Rituals and traditions are those patterns of behaviour that occur with regularity. They help us communicate meaning, values and relationships that exist between people and with God. They are like signs that are meant to point beyond themselves to a greater reality.
To a certain extent, whether consciously or not, we all practise our own personal rituals. John Travolta once said that the evening ritual of his parents was for mum to sip tea at a particular hour, with dad instantly lighting up his cigar, followed by a cocktail.
Endless rituals and traditions seem to abound graciously within the local Church. It would be exhausting to calculate the amount of time and energy spent organising our spectacular, yet sometimes troublesome external feasts. Never-ending ceremonies in the temple of God are proving to be tiring, if not distasteful to our younger generation, who thirst for ‘creativity’ and a ‘lived experience’ of the Divine presence, rather than rituals and pomp.
Apostolic rituals were always meant to increase faith, advance oneself to higher states of spiritual perfection and to prepare oneself for greater communion with God. At the root of apostolic rituals is an invitation for some personal sacrifice in body, mind and heart.
We are called to sacrifice our time, and on a deeper level, our very own self, to attend to the Eucharist celebration, to join in a community of sinners yet believers and partakers of the passion and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ through God’s endless mercy.
We are called to fast during Lent as a form of penance without which the Christian is unlikely to remain on the narrow but joyful path in the midst of a highly secular and idolatrous world. Lack of sacrifice may lead to compromise our Christian faith for safer and more comfortable lives.
But rituals fall short of their apostolic relevance when they become an end in themselves instead of a means to contemplate and transcend beyond self into the Divine realm, which manifests itself in a life of unconditional love and service towards others.
Do we recognise the spirit of God in rituals?
There is the danger that we can become idolatrous about our rituals and traditions when we divorce them from the truth and reality they point to. We begin to worship the ritual itself just for the sake of the ritual.
We are all aware of the shameful pique in our village feasts, of the occasional farce of the traditional running with Church statues.
Rituals and traditions are important elements that are supposed to connect our lives to God and others, empower us with a sense of identity, purpose and meaning through a sense of community and collective participation.
The Church commissioned to Peter by Jesus Christ is not a Church plagued with a sense of untouchable vanity, tasteless rituals and traditions. It is a Church, in the words of Pope Francis, where “it needs to proclaim the Gospel on every street corner, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and wound. It is a Church that is a mother and shepherdess, that accompanies its people like the good Samaritan, who washes, cleans and raises up his neighbour.”
Pope Francis is calling each of us for a renewed ‘open heart to God’. This calling extends to the hierarchy of the Church. It is not a call to abolish apostolic rituals and traditions but a call to recast them in this day and age to give them meaning, to give them a heart of flesh, to adapt them to the great variety of life forms and the context of changing realities.
If we fail to recognise the divine grace inherent in apostolic rituals and traditions, these are nothing more than symbolic gestures, habits or alienations rather than a stepping stone to devotion, spiritual vitality and a life of communal service.
Do we recognise the spirit of God in rituals? “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and, they recognised him…” (Luke 24:31)
gordon@atomserve.net
Mr Gordon Vassallo is an accredited spiritual guide at the Centre of Ignatian Spirituality.