Envy for the "Florid Grandiosity" of the Baroque

I've recently begun an aural sojourn through the history of classical music, lead by Jan Swafford and his book "The Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music.  (If, like me, you find yourself intrigued by the beauty and grace of classical music but don't have the basic knowledge you feel you need to really appreciate it, I highly recommend this book.  It's exactly what I was looking for, and gives the perfect amount of suggested listening for each style and composer).  

After a quick pass through the medieval era (replete with Gregorian chants and embryonic polyphony), I came to the brazen fanfare and glorifying pomp of the baroque period.  What a rush that music can provide!  While Bach and Handel can certainly be subtle, there's also a bombastic element to much of their music, a burst of energy (often spiritual) that Swafford calls a "florid grandeur."

While listening to this music, I couldn't help feeling that despite its brilliance I couldn't quite identify with it.  Why?  I think it's because the music of that period, much of it expressing the contemporaneous religious fervor, evokes a sense of unshackled exaltation that many of us can no longer relate to.  

In the worldview (so common today) with no religion, no strident nationalism, and no illusions of other-worldly grandeur, nothing really seems worthy of the excessive pomp expressed in most baroque music.  In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a riveting ode to the divine miracle of Christ seemed an appropriate piece of art.  Since then, we've come through (sticking to classical music) the moody modernity of Erik Satie and ultimately arrived at the avant-garde irony of John Cage.  In the last hundred years, our sense of the sublime has come to be too subtle for excessive bombast.

And yet I can't help feeling envious when I hear baroque music, wishing I could sympathize with the rabid exaltation.  We've gotten to the point now where Handel's famous "Hallelujah!" conclusion to the second part of his oratorio "Messiah" reminds us first and foremost of Chevy Chase in "Christmas Vacation."  I long for the type of resounding belief in something, anything that would compel an non-ironic, arresting rapture like what Handel must have felt in his devotion to Christ.  I wish I, like King George II when he first heard that incomparable ode, was driven to my feet, my chest bursting and my veins swollen with the power of immeasurable feeling.  

But no- the current era is one for walking down a lonesome city street in the rain, whistling a weary tune.  We can only hope something mildly pretty- an illuminated drop of water slipping from the edge of a gutter or a laughing little girl- can introduce a little beauty amid the snickers, scoffing, and banal meandering of the postmodern everyday.  

Handel's "Hallelujah"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YaGwI7GjlA