Charles Victor on Religion

Baptism comes from a Greek word meaning to plunge, and early baptisms were plunges into the water. Christians were neither the first nor only group to use a rite of baptism. The Jews practiced ritual baths for purification and for the initiation of converts. John enforced a baptism to mark a turning to and commitment to God. Among the Gentiles, various cults celebrated a rite of baptism as part of the ceremonies of initiation. The early Christians took this ritual bath, this ritual plunge into the depths, and made it the sign, the symbol, the sacrament of God’s election, redemption, justification, and sanctification. The church offers up the waters, the Spirit of the Lord hovers over them, the creative Word makes them the sacrament of regeneration.

The rites of baptism given in our prayer book represent the final rites of a journey. As the church moved from gradually enfolding adult converts to rather automatically baptizing the infant offspring of believers, the long journey of conversion, of seeking for God, hearing God, coming to know and respond in love to God was lost. In order to illuminate the rites we use today, allow me to look back in time and place to uncover the ancient steps to the baptistry.

The journey of conversion, the road to new life and the accompanying rites are usually divided into three stages: Catechumenate, Election, Baptism. These stages are preceded by the state of being a Seeker or an Inquisitor, a state of looking for meaning and asking questions of the church.

Once a Seeker decides the church has the answer or is the answer, the Seeker becomes a Catechumen. The name comes from a Greek word meaning to make hear or to teach. The catechumen is a student, a student of life, life in Christ. This is not primarily a time for the catechism; this is a time to teach the senses, the mind, and the will what it is to belong to Christ. The duration of the catechumenate is technically indefinite, but usually lasts one to three years. The stage customarily begins with a rite of entry celebrated at the door of the church. All evil is renounced. The evil that clings to the heart and soul is ritually exorcised. (Sometimes the evil is addressed directly and ordered to depart [major exorcism], sometimes God is invoked to safeguard against all evil [minor exorcism].) In some places the head, hands, feet, heart, ears, eyes, nose, and/or mouth are signed with the cross in token that this person and all his/her faculties now are reserved for Christ. In some places the person here takes a new name as a token of a new life begun. When these rites are ended, the catechumen is brought into the church proper, for now, being reserved for Christ, the catechumen belongs to the church as well. Now begins a journey of hearing God’s Word and living among God’s people. Scripture, prayer, and charity become the catechumen’s life. The burden of the journey is periodically fortified with exorcisms, anointings, blessings, and public prayers. In the ancient church the catechumens attended only the scripture liturgies (Ante-communion, Proclamation of the Word, Liturgy of the Word). Traces of this practice continue in most churches into the present. Our Holy Communion is divided into word and sacrament. In the Roman Church (until 1968) the division was most clearly stated, the Mass being given in two parts: The Mass of the Catechumens (Word), and Mass of the Faithful (Eucharist).

If the above process seems long and drawn out, think in terms of dating a prospective spouse. Few can make a life-time commitment in the twinkling of an eye. Most need time to come to know the other, time to come to truly see the other, time to pass by fascination and come to adoration. If the spouse is Love Itself, what caution ought to be observed? Yet, commitment not caution is the goal of faith. With due discernment that catechumen and church have the heart and mind of Christ in this matter, the rites of entry to the next stage are celebrated. The stage and rite are called Election. Now is the time for purification and illumination, the time for intense solemn prayer, fasting, meditation, and mortification. The ritual customarily involves the inscribing of the elect’s name in a ritual book, The Book of Life. In some places it is in this ritual of enrolment that a new name may be taken. In some places during this stage the creed and the gospels are ritually presented. In some places during this stage, in accord with Mark 7:34, the Ephphatha (a ritual opening of the ears to truly hear, and a ritual loosening of the tongue to truly speak) is celebrated. This stage continues the steady diet of exorcisms, anointings, blessings, and public prayers. The duration of Election is unlimited, but traditionally coincides with the season of Lent and culminates with the celebration of baptism on Easter morning.

