Citizen Columns
Question
What is the importance of symbolism in your weekly rituals and liturgy? Are fewer people responding to it?
Answer
The saintly Greek monk Elder Porphyrios (d. 1991), wrote that:
"the soul of the Christian needs to be refined and sensitive, to have sensibility and wings, to be constantly in flight and to live in dreams, to fly through infinity, among the stars, amidst the greatness of God, amid silence. Whoever wants to become a Christian must first become a poet."
Eastern Christianity is well known for its elaborate ancient liturgy filled with poetic symbolism. This is entirely appropriate, because the mystical encounter with God can only be hinted at and caught in glimpses. Speaking cryptically of his own experience St Paul said:
"I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven-whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person-whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows-was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat" (2 Cor 12:2-4).
Paul's symbolic language of "third heaven" and "Paradise" connects with his real experience. Something happened to him, but he can only express it in this poetic language. The word symbol comes from Greek and means literally "to throw together." The truly mystical and its poetic expression are here thrown together.
The answer to your second question follows from this. For if the symbol remains but there is no real experience to go with it, then the symbol and ritual are emptied of their meaning and people will not respond to it. But wherever liturgy is grounded in real communion with God, with each other and with creation, then the symbolism of liturgy is alive and people respond. Such people, far from being turned off by symbolism, are running away from prosaic worship and looking for liturgy that better expresses the incomprehensible reality of what they have experienced.
Father John Jillions
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