Bouyer provides a fitting overview at the end of his book of the way in which the entire universe, with mankind at its center, is brought to fruition in Christ, and therefore cosmified, its mythos renewed. Danielou provides particular examples in the Sacraments, particularly in his deep dive into the holy oil of Confirmation, that brings Bouyer’s overview within a lived experience and a concrete situation, and then again elevated to a supernatural reality.
The universe, says Bouyer, does not exist conceivably outside a society of spirits, who hold the cosmic order of the universe as a whole inside of their consciousness. And the body extends to the limits of the universe in its ability to perceive the universe, and the universe’s penetration of our senses (225 . The feeling that mankind is small in relation to spatial dimension of the universe is in fact an illusion, as man is able – and this is a very Heideggerian concept – to extend through space through the action of his senses, and the “roots of his consciousness”. In other words, the spirituality of man, in his hylemorphism, is far greater in magnitude than the seemingly grander realities of space or time (which do not conceivably exist apart from a perceiver).
How does this relate to the sacraments and salvation history? Bouyer notes that when the Son of God incarnates into mankind, we are renewed through the Son to the Father. “What will be the situation when the Word is incarnate in the flesh of man and when he instills into our spirit the very Spirit of his Father, the Spirit of filiation? The universe will henceforth be entirely seized by mankind and returned to the praise of his creator: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (225). And mankind is caught up in this heist through the sacraments, in which Christ “assimilates them [mankind] so completely to the temple of his own body, that their bodies become even now ‘the Temple of the Spirit’” (226). The ultimate end of mankind will be the Lamb’s nuptials, where Wisdom will be revealed as the goal of all history and mankind.
The mystical wedding feast of Heaven, particularly coupled with the revelation of Wisdom as the thread that pulls man towards his end, can be a difficult notion for the Western reader. This seemingly different, or perhaps offshoot entity of Wisdom, is however present in the Old Testament, and directly related to the Lamb’s feast. Fr. Danielou, in his work “The Bible and the LIturgy” notes how the Church Fathers focused on Wisdom’s feast in Proverbs IX:1-5 when discussing the ends of the Eucharist: “Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars. She hath slain her victims, mingled her wine, and set forth her table. She hath sent her maids to invite to the tower, and to the walls of the city: Whosoever is a little one, let him come to me. And to the unwise she said: Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine which I have mingled for you.” (Prov. IX:1-5) Wisdom, or the Mind of God, which I believe is what Bouyer means by wisdom, (and what wisdom truly is), has set the table for the “messianic banquet” where “the blessings are spiritual ones, of which the visible foods of the liturgical meal are the symbols” (154, Danielou). The physical realities of the Old Testament – the Manna sent from heaven, the Rock of Horeb – are merely shadowed prefigurements to the reality of the Lamb’s Supper, initiated by Christ on the Cross, and foreshadowed in the Gospels. As Bouyer remarks, the person in baptism and faith enters into the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection (226, Bouyer). This initiation, and the following spiritual progress towards total union with Christ through the eschatological Bride, the Church, is itself an example of the manner in which the universe is “seized” by the Trinity and returned to the praise of the Creator.
Another example, evident of the way in which the spiritual reality is greater than the physical, and how consciousness pervades physical limits, can be found in Danielou’s exposition of the muron, or holy perfume that anoints the Christian, or the christos, into the royal priesthood of believers. Danielou notes that it was reserved for post-baptismal persons: “For it is by Baptism which gives the capacity to perceive the divine perfume, while Confirmation ‘sets in motion the energies given in the sacred bath’” (124, Danielou – quoting St. Ambrose). While Baptism enters the person into the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, the muron, a consecrated perfume – therefore truly efficacious – seals the person into the life and way of Christ. In the same sense that it seals and sets in motion, Danielou says that it represents the “development of faith into ‘gnosis’” a strange term in our general conception of gnosis, but one that makes sense given the topic of the muron. For in receiving the Anointing, the sweet perfume of Christ, we are called to become the sweet perfume ourselves, and therefore to understand more fully the biblical passage “Thy name is as oil (muron) poured out.” God’s name is indescribable and incomprehensible, but in taking on the role of the muron, in becoming the oil ourselves – depending on our capacity or ability to perceive, says Danielou – we are able to see (or more acutely know) that which Gregory of Nyssa describes: “‘All the marvels that we see in the world furnish material for the divine names by which we say that God is wise, powerful, good, and holy. They betray a remote quality of the divine muron” (125, Danielou – quoting Gregory of Nyssa). The world is charged with the grandeur of God, or as Bouyer remarks, is seized and returned to the praise of its creator.