With your indulgence, I shall try to revision the ancient rites. On Easter Eve the faithful gather in the great cathedral church for the night long vigil service. In the middle of the night, the elect, who have been secluded in prayer and fasting during Holy Week, are brought to stand outside the baptistry building just beyond the cathedral. They are left to stand hungry, cold, tired. The deacons and other ministers who have guided them to this moment give them their final instructions. Turn to the west, to the darkest part of the fading night sky, renounce evil, denounce all of Satan and sin. That being done, they are told to remove their clothes, everything of the old life must be cast off. They are instructed to turn to the east, to the dawning light, confess Christ is Lord. Here, in ritual, in this act, Adam and Eve again stand naked before God, now not hiding in shame and lies, but standing in surrender and the hope of forgiveness. The doors of the baptistry now open into the night. Incense and the smell of fragrant oils pour out on the mist arising from the pool of warm water, candle light fills the air. One by one the elect are lead into the pool, one by one they are submerged “In the Name of the Father … the Son … the Holy Spirit”. Wet, warmed, dazzled, moved to the depths, one by one the baptized emerge. They are robed in white. They are lead into the church. The whole body cheers them on with song until they reach the bishop standing at the chancel steps. The bishop greets them with a kiss and anoints them with holy chrism. Now no longer reserved for Christ, now filled with Christ, now God’s own, beloved and anointed, now may they, now do they, together approach the Holy Table and partake of the Feast of Thanks, now is theirs the scripture that says: “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, unto him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

Such fullness of ritual is deprived us today. It is not beyond our legal reach, merely beyond our “modern sensibilities”. In many places there are movements to restore some semblance of the above progress from Seeker to Baptized, to once again more richly robe our ritual celebrations of the long process of conversion. Rome has set out an extensive body of new rites, and many other churches are also fostering a renewal of this ancient heritage.

In most places the bare outline of ancient practice still persists. Surrounded by the congregants they are about to join with as full members, the candidates are presented and examined, asked to renounce Satan and evil, to confess Christ as Lord, to assent to the creed, the traditions, the practice of the Church. These given, water is blessed and imparted either by immersion or by affusion. I am sorry to say that in most situations we approach these rituals with more of a business attitude than a sacramental one. We seem to be more about processing than ritually illuminating and celebrating the sacred. In some places, the newly baptized are presented a white garment, anointed with Holy Chrism, presented with a light symbolic of the shattering light of Christ, yet again, these three elements taken out of their ancient context carry little ritual impact in the way they are usually handled today. Pity, we have such treasures to share, so few who have any idea how even to open the box.

As an addendum, I note that some argue that the post-baptismal episcopal kiss and anointing are the root of Confirmation. In the ancient church, these acts publicly confirmed the baptismal covenant that had been celebrated in the baptistry. When baptism was no longer reserved to Easter (and later, Pentecost and Epiphany), when adult baptism was no longer the norm, when bishops were no longer present at baptisms, then this act of confirmation was lost to the rites of baptism in the western churches and came to be seen as a rite in itself.

I offer you here a few sparks of light to illuminate the complexity of aspects that this ritual has opened up in Christian thought.

The reality of being baptized, like the reality of being married, is something that one moves and grows toward, something that is publicly celebrated and supported, something that endures and in which one must continue to grow and mature. That does not capture the whole of the situation or even say it well; mysteries are not easily captured in similes. Peter, Paul, John, and countless other disciples have painted countless pictures to try to express the mystery. All are true; none captures the whole truth. Baptism is incorporation into the body of believers, baptism is a grafting into the Body of Christ, baptism is re-birth as a child of God, baptism is a washing away of sin, baptism is a commitment to Christ, baptism is a solemn covenant with God, baptism is a celebration of God’s commitment to humanity, baptism is a ritual death to self, baptism a ritual resurrection into Christ.  Like the facets of a gem, each statement sheds a fraction of the light; but this light we try to capture is the very light in which we stand, the very light that contains us, creates us, and reveals us even unto ourselves.

Baptism is a gift. No human can create itself, absolve itself, or incorporate itself into the divine. If we accept the state of being baptized exits, it comes from outside the self, it comes as a gift from God.

Baptism is a commitment. It is a response to the gift of God, to the love of God. It is response of love to love.

Baptism is a mystical union. The gift of love is always the self. In baptism the human surrenders in love to the Holy One, and the Holy One surrenders and humbles Itself to enter and dwell in the human.

Baptism is a ritual death. The candidate is plunged into the water, and the water is the tomb of Christ. There is only one Lord, one God, one Spirit. The pride of humanity that believes itself to be its own lord, its own law-giver, its own source of meaning dies here. There is either Christ or Me; there is no room in the Trinity for both.

