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What is Ritual?

The English word "ritual" is a translation of the Coptic word of "taksees." This word refers to the order or rite of the practices and services of the Church, and from it comes the Arabic word "taqs." It means a form of procedure or action required. In this sense the word is used in the Christian Church, it is meant to cover all systems and spiritual procedures to be observed in Christian worship. The science researching these procedures is called "Ritual Theology."

It is true, in fact, to say that the order of the rituals is very important as the rituals were designed by the Holy Spirit to lead us ever-increasingly towards perceiving God, and to have Him embodied in our minds, eyes and understanding.

"God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:24)

"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life." (John 6:63)

These verses encourage us to look at the rituals of the Holy Church, not as a dry academic exercise, but in spirit and as life - indeed, as a life to live. With penetrating the spiritual depths and meaning which underpin these rituals, but more than any other motivation we are trying to find the presence of God in these ritual procedures. To find God in the praises offered to Him from within the Church Herself and ideally to discover that this knowledge will lead me to God Himself.

Ritual theology covers things as:

• The church building itself and the spiritual nature of ecclesiastical architecture
• The furnishings and interior of the church building
• The functions of the furnishings and ritual objects
• The study of iconography and iconology (i.e. the theology of the icons)
• The design of the exterior and interior of the church itself
• The essential areas of the interior (The iconostasis, the Baptistry, the Sanctuary, etc)
• The origins and study of the function of these portions of the church building
• The ceremonial of the Sacraments
• The church hymnody and hymnology (the study of the Church tunes, hymns, etc.)
• The origin and foundation of Coptic hymnody, as well as their construction
• The spirituality and theology of the various Feasts of the Coptic Year
• The fixed calendar of Feasts, as well as "variable" Feasts
• The categories of service books of the Church The hidden mystery of the order of readings of the Church, etc.

Sources of Rituals

1) The Holy Bible

Naturally the church's rites are founded upon the Holy Bible which is the core of Tradition, and which is the foundation from which we may verify the teachings and authority of the Church itself. It follows that our study will be based very firmly upon the biblical traditions of our Fathers.

2) The Books of the Holy Apostles

Two books of the Holy Apostles that are filled with their teachings. They are known by the names; the Didascalia and the Didache.

3) The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers

The period of the Apostolic Fathers covers the time from around the years 50/60 A.D. (i.e. the period following the martyrdom of the first Apostles) until about 90/100 A.D. We should remember that the last Apostles to die was St. John the Beloved who reposed in the Lord in the year 104 A.D., the only Apostle not to have been called to a martyr's death. Thus we can here see a cross-over between the period of the Apostles and the first generation of Apostolic Fathers who were taught by them.

4) The Writings of the Disciples of the Holy Apostles

These books were written by followers of the Holy Apostles.

5) Church Writings

The writings of the Fathers of the Church, her scholars and teachers, during the first four centuries before the Council of Nicaea in 325, which have great relevance as they come from the period in which the churches of the world were united in Christ.

6) The Service Books of the Church

The oldest is named "The Order of the Holy Church of God," a very large book which is kept in the Patriarchate Library in Egypt. There are other smaller books which further explain the rituals of the Church.

It is abundantly clear from the New Testament that the symbolic rituals of the Old Testament were not swept away nor canceled nor expunged by Our Lord, but were fulfilled and reinvigorated by Him. He did not cancel or end these rituals, but renewed their spiritual meaning in a way which gave them clarity and richness.

The rituals of the Old Testament were not dry, lifeless, or empty as some claim, but were in fact very deep, rich and alive expressions of worship. Indeed whoever studies the Old Testament closely will find that our Lord Jesus Christ is continually prefigured in its pages.

Why Should We Study Ritual Theology?

1. It is an order.

God manifests and prefers order in everything He does. For example, He took chaos and nothingness and from them created the universe, its planets, and systems of nature. The resulting creation was highly structured and ordered. Also, when God created humankind, He made our systems immensely ordered, from nerve impulses to systems of feeling to physical ranges of motion. Humans also enjoy order in their environment. Thus, societies, corporations, governments, and even religions have grown more orderly and sophisticated in their development throughout time. We see highly structured systems of order in everything around us, from the building of a simple house to the most complex and advanced army in the world. Why, then, when it comes to the Holy Church, do we fight against order?!

