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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Contemplative Realism: A Theological-Aesthetical Manifesto

Contemplative Realism: A Theological-Aesthetical Manifesto

Hren, Joshua

Paperback

PhilosophyLiterary CriticismReligion General

ISBN10: 1951319567
ISBN13: 9781951319564
Publisher: Benedict XVI Institute
Published: Jan 2 2022
Pages: 72
Weight: 0.18
Height: 0.15 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English

As ever, but especially in our present age of raging post-truth unreality, we ought to heed Pope Benedict XVI's summons to ask rather more carefully what 'the real' actually is. So-called realism, when relegated to material tangibilities, can blind us-instead of binding us-to things as they are. Are we not interested in the cosmos anymore? Benedict asks. Are we today really hopelessly huddled in our own little circle? Is it not important, precisely today, to pray with the whole of creation? If this preeminent mind of our time is not wrong, and the man who puts to one side the reality of God is a realist only in appearance, then we ought to ask with unflinching intensity and openness: what is real? Like liturgy, literature asks this question with a range of forms that answer it very differently. At times, both art and worship seem to devolve into the manners and mood of self-referential and inconsequential play, gestures without meaning, or bank notes (says Benedict) without funds to cover them. These too-closed circles of communication wall off transcendence. In living cruciform liturgy-on the contrary-the congregation does not offer its own thoughts or poetry but is taken out of itself and given the privilege of sharing in the cosmic song of praise of the cherubim and seraphim. In living contemplative literature something analogous happens: we suffer and praise with the whole of creation; the prose cultivates a grateful disposition, prompting us to yearn for a vision of the whole.

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