Baptism is a ritual re-birth. The candidate is drawn out of the water, and the water is the Spirit-filled water of a new womb. If the soul surrenders all the private agendas, ideas, feelings, desires, hopes, fears, drives, goals, cravings, and wants, then the promise stands firm that the Triune and Holy shall come and make that soul Its dwelling forever. The human is restored to Eden. Once again the creature has for its centre, its breath, its companion, the Creator.

Baptism is life in Christ. The Triune and Holy who dwells within as Lord and Sovereign is the same God who has called this all into being out of love. The Lord and Sovereign is also the Lover. A lover never wills the death of the beloved. A lover shares life, brings healing, comfort, direction, light, power, insight. A lover embraces the ego and draws forth a person. Everything Jesus experienced, knew, felt, willed, everything in Christ, dwells within the baptized heart. Everything in Christ awaits in the baptized heart, awaits the moment of adoration, the moment of silence when human and divine can again be one in the world. The Power of that moment is life, new life, life-in-Christ, life renewed, a life at work to recreate the world so that the Love who made the world might for all be made manifest in it.

Baptism is an avowal of parousia. Fr. Kavanagh claimed a Christian could only speak of his death in the past tense. To be baptized is to die for Christ’s sake. The world can only see and hear, can only know, can only come to Christ if I offer my life, my body and soul, to be the vessel of the second coming. And the scriptures end with the righteous reply: “Come, Lord Jesus, come!”

Morning and evening prayers are structured around the ritual reading of sacred texts and meditating upon them. As in most liturgies, divine service here begins with bowing down before the Holy and acknowledging our sins. As in most liturgies, place is provided for prayers of supplication, praise and thanks. These exercises for the start and end of day can be simple and intimate, they can be enhanced with music and ceremony. Howsoever they are practiced, they provide an opportunity to be still, to be recreated and refreshed.

In every religion there is an impulse to consecrate time, to offer up every moment to the holy, to recognize the presence of the holy in every moment. In monasteries and other retreats this vision, zeal, and devotion are often ritually celebrated by gathering for prayer and worship at various hours throughout the day and night; and such monastic practices have often coloured and effected the development of the public liturgies. When the first Christian communities began to develop, the members of those communities brought with them the heritage of the Jewish and the Gentile liturgies and devotions. The practice of praising God in prayer and song at the rising and the setting of the sun was part of this heritage. Distinctively Christian liturgies of morning prayer and evening prayer were almost immediately established. In the time of Constantine, these liturgies flourished. In the time of Constantine something else also flourished: retreat from the world. For many in the church the new partnership between church and state was dangerous; they feared the church would become corrupted by the worldly, and they retreated to deserts and lonely places to pray and to become living anchors of prayer for a church now afloat in worldly affairs. These early hermits or anchorites were the foundation stones of Christian monasticism. In time, numbers of hermits gathered near one another for protection and spiritual community, and out of those unions developed the rules and disciplines for communal living that still direct and colour monastic and religious life in the church.

The monasteries were not social organizations, but communities. The communal life consisted of work to support the members and prayer to support the church. The work of prayer soon had the day methodically divided up into eight canonical hours or times for communal supplication and praise. Morning prayers were divided into three distinct services: Matins, usually celebrated just after midnight; Lauds, celebrated just before dawn; and Prime, celebrated at the beginning of the work day. There were also three periods of prayer to consecrate the day, Terce, celebrated at mid-morning; Sext, celebrated at noon; and None, celebrated at mid-afternoon. Evening prayers were divided into two distinct services: Vespers marked the setting of the sun and end of the work day, Compline marked the end of day and the time for sleep. These monastic liturgies soon came to be codified, published, and adopted by the church in an official prayer book. The prayer book was variably called The Book of Hours, The Breviary, The Divine Office. The strength of this monastic discipline of prayer had, however, a negative effect upon the church. The rigour and methodical nature of monastic prayer and striving for the holy made it seem to be a work for professionals; morning and evening prayer were lost to the masses, a great gap between the professional church people and the church-going people opened. The celebration of the liturgy in a language most people no longer spoke or understood, the encouragement of strange devotions, the resistance to moral and doctrinal reform all widened the gap until, thanks be to God, as with Israel in the Exile, the Spirit dashed the church to pieces in order to save it, reform it, and bring it back to life anew.

