And compared to the amazing
sacred music of the Renaissance and Baroque, by which the composers sought to glorify God through the sheer beauty and scale of their
work, it sounds
very paltry indeed.
In the words of an ancient prayer, it is the visible expression of «that wonderful and
sacred mystery» which speaks to us and
works on us, through the
very imperfection, weakness, error, and even the sin of the empirical institution, to manifest in the world of time and space the abiding reality of God's operation in the event of Christ for human wholeness.