2. It is a practical practice of our belief and faith.

Believing in God is a subconscious belief in a spiritual and non materialistic fact, but worshiping and practice is an expression of that believe. For that prayers and alms are called rituals. By the same token, your belief that the Holy Eucharist is the actual body and blood of the Lord represents your faith, but rituals are represented by the prayers for consecration, the coming of the faithful to receive the sacrament.

3. It unifies the body and the spirit in expressing our feelings toward God.

The connection between the body and spirit is a connection of natural union, in that if the spirit encounters an inner psychological emotion, this reflects on the body. If you are happy your inner happiness is bound to show on your features, the immensity of happiness renders the expressions uncontrollable. Contrary to that if you are hit by sad news, sorrow is externally represented by frowning of the face, lose of weight, teary eyes, the slow and quiet motions of the body and the low voice. What is said about happy and sad motions equally applies to other emotions eg. fear …etc.

4. It is an external spiritual effect of the inner soul through senses.

The senses are the gates to our understandings and feelings, they transmit the external world to the innermost of our souls. We may become upset or happy at seeing someone or a certain scene, we may enjoy the taste of delicious food or feel disgusted at an ugly scene. Our vision of the Lord icon on the Cross on the Great Friday, makes us feel His pains and some people cry. The same also for the tune, being an appropriate means to stimulate the spirit of religion in the hearts and souls of people through their auditory sense. The incense does the same to the sense of smell and the holy sacrament to the sense of taste – the same effect takes place when the faithful feels the threshold of the altar by kissing it or by kissing the icons of Christ and His saints or by kissing the hands of the priests.

5. It is a method to draw us closer to religious facts.

Religious facts are similar to other scientific facts – it is essential to have sensual images that bring to the mind of a person those facts that cannot be understood without demonstration. In geometry we are aided by fine diagrams, in Geography we resort to maps, in Physics we seek examples, we have to have experiments in the sciences of sound, light and heat, in the science of Chemistry laboratory is a necessity to establish facts, in botany and zoology dissection is essential. The same thing applies to facts of religion where it is necessary to have pictures and icons of the Lord Jesus Christ, His apostles and sains so that we can picture events in our minds – this way we either approach history or history approaches us. Rubbing the holy Eucharistic bread symbolises the baptism of Jesus. Rituals are therefore, inseparable from religion because abstract facts need rituals to make them comprehensible

6. It is an appropriate means combining body and spirit in worship.

If a human being is composed of body and spirit and the soul's duty was to worship, the body also has to fully merge with the spirit in the performance. How can we worship God in body and not in spirit? This means that if we pray and submit ourselves in spirit, we must do the same in body. The spirit meditates in and aspire to God, the body stands or kneels in homage and reverence, the tongue utters the prayer words – if we worship God by our spirits in prayer we have to worship Him in the same manner by our bodies in fasting. On this basis, the rituals, in the form of practices combining body and spirit in the performance of God's worship.

The Advantages of Rituals

1. They Transmit Religion to Children

A young child is unable to comprehend the facts of religion through the normal brain channels, and cannot understand the value of advice or instruction delivered by a priest or a reader in the church. In spit of this, children's attendance is not in vain, although they do not make use of the words or sentences, the church rituals influence them, attract and dominate their senses, they begin by loving the church and feel attracted to attend it. We noticed little children, even infants, unable to speak, will hum the tunes of church hymns because their mothers accompanied them to the church and they were impressed by what they saw and heard in church.

2. They Transmit Religion to Adults

In view of the fact that men/women, are sentimental and inclined towards emotional events. If a religion is confined to pulpit sermons and instruction, it would not attract the attention of men/women like ritualist religion.

Men/women are not just brains or sheer ideas, they have feelings, sentiments and emotions. Mind is one of the many doors through which meanings and beliefs have access. It is not true that beliefs are formed through one channel only – the brain. Rituals must be catered for so that men/women can receive them with enjoyment and without effort.

