Rite and Man

Rite and Man: The Sense of the Sacral and Christian Liturgy by Louis Bouyer of the Oratory, translated by M Joseph Costelloe, SJ, 220 pages

This is another phenomenological exploration of the religious experience - in many ways, Bouyer begins where Otto (The Idea of the Holy) ends.  In his analysis, it is ritual which is the central location for an encounter with the numinous.  

In Fr Bouyer's account, far from ritual being an invention of priestcraft to interject a supernatural note into the secular world, ritual served initially as a focus for a numinous reality universally perceived - in the beginning, every slaughter of an animal was seen as something mysterious and sacred, until the establishment of ritual sacrifices formalized and thus limited this power.  The natural significance of ordinary acts - a bath, a meal - recovers its supernatural expression in the rite.  This logic underlies the entire sacramental system.