Prayer The Role of Liturgy and Ritual

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PrayerThe Role of Liturgy and Ritual
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• To the ancient Greeks who coined the term
• Liturgy meant "public work," that is,
• any work undertaken in service of the general
  populace.

The word referred, for instance, to the efforts
of the shipbuilder who equipped a warship to
defend their shores, to the service given by
civic leaders and to the work of the folks who
underwrote the Olympic games.
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• Liturgy The Church's 'Work' of Praising God
• Centuries ago, when the Church was still in its
  infancy, the same word was applied to Christian
  worship
• and the name has stuck.
• Liturgyworship
• is the Church's "public work.
• Liturgy isn't the only work the Church does
• But worship is the Church's central activity, the
  work which serves the people by affirming who
  they are.

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• Liturgy is all those rites
• words and actions
• through which the Church publicly praises God in
  Jesus' name.

• It includes the Mass, baptisms, weddings and all
  the other sacraments.
• It also includes the Liturgy of the Hours and
  many other rites, such as Christian burial, the
  consecration of churches, vow ceremonies for
  religious, the blessing of water, palms, ashes
  and the like.

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• Its focus is the event which has changed human
  history
• the Easter event
• The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
  

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• We will explore this
• "public work,"
• focusing on the twin centers of liturgical
  activity
• The Eucharist
• and
• The Liturgy of the Hours.
• These two stand at the center of Catholic worship
  and inspire our prayer and the good work we do.

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• How is liturgy 'work'?
• Most people find it curious to speak of
  worshiping God as work
• (except, perhaps, reluctant teenagers who find
  Sunday Mass a chore).
• We Americans are accustomed to thinking of work
  as "heavy labor
• as an effort which yields some tangible result.
• Liturgy doesn't seem to fit any part of that
  definition.
• Getting to church on Sunday morning
• even participating wholeheartedly
• doesn't seem to take the same kind of effort as
  cleaning out the garage or standing behind a
  sales counter.

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• How is liturgy 'work'?
• Consider the results
• We speak of grace, but that elusive quality is
  harder to measure than the number of parts moving
  off an assembly line or the shine on a kitchen
  floor.

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• How is liturgy 'work'?
• Sometimes we don't even seem to get results.
• We pray for peace on earth and go home to read
  the morning headlines.
• We raise our voices at Evensong
• (the Church's evening prayer)
• and wonder if God is still listening when we cry
  out from pain or anxiety.

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• If liturgy is work, then obviously it must be
  work of a different sort than what we face when
  the alarm clock goes off.
• The work of liturgy
• the work of the Church
• is giving praise to God through Jesus Christ.
• Not because God needs our praise God could
  manage very well without us.
• We are the needy ones, incomplete creatures who
  look for meaning in our lives.

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• That's why we can apply that old Greek word
  liturgy to our worship
• It serves us by turning our attention to God.
• By drawing us ever deeper into the death and
  resurrection of Jesus
• his "work" in praise of God
• liturgy draws us into the holiness that is God's.
  
• As St. Irenaeus put it centuries ago,
• The highest praise of God is a holy
• fully aliveperson.

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• We don't, of course, praise God only at liturgy.
• Whenever we help build God's Kingdom on earth, we
  are offering worship to the King.
• In these ways we carry on the work of the Church
• praising God
• apart from the liturgy, so to speak.
• But it is at liturgy that we do this work most
  publicly.

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• How is liturgy 'public'?
• Liturgy is public in the same sense a beach or a
  restroom or a golf course is public
• Open to all.
• Admission is free
• (more accurately, prepaid, purchased for us on
  Calvary).

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• The right to participate is ours by citizenship
• and citizenship is ours by Baptism.
• We need no special knowledge, no devotion to a
  particular saint or fondness for a particular
  form of prayer to participate on the Church's
  liturgy,
• only membership in Jesus' living Body.

How is liturgy 'public'?
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• Liturgy is public in another sense, too
• It is ritual, a set of words and actions with
  universal meaning.
• Liturgy celebrates God's presence in the most
  ordinary human things.
• The miracle of birth, the bonds of love, a
  healing touch, a shared meal

How is liturgy 'public'?
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• These human experiences are recognizable in the
  sacraments
• Baptism, Matrimony, Anointing of the Sick,
  Eucharist.
• A visitor from Germany can recognize the breaking
  of bread in Jesus' name whether the Mass is
  celebrated in English or Japanese.
• The music may be African drums or Gregorian
  chant, songs accompanied by guitar or by organ
  the church may be an oriental shrine or a
  medieval French cathedral or someone's living
  room.
• In richly diverse ways, Christians everywhere do
  the same thing
• They give thanks to God in Jesus' name.

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• By ritual, we mean that repeated action that
  makes up the framework, or skeleton, for our
  prayer.
• While various prayers, readings and songs change
  each week at Mass, the basic structure of the
  liturgy, including the Liturgy of the Word, and
  the Liturgy of the Eucharist, remains the same.
• On a practical level, this means that we dont
  have to re-invent the wheel each time we gather
  as a community.
• Instead we can enter into a space of familiarity
  and comfort, knowing basically what comes next.

