In the chaos of concepts and ideas, thoughts revolve around rituals, so some believe that rituals are religious only, and in particular that the Orthodox and Catholic Churches are ritualistic, while the Evangelical denominations are freed from them. The second matter is that some see rituals as the summoning of divine powers in a magical way.
What concerns us is to clarify the confusion surrounding the two previous matters: what are rituals, and who performs them? And the second matter: is ritual a magical act, so that a procession with icons, for example, will halt some catastrophe?
Some believe that rituals are what the Churches do in their prayers when they rely on performing religious movements in the presence of a clergyman, such as processions and the religious services at marriage, baptism, and others. Therefore some call the Orthodox Church “the ritualistic Church”, believing that clergymen are bound to rituals and that the absence of rituals means the invalidity of their existence, and vice versa. But if we want a more precise and deeper understanding of this word, the word “ritual” is not bound to what is religious only; rather, everything in life has a ritual. The family has rituals for its order and its gathering around the dining table; weddings, and elections, are conducted according to a ritual; the manner of marriage among Christians, Muslims, and others is called a ritual; parties have rituals in taking the oath; Freemasonry has rituals; states have rituals before the president in taking the constitutional oath. The Evangelicals themselves, who consider themselves freed from rituals, have rituals in prayer, marriage, and burial. For example, the manner of gathering for the sermon is among the most important things the Evangelicals do; the gathering around the preacher to hear it and the prayer afterwards is a ritual. For ritual is the manner in which a community performs an essential act that gathers it and around which it revolves together. Liberation from rituals means chaos, disorder, and impropriety.
After we look in the comprehensive lexicon at the meaning of the word “ritual”, which is order and arrangement, and return to its Greek origin τάξις (taxis), we see that it occurs in the Holy Scripture in the words of Paul the Apostle (1 Corinthians 14:40) “Let all things be done decently and in order.” The word “order” is (ταξιν) (2).
The Orthodox Church has never departed from the scriptural teaching, that is, the teaching of the Gospel.
The second matter (and I speak here about religious rituals, especially the Orthodox ones) was stirred up by the Corona crisis, when some believed, by a popular faith, that the processions that are held, the anointing with oil, and so on, push the epidemic away. But we saw the monks who left Mount Athos for Britain carrying the relics of Saint George the Great among the martyrs, in order to push the epidemic away from one of its cities, return infected with it. Many priests and metropolitans reposed because they were infected with the same epidemic, having previously communed, prayed, and completed everything. And we heard of a monastery on Mount Athos that closed its doors when a number of its monks were infected with the Corona epidemic.
In order to understand the idea fully, and why this wrong belief in the magical power of rituals took shape in us, we must return to the roots in the ancient worship and to the accounts of creation in the pagan myths. For them, ritual had a magical aim, which was to reactivate the powers of the gods that acted in the first time at creation, and this reactivation took place through the corresponding mythological hymns. For example: whoever wants to be rid of toothache must chant one of the poems related to creation seven times (1). And in the Babylonian myths, at the new year they used to read the Epic of Gilgamesh, because they saw that the floods that occur in winter are the forces of destruction that existed at the beginning and have returned anew to harm the world; so they used to summon the powers of the good gods that were active at the time of the first creation and destroyed them, in order to control them once again.
This ancient influence, unfortunately, is still present in the popular memory, especially when we read in someone’s writing that such-and-such a psalm is for alleviating headaches, for example, or another for alleviating the pains of childbirth, as though God were asleep and needed someone to wake Him, and His power had grown weak so that He needed rituals to reactivate the first power. This is what the Lord warned against: ”And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” (Matthew 6:7).
And this is what they represent in many films, where they gather in a dark room and recite some words and summon the powers of darkness.
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References:
1. The Word of the Lord Is Pure, translated by Archimandrite Elias Taameh, p. 86.
2. See the interlinear translation (Arabic-Greek) of the New Testament, p. 836.