Why Are Rituals Necessary? #
By Bishop Mikhail (Semyonov)
The Old Believers are most frequently accused of “ritualism,” that is, of stubbornly venerating rituals even more than dogma. Their reverence for ritual is often regarded as little less than idolatry.
But is ritual really something insignificant, of little importance in the order of spiritual life? We have already written briefly about the meaning of ritual in the first article. We spoke of why the Old Believers had to “rise up in spirit” against the sacrilegious assault on the sanctity of ritual. Now I wish to explain, primarily for the Old Believer youth, the true meaning of ritual.
What is a ritual? It is the “shell,” the garment of dogma, as we have said. Now let us continue in a slightly different way: it is the consolidation of spiritual life, a powerful element of Christian life, a great moment, fixed, as it were, for eternity, for the purpose of spiritual education.
In the early Christian Church, there was a sharing of all things; people held everything in common, and there was no one in need among them. The spirit of those holy days gave rise to a sacred custom, or ritual, known as the “agape”—the feast of love.
The Christians of that time were in constant unity of love: not only their possessions, but also their hearts and souls were one (Acts, ch. 6).
The sacred disposition and “agape” of this communion of souls became fixed in a complex ritual, a system of rites, in the liturgy, and in worship in general.
The liturgy, in its rituals, is the symbolic fulfillment of the Lord’s prayer to the Father: “That they all may be one… even as We are one” (John 17:11-21). In antiquity, the very liturgy bore the name “the mystery of communion,” and Cyril of Alexandria directly calls it “the common bond uniting all.”
“The liturgy,” writes N.V. Gogol, “imperceptibly builds and forms a person, and if society has not yet completely fallen apart, if people do not breathe with full, irreconcilable hatred toward one another, the hidden reason for this is the system of rituals—the Divine Liturgy, which reminds man of sacred and heavenly love for his brother.”
But the liturgy is something great, extraordinarily profound. Let us take something simpler, if I may put it that way.
Let us consider a minor ritual, such as making bows.
Why engage in this purely mechanical movement?
Here is an account from The Spiritual Meadow (in our free rendering).
One day, a peasant came to Abba John and, having told of his extreme poverty, asked him for a loan of a nomisma (4 rubles).
The elder took pity on him and borrowed the money from the monastery. However, two years passed, and the peasant did not return.
The blessed elder, in the meantime, learned that the peasant was living a careless life and was neglecting his family. The elder thought for a long time about how to help him. Summoning his debtor, he said to him:
— Return the debt to me, brother!
— God knows, I have nothing with which to repay you!
— Then I will help you pay it back. The fieldwork season is not coming soon yet…
— Whatever you command, I will do.
— Whenever you have free time at home, come here and make thirty prostrations. Each time, I will give you a kerata (18 kopecks).
And so the peasant began to come to the monastery very often and, together with the elder, to make full prostrations.
— Why are you doing this? — the elder was asked. — Are mere prostrations truly beneficial for a peasant? It would be better if you instructed him… We assume he is a Christian and already knows his duties.
— His spiritual life has been extinguished. Prayer will revive his faith and the spirit of piety.
— But for now, he is only making prostrations.
— Fruit is preceded by a flower, the flower by a leaf, the leaf by a bud, and the bud brings new life to the branches… Do you not know that the gift of prayer is a fruit? One must labor greatly before this fruit matures. Prostrations are the first tilling of the soil for the little tree… Man is not a lifeless tool, but a living being: in the midst of prostrations, the first stirrings of the spirit of prayer will awaken. Little by little, like life-giving rain, the gift of prayer will descend upon him… Would you give a book to someone who does not yet know the alphabet?
And the elder proved his wisdom in action, continuing to train the peasant in prostrations. When the poor man was hungry, the elder shared his meal with him as a brother and sent him home with a sack of dried bread for his entire family. This continued until the sum of twenty-four kerata had been collected. The peasant repaid his debt to the elder. But even after this, we saw the peasant with the elder. He now came voluntarily to pray with him… The peasant no longer suffered from poverty, for from that time, he began to live a sober and hardworking life.