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• This is particularly important in the context of
  prayer, where it is not only we as community who
  are active.
• In prayer,
• we are always striving to create a space of
  hospitality,
• in our midst and in our hearts,
• where God can enter in.

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• The repeated action of ritual does this for us.
• Ritual is something that our society often
  doesnt value.
• In the marketing-driven world that surrounds us,
  we would be led to believe that the new is always
  better, and that we must be entertained and
  surprised at every turn, just to keep our
  attention.
• Anything else, we are told, would be boring.

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One powerful example of this is the ritual of the
Communion Procession. Week after week, we
process up to receive the same Lord, the same
Savior, his Body and Blood under forms of bread
and wine.

• We dont need to vary the menu,
• for nothing could be more valuable to us.
• We dont need to devise new ways of getting to
  the front of Church,
• since the ritual of the procession has a value
  all its own.
• It is familiar, and comfortable, and creates the
  space where we can encounter God, and one
  another, in prayer.

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• This Communion Procession, Sunday after Sunday,
  also teaches us something about who we are, who
  we are called to be.
• The Church is often spoken of as a Pilgrim
  People, a people on the way.
• We are reminded of the Israelites preparing to
  leave Egypt, told to share the Passover meal
  standing up, staff in hand, ready to move out
  where God would lead.

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• As we journey forward to receive the Lord, and
  move on, we are reminded that we have a mission.
• We do not come only to receive the Lord, and be
  with him.
• We come also to be enriched, empowered and
  enabled, so that we can move out into the world,
  there to do the will of the Father as Jesus did.

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• And at the end of Mass, in another part of our
  ritual,
• we are dismissed
• we are sent out, to continue this Communion
  procession,
• bringing the Christ we have received out into the
  world.
• We do this every week.
• This is our ritual.

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• Even Protestants can find some sense of home in
  Catholic liturgy.
• One of the strongest testimonies to the unity
  which endures among Christians in spite of
  centuries-old doctrinal quarrels is the
  remarkable similarity in public worship.
• One would be hard-pressed to distinguish between
  Roman Catholics and Anglicans celebrating the
  Liturgy of the Hours.
• Even Churches whose "Communion Sunday" is a
  monthly event use a eucharistic prayer that would
  startle Catholic ears with its familiarity
• Roman Catholics and many major Protestant
  denominations follow the same sequence of Sunday
  Scripture readings.

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• Liturgy is public in still one more sense
• It is open to viewas open as the church building
  itself.
• However strange Sunday morning goings-on may be
  to nonbelievers, even casual observers know that
• Christian worship is what Christians do.

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• In the Church's infancy, that public recognition
  was dangerous.
• The Roman persecutions drove believers
  undergroundliterallyinto the catacombs.
• Throughout the centuries, legal prohibition or
  the neighbors' prejudices have made believers
  wary of attracting too much attention.
• Even in these United States, where the freedom of
  worship is written into the Constitution,
  old-timers in some areas tell stories of buying
  land under false pretexts in order to build their
  churches.

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• And build them they did.
• They had tojust as their ancestors had to file
  into the cemeteries under Rome's streets, just as
  small groups in oppressed countries today must
  find ways to come together for liturgy.
• Because it is at liturgy that Christians both
  affirm and discover who they are.

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• Liturgy makes us who we are
• Our American sense of work is not so out of tune
  with
• the "work" of the liturgy
• after all
• it brings us to the very heart of why we do this
  "work."
• We know full well that what we do is an essential
  part of who we are.
• That's why it's part of getting acquainted.
• "What do you do?" we ask the newly introduced
  stranger.
• Or the question full-time homemakers hate slips
  through our lips
• "Do you work?"
• We exchange introductions in the same way
• "What a great workshop/kitchen/sewing
  room/computer system/garden! I've got a project
  going myself..."

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• Liturgy makes us who we are
• At liturgy, Christians define themselves by what
  they do.

Vatican II put it this way "The liturgy is the
means whereby we express and manifest to others
the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the
true Church" (Constitution on the Liturgy, 2).
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• In other words,
• liturgy is our self-expression of who we really
  are
• A people who take time out from all the pressures
  of earthly life to rejoice in God's nearness.
• The "work" of liturgy is much more like play
• a celebration of who we are because of all that
  God has done for us.

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• Celebrating a new view of history Eucharist
• "There's nothing new on the face of the earth,"
  we say.
• And the observation that "history repeats itself"
  is older than written history.
• When a band of Hebrew ex-slaves made their way
  into Canaan, they saw that a cyclic view of
  history ruled the lives of their new neighbors.

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• Those neighbors were farmers locked in the cycle
  of nature.
• To them the turn of the seasons and the earth's
  fertility were life-and-death matters reflected
  in their religious practices.
• Canaanite worship was, by our standards, obsessed
  with fertility.
• Their god was Baal
• their rites reminded this god to fertilize the
  earth each year by presenting human sexual
  activity as a model.