3. They Transmit Religion to the Uneducated

It is not a prerequisite to be knowledgeable to become a Christian. Christianity is a spiritual and heavenly religion – it embraces the knowledgeable and the ignorant. The literate can follow the books, preaching and instruction. It is significant that a simple man or woman, uneducated in the study of theology, will, if he or she simply follows the rituals and practices in full with the understanding which this engenders, be led towards God and will develop an appreciation for the fundamental theological teachings of the Church.

Ignorance does not by necessity mean illiteracy. An intellectual who has no knowledge of religion can be classified as ignorant. He who comes to the church of God in arrogance and without the reverence befitting the majesty of the Holy one, will find the church rituals to be the greatest suppressant of arrogance before even the meanings contained in the holy books reach his mind or heart. Involuntarily he will rejoice or become sad and will feel helpless before the hymns that would raise his spirit to the required sublimely, even if this was not his intention. If he looks to the right or left he is faced with the Lord's eyes gazing at him in innocence and purity thus chastising the relentless soul and extend to him an invitation to the good life of complete peace.

4. They Constantly Remind and Rebuke Us

The worries of life pile on us and force us to forget, we all suffer from forgetfulness. For this reason, and in order to overcome this human deficiency, the church preserves the rituals to serve as a constant reminder that recall those beautiful meanings to our minds.

Rituals serve as a renewing agent to our lukewarm sentiments. The Luke-warm faithful are those who are busy with worldly affairs and refrain from attending, neglecting their salvation, with the excuse that their occupations have the priority in concern over observing the great day of the Lord. Often we enter church either depressed or indifferent and we leave it full of grace and renewal.

We notice that these Luke-warm people frequent the church either during eves or days of holy feasts – they do not attend with the aim of praying but with the intention of enjoying the fun knowing that the church ceremonies on feast eves are joyous – they are attracted by the rituals which may lead them to repentance, return to God and concern for eternal life.

5. They Confirm the Refinement of Religion and Pass it Down through Generations

If religion were to be confined to mere concepts that do not depart from the mind and were not to be tangibly expressed, it would not be possible for religion to transfer from parents to their unknowing successive generations. Rituals from the appropriate tool to convey the facts in a lucid manner, repetition is bound to impress the hearts and minds, in this regard we refer to the psychological aspect which supports the theory of repetition as a means of impressing abstract ideas in the mind of a person.

A boy who watches his father kneeling or standing with reverence while praying , will not give a second though to what he sees, the scene will remain in his memory and when his turn for worship comes, he will recall what he saw in his childhood.

Rituals give the greatest protection to religion against change and deviation as it prevents straying of thoughts and undesirable imagination. For this reason we find that ritual religions still retain their solid foundation in the souls of their followers.

Sociologists are of the opinion that followers of Judaism, and Christianity eg. Orthodox and Catholics are deeper in faith and more attached to religion, its laws and unity than other denominations that ignore rituals claiming that their religions are purely spiritualistic. This latter is by far more subject to destruction, division, fading and disappearance. This painful truth was admitted by a prominent Protestant in America saying "Neglecting rituals in Protestant churches was one of the factors that helped the prevalence of atheism and agnosticism among the public".

6. They Reinforce Religion

The church's system and order undertake the task of introducing religion to those who are ignorant of the facts whether they be among the luke-warm faithful or the non believers. It is, therefore, a teacher and preacher to the former and a missionary to the latter.

As to the non believers, the majority are ignorant of the facts of Christianity but they follow the church orders and patters. They know the religious seasons, the Lord's and other festivities. They know that we observe Sunday as the Lord's day they hear the ringing bells and see the praying groups flocking to churches leaving behind the worldly cares and departing from church in peace and tranquillity. They also know the beginning and the end of our fast days.

This knowledge of the church rituals as observed in fasts, feasts, weddings, funerals and masses is the means by which the unfaithful identify the facts of religion and the church teachings.

In conclusion, we re-affirm that rituals form the greatest medium of transmitting religion to people.

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Credit and Attribution:

This article is a segment of the Pre-Theology Certification curriculum at the Theological Seminary based in the Southern United States Diocese under the auspices of H.G. Bishop Youssef.