“…all true culture begins with the fact that man steps back. That he does not obtrude himself and seize hold of things, but leaves a space, so that there may be a place in which the person in his dignity, the work in its beauty, and nature in its symbolic power may be discerned.”
Romano Guardini on reverence, from Learning the Virtues That Lead You to God
Maybe it’s the final sibilance, that last soft ‘c,’ but the word reverence makes most of us nervous, as though the word itself was whispering “Ssh.” Like children in a china shop, we are afraid we will break something and be in trouble. In fact, the German word for reverence, “ehrfurcht,” combines the two words for honor and fear. The fear of reverence is not the fear of violence or punishment. Rather, it is the solemn fear one feels at the foot of a mountain or on the shore of the sea. One may love the mountains and the ocean, but the wise person knows that she will never master the mountain; he will never control the sea. In all their beauty, they are beyond our ability either to create or to control.
For Christians, reverence is the virtue that acknowledges that there is One before whom we must bow the head and bend the knee. Reverence teaches that, like the mountains and the sea, we neither create nor control nor command the creator of the mountains and the sea. It is the virtue that acknowledges mysteries beyond our ability – not to know – but to know fully, completely, and so master them. We do not understand God; we stand under God, and so seek to grow in the knowledge of God. Reverence brings forth, not shamed silence, but awed silence. Reverence orders the universe, and we are not at its center. Reverence “leaves the space” in which we can worship.
A CROWD IS NOT A COMMUNITY
Few of us are ever alone. We spend our days commuting with others, bodies pressed uneasily against other bodies on the bus, crowded together in an elevator. If we drive to work or school, we know what it is to be within arms reach of the car and its driver idling in the next lane of stopped traffic. We spend our days working with others, and yet most of know little about those men and women beyond their names and jobs. We stream to the discount superstores where we shop in mobs; people whose names and faces may be heard and seen but never registered. We live in crowds; do we also live in community?
To find oneself at Costco on a Saturday afternoon is to find oneself in a crowd. We cannot know what has brought all these people here. We are all shopping, but for what? We cannot know what others hope to find. We overhear scraps of conversations: Laughter, an argument, a parent admonishing a child not to wander. We come separately and leave separately. Most of us hope to be spared a touch or a word from the stranger next to us.
But on Sunday mornings we wake with an intention and a destination. We rise and dress with a purpose. We know that, all over the neighborhood and town, in snug houses and drafty shelters, men and women are rising with the same purpose. We are preparing to gather with our brothers and sisters to celebrate the Eucharist, just as Christians have done for two thousand years. Different countries, different languages, different ethnicities, different political loyalties, and still we keep what Christians have always kept: A gathering, on the Lord’s Day, to take and bless and share the Body and Blood of Christ. Our intention takes shape in our preparation.
Just as the Gathering Rites at Mass “help the assembled people to become a worshipping community and to prepare them for listening to God’s word and celebrating the eucharist,” so our domestic practices can help us prepare.
We have an ancient practice of fasting to prepare for Mass. Fasting helps us “leave a space,” in which reverence may flourish and grow. Fasting helps sharpen our hunger for the feast to which we are invited. The traditional fasting from food helps us hunger for the bread and wine we will joyfully and gratefully receive.
In a contemporary context, fasting might also sound like silence, a fast from the barrage of sound in which most of us live. We might fast from radio and television news and podcasts to sharpen our hunger for Good News. We might fast from Pandora or Spotify to sharpen our hunger for the music we will sing – not recorded, but live - together.
We arrive at church with a common intention: To hear our stories, to sing our songs, to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, broken for us, poured out for us, given for us. We see one another and greet one another. We hear of a job lost, a job found. We ask after the ill and the homebound. We rejoice in the a new baby or a child returned from college or military service. In every word and gesture, from the time we awake, we are being knit into a community. We are the community who comes to be fed from Christ’ own flesh that we might go out and be Christ for the world.
תגובות