In this day of reformation, Thomas Cranmer set out to write a new prayer book, a book common to all, a book proper to all, a book usable by all. The Book of Common Prayer gave the liturgies and the scriptures back to everyone. There was a language all could use, there was a simplified discipline of prayer all could follow. Once again, at the rising and the setting of the sun was the Lord’s name by all to be praised.

In the beginning there were no distinctive garments for the clergy or for the celebration of the liturgy. Some leaders of the early Christian community even spoke out against the use of any distinctive clerical or liturgical garb. But human nature seeks structure and reinforcing symbols, and leaders may educate that impulse, but they cannot eradicate it.

The impulse toward symbol and ritual, toward marks of distinction in act, word, and dress works to communicate, underscore and celebrate the distinctiveness of an experience, accomplishment, role, or mission. This impulse reveals the language of the subconscious, expresses what words cannot express, presents in pictures what mere words cannot begin to discuss.

Our lives are filled with unspoken structure and reinforcing ritual that denote who we are, what role we play in society, what position we hold in an event, what others are to expect when they enter our homes, our work places, our public spaces—the rituals of walking on the right; the setting of a table; entry halls, family rooms, master suites; formats for letters and introductions; set procedures for opening and closing a business deal, a debate, or a meeting; titles; business suits, cocktail dresses, the “tribal” costumes of torn jeans and shaved heads. We live in a world filled with ritual in architecture, act and dress as much as any ancient or so-called primitive society. Our rituals are simply those we know and are familiar with to the point of seemingly never taking notice of them. We do not pay attention to them because they do well that which they are meant to do: function as subliminal signs and re-enforcers of an order of society and a system of values.

When our early Christian ancestors gathered to hear God’s word in scripture and remember the saving acts done in Christ Jesus, they were already engaged in ritual: a format of readings taken from the synagogues, a format of a community meal with its prayers of thanksgiving and blessing. When they gathered they instinctively wore their best, but these clothes were still the ordinary dress of ordinary people, the “sunday best” of the first century.

By the third century the leaders and officers of the community began to appear with their little badges of authority: a scarf draped over the shoulder in a special way, shoes embroidered with crosses. The apostles who had seen Jesus were now gone and their successors were making a simple statement by dressing in a teacher’s scarf and walking, as it were, in Christ’s shoes.

By the sixth century Roman dress attire was the custom for liturgical worship. As this style began to be challenged and displaced by the styles of invading peoples, a conservative impulse asserted itself and clung to the civilized, the dignified, the established, the ancient. Within a century the presiding ministers at the liturgy were no longer in secular dress. The secular of yesterday had become the priestly. By the eighth century, directives and rules began to appear as to whom could wear what and when.

This process has taken place over and over again in the history of vestments. The Reformation put aside the old Roman robes for the robes of the university, another reformation abandoned these for the dress of the day. Today the preacher’s coat has given way to the three-piece suit and wing tips of the tele-evangelist, and one day that civilized, dignified, established, and ancient three-piece suit may well appear in someone’s list of vestments and robes, and that someone will need to discuss how and why the suit and tie befit tradition and the celebration of faith.

Ritual in dress, and in every other aspect of being human, is simply our subliminal language, our collection of unspoken words, a type of short-hand to convey a great deal of information most succinctly.

 The holy eucharist is the ritual foretaste of that heavenly banquet wherein all God’s children shall be gathered around one table. As baptism ritually creates the community, the eucharist nourishes and maintains it. It is called the sacrament of unity, and yet it is the sacrament that has caused the greatest disunity and discord.

Melchizedek, the priest-king of Salem took bread and wine and made a thank offering for Abraham, our father in faith. The priests of Yahweh regularly took bread and wine and offered them to the Lord. The head of the household, in the keeping of the sabbath and other feasts, pronounced a berakah or blessing over the bread at the beginning of the meal, and over the wine at the end of the meal. Jesus, as the head of a chaburoth (an informal religious group of friends or of master and disciples), presided over the shared meals and pronounced the blessings over the bread and wine. On the night before his betrayal, Jesus changed the ancient formula and a new age began.

In the early church there was little controversy over the eucharist. That the eucharist truly conveyed the body and blood of Christ to the believer was universally accepted. Sometimes the bread and wine were spoken of as the body and blood, sometimes they were spoken of as signs or symbols or archetypes or ante-types. But the reality of Christ present for the sake of the world was never doubted or debated.

