Myth And Ritual In Christianity Part 11

2 Sri Krishna in Bhagaeiad-Gita io: 20, to: 8, 9: 17, T 8, to.

3 Taliesin, from Coomaraswamy, On the One and Only Transmigrant, in JAOS, vol. 6, No. 2, supplement, p. 33 A.

I am the wind which blows o'er the sea, I am the wave of the ocean ... a beam of the sun ... the G.o.d who creates in the head the fire.l

I am in heaven and on eanh, in water and in air; I am in beasts and plants; I am a babe in the womb, and one that is not yet conceived, and one that has been born; I am present everywhere.2

' Amergin, from Coomaraswamy, ibid. "Wind" and "wave of ocean" are the Spirit and Water of Genesis z: a.

2 Hamm Trismegistus, lib., xiii. 1 Ib.

CHAPTER V.

The Pa.s.sion IN the cycle of the Christian Year we move very swiftly from the Birth of Christ to his Pa.s.sion, Death, and Resurrection, for the great feasts and fasts of the calendar commemorate the mythological aspects of the life of Christ-his great, world, saving actions rather than his teachings or miracles for the healing of individuals. However, the season of Christmas and Epiphany is separated from that of the Pa.s.sion by the fast/ time of Lent.' The purpose of Lent is not primarily to commemorate the forty day fast of Christ in the wilderness which immediately followed his baptism; in the ancient Church Lent was, above all things, the period of spiritual Lent is actually divided from Epiphany by the so/called Pre,Lenten season, the three Sundays of Septuagesima, s.e.xagesima, and Quinquagesima. These names are derived from the fact that the First Sunday in Lent was originally called Quadragesirna-the fortieth day before Easter-and the three Sundays preceding take these names by a.n.a.logy, and not because they are respectively the fiftieth, sixtieth, and seventieth days before Easter.

138.

The Pa.s.sion 1 39 training and instruction which preceded initiation into the Christian Mysteries by the Sacrament of Baptism. The proper time for initiation was Easter Eve, because the Sunday of the Resurrection is the greatest feast of the whole year-repre, sensing the fulfilment of the Incarnation, whereas Christmas is only the beginning.

Prior to the general practice of infant baptism, initiation into the Christian Mysteries was a tremendous solemnity involving preliminary disciplines, tests, and exorcisms of a most serious kind. For in this respect, as in many others, Christianity was following the pattern of the other great Mystery cults of the GraecoRoman world. In those days the inner Mystery of the Ma.s.s was by no means a public rite which anyone might attend. It was a true mystery, and the actual rite was divided into two parts-the Ma.s.s of the Catechumens and the Ma.s.s of the Faithful. The Catechumens were those undergoing preparation for baptism-being catechized-and because they had not yet received initiation were permitted to attend only the introductory part of the Ma.s.s. After the reading of the Gospel for the day, the Deacon of the Ma.s.s would turn to the people and say, "Let the catechumens depart", whereafter it was the duty of the Doorkeepers to see that no uninitiated person remained in the church. This custom prevailed so long as Christians were a minority in their society, but disappeared when Christianity had been adopted as a state-religion, and when whole societies were nominally Christian.

While the primary purpose of the Quadragesima or Lent was, therefore, the preparation of the Catechumens, the fast was also kept by the Initiated Faithful as a matter of annual partic.i.p.ation in the labours of Christ. Thus with the third Sunday before Lent-Septuagesima-the Church changes its vestments to the purple of penitence, and goes with Christ, as Christ, into the cycle of darkness. From now until Easter the Gloria in excelsis is not sung, nor is the triumphal cry "Alleluia! heard in the liturgy. The Ma.s.s of Septuagesima opens with an introit from Psalm 17, appropriate to the entry of Christ in the darkness which he is to redeem:

The groans of death surrounded me; the sorrows of h.e.l.l encompa.s.sed me: and in my affliction I called upon the Lord.

Lents itself begins on the Wednesday before Quadragesima Sunday--a day called Ash Wednesday because of the rite of imposing blessed ashes on the foreheads of the faithful. Before the Ma.s.s, the priest takes ashes which have been made from palm.leaves used on Palm Sunday of the year before, and solemnly blesses them at the altar with holy water and the sign of the Cross. Thereafter the faithful come to the altar, and the priest traces the sign of the Cross with the ashes upon their foreheads, saying to each: "Remember, 0 man, that dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return", while the choir sings:

Let us change our garments for ashes and sack/ cloth: let us fast and lament before the Lord: for our G.o.d is plenteous in mercy to forgive our sins... . Attend, 0 Lord, and have mercy: for we have sinned against thee.

