RE: Today’s Catholic Mass in the stock-in-trade neighborhood parish is banal, drained of its richness, sacred music, and rituals. . . . Tens of thousands (myself included) now find it hard to attend Mass and experience the Divine.
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I realize . . . that as a Pentecostal, I come at "experience the Divine" from a different set than the average Vatican co-hort.
However, I'm a bit mystified at what "experience the Divine" has to do with ritual.
I understand that in the Old Testament, in the Holy of Holies . . . EXPERIENCING GOD'S MANIFEST PRESENCE had a lot to do with a very precise ritual.
I do not find ANYTHING similar in the New Testament.
Actually, I find a lot of evidence in the New Testament and certainly from my experience that more than suggests God has a strong hostility to efforts to reduce TOUCHING HIM, TOUCHING HIS HEART, FACILITATING HIS PRESENCE
. . . BY . . . RITUAL.
Pentecostals can get caught up in such efforts very easily and humanly. And I've NEVER seen God tolerate such very long. Usually, even though a given sequence of worshipful actions, focus, whatever has been "successful" . . .
i.e. God has responded powerfully and dramatically . . .
say 2-4 times or so . . . THEN OR VERY SHORTLY THEREAFTER, GOT WILL CUT THE STRINGS, THE BUTTONS. HE WILL INSURE IT WILL NOT WORK AGAIN.
There were even hints in the Old Testament that ritual was not, per se, HIS cup of tea. It often seems to me that ritual was more like training wheels . . . teaching respect for the ALMIGHTY-NESS, HOLINESS OF GOD.
Yet His delight was to say "Y'all come on over to the Tent of Meeting and we'll chat."
AND THEY WOULD HAVE NONE OF IT. They escaped into their fear and into the comfortable, familiar mundaneness of detached pseudo-manipulatable ritual.
Gag.
No wonder the veil in the Temple was rent asunder.
I know folks who have a routine in their "secret place" prayer time alone with God . . . wherein their focus or sequence of prayers or worship and prayer or whatever is standard and that God always meets them intimately in that secret place and time quite routinely and faithfully in very tangible, PRESENCE sorts of intense ways virtually daily.
And, I suppose some could say--you're not doing it right.
It just has never worked that way for me. He comes and manifests HIS PRESENCE according to HIS priorities, timing, goals, something. I can fast, worship, pray long or short, prostrate myself, stand on my head, whatever . . . to no avail, essentially. And, often enough, at other times, just lay out my random thoughts and heart in a virtually casual, chatty way and WHOOM, HE IS THERE.
And, I recall the time I lived literally a couple of blocks from the Episcopal Cathedral in Spokane and worshiped there. There was a certain majesty and grandeur to the architecture and service form and ritual. And, on occasion, I felt God's subtle touch there. On the whole, it was just nice pomp and circumstance. OK if that was your taste and maybe God was meeting with and touching individual hearts according to their candor and openness to Him . . . . all quite more or less independent of all the pomp, circumstance and ritual.
I don't understand how one . . . being human and all . . . can engage in a ritual--particularly over a very long period of time . . . without the ritual becoming THE focus--or at least, the death-grip-clutched crutch. . . . that particularly God . . . is not very interested in, any more. He wants our hearts, heart to heart dialogue, intimacy, NOT ritual.
The whole idea of "experiencing the Divine" IN ritual, through ritual sounds very very mutually exclusive, to me. It's really very difficult for me to wrap even my intellectual understanding around.
I know C.S. Lewis felt otherwise. As I recall, he felt that ritual sort of freed him from paying attention to the tangible earthly present--rather paradoxically--allowing him somehow to focus on God more freely and directly.
I gathered that the ritual was sort of the cart or enclosed carriage, that carried him along in some sort of isolation from 'the world, the flesh and the devil' . . . enabling a more focused attention to God. That sounded to me like utter nonsense. One focuses on a very repetitious manifestation of the tangible world MORE in a way to reach the INTANGIBLE??? That's too jangly a paradoxical contradiction to wrap my sensibilities around. He wasn't very convincing for me, either.
I'm really not trying to be contentious. I really am trying to understand HOW ritual COULD POSSIBLY be a vehicle for "experiencing the Divine."
All my experience fiercely suggests that ritual virtually always and ALWAYS WITHIN A FEW REPETITIONS--becomes a DEADLY PREVENTION of EXPERIENCING GOD.
I suppose it's quite possible, plausible that God just wired me differently for His purposes. Yet, I don't think that's it--though it certainly could be.
It's just mystifying, to me.
So, if ANY of y'all can enlighten me on the issue, I'd be thankful.
If any of the rabid clique appear and choose to display their usual derisive attitudes etc. I shall do my best to totally ignore them.
Quix,
I can appreciate how a charismatic, such as yourself, would not fully appreciate the ancient liturgies used by both the eastern and western (particular) Churches.
