The Gift of Reverence
Director of Music &
Liturgy
~ I have opportunity, several times a year, to lead confirmation retreats with a close friend of mine. We believe strongly in interactive components to these days, to allow the young people an opportunity to approach the faith more than just intellectually but with their hearts and souls, and their whole selves.
One of the activities we often do on these retreats is to divide up the participants into 7 smaller groups and assign each one gift of the Holy Spirit. We then invite each group to come up with a business that offers a product or a service somehow connected to or a part of the gift they were assigned. Once they have come up with that idea, we invite them, on poster board, to create a logo or an ad for that business — something that would tell someone who looks at it just what that particular gift of the Spirit is and how in practical ways it can help someone in their day to day life.
I mention all this because one of the gifts of the Spirit is reverence, something we liturgists could probably always spend more time considering. Reverence is not something exclusive to church buildings and liturgy, but it is perhaps where it is practiced the most, and in the most public way. Often the businesses which our retreatants create embodying the gift of reverence include makers of incense, or kneelers, both objects used liturgically to show reverence, deep respect, in the divine presence.
There are of course other ways to show reverence, and many of them vary from culture to culture, or from religion to religion. Christians stand, typically, when the Gospel is proclaimed as a sign of reverence focused more tightly on the respect for and acknowledged importance of the words and deeds of Christ. Our Jewish siblings sit when the Torah is read, however, not out of a lack of reverence, but as a posture more conducive to listening and study.
Within various parish congregations, one might in one church find the pews filled with people a few minutes before mass begins but completely silent but then travel to the next church over and find their gathering much more conversational and informal. It might be tempting to call the second instance “irreverent,” but could one also not be observing in that instance the body of Christ recognizing that presence in one another and by communication entering into true communion and true community? One version isn’t necessarily right and the other wrong — it depends, ultimately, on the parish’s vision of and realization of what reverence is and means to them.
One can also examine the other gifts of the Spirit, liturgically, in similar fashion: how are wisdom, courage, or right judgement embodied in our congregation and our communal prayer? How might these gifts be embodied differently, more fully, by the varied expressions of our liturgies and, by extension, our outreach into the wider community?
Throughout the year, we present an article in the bulletin each week on a variety of topics, written by a member of our Parish staff or ministries on a rotating basis.