The fast itself consists in special acts of piety carried on throughout the forty days, as well as abstention from "flesh" food--that is to say, from "blood". For both Hebrew and Christian symbolism identify blood with the life,principle, and abstention from blood is in recollection of the shedding of the Blood of Christ-that is, of the pouring out of the Divine Life into human nature.

Generally speaking, the penitential observances of the Church have, in practice, a sentimental rather than a spiritual atmosphere because they express the feeling of remorse rather 1 "Um" is an Anglo.Saxon word meaning "spring" (Ienrten). In France the season is known as Came, in Italy as Qaarerima, both from the Latin Quadragesima.

than "metaphysical conversion" or rnetanoia. From the earliest times they have dwelt upon the extreme horror" of sin, and upon how deeply it wounds the feelings of Christ, and "grieves the Holy Spirit. While it is all too true that the "missing of the mark" called egocentricity underlies all the enormities of human behaviour, Christians have seldom recognized that the inculcation of shame, horror, and guilt is in no sense a cure for sin. It is merely the opposite of conduct, the automatic reaction of the ego to social rejection, and, like every mere opposite or reaction, it is nothing more than a swing of the pendulum. The pendulum will continue to swing between good and evil until the weight is raised to the fulcrum, the Centre above and beyond the opposites. For sentimental guilt by no means destroys egocentricity, being nothing other than the sensation of its wounded pride-a pride which it then labours to restore by acts of penitence and piety.

When the Devil was ill, The Devil a monk would be; But when the Devil was well, The Devil the Devil was he!

In the sentimental sphere of "morals" both good and evil arc sin, because the weight is away from the Centre, and thus "off the mark. The Church recognizes this in principle, but nct in practice, in the doctrine that, lacking the divine Grace, even moral actions are done "under sin. In effect, however, this has come to mean that only those good actions per formed under the auspices of the Church are really" good. The state of Grace has been confused with a permanent swing of the pendulum in one direction-an impossibility so long as the end, the ego, remains weighted.

After five weeks of Lent the Church comes to the week in which it celebrates the central mystery of the entire Christian myth-the Mystery of the Atonement, of the atrone,ment of G.o.d and man achieved by the Incarnation. The rites of the Birth and of the Labours of Christ have been enacted, and the Church now turns to that phase of the Incarnation wherein G.o.d the Son descends into man's suffering and death as well as into his life and labour, thereby raising the most finite level of human experience to the infinite.

The Sacrificial Victim enters the temple for the final act of the Mystery with a triumphal procession, commemorating the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem for that Pa.s.sover Sacrifice which was to be his own crucifixion.' Thus the first day of Here again, I suggest that the reader refresh his memory of the Gospel narrative-if necessary-before proceeding further with this chapter. The rites of the Church follow the order of events as described in Jahn, and the relevant sections of this Gospel are Jahn 12: 12 to 13: 38, and 18: to the end of the Gospel. Jahn, however, has no complete account of the Last Supper, and to fill in the full details of this and other events one should read also the accounts of both Matthew and Luke, at least. For these, see Matthew 21: 1-2o, and 26: I CO the end of the Gospel, and Luke 19: 28-48, and 22: I to the end of the Gospel. To clarify the order of events in the second pan of the week, I append the parallel Jewish and Christian calendars, inserting the events of the Christ/story as Jahn places them: CHURCH CALENDAR.

Weds. in Holy Week JEWISH CALENDAR.

CHRIST STORY.

Sunset: Nisan 13th First Day of Unleavened Bread Thurs. (Maundy) Sunset: Nisan r4th The Parasceve Last Supper Gethsemane Fn. of Preparation Peter's Denial Trial by Pilate Crucifixion 3 p.m.

Paschal Lamb Death of Christ slain Burial of Christ Sunset: The Sabbath Pa.s.sover meal eaten Sat. (Easter Eve) Sunset: First Day of the Week Sun. (Easter Day) Daum: Resurrection Note that in the Jewish Calendar days are reckoned from sunset to sunset.

Holy Week is Palm Sunday-a day upon which the rites of the Church a.s.sume, and retain throughout the week, the definite character of a Mystery Drama in which the actual events of the Pa.s.sion are reenacted year after year, in witness to the fact that what is done here, in time, is the anamnesis or representation of a truth which, at the metaphysical level, ever is. Jerusalem, the Ciry of G.o.d and of the Temple, is Heaven when considered as the Jerusalem Above, but as the Jerusalem on earth it is the type of the human body, the material Temple of the Holy Spirit. To this shrine the Christ comes in triumph, the Word a.s.suming the flesh to be crucified in the flesh, and "the children of the Hebrews" honour him by strewing their garments in his path and waving branches of palm and olive about his head, crying, "Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!"1 The Ma.s.s of Palm Sunday is therefore preceded by a rite of peculiar interest and solemnity, having itself the form of a ma.s.s, save that the elements to be consecrated are not bread and wine but branches of palm and olive. As the procession of the priest and his ministers enters the church, the choir chants:

Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord. 0 King of Israel: Hosanna in the Highest.

