You’re at a wedding. The setting is a medieval castle of some report. The King, Queen, and his Court are present. The enter aristocracy is on hand. The Groom stands waiting beside the Priest, the sweat on his brow is noticeable. The pianist begins a wedding march and is joined triumphantly by an orchestra. The people in attendance stand. The rear doors open and the Bride appears; wearing the same clothes that she wears while gardening. She proceeds to walk, just as she always does down the aisle. Her hair needs washing.

Never happen. At least not in normal human nature. The medieval Bride dressed as if she were a medieval Bride. With all the things the imagination clothes a medieval Bride with. In those times, and both times before and after, a wedding was really a wedding. The people dressed like they were in a wedding. Not because they were not trendsetters, they certainly were that, but because they understood the magnitude of the event. It was a ceremony, a ritual, a most solemn event to be remembered and appreciated for it’s ramnifications.

The ancient druids didn’t process into the wooded mists to meet Mother Oak wearing their work clothes. The didn’t walk as if they were walking to the bathroom. They didn’t chit-chat as they would around a fire.

The Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, and all other members of pagan antiquity got a lot of things wrong. They made admirable attempts and truely human errors in their quest for a sort of true religion. They failed. As the clans merged and the kingdoms expanded gods were combined into mythologies, into deities as fragile as the minds that made them. When God became the gods He became schizophrenic.

But for all that the pagans fouled up, they did manage to get the truely human parts of their panetheon correct. They kept their rituals and sacrifices solemn. They kept their rituals true to form. They were pompous, and that is a good thing.

The Jews of the Old Covenant kept the same ideals. When God laid out the plans for the Temple and the Ark he gave his blessing to ritual. The Temple was going to look like the Temple. The Ark was going to look like the dwelling place of the Almighty. The priests of the Covenant were going to carefully measure their words during worship. They dressed like a Holy Priesthood.

Fast forward to today. Churches look like cinemas, or department stores, or even barns. Members of wedding parties can be seen in jeans. Preachers dress like the congregation. Partitioners dress like they’ve came to the Coliseum instead of the Cathedral.

The clearest example of mans decline into boredom, or carelessness, with ritual is most clearly witnessed in the modern use of the word “solemn”.

C.S. Lewis in his “Preface to Paradise Lost” recognized this:

“[The Middle English word solempne] means something different, but not quite different, from modern English solemn. Like solemn it implies the opposite of what is familiar, free and easy, or ordinary. But unlike solemn it does not suggest gloom, oppression, or austerity.The Solempne is the festal which is also the stately and the ceremonial, the proper occasion for pomp — and the very fact that pompous is now used only in a bad sense measures the degree to which we have lost the old idea of “solemnity.” To recover it you must think of a court ball, or a coronation, or a victory march, as these things appear to people who enjoy them; in an age when every one puts on his oldest clothes to be happy in, you must re-awake the simpler state of mind in which people put on gold and scarlet to be happy in.Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a widespread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connexion with vanity or self-conceit. A celebrant approaching the altar, a princess led out by a king to dance a minuet, a general officer on a ceremonial parade, a major-domo preceding the boar’s head at a Christmas feast — all these wear unusual clothes and move with calculated dignity. This does not mean that they are vain, but that they are obedient; they are obeying the hoc age which presides over every solemnity. The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather, it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”

The popular mega-churches of our time have nothing symbolic in them. No crucifix’s or crosses. No statues or candles. Why? Do they believe they are preparing men to focus clearly upon God? Do they believe that austerity is superior to the Jerusalem Temple? Can they design a better Cathedral than God?

I believe that people desire a certain type of the proper solemnity. And yet, as Lewis understood, their self-consciousness prevents them from becoming lost in the worship. How many of us refuse to sing out at church or recite the Creed quietly? Many of those same people would die to uphold that Creed, and yet their vain ideals prevent them from proclaiming it.

In Saint John’s Apocalypse we get a picture of the heavenly liturgy, but somehow we miss the obvious fact that it is a liturgy. People and angels are singing. A woman is clothed with the sun. The streets are paved with gold. Elders approach the throne and pour out prayers as incense. Worship in the presence of The Lamb of God is certainly ritualistic, and definitively solemn.

So, how is the modern evangelical/fundamentalist bare-bones services an improvement on the ancient version? Or even, and especially, the future version of worship?

The ancients had liturgy. The Jews followed liturgical patterns. And, thankfully, the Catholic Church has upheld and preserved these solemnities for us all. When someone asks if the Mass is a ritual, the answer is a resounding, “YES!” By memorizing prayers and creeds and hymns Catholics do not fall into vain repetitions. They proclaim at each Mass, with the freshness and exuberance of the first Mass, the words recalled from memory that they share with the first Christians.

We should memorize the Mass. We should ritualize the Mass. We should show up to Mass prepared for a most solemn occasion. We must do these things because, for that hour each Sunday, we are entering into the Holy of holies. We are processing toward a marriage feast. We are being wedded to Christ. We are proclaiming His death and resurrection until He returns. And we are doing this, as He commanded, in remembrance of Him.