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• When our Jewish ancestors settled in Canaan, they
  brought with them not only a different God, but a
  different sense of time.
• Their God was not a prisoner of nature but had
  interrupted history and set it on a new course.
• Delivering a people from slavery, leading them
  across the desert and giving the Law from the top
  of a thundering mountain,

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• The God of Israel gave time a new meaning.
• Instead of being slaves to an endlessly recurring
  cycle of events,
• this people was in the vanguard of ascending
  time
• time ruled by the Lord of history and destined to
  proceed toward full intimacy with God.

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• Christian belief affirms an even more startling
  departure from the cyclical turn of pagan time.
• Our God entered human history in a new way as one
  of our own kind, the human Jesus.
• Broken in death on Calvary, Jesus rose on Easter
  morning, and the world has never been the same.

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• Ever since his resurrection, his followers have
  conceived history in terms never before heard on
  earth.
• We live in the final age, we say
• We strain forward to the Lord's return in glory
  and the endthe perfectionof time.

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• Living in the final age makes us a kind of time
  travelers.
• At Eucharist, the event we see as the peak of
  past history
• the death and resurrection of Jesus
• is an eternally present moment.

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• At Eucharist we step into an event which has rent
  the fabric of time like a worn-out shirt.
• There we remember Jesus' dying and rising not
  only as his story, but also as our own.
• With him, we are propelled into a new age, a new
  creation.
• Eucharist is our food for that journey into the
  future
• the Liturgy of the Hours is our ongoing response
  of praise to the God who daily leads us into
  freedom.

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• A Resurrection-based calendar
• The liturgy resounds with a sense that the time
  we measure by clocks and calendars is moving us
  toward a glorious future.
• Easter morning stands at its peak, shaping our
  weeks, our years and our days.

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• A Resurrection-based calendar
• The week
• The first Christians gathered to break bread in
  Jesus' name on Sunday, the "little Easter."
• (Daily celebration of Eucharist is a
  centuries-later practice.)
• The day the Lord rose gave a new shape to the
  week, to the endless turn of everyday life.

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• This day was different from any other day
• The day of resurrection stands at the center of
  Christian belief that time is not circular after
  all,
• but ascending moments leading believers
• face-to-face with God.

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• In the sense of time inspired by faith, the week
  and the year are holy
• our public prayer "hallows" them
• that is,
• proclaims and reveals to us the holiness of the
  time as we know it.

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• A Resurrection-based calendar
• The year
• The Church year developed over many centuries.
• Today we mark its beginning on the first Sunday
  of Advent with anticipation waiting for the
  long-ago birth of the Messiah and for the Lord's
  future return in glory.
• The Church year continues with the beginning of
  Jesus' ministry of teaching and healing,
• Slows in Lent to recall the meaning of
  discipleship
• Follows Jesus to death and risen glory at Easter
• And picks up his life in the season of "ordinary
  time"
• Until we celebrate his Lordship over heaven and
  earth on the last Sunday of the year, the feast
  of Christ the King.

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• The season we know as Lent was the first of the
  liturgical seasons to take shape as a time of
  preparation for Baptism.
• Then (as now, in the new Rite of Christian
  Initiation), catechumens moved deeper into the
  life of the community, learning the Creed and the
  Lord's Prayer in preparation for Baptism at the
  Easter Vigil.

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• Easter, the day of the Lord's resurrection,
  stands at the peak of time and at the peak of the
  Church's year.
• From that peak, believers viewed the rest of the
  year and, over the centuries, developed what we
  now know as the Church year.

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• A Resurrection-based calendar
• The day
• If the week and the year are holy, so too is each
  and every day.
• That conviction takes ritual form in the other
  major element of the Church's liturgy
• The Liturgy of the Hours.
• Celebrating the day Hours

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• A Resurrection-based calendar
• The day
• Hours is considerably less familiar to lay people
  than Eucharist.
• Apart from an occasional parish celebration of
  Morning Prayer and Evensong, we know it better as
  the "Office" priests and religious are supposed
  to recite each day.
• But it was first the daily prayer of all
  Christians.

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• Borrowing from the habits of their Jewish
  ancestors, the first Christians marked the hours
  of the day with prayer.
• They came together to stretch their experience of
  the Eucharist
• that moment of suspended time which they
  celebrated on Sundays
• over the everyday turn of the clock.
• They marked the rising and setting of the sun
• and all the hours between
• by praying the Psalms and exploring Scripture.

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• Those two moments
• Morning Praise and Evensong
• are the "hinges" of Hours,
• which also includes prayer during the day and
  during the night.

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• The ritual structure is simple
• hymns and psalms,
• Scripture and readings from religious writers of
  every century,
• a canticle
• (Zechariah's, Luke 168-79 Mary's, Luke 146-55
  or Simeon's, Luke 229-32),
• prayers of petition,
• the Lord's Prayer
• and, at Evensong, the sign of peace.