Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/778

 WORSHIP

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WORSHIP

(ii, 46, 47; iii, 1; v, 21; v, 42, etc.)- By the worship in spirit and truth, which was to supplant the ancient worship, is meant less the form of a new worship than the spirit in which worship should be understood. Instead of adoring at Jerusalem or Garizim, men will adore everywhere; the behever will adore in his heart no matter what his nation, be he Jew, Samaritan, or even Gentile. And he will adore not Uke the Jews or the Pharisees, with a purely external worship, with the lips, and in a formalist and hypocritical manner, but with a true and sincere worship, which supposes and implies a pure life and upright conduct.

But it must be recognized that if He did not di- rectly attack the ancient worship, Ciirist substituted for it a new worship which would by degrees and natiu'ally replace the Jewish worship. First came baptism, which might have been more or less clearly prefigured by the ablution of the Jews, but which assumed a new character in the Gospel and which is truly a new rite, for it is baptism in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It is especially the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, which recalls the ancient sacrifices. The Eucharist at an early date was enshrined in the Jewish service of the synagogue, profoundly modifying its character, and which also, by concomitance, brought about the suljstitution of Sunday for the Sabbath. This last fact, from the standpoint of Christian worship, is of the utmost importance, on which we cannot dwell here (see Sunday). The rites of penance, anointing of the sick, the ceremony of washing of the feet, the imposition of hands on "the ministers, some benedic- tions, invocations, exorcisms, follow clo.se after Isaptisra and the Eucharist, and are mentioned in the New Testament. The Divine Office and the various forms of psalmody are already in germ in the most ancient Christian Synaxaria. Soon came the cult of the martyrs with the ceremonies for the burial of the dead. Sunday and soon Thursday and Friday con- stitute a Christian week wholly different from the Jewish week, the pivot of which had been the Sab- bath. Easter and Pentecost became the pivot of a Mturgical year. But this nucleus, which is almost all we know of the primitive Christian liturgi,', dates from the first Christian generation. The residuum reached by successive eliminations, and by going back through the centuries, is Christian and exclusively Christian, whatever analogies may be found with the Jewish ceremonies, because the Christian rites, especially the Eucharist, baptism, and the Sunday, have such a determinate significance as to permit of no mistake. This worship is Christian in the sense that the authors of its foremost and essential institutions were Christ and His Apostles, and the institutions are to be found in the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Acts. It has been shown above how this worship differs from the Jewish worship by a new character which is peculiar to it; its object is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Jewish and Pagan Influences. — Although, as we have seen, the Chiu-ch constituted a worship for itself, it nevertheless retained several memorials of the Jewish religion, which was a preparation for the Christian religion. But even here the originality and indepentlence of the Christian worship are loudly affirmed. Thus the circumcision, which was the great sacrament of Judaism and as it were its dis- tinctive sign, was rejected by the Church. The Temple of Jerusalem, the religious capital of Judaism, was deserted by the Christians, even by those of Jerusalem, and it was never the centre of their wor- ship. They loved to assemble in private houses 1o hear the Word, to pray, an<l to have the breaking of the bread. The Jewish feasts were likewise con- demned. Neither the feast of Tabernacles, nor that of Lights, nor that of the Dedication, nor that of Purim left any trace in the Christian calendar.

Easter and Pentecost, which kept their Jewish names and even, to a certain extent, their place on the Christian calendar, changed their object, one becoming the feast of the Resurrection and the other that of the Holy Ghost. But what is still more im- portant, as has been said, is that the Church sub- stituted Sunday for the Sabbath. The distinction between clean and unclean animals, which related to Jewish worship, was also rejected in the very beginning. On these questions, therefore, the Church asserted its independence. However, it borrowed certain things from the synagogue. It retained the Sacred Books as the most precious portion of its heritage and at once made them its liturgical books. For they are truly the core and the substance of the Christian Uturgical books. The Church also bor- rowed from the Jews of the Diaspora the form of their meetings in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. At first the Christian meeting, hke that of the syna- gogue, was taken up with the singing of psalms and the reading of the Sacred Books, followed by an exhortation or homily. These are the chief points of Jewish influence on Christian worship.

The question of pagan influences on Christian liturgy is more comphcated, and requires lengthy considerations which can only be summarized here; for further details see works of Cabrol cited below in bibliography. According to some, it was through Gnosticism that pagan influences shpped into Chris- tian worship. Gnosticism, they assert, served some- what as a bridge between paganism and Christianity. This theory, which has been chiefly supported by Renan in his "Origines du christianisme", has now lost much ground. The truth is rather the contrary. Gnosticism, which borrowed from all sides, borrowed from the Chiu-ch several of its Uttu-gical practices. This theory is sustained by Matter in his great work on Gnosticism; it is also defended by Probst (" Sakra- menteu.Sakramentalien", Tubingen, 1S72, 11, 12, sqq.) and Duchesne (Christian Worship, 336). According to others, it was much later, in the fourth century, that the Christian reUgion allowed itself to be con- taminated by polytheism and admitted numerous pagan practices (Harnack, "Das Wesen des Christ- entums", BerUn, 1900, 126, 137-38, 148). But most frequently these pretended borrowings are only un- meaning analogies, and when the Chiu'ch borrowed from the religion of the Gentiles certain general rites which are current in all rehgions, such as the use of incense, lights, processions, gold and silver ornaments, she did not fail to profoundly change their character. This has been shown by Newman with his usual profundity in several chapters of his "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine" (ed. 1894, 169 sqq.). This is admitted even by such ^Titers as Loisy (L'^vangile et I'eglise, 186) and R^ville (La religion i Rome sous Ics Sev6res, 294).

Most of these pretended borrowings have no bear- ing on the essence of the littu'gy. From the very first, Christian worship was in possession of all its organs. Instances have been cited of pagan feasts becoming Christian, of pagan temples consecrated to the worship of the true God, of fountains, of statues of the gods baptized and transformed into Christian patrons. It does not suffice to say, as has been said, that Christianity has been superimposixl on paganism, that it is a religion of superimposition. With regard to the cult of the saints which has been especially assailed ("A low type of Christianity was born of the cult of thesaints" (Harnack, op. cit., 126); in the .s:imc sense, Lucius, "Die Anfiinge des Heili- genkultus in der ChristUchen Kirche", Tubingen, 1904, and Sainty\-es, "Les saints successevu-s des dieux", Paris, 1907] a serious and profound study of the subject has led such scholars as Deleliaye, Dufourcq, and Vacandard to conclude that the wor- sliip of the saints was not borrowed from paganism