Abstract

The contribution which Romano Guardini has made to the liturgy finds a paradigmatic expression in the description which the theologian from Verona offers of a Eucharistic celebration in the cathedral of Monreale. This circumstance provides the starting point for a profound reflection upon the meaning of the celebration and the individual member of the faithful who, living the experience of the celebration and participating in it, is ‘transfigured’ by the encounter with the mystery of the latens Deitas. The rediscovery of the most authentic meaning of participation in the liturgy, in the proposal of Guardini, is the interpretative key for overcoming the crisis of representation, which modernity is experiencing by reason of the loss of the connection between philosophical reflection and the ideal of mimesis. Liturgical experience is the experience of form and it is the basis for the cognitive, aesthetic experience which ‘expounds’ the Christian life, insofar as it is a form-of-life, in the sense that it is ‘transfigured’ by the liturgy.