They repair to the altar for the intoning of a Collect, Lesson, and Gospel after the usual manner of the Ma.s.s, and thereafter chant the Preface and Sanctus to the music of the Ma.s.s for the Dead. The priest then blesses the branches with incense and holy water, recalling in his prayer not only the palms with It should be noted, too, that in entering the City of the Body he rides upon the animal-`Brother a.s.s" as St. Francis called the body. Many of the avatars are thus pictured, Lao-tzu upon the watevbuffalo, the Buddha entering Maya upon the elephant, and Feng,kan riding the tiger. Krishna as the Charioteer has the same sense, for ultimately it is always the real Self who holds the reins and "rides the beast" and not this "I".

44 Myth and Ritual in Christianity which Christ was greeted at Jerusalem, but also the olive, branch which the dove brought to Noah as a sign of the ending of the Flood and of peace between G.o.d and man. For the Flood is ever the symbol of that unconsciousness of the Spirit, the true Self, into which the Divine-as the Sun-descends at night, and from which it arises at dawn, since these are the same waters from which the world was made in the beginning. The essential meaning of the Atonement is that it is the representation in time of the Sacrifice which was made "before time", of the voluntary sacrifice wherein and whereby the One seems to become the Many. By the spell of the Word the true Self is enchanted, and appears to be this, that, and the other "I", unconscious of its original Ident.i.ty as, by night, the sun is lost in "the waters beneath the earth.

After the blessing, the palms are distributed to the people, a procession is formed, and the clergy with the choir leave the church, gathering outside the great West Door which stands at the opposite end of the church from the altar. At this point a group of cantors reenters the church, and, facing the closed Door, begin the hymn Gloria, taus et honor: All glory, laud and honour To thee, Redeemer King,

To whom the lips of children

Made sweet Hosannas ring.

And at the close of each verse the choir outside repeats the refrain, echoing back and forth, until with the last verse the Subdeacon strikes upon the door with the foot of the proses, sional cross. At this, the Gate of Jerusalem, the Door of Christ's Body the Church, is opened and the whole procession makes its triumphal entry, singing:

As the Lord entered the holy city, the children of the Hebrews, declaring the resurrection of life, with palm branches cried out: Hosanna in the highest.

During the Ma.s.s, at the time for the chanting of the Gospel, the clergy and the choir sing the whole story of the Pa.s.sion accord ing to Matthew in a dramatic form, wherein members of the clergy take the pans of Christ, Pilate, Judas, and the Narrator, while the choir sings the words of the Hebrew mult.i.tude. The same rite is repeated on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Good Friday with the Pa.s.sion stories according to Mark, Luke and John.

Thursday is an exception, because it is the feast Caena Domini, of the Lord's Supper, commemorating the inst.i.tution of the Ma.s.s itself, and for a moment the purple of mourning is exchanged for the white of gladness. On the night before he was crucified Christ and his Twelve Disciples partook of a last meal together. This, according to John, was not the Pa.s.sover meal itself, which would have been eaten after sunset on Friday; it was possibly a rhaburah, a type of solemn fraternal banquet held from time to time among Hebrew religious societies. At this supper Christ inst.i.tuted the Sacrament or Mystery which was thereafter to be the very centre of Christian Ile and wors.h.i.+p, and to be known by such names as the Holy Sacrifice of the Ma.s.s, the Eucharist, and the Divine Liturgy.l The action of Christ at the Last Supper may best be de/ scribed in the words of the Ma.s.s itself, taken from the Quam oblationem-the Prayer of Consecration in the Canon or Order of the Roman Ma.s.s. Having given thanks, and having called 1 The word "ma.s.s" is supposedly derived from the final salutation of the priest to the people, Ite missa est-"Go, it has been sent forth"-in other words, the mission of the Incarnation has been completed. "Eucharist" is the Greek word for "thanksgiving", and is used because Christ "gave thanks" before he took the Bread and the Cup to perform the Mystery. The priest does the same before repeating the Act, beginning the Preface with the words, "It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, 0 Holy Lord, Almighty Father, Eternal G.o.d". The word "liturgy" is from the Greek 1eitourgos, that is, "public" kites "work" our os-a tam applied to the rites of the Church as a whole, but to the Ma.s.s in particular as the Great Work performed by the Church as the Body of Christ, the company of all faithful people.

upon the Father to accept the Bread and Wine offered upon the altar, the priest continues:

Which offering do thou, 0 G.o.d, vouchsafe in all things to bless 4j,, consecrate +, approve 4j+, make reasonable and acceptable: that it may become for us the By 4~+ and Blood 4:+ of thy most beloved Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Who the day before he suffered took bread into his holy and venerable hands, and with his eyes lifted up to heaven, unto thee, G.o.d, his almighty Father, giving thanks to thee, he blessed +, brake, and gave to his disciples, saying: Take and eat this all of you, FOR THIS IS

MY BODY.

