Ressourcement : returning to the source

Defined by poet Charles Péguy as “an overtaking of depth, an investigation into deeper sources, a return to the source in the literal sense,”2 ressourcement was at the heart of the Second Vatican Council’s journey into liturgy. Freeing liturgical discourse from the stultifying implications of a “baroque theology”3 where processes of metaphysical self-reference had “volatized [God] into simulacra,”4 ressourcement promised a coherent foundation upon which the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963) could be built. In order to affect this shift away from purely formal representation, the Liturgical Movement in the twentieth century undertook a reevaluation of Catholic ritual and an exploration of the liturgy’s radically Christological identity.peer-reviewe