Kneel to Be Real

Alexander Schmemann, in his For the Life of the World, defines secularism as "above all a negation of worship." (cited from David L. Schindler, Ordering Love, at p. 288.)

Schmemann believes that the "real," in truth, includes nature's relation to God, but that we have adopted (in modernity) a perspective that cuts it off from God. Why? Ultimately, to make matter amenable to our manipulation. But without a connection of matter with God, we, who are also matter, lose our own identity as creatures of God. Our own bodies become material fit for technology. We become something bodiless, and ultimately, unreal.

Schmemann invites us to a renewed sense of sacramentality:

We need water and oil, bread and wine in order to be in communion with God and to know Him. Yet conversely . . . it is this communion with God by means of 'matter' that reveals the true meaning of matter, i.e., of the world itself.

It is as sacramental that the world becomes real, has meaning. And, in seeing the sacramental nature of the world, we also become "real," we become who we are: homo adorans, the privileged being for whom a god, our God, is real.

To kneel is thus the proper human posture; it brings us to our reality, our elevated posture, in the nature of things.

Listen to Tantum Ergo Sacramentum.

Listen to Magnificat.

Listen to Charlie Daniels' "Kneel at the Cross"

Listen to John Michael Talbot, "Holy is His Name"