Eucharistic prayer in the 21st century

The sky at the Cerro Tololo in the Valle de Elqui, Chile, Oct. 11, 2015. (CNS photo/AURA Observatory of Chile via EPA)

by Thomas Reese | Jan. 12, 2017by

One of the greatest liturgical challenges of the church in the 21st century is to figure out how to do liturgy in a way that is meaningful to people in a post-Darwin, post-Einstein, post-Hubble world.

Traditional liturgical prayer, based on biblical imagery, presumes a pre-scientific worldview where Earth is the center of the universe and the world was created quickly and perfectly. Everything was wonderful until Adam sinned.

In fact, the universe is some 13.8 billion years old, with organic life appearing about 3 billion years ago, and humans evolving relatively recently. Rather than appearing in an idyllic paradise, humans crawled out of the mud fighting, scratching out an existence in a brutal and highly competitive environment.

Current liturgical worship requires that we park our scientific minds at the church door and enter into the pre-scientific world of our ancestors when we pray. This schizophrenic existence is not viable in the long run. How do we do liturgy with people having a "quantum-cosmological, developmental-evolutionary worldview," asks Jesuit Fr. Robert Daly, who has been thinking about this question for a number of years.

https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/faith-and-justice/eucharistic-prayer-21st-century