect self-entrustment to the Father on the Cross all law, worship, human yearning for the divine, even the creation itself, find their fulfillment (cf. 47). This εὐχαριστία (eucharistia) of praise is universalized in the Resurrection and Ascension in such a way that all humanity can participate in it (cf. 48-49). True worship is possible as our total offering of self is taken up into ‘Pasch’ of Christ (cf. 34, John 12:32). The Resurrected body of Christ becomes the place of true worship, the New Temple of the New Creation (43) wherein God and man finally commune with one another in the intra-Trinitarian dialogue of love (cf. 48).
Thinking in Open Water 