Connecting with mystery

A huge juxtaposition exists in the streets of Eastern Europe. Monumental churches stand guard at every other corner, yet fewer Europeans attend church than Americans go to drive-in movie theaters. Most of these baroque superstructures -- erected by the Jesuits long before Communist-imposed atheism settled over the Eastern Bloc -- no longer house worshipers. They may charge 50 crowns for visitors to peek inside. At some, passers-by walk in to light candles in the adjoining chapels.

Conversely, given this indifference to institutional religion, the Easter Festival in Prague's Stare Mesto (Old Town) is ardently celebrated for two full weeks before Pascha. Scents of sausage cooking over wood fires waft through the sprawling plaza from midmorn till dusk, while pivo (beer) and mulled wine can be had throughout the square. During the rule of Communism (which ended here only 19 years ago), religious observances were discouraged, so this Easter festival was really celebrated as a harbinger of spring.

We will endeavor to sample a tangible sense of the sacred tomorrow morning by rising before dawn to attend daily Mass at St. Vitus Cathedral, which overlooks the city from within the walls of the Prague Castle.

Despite what might be described sociologically as its nominal religiosity, Prague -- and much of Europe, I suspect -- inspires a sense of awe. While here, I have discovered while preparing for the Easter sermon that the text comes alive in different ways when one's context is a place so historical, so foreign, so grandiose and stark at the same time. It lifts one out of the Western historical-critical constraint, freeing the Word to become embodied in the depth of all the senses that a place such as this evokes.

It is a reminder of something I recently read from H.B. Swete (from The Two Greatest Miracles of the Gospel History):

"A rejection of the fundamental miracles which the Church has from the first learned to connect with the Incarnate Life, if it takes a firm hold upon the thought of our time, cannot fail to issue in a widespread loss of faith in the central mystery of Christianity, and a corresponding loss of the higher life which that mystery inspires."