THE “NEW AGE” AND EASIER LIFE

 (THE ELIMINATION OF “SACRIFICE”)

            Religion was quite willing to present the Sacrifice to the Men of the City as something more accessible and easier to understand. She set herself to the urgent task of providing it with a more intelligible character.

            To accomplish this task, it was not only convenient but also necessary to modify two most relevant elements in the configuration of the Sacrificial Act; on the one hand, the ceremonial rites would be simplified; on the other, the language to be use in the Sacrificial Act would be changed. The first change should be done by way of brevity and simplicity; as for the second, the novelty would mean to include the multitude of languages used by the various peoples of the Earth.

            The Bride was told that this new orientation would help Men understand better and more clearly the meaning –a term preferred to content—of the Sacrificial Act. The use of their vernacular languages was also presented as a useful aid for Men. One must add here the introduction of rites more in accord with the peculiar psychology, customs, and traditions of the Men of the New Age. It goes without saying that these new rites would be divested from their former sumptuous and baroque complexity, more in alignment with Ages gone by; as well as from a sense of transcendence which, in the opinion of those Men, had been excessive and had shrouded the rites in a kind of remote and unreachable character. In sum, language and rites were now arranged and ready to be presented in their new context, undoubtedly much easier to be assimilated by Modern Man’s mentality.

            Nevertheless, strangely enough and contrary to what would have been expected –these feelings of sadness that abruptly spring forth from the human heart usually do not have any known cause or reason which could possibly justify them—, the Bride suddenly felt herself terribly perplexed. She could recall the events –narrated in the Books of the Chronicles of the Bridegroom—that happened long ago, at the dawn of the History of Men. It was said in these Books that life was peacefully lived in mutual society where everyone commonly used the same language; but a moment came when Men, because of their iniquities, were punished by God, Who transformed their common language into a strange and distressing diversity of tongues. Men were then extremely confused and understood each other only with great difficulty; the ensuing division among them was so profound that to date it has not been mended (Gen 11: 1—9).

            Many a century has passed since then, and the circumstances are not indeed identical. Nevertheless, the dejected and grief-stricken Bride is suffering; she is in agony because she feels that the Sacrifice –the Death of the Bridegroom out of Love—can be as differently interpreted as it can be differently expressed. Even admitting that language is the vehicle that transports ideas, no one can deny the decisive influence that words acquire for those ideas. Much more so when the different forms used to express the idea of Sacrifice are subject to the opinions and discretion of different Organisms which belong to Cultures and Countries equally different, or even to mere individuals who are allowed to speak and to act according to their own particular understandings.

            When the Bride confronts the grave probability that such a sacred Reality may be tampered with and altered, she feels herself overwhelmed by anguish because she is terrified by the possibility that the Death of the Bridegroom will be spirited away. She is scared by the possibility that they rob her of the maximum expression of the Love of the Bridegroom for her: the Sacrificial Act; because she foresees, at the same time,  the danger of being deprived of her sharing with Him the Sacrifice, that is, of a mutual and combined Death out of Love.

            When all is said and done, what the Bride really fears is that they hide the Bridegroom away from her and that she may not be able to find Him again:

                                   I opened the door to my Beloved,

                                   But he had turned aside, and was gone.

                                   I sought him, and found him not.

                                    I called him, and he did not answer me.[1]

            Her fears are far from being exaggerated or unfounded. For there are many people who no longer believe in the Sacrifice, as their forms of expressing it clearly prove, for they do not refer to the reality of Sacrifice since it has been replaced by words like Memorial, Symbol, or mere Allegory. Those who still acknowledge themselves as faithful Christians cannot even remember the last time that they used its proper name; they now refer to it with expressions whose ultimate goal does not seem to be other than hiding the sad disappearance of the Faith: Meal of Solidarity, for instance, trying to allude to an alleged fraternity among Men. Thanksgiving is another expression which tries to signify gratitude about something or to someone, but nobody knows what or who it is.

            How is it possible that the Bride not cry? The Death of the Bridegroom debased to signify a Meal among Friends! Or to signify an Act in Honor of a person to express gratitude for a service rendered, whose meaning barely matters and whose purpose is of no interest to anyone!

            In the meantime, the Bride’s attempts at keeping her relationship of Love with the Bridegroom alive and burning –or at trying to prevent that true Love, Immutable and Eternal as It is, be deformed and spirited away— those attempts have ended up by her being ridiculed and persecuted:

                                   The keepers that go about the city found me

                                    They struck me, and wounded me;

                                     The keepers of the walls

                                    Took away my veil from me.[2]

            But the Bride never thought of an easy way of sharing the Life and Death of her Bridegroom. She knows very well that Love is not found along the paths that climb down Mount Absence-of-Effort. Why should she want her relationship of Love with her Bridegroom to be made up of small trifles, absence of sacrifices and renunciations, lacking, at the same time, the strength  and consummation of the mutual self-giving to Death? Knowing that the Bridegroom has chosen for Himself  the Narrow Path, she does not wish to follow another, but only to walk with Him, to live with Him, and to die with Him. That is why she tells the Bridegroom:

                        Of all your great longings, which dream stands apart?

                        You asked as we walked on the path yesterday.

                        I looked in your eyes and they captured my heart.

                        “To die of love for you” is all I could say.