In like manner, after he had supped, taking also this excellent Chalice into his holy and venerable hands; also giving thanks to thee, he blessed , and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take and drink this

all of you, FOR THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD, OF THE NEW AND ETERNAL TESTAMENT; THE MYSTERY OF FAITH: WHICH SHALL BE SHED FOR YOU AND FOR MANY UNTO THE REMISSION

OF SINS. As often as ye shall do these things, ye shall do them in memory of me.

At these words, spoken first by Christ, and thereafter by any duly ordered priest of the Apostolic Succession, that which was bread and wine becomes, in substance, the veritable Body and Blood of Christ. Thus the frail Host, the round wafer of bread, which the priest holds in his hands, becomes effectively the Eternal Word, G.o.d and Man, Creator and Ruler of the universe. Lifting it above his head, the priest shows it to be adored by all amid the rising smoke of incense and to the solemn ringing of bells.

Bread and wine are respectively the staple food and drink

of men, and thus the substance of human life. Yet before they become food, the wheat and the grapes undergo a trans formation: they are ground and crushed, baked and fermented, and in this they typify the strangest and most problematic aspect of life itself. For every form of life exists at the expense of some other form, the whole living world const.i.tuting a colossal cannibalism, a holocaust in which life continues only at the cost of death. Man lives because of the sacrifice of the wheat and the vine, and he, in his own tum, is a sacrifice to the birds and the worms, or to the bacilli which effect his death. This is e inescapably gnm fact of being ve, and wbicri most civilized peoples do their best to conceal.

From the relative standpoint of time and s.p.a.ce this mutual slaughter is hardly a sacrifice in the accepted sense; for every true sacrifice is voluntary, whereas the wheat which was ground for our bread, and the lamb which was slain for our roast could not exactly be called the willing victims of their fate. On the other hand, the Ma.s.s represents a true sacrifice, in that Christ submitted deliberately and willingly to his crucifixion, which took place at the very moment when the Jews were sacrificing the Pa.s.sover Lamb at the Temple. The reason why the new Christ.Sacrifice redeems and the old Pa.s.soverSaerifice does not is that the Victim of the former is willing, the performer of a self-sacrifice, at once Priest and Offering.'

Now the voluntary sacrifice redeems man from the curse of sin and death because there is but One who can actually perform selfsacrifice-namely G.o.d, the true Self. That other self called "I" is utterly unable to end itself, for it can only think in terms of its own continuity. Even ordinary suicide is not a true sending because, like every desire for a future, it is an ' Naturally, the Jews have to play the part of "villain" in this story, but if one were to consider Hebrew Mythology in its own right, it would be found to express the same pbilosopbia perennis as the Christian, more especially in that complete form known as the Kabala, attempt to retain something out of the past, out of memory-in this instance the memory of sleep, but sleep to continue for ever. But "I" comes to an end when, in the fight of immediate "nowconsciousness", of the true Self, it is seen to be unreal, abstract, and incapable of creative action. This actual Self alone, being of eternity and not time, is free from the wish to continue, and is able to come to an end-the end here signifying the "mark" which sin misses, the point of the needle on which the angels stand, the One Moment of eternity.

The marvelous symbolism of the Ma.s.s, as of the Crucifixion itself, has to be understood in relation to the mysterious "Lamb sacrificed from the foundation of the world" which is mentioned in the Apocalypse.' Seen from the temporal standpoint of I", life is founded on the grim holocaust of mutual slaughter unwillingly endured, since "I" must ever wish to continue. But from the standpoint of the Point, of eternity, this holocaust is the outward expression of the eternal sending of the Creator. Hindu mythology puts it rather more directly by saying that each form of life is the disguise of G.o.d, and that fife exisu because it ever offers itself to itself, since the food which is eaten is the disguised G.o.d giving himself to be eaten. Hence the formula, Annam Brahman-food is G.o.d-and the verse: Who gives me away verily helps me! I-the food-eat the eater of food! I overcome the world!2 All of which is to say, with Christ, of the Bread, Take and eat this all of you, for this is my Body.... Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.

The death from which we are redeemed is always the past, and salvation is release from the enchantment of time. At once this deprives physical death, so essential to life, of its peculiar horror because the mind is no more obsessed with the wish to

1 Revelation i 3: 8. 2 Taittiriya Upanishad, iii. to. 6.