In the fourth century some theologians began to question how bread and wine could at once be bread and wine and Christ. The question remained largely confined to academics, and still no one doubted or questioned the reality, only the How. In the thirteenth century the metaphysics of Aristotle was rediscovered. In his analysis of reality, Aristotle divided everything into two parts: “Accidents” or the sensible and changing aspects of things (such as the colour, taste, smell, size), and “Substance” or the unchanging, abiding, and underlying identity of a thing in which the “accidents” are anchored. Some theologians took this view of things and divided the bread and wine accordingly. They claimed that in the eucharist the changeable aspects of bread and wine did not change, so that the bread and wine looked, smelled and tasted like bread and wine, but the underlying realities, the “substances”, the bread-ness and the wine-ness, were changed into the “substances” of the body and the blood of Christ. This theory is called Transubstantiation, and it has transformed Christianity.

In an effort to affirm the reality and the presence of Christ in the sacrament, some of these theologians fell prey to talking about the physical presence and reality of Christ under the cloak of bread and wine. This opened the doors to the worshipping and adoration of the elements, and to countless abuses against countless simple minds and hearts. The eucharist became something to gaze upon rather than a sacrament to feed upon, an object of religious curiosity rather than a ritual means to community building through mutual contact with the Holy.

The great reformers sought to re-establish the sacrament as the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion of the Children of God. The reformers rejected the theory of transubstantiation, but they did not agree on a theory to replace it. Luther spoke of con-substantiation, wherein bread and wine and Christ were all truly present. Zwingli claimed that there was no transformation whatsoever, that the bread and wine were merely symbolic of the body and blood of Christ. Calvin attempted to hold a position in between those of Luther and Zwingli. Calvin claimed that there was no change in the bread and wine, but that by faith the communicant entered into a union with and was sustained by the whole Christ, heart and soul, body and blood. The teachings of the Anglican Communion are diverse, and happily so, for no one theory shall ever touch the reality of Christ, risen, glorified, present.

Today some theologians speak of the eucharist as giving the bread and wine new significance or new meaning. Perhaps, they are still caught up in a debate that started off with the wrong approach. Sacraments are not about How but What. The soul touched by the love of God, indeed, any soul touched by love, knows How love can transform, trans-signify, transubstantiate reality, and such a soul knows also that neither Aristotelian metaphysics nor Heisenbergian quantum mechanics can capture or describe the simplicity or the power that effects the change. What happens in the eucharist is the correct question. Scripture tells us that at Emmaus Christ took bread, blessed it, broke it, and that the eyes of the disciples were opened. They recognized Jesus Christ, they saw who Christ is, Christ who fills the universe, Christ Crucified, Christ Risen, Christ Hidden in the glory of God. That is what the eucharist does; it opens the eyes and hands and hearts, it gathers all humanity to one table, it feeds all humanity in one food and one drink, it proclaims this medium of human commonality to be the very fabric of the Creator, the very body and blood of God’s Christ, it tears away the ego and reveals all to be equal before God, all brothers and sisters, all joint-heirs, all fellow partakers in Christ who from before time began was turned toward creation as its redeemer, its healer, its centre, its life. Thus, there is no eucharist, no holy communion without the question: whose need, whose pain, whose cares, whose sin, whose joy, whose love, whose life is not also mine? There is no union with Christ without communion with every one and every thing. Eucharist is about communion, and com-union is always about sacrifice, self-sacrifice.

In the early church there was no controversy concerning the sacrificial nature of the eucharist. In the temple at Jerusalem the offerings of bread and wine were termed sacrifices. In the gospel accounts of the institution of the sacrament three sacrificial terms (covenant, poured out, and memorial) are consistently used. In other early writings of the church, the crucifixion is spoken of in sacrificial terms, and the eucharist is spoken of as the memorial of that sacrifice.

