God's creation is truly beautiful and the Church as a living organism, reflects this beauty in her services and ceremonies. In the Church, especially in the physical temple, the harmony between creation and the spiritual world is expressed in its architecture and in its atmosphere of holiness.
An Orthodox temple has its origin in the divine worship of the Temple in Jerusalem. To enter an Orthodox church is to enter a holy place. Emphasis is on the experience of God first, followed by scriptural readings and teaching.
In St John's Gospel, we read: God is a spirit and they who would worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth. (John 4: 24)
True devotion must be internal and come from the heart. But we are not to infer from this that exterior worship is to be condemned because interior worship is prescribed as essential. On the contrary, the rites and ceremonies which are enjoined in the worship of God and in the administration of the mysteries are dictated by reason and are sanctioned by God in the Old Law (Zechariah 14:17) and by our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles in the New. Our worship is not human based but based on the heavenly.
The Church is a divine-human- community in which the eternal worship of Heaven is always present and ceaseless. The heavenly servants, the angels being pure spirits without body, render to God a purely spiritual worship. The sun and moon, and stars of the firmament pay to Him a kind of external homage.
In the Prophet Daniel, we read: Sun and moon bless the Lord...stars of heaven bless the Lord, praise and exalt Him above all forever.
But man, by possessing a soul or spiritual substance, partakes of the nature of angels and possessing a body, partakes of the nature of material bodies. It is therefore his privilege, as well as his duty, to offer to God the twofold homage of body and soul; in other words, to honour Him by internal and external worship.
Genuine piety cannot be concealed in the heart without manifesting itself by exterior practices of religion; and hence, though interior and exterior worship are distinct, they cannot be separated in the present life.
The fire cannot burn without sending forth a flame and heat. Neither can the fire of devotion burn in the soul without reflecting itself on our countenance, and even in our speech.
It is natural for man to express his sentiments by signs and ceremonies for, from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh. And as fuel is necessary to keep the fire alive, even so the flame of piety is nourished by the outward forms of religion.
No comments:
Post a Comment