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Dear Parish Faithful,
Last Sunday, the homily focused on the Liturgy, something of a "reminder" of what we are hopefully experiencing as we move from one Lord's Day to the next on our lifelong journey. The Liturgy allows us to experience, here and now, what we hope to experience in a manner beyond understanding and description, in the Kingdom of God.
I have simultaneously been re-reading a brilliant essay by Archbishop Kallistos Ware entitled, "The Theology of Worship." This is from his collected essays in the book The Inner Kingdom. After speaking of prayer and worship more-or-less on the personal level, he speaks of our prayer and worship in the collective context of the Divine Liturgy. Beauty is essential to Orthodox worship as God is the ultimate Source of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. Often, there is a good deal of misunderstanding about the "symbolic" nature of the ritual actions of the Liturgy. Are they really necessary? Would it not be better and "purer" to simplify the Liturgy and dispense with ritual all together. Our whole Tradition responds with a resounding "NO!" Here is a short passage from Archbishop Kallistos as to why the symbolic gestures and ritual of the Liturgy are absolutely essential to its celebration - and to our thirsty souls:
"To an Orthodox Christian it is of the utmost importance that the act of worship should express the joy and beauty eof the Kingdom of heaven. Without the dimension of the beautiful our worship will never succeed in being prayer in the fullest sense, prayer of the heart as well of the reasoning brain. This joy and beauty of the Kingdom cannot be properly expounded in abstract arguments and logical explanations; it has to be experienced not discussed. And it is above all through symbolic and ritual actions - through the burning of incense, through the lighting of a lamp or candle before an icon - that the living experience is rendered possible. These simply gestures express, far better than any words, our whole attitude towards God, all of love and adoration, and without such actions our worship would be grievously impoverished."
The Inner Kingdom, p. 65
