Formation: Ritual

Ritual: Barrier or Gateway ?

Formation on Sundays at St. James’ Notes for prayer, study and reflection – Fr. Mark

Sunday 27 May, 2012

A)

Orientation and exploration by terms

1) Worship Plain sense (Old English - worthscipe - worthiness / worth-ship) The act of giving worth to God. For Christians Worship is the principal marker and shaper of Christian identity; to worship is to call oneself a 'Christian', to claim a place in a particular worshipping community, whatever form it takes, and to place oneself in the context of the symbols and rituals peculiar to Christianity.

Christian worship is a constellation of ritual words and actions through which the company of Christian believers praises and prays to God, listens for God's voice, initiates new members, confesses sin, intercedes for others, and asks for God's blessing on events in the human life-cycle (birth, maturity, marriage, sickness and death).

From the time the earliest Christian communities were established, gathering for worship on 'the first day of the week' (Sunday) for 'the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers' (Acts 2.42) has been one of Christianity's most persistent and identifiable features.

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2) Ritual and Rite Anthropological sense Ritual behaviour is one of the most ancient of all recorded human activities. In every culture throughout our history we can find people engaging in complex patterns of action by which they celebrate births, marriages and deaths, lament loss, and negotiate changes in social status within a community.

By definition, ritual is an agreed-upon form of coded communication using the language of significant action, objects and formalized speech to convey meaning. Whatever its shape and intention, ritual plays an essential role in constructing our personal, social, and cultural identity as human beings.

Plain sense / Latin origins The word ritual itself is derived from the Latin work ritus, which simply means 'the form and manner of religious worship', 'a religious ceremony or custom'.

This more neutral definition implies that all Christian worship, from the most formal and the most elaborate to the most simple and spontaneous, is actually 'ritual'.

Ritual is the ‘general idea’ of which rite is a specific instance. A rite is a specific expression of a ritual.

3) Ceremonial Ceremonial is a complex of peripheral symbolic actions that elaborate and expand upon a central rite.

4) Liturgy The origin of liturgy comes from the Greek word leitourgia (literally ‘people’s work’). Because it is rooted in the Greek words for people (laos) and work (ergon) it carries an understanding that somehow the gathering for the worship of God is a ‘public work’. So every form of Christian corporate prayer may be described as liturgy. In so doing emphasis is given to the reality that such worship is always participatory, it is a work for God in which we all share, whatever our role.

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5) Ritualism Ritual is intended to point beyond itself to a deeper reality, and in the case of religious ritual to a divine reality. But ritual can be deformed into ‘ritualism’ which denotes a form of ritual done for its own sake, without reference to the transcendent. We might say that ritualism is an idolatry and that inherent in all Christian worship is a propensity for the idolatry of ritualism.

6) Ritualist This describes the second generation of the Oxford Movement (i.e. as it developed after 1845 when John Henry Newman left the Church of England) which sought to introduce into the Church of England a range of Catholic liturgical practices.

The leaders of the first generation of the Oxford Movement (e.g. Newman, Pusey, and Keble) had been primarily concerned with theological and ecclesiological questions and had little concern with questions of ritual.

After the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874, note the prosecution and trial of Bishop Edward King (of Lincoln) for using, during a Eucharist on 18 December 1887, lighted candles, mixing water with wine in the chalice, the singing of the Agnus Dei, making the sign of the cross at the Absolution and Blessing, and using ceremonial ablutions at the end of the service!

B)

Illustration

1.

The source and summit of Christian worship is the Eucharist.

2.

The Eucharist is a ritual action.

3.

Eucharistic worship is made through the use of a specific rite: Byzantine / Roman / Sarum / BCP / BAS.

4.

At the Eucharist some examples of ceremonial actions are: the priest kissing the altar, the people making the sign of the cross, a genuflection before the Blessed Sacrament.

5.

The Eucharist, like every corporate Christian ritual action, or worship, is a liturgy.

6.

When we become fixated on the ‘proper’ ceremonial (how the actions are being made) and the outward signs (colour and style of vestments, quantity and type of incense, which version of ceremonial and rite is being used) then we risk the idolatry of ritualism.

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C)

Ritual: Barrier or Gateway? Some considerations:

1.

Every act of Christian worship is ritual. It is a matter of degree.

2.

It is impossible to worship without ritual, rites and ceremonial.

3.

The purpose of every ritual, rite and ceremonial is to lead us into the heart of God.

4.

Everyone has the capacity to misuse rites and ceremonial which lead us away from God.

5.

The concept of worship as ‘liturgy’ frees and empowers everyone to claim their baptismal dignity in Christ.

D)

Works consulted

Bowden, J. (ed). Encyclopedia of Christianity. New York: OUP, 2005.

Bradshaw, P. (ed). The New SCM Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship. London: SCM Press, 2002.

Elliott, P.J. Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995.

Hefling, C. & Shattuck, C. (ed). The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer. New York: OUP, 2006.

Lamburn, E.C.R. Ritual Notes. London: W. Knott & Son Ltd, 1964.

Rocksborough-Smith. The Meaning of “Ritual”. Reprinted from The Living Church of July 14, 1934.

Rowell, G. The Vision Glorious – Themes and Personalities of the Catholic Revival in Anglicanism.

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.

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