Correct Inculturation

In Pope Benedict XVI’s book “The Spirit of the Liturgy,” he spends a good deal of time on the postures of prayer and the correct implementation of them in reference to the Liturgy. While many people out there (and I’m sure many of you reading this) might hear that and think that it sounds about as boring as some cliche I could put here, to me it is fascinating and worth every second.

In the midst of a discussion on kneeling, one of the most important Christian postures of prayer, Pope Benedict reflects on the fact that kneeling is something particular to Christian prayer and the acknowledgment of the humility of Christ on the cross. Here is what he says:

“The kneeling of Christians is not a form of inculturation into existing customs. It is quite the opposite, an expression of Christian culture, which transforms the existing culture through a new and deeper knowledge and experience of God. Kneeling does not come from any culture–it comes from the Bible and its knowledge of God.”

As a twenty-something living surrounded by many aspects of twenty-first century culture, I found this statement—in its content and in its context—to be very intriguing. First, the context: to talk about inculturation in the context of kneeling during the Liturgy is not a method I for one would have ever taken to discuss inculturation. For me, inculturation is always about media, technology, and the latest trends. While our Emeritus Pope’s statement does not exclude those things, it places them in the context that we ought to think about them: the context of the way the Church relates to God. And I think that was brilliant.

The other important thing about what he said was his understanding of what inculturation for the Church really is, and I think we should dwell on that for a while. Pope Benedict explains that Christianity is not simply an amalgamation of the cultures it is found in, but that Christianity has a culture all its own to offer the world. This culture offers the world something that the world desires, a new and deeper experience of God, who, as he says elsewhere in this book, is himself “the great artist, in whom all works of art—the beauty of the universe—have their origin.” Christianity can offer the world something culturally that the world really needs, an authentic experience of beauty and the Logos, the Word, who contains all beauty and begins all authentic culture.

The conclusion in all of is, I think, is to remember that as we encounter our culture that we live in, as we are saturated with it and surrounded by it, we ought to embrace it while realizing that we don’t need the culture of society because we have our own. With that confidence, then, we can properly inculturate; we can see what is good, true, beautiful, and holy in the world without sacrificing anything of our culture, the culture which allows us to come to know, experience, and love the Logos who loved us each into existence.