Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries

"If the hierarchy spent only half the time on disseminating the mystical and liturgical tradition of the Church that it does on destroying our own liturgical inheritance, it could drag us out of the nihilism of the secular age in the flash of a moment." According to Sebastian Morello, the Church possesses the most potent resources for mystical transformation, with the event of the Incarnation and the outpouring of grace it entailed radically altering the cosmic order. But we would hardly know it today. A leaden blanket of rationalism, materialism, reductionism-all that goes by the name of modernity-has descended over this ancient treasury of divine wisdom, and myopic pastoral programmes which only intensify the despoilment and quashing of the Lord's Kingdom have eclipsed its innate appeal to the searching heart of modern man. In this ambitious and at times unconventional book, Morello proposes a pathway of escape from what he calls the "hex," toward a rediscovery of the Sacred Mystery at the heart of reality.