What is the Unchanging Principle? A Discussion of the Eucharistic Ordo in Anglicanism

Anglican Theological Review, Spring 2004 by Bates, J Barrington

In short, Fagerberg raises the notion that the ort/o is more than simply a text, something well beyond the rubrics, rules, and regulations. His notion of a principle that animates the text, while intriguing and even perhaps insightful, helps us comprehend that a definition of ordo as text is insufficient. It is, however, less helpful in discerning exactly what lies behind or beyond the printed page.

Perhaps the most poetic of the works considered in this essay, Gordon Lathrop's Holy Things employs a rich metaphorical vocabulary throughout. The work, nonsystematic though it may be, provides numerous valuable insights to this discussion. Lathrop posits that the assembly is essential to the eucharistie celebration, that ordo is more than written instructions, and that the ordo holds together all of liturgical life.

Lathrop's ordo is not so much a book as it is a catalyst, a stimulus that puts symbols in motion and juxtaposes them. The juxtaposition is meant to "speak and sing Jesus Christ in our midst, God's presence and mercy."9 Employing a characteristically rich and metaphorical vocabulary, he gives this example: "when the cross is set next to the content of the ordo, when the book tells the story of the cross, the bath washes into its meaning, the cup gives to drink from it, the resonance of the symbol is transformed."10 Action, motion, juxtaposition: these concepts are essential to Lathrop's ordo.

Likewise, the assembly is essential to Christian faith and worship-that is, liturgy is first and foremost a meeting, not a text. Primary liturgical theology, he says, is the communal meaning of the liturgy, as exercised by the gathering itself.11 he speaks of the "lively presence" of the "major oppositions" of the ordo12 as the task of liturgical criticism, setting the liturgical theologians task as illuminating the structural phenomena of ordo as they continue to be alive in the churches.13

Lathrop helps focus this discussion, in that he proposes a general term for some of what, in addition to text, needs to be included under the ordo umbrella-namely action. His discussion speaks this very action, through the use of active verb forms: "speak," "sing," "wash," "tell." These are things the worshipers do, actions taken, rituals enacted. One use of the passive voice-"is transformed"-expresses God's essential role, indicating the integral necessity of human and divine action and activity. Thus, for Lathrop, the concept of ordo contains text, structure, and action.

Schmemann's perspective is based on the fundamental belief in Christianity as being first of all action.14 His entire concept of ordo assumes, first and foremost, a context of enacted rite. He says, "Any serious study of the eucharistie orrfo cannot but convince us that this ordo is entirely, from beginning to end, constructed on the principle of correlation-the mutual dependence of the celebrant of the service and the people."15 It is a theory of action, of doing, of being-and not simply a bibliography of texts. Schmemann speaks not so much of the ordo itself as of what lies "behind" it. He first defines ordo as a collection of rules and prescriptions ("rubrics" in the language of Western liturgies) which regulate the church's worship and which are set forth in the Typicon and various other books of rites and ceremonies.16 On the very same page of this work, however, he admits that more than half of our liturgical rules are not drawn from such official and written ordos.