C.S. Lewis's Reflection On "The Fair Beauty Of The Lord"

[The ancient worshipper] had never heard of music, or festivity, or agriculture as things separate from religion...Life was one. If I had been there I should have seen the musicians and the girls with the tambourines; in addition, as another thing, I might or might not have (as we say) "felt" the presence of God. The ancient worshipper would have been aware of no such dulaism.

When the mind becomes capable of abstraction and analysis this old unity breaks up. And no sooner is it possible o distinguish the rite from the vision of God than there is adanger of the rite becoming a substiute for, and a rival to, God Himself...There is a stage in a child's life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began "Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen". But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer be sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat...at some period in Judaism...a roughly parallel situation occurred. The unity falls apart; the sacrificial rites become distinguishable from the meeting with God...They may be valued as a sort of commercial transaction with a greedy God who somehow really wants or needs large quanities of carcasses...Worse still, they may be regarded as the only thing He wants, so that their punctual performance will satisfy Him without obedience to His demands for mercy, "judgement," and truth.

Is Lewis suggesting that at this point the prudent thing is to throw out the ritual, the sacramental "gateway" into meeting with God? Definitely not. Just that we regain the childlike unity of perception toward the imminent and the transcendant. And thus he nicely bridges a completely unnecessary gap between Catholicism and Protestantism.