The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

For the second time I am joyfully reading the book The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. It is such a wonderful exposition of the Mass. Part Three, titled "Art and Liturgy," has some magnificent statements about art (expressions of beauty) and the liturgy. Unfortunately that section has only two chapters: 1) The Question of Images, and 2) Music and Liturgy. They express such meaningful realities that I would hope for more. I'm thinking they could be read as standalone readings.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from that section.

"The icon comes from prayer and leads to prayer." (121)

"The icon, rightly understood, leads us away from false questions about portraits, portraits comprehensible at the level of the senses, and thus enables us to discern the face of Christ and, in him, of the Father." (122)

"The icon is intended to draw us onto an inner path, the eastward path, toward the Christ who is to return." (122)

"Only when we have understood this interior orientation [looking eastward toward Christ] of the icon can we rightly understand why the Second Council of Nicaea and all the following councils concerned with icons regard it as a confession of faith in the Incarnation and iconoclasm as a denial of the Incarnation, as the summation of all heresies. The Incarnation means, in the first place, that the invisible God enters into the visible world, so that we, who are bound to matter, can know him." "That is why to reduce the visible appearance of Christ to a 'historical Jesus' belonging to the past misses the point of his visible appearance, misses the point of the Incarnation." (122-123)

"As Evdonkimov again says so strikingly, the light of the first day and the light of the eighth day meet in the icon." (123)

"It is always the risen Christ, even on the Cross, to whom the community looks as the true Oriens. And art is always characterized by the unity of creation, Christology, and eschatology: the first day is on its way toward the eighth, which in turn takes up the first. Art is still ordered to the mystery that becomes present in the liturgy." (125)

"In the liturgy the curtain between heaven and earth is torn open, and we are taken up into a liturgy that spans the whole cosmos." (125)

"The complete absence of images is incompatible with faith in the Incarnation of God." "Iconoclasm is not a Christian option." (131-132)

"But [liturgical music] also has the privilege, by anticipation, of experiencing the reality of the Resurrection, and so it brings with it the joy of being loved, that gladness of heart that Haydn said came upon him when he set liturgical texts to music." (149)

"Beauty comes from meaningful inner order." (152)

"All true human art is an assimilation to the artist, to Christ, to the mind of the Creator." (154)

"When a man conforms to the measure of the universe, his freedom is not diminished but expanded to a new horizon." (154)

"We sing with the angels. But this cosmic character is grounded ultimately in the ordering of all Christian worship to logos." (155)

"What in museums is only a moment from the past, an occasion for mere nostalgic admiration, is constantly made present in the liturgy in all its freshness." (155)

“Anyone who looks carefully will see that, even in our own time, important works of art, inspired by faith, have been produced and are being produced—in visual art as well as in music (and indeed literature).” (156)