Rites restrain us from an excess of personality
If Humility is the ground of all the virtues then rituals are designed to ground us in the objectivity of someone greater than ourselves, in whose presence we stand. Insofar as the meaning of the word derives from ‘humus’ which means earth or soil we need to be grounded, earthed in reality. A reality of what we are, namely, beings made in the image of God, yet beings broken by the Fall. Thus we stand before God in a broken world and we are in a condition of brokeness too, such that we are wounded in our nature and despoiled of our graces!
Not surprisingly Our Lord calls us to recognise this broken condition that characterizes our lives. He wants us to begin with our poverty that is the lack, the lack of grace, and only from this recognition of our true state can we come to God to plead with him to have that lack filled. It is why the first beatitude links the call to a profound and existential humility with an equally profound perception of our ontolological poverty, when Our Lord proclaims: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
So the virtue or good habit of humility means a knowing both our weaknesses and our strengths which makes us live a life of thanksgiving to God for we owe God absolutely everything. Indeed humility is a habitual process of emptying ourselves so that we can be filled with God. The contrary view is that of a worldly habit that is full of self but empty of God; a worshipping of the selfish trinity of me, myself and I before whom all others must bow, adore and venerate with full attention!
But ‘Pride goes before a Fall’ and such a fall it is for those who love and worship only themselves! Every footballer knows this. For who has not seen the prima Donna on the football pitch hogging the ball, failing to pass and costing the team the match? If not a match loser still sooner or later the prima Donna will find his ego will trip him up as he trips over the ball and becomes not the hero but the fool on the pitch!
So even on a natural basis we see Pride makes us curve in ourselves and so trip over ourselves, whereas, humility makes us forget ourselves and focus on what is good for the other. Pride makes us play in the field of subjectivity against other fragile egos like ourselves so that it becomes a clash of egos, whereas, humility makes us play in the field of objectivity where reality forges us in to a realism in thought, word and deed that treats and gives to others their true worth! Humility is the virtue for making us realists, whereas Pride is the vice for making us into phantasists of self-deception.
Modesty flows from humility and is both an interior attitude and an external comportment to the good, the true and the beautiful. It is a modus operandi as well as a modus intentionis. Simply put Modesty helps us to avoid the excesses of passion, appetite and desire, after all too much of a good thing can kill you be it drink, sex or food.
Modesty is needed also in the domain of self expression to curtail our tendency to act out in ways that spell a loss of self control through excess: a flaunting of our status through the ostentatious wearing of gold, jewels and expensive clothing, an excess in our apparel; a flamboyance in the company of others that can be only called an excess of personality!
So Modesty restrains us in speech, clothing and behaviour so that we have an objective view of our own value and the value of others, especially if there are people in the room who are more powerful, more gifted and more authoritative in the public sphere than us.
Most of all we can see it played out, or not, as the case may be, in the domain of God’s looking glass, the Sunday Mass! Before a King, a Prime minster or a Pope we would all seek to be modest and deferential as this is natural and proper before such persons. Yet in many a church we often find there is a lack of this modesty, deference and even reverence in both priests and laity! Why?
Primarily it’s due to both the culture of entertainment and the culture of celebrity plus the dominance of feelings over thought that have invaded our churches. How many times do we hear people and priests speak about ‘getting something out of the Mass’? Alongside this goes an emotional titillation that ranges from smiles to laughter, from chatter to voiced greetings, from rubbernecking to a wondering eye when people come into church or sit in church. All of which leads to the distractions and noise that brings about the death of silence in many of our churches.
Indeed it seems that priest and people want to offset reverence and awe because they don’t want to get too serious about the rites, the words, the gestures, the music and song that is supposed to initiate us into the divine presence. Many a priest and many a lay person seem to find it all quite embarrassing to take worship seriously. Indeed, the worship found in many churches today seems not about God but rather all about us! It seems that the word worship is replaced by celebration and thus captures very well that being in Church on a Sunday is really about getting out of the Mass those feelings that certify I am a person of religious faith because I have had religious feelings!
So I ask myself, is it the way Mass is celebrated that leads to such a lack of restraint and a kind of spiritual puerility in both priests and laity today? Clearly Modesty is needed when so many abuses of the Mass occurs in clergy and laity alike who seem to have that excess of personality, excess of flamboyance in personal expressions and dress, excess of sensuality in their mode of apparel, such that it draws people away from an attention to the Divine towards an attention to a host of distractions and noise for our entertainment.
With so much familiarity being expressed in churches today, maybe we have lost what the ancients called the Fear of the Lord! The fear of the Lord did check egotism and immodesty. But they seem now to have infiltrated many churches, that maybe we all need to step back and ask ourselves in whose presence do we stand? In whose presence have we have entered into when we come into a church? To quote an exorcist:
‘If the ritual begets modesty and restrains the action of the priest, the other decora, such as church appointments, vestments, and the like, will also manifest restraint for the priest will develop the virtue of modesty by the very ritual he offers. If the ritual does not demand modesty of the priest in all of its aspects, the decora will slowly slip into disorder as the lack of modesty in approaching God in the ritual makes its way outward into the priest, the faithful and finally in the monumental patrimony of the Church, i.e. in the physical things used in the worship of God.’ [Topics on Tradition by Fr Chad Ripperger, p.153 [2013, Sensus Traditionis Press]]
Here we need to rediscover the words of the Baptist before Our Lord when we prepare for and when we enter the church for Mass, weddings or funerals, namely: “I must decrease, He must increase.”
Watch video for bizarre performances of priests showing with their people little modestry, humility or fear of the Lord: https://bishoppatbuckley.blog/2022/08/21/why-do-some-priests-use-the-mass-to-give-crazy-personal-performances/