Prostrations—this “small” ritual—uncovered, by its inner power, the dormant awareness of sin in his soul.
And what about other rituals?
The meaning of the rites of baptism is profound. We will discuss them separately on another occasion.
In the Paschal service, for example, there is the rite of the Paschal kiss. And who knows how many hearts have been softened, how many movements of anger have melted away in this ritual kiss!
On the eve of Great Lent, there is the rite of forgiveness…
What a power of reconciliation this rite contains within itself! And the rite of marriage—that is, the sacrament of matrimony in its ritual form—what a revelation about the family is given here to those who have ears to hear!
But how? In what way does a ritual exert such an influence?
I explain it like this: a ritual, at the time of its creation, was born of a great thought, immense spiritual energy, and a profound spiritual fervor. And yet all energy is always preserved according to the law, so to speak, of “the conservation of spiritual energy.” Just as heat is retained, the spiritual power of a ritual is preserved within it in a hidden state.
There is a short story by Korolenko called Frost.
It is a fantasy. The author imagines that sometimes, under the frost, words freeze, but then, when the sun shines, he thinks—they thaw and descend into souls with sacred power.
In a ritual, words—that is, sacred power—have become frozen.
For a person who has not yet been warmed by the sun of grace, they are dead, lifeless; but even for him, they can awaken, they can come to life.
One must look closely at a ritual, enter into its depths, for its power to come alive in the heart.
Those who are indifferent to religion itself, who visit the church only occasionally and remain in it for just a few minutes, are naturally deaf to what is hidden beneath the outer vesture of ritual and are incapable of comprehending its essence and spirit. These are carnal people rather than spiritual ones, and over them, the words of the holy Apostle are fulfilled: “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).
They say that ritual has become outdated, worn out.
Let us suppose for a moment that this is true. Even then, it remains sacred—like the lifeless body of a deceased mother, which we kiss with no less tenderness than when she was alive.
These are the steps by which, to use the words of Merezhkovsky, millions have ascended to God.
Even if we assume, once again, that the steps have become worn, still, kiss and venerate the footprints left by the holy millions.
But can a ritual truly become outdated and die?
Of course not. Its soul is eternally alive.
Only we can die to the ritual.
We must not forget what has been said about the origin of ritual.
“A ritual cannot kill the spirit. The spirit created it, and as a remembrance of a once-experienced religious disposition, it reawakens that disposition. And if the soul is not asleep, the outward form and ritual once again become spiritualized for a person and turn into a life-giving force.”
We must not forget that a ritual, as we have said, is “the visible covering of an unseen mystery, an unseen truth, the living body of a living soul.” At the same time, it is also, we repeat, “the steps by which millions of believers have ascended to God for centuries upon centuries.”
“This alone should have made them forever sacred, not only granting them holiness but also endowing them with the power of divine sanctification for all time. The sacred thought, the prayerful activity, has become so historically intertwined with the ritual that to destroy the ritual (even if it were psychologically possible) would mean to break a chain of the most precious associations, to put at risk the very thought bound up in the ritual and expressed through it, to kill within it the activity of prayer itself.”
“They carried a vessel filled with a precious liquid. Everyone fell prostrate before it, everyone kissed the vessel, which contained this life-giving drink for all. But then, men arose and began to shout: ‘Fools, why do you kiss the vessel? Only the life-giving liquid within it is valuable, only its contents are precious! Yet you kiss the glass, mere glass, and attribute holiness to it… Idolaters! Cast the vessel away! Worship only the life-giving drink, not the glass!’ And so, they shattered the vessel. The life-giving liquid spilled upon the ground and vanished into the earth, as was to be expected… They destroyed the vessel—and lost the drink.”
This beautiful legend is directed against the enemies of ritual.