I thank God that you have a means of worship that allows you to experience a closeness with God.
This all seems somewhat like “angst” to me.
When God is truly the focus of our lives, He is there in prayers, works, joys and sufferings; He is there in liturgy (public worship) which, to me, is not the same as “ritual” ; He is there in good times and bad.
We are the temples of the Holy Spirit, because He promised to come-—He and His Father-—and abide in us who believe; He is there when we are awake or asleep, knowing or not knowing His presence.
To me, this is practicing the presence of God and is true worship, day in and day out.
All my experience fiercely suggests that ritual virtually always and ALWAYS WITHIN A FEW REPETITIONS--becomes a DEADLY PREVENTION of EXPERIENCING GOD.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach Hosea 6:6 For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice,
An invitation to come and know by reading the Word of G-d.
And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
From my time as a Catholic, I found the Mass to be very inspiring when I applied the "ritual" with my heart and not switching to automatic. Just like the Lord's Prayer, you can say it or you can SAY it.
I hope it does not sound condescending to say this (I have been both places), but I believe God may accept the offering, even if it be of ritual if that is as far as we have gotten, and ever faithfully seeks an opportunity to bring the believer into a more vital form of relationship with Him.
Well, if you define"ritual" thataway, then of course it would be a horrific thing.
Problem is, I do not believe that's how the Roman Catholic Church understands "ritual." The Church and you seem to be operating under two entirely different definitions of what the word "ritual" denotes and means.
Maybe we should try to clarify our definitions before we press on?
Anyhoot, I strongly sympathize with the statement
RE: Today’s Catholic Mass in the stock-in-trade neighborhood parish is banal, drained of its richness, sacred music, and rituals. . . . Tens of thousands (myself included) now find it hard to attend Mass and experience the Divine.Indeed. One is put in the extraordinary position of being in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, but of not being in communion with the American Catholic Church. Most distressing....
I truly appreciate your eloquent witness, dear brother in Christ! But I still think we need to work on the idea of "ritual" a bit more before we pass judgment on co-religionists (no matter how seemingly remote they are to us).
In Christ's Love and Peace!
Amen!
"Man`s mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain." -- John Calvin, on the work of the Holy Spirit.
This whole question of ceremonial and ritual is difficult to discuss. And certainly, leaving the actual sacraments aside, comportment and "style" in a service of worship ought not, and strictly speaking cannot command, cause, or prevent God's presence.
BUT at least for moi, the 2 hour long midnight Masses of my childhood, flowers everywhere, the church redolent with beeswax, good music well sung with plenty of GOOD hymns which everyone knew but which had literary and musical excellence, the alertness and stillness which being an acolyte required ... all this definitely seemed and seems related to a kind of perception or sense of the wonder and beauty of God.
I think of my daily prayers and vain repetitions that while clearly in one sense they are something I "do," (and to the extent that I do them I do them badly, with wandering and worried mind) still, over time, I find that, to use a banal image, they amount to my "turning the radio on." The scientific outsider would think that ->I<- am doing the praying. Heck even I say, "I'll be up as soon as I read my 'office' (that is, my 'duty.')" But one discovers that all that is important about prayer is done by God. HE prompts me to "ask" by opening my Bible or my prayer book. HE then answers. I "caused" nothing.
Rites and ceremonies, properly, are "done" by all present, not "performed" by a few, though certainly there are "leadership" roles. So, where things are as they ought to be, all present are "doing something beautiful for God." Though the psalmist invited us to "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" a beauty only God can grant, still, even if it smacks of a kind of primitive sympathetic magic, our efforts at beauty and at a "set-apart" kind of behaviour seem actually (for some at least) to conduce to a deeper awareness of the presence and beauty of God.
Whether it's a good thing or not is debatable, but I was told more than once by parents who brought their children to services where I was the "celebrant," the kiddies were intently focussed on my gestures (hands lifted up, joined palm-to-palm, palms out to the people or palms up to the 'gifts' on the altar, and of course various signs of the cross) and some kids "followed along" imitating me. It struck me that for them all this folderol -- almost BECAUSE it was folderol -- suggested to them that something very important, something they wanted to be a part of, was going on.
As a Catholic Xtian, I remind myself often, with respect to religious "bling" and the rest, "This is not God." Even of the sacrament we call "the Most Holy" I remind myself that they do not celebrate Mass with bread and wine in Heaven, where the promise of the Mass is finally fulfilled. "When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until [and ONLY until] you come in glory."
But to get back to my earlier point, we attempt to do something beautiful for God. Asked to explain it, we'd say of the whole mishegoss and of our presence and involvement in it that, in divers ways, it all came from Him. And He (sometimes -- He's not a tame lion) does something beautiful in us in response. And I'd venture to guess that even when we do not perceive it, still He is acting, through and in response to our rites and ceremonies, our ritual.