The sacrificial nature was accepted, but not until the thirteenth century was there a forceful attempt to define How the eucharist was a sacrifice. Some said the eucharist re-presented (made present again) the merits obtained by Christ in the self-sacrifice of his life. Some said the eucharist made the very sacrifice of Calvary present again, although in an unbloody manner. Some claimed the eucharist could not be a sacrifice in the technical sense because there was no essential destruction of the victim, Christ. Some replied that the words of institution transformed (transubstantiated) the bread and wine into the body and blood, and that since the bread was made into the body before the wine was made into the blood, this separated transformation of the two elements caused Christ to be made present in immolated form, that is, sacrificed, with body and blood separated. Once again the sacramental reality was lost to a preoccupation with the idea of a physical presence. This preoccupation added to the eucharistic abuses of the day and led the reformers to focus on the one all-sufficient sacrifice of Calvary remembered in the eucharistic act, and on the need for the self-sacrifice demanded by the holiness of the communion and community celebrated.

Sacrifice is always about the purposeful giving-up of something in order to secure something deemed to be of greater value. We regularly give up part of our earnings to secure our national security and well-being; taxes are the sacrifice we make as a nation to be a nation. We sacrifice of our time, resources and energies in countless ways to uphold the existence of that which we value, from relationships to roofs over our head. In the context of religion, there are various types of sacrifices, sacrifices to praise, to give thanks, and sacrifices to repent for sin. These latter usually involve the offering up of a living creature designated to be a substitute for the sinner whose rightful fate before the Holy is considered death. The substitutionary death opens the way to new life, a renewed life, a renewed relationship with the Holy; it is the ritual act of buying back (redeeming) self, a ritual attempt to satisfy (propitiate) the proper order of life, the just relationship with the Holy.

According to our sacred vision, Christ is the offering whose immolation redeems everything, propitiates for everything for all time. Christ is the sacrifice whose shed blood is our life-force, whose broken body is most true integration and communicity. One shares in that life, one enters into that body only through the sacrifice of self, body and soul. And when one enters that life and that body, one is destroyed, for “here there cannot be Gentile and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but only Christ”. And when one enters that life and that body, one is re-deemed and re-created, for in the words of Augustine as he held out the holy bread to the communicant: “Body of Christ, behold thyself”!

In our church there are two distinct but similar orders of service for the Holy Eucharist: the order of The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) and the order of The Book of Alternative Services (BAS).

The principal variations in the two orders stem from the distinct ways in which they approach the repentance of the assembly. The BCP makes the assembly ritually enter three progressively deeper stages of repentance or turning to God. The first stage occurs in the entry rites. The assembly acknowledges all things are open to God, no thing hidden from God. Then the assembly hears the Law of God and begs it be written upon the heart. The turning to God is concluded in the cry “Lord, have mercy”. The congregation has turned itself toward God and listens to God’s Word. The congregation responds with an act of faith (the Creed), with the offering of gifts, and with the raising up of the concerns and cares of all the earth (the Intercession). The second stage follows immediately. The BCP again forces the assembly upon its knees, for repentance must reach deeper into the soul. The congregation now begs pardon for all misdoings, for all that is past. The congregation prays for the newness of life which can come only from the Creator. This time the repentance ends not in hearing God but in thanking God, for it is in the lifting up of hearts and the giving of thanks that the true dignity of humanity is reached and the bounden duty of humanity fulfilled. When the great prayer of thanksgiving has been said, the BCP moves the assembly into the third stage, a state beyond being open to God, and beyond human fulfillment. The BCP moves the assembly into unity with God in Christ, a unity acknowledged to be a free gift for “we do not presume”. The unity in God is celebrated in the reception of the most holy sacrament, and in the total surrender of self, body and soul, as “a living sacrifice”.

In the BCP the momentum of the liturgy is a dialogue between ever more profound repentance and grace. In the BAS the movement is very different. In the BAS, the focus is on a community that gathers together as the body of God’s people. The body gathers to praise and hear God, to affirm faith and action, to offer prayer for the world and to give thanks for the mercy and goodness of the Lord and Creator. This gathering is more a celebration of grace than a dialogue between repentance and grace. The gathering culminates in the sacramental act of incorporation into the body and blood of the Lord, and in the preparation to carry the power of that holy state out into the world. There is, as in the BCP, the progression of acts from hearing God to surrendering to God, but in the BAS, these acts are a fairly straightforward ascent, a movement wherein each act gains its momentum from its predecessors. There is provision for a penitential rite either before the gathering of the community or before the offering of the gifts, but because the eucharistic rites as a whole have their own momentum, these penitential rites do not carry either the same ritual or moral force as their counterparts in the BCP.