{"id":48447,"date":"2024-12-05T05:43:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T12:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=48447"},"modified":"2024-12-02T12:45:47","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T19:45:47","slug":"weekly-observance-of-the-sacrament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/12\/weekly-observance-of-the-sacrament\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Observance of the Sacrament"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Sacrament of the Lord&#8217;s Supper is one the most common ritual and use of set ritual prayers in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Weekly observance is a high frequency compared to many Christian denominations&#8217; observance of similar rites and begs to question of why we observe it so frequently. David F. Holland discussed the ritual of the sacrament in a recent post at the Latter-day Saint history blog <em>From the Desk<\/em>, based on his work in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fromthedesk.org\/what-did-moroni-teach-about-the-sacrament\/\">Moroni: a brief theological introduction<\/a><\/em>. What follows here is a co-post to the full discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-wp-embed is-provider-from-the-desk wp-block-embed-from-the-desk\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"ZJRdD1pplt\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fromthedesk.org\/what-did-moroni-teach-about-the-sacrament\/\">What Did Moroni Teach About the Sacrament?<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;What Did Moroni Teach About the Sacrament?&#8221; &#8212; From the Desk\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fromthedesk.org\/what-did-moroni-teach-about-the-sacrament\/embed\/#?secret=viGUuTqEy3#?secret=ZJRdD1pplt\" data-secret=\"ZJRdD1pplt\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>One key observation that David Holland made strikes at the answer to the question of why we observe the sacrament so frequently:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Let us return for a moment to the internal order in which Moroni places his materials: instructions on ordinances, a description of a church community, a discourse on pure love leading to personal transformation. The sequence of topics here\u2014a process that starts with rituals and ends with the formation of a new being\u2014bears resemblance to an argument made by the modern scholar of religion Saba Mahmood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interviewing Muslim women in Egypt and observing these women in their devotion to the Islamic practice of daily prayer rituals, Mahmood noticed that their experience did not exactly correspond to some of the prevailing academic theories about ritualism. She concluded that the repetitive performance of religious rituals functions in people\u2019s lives in ways that modern scholars have too often overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mahmood notes that the rituals are usually seen by their practitioners as a substantive way to connect with the divine while they are usually seen by academic observers as symbolic expressions of identity and an affirmation of group cohesion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In close observation of her subjects, however, Mahmood noticed a third implication of their ritual lives. She recognized that the women approached their prayer rituals as repeatable acts of spiritual training, disciplines whose repetition over time would facilitate a gradual internal transformation. They did them less as professions of faith and more as avenues toward faith. They did not observe their prayer practices\u00a0<em>because<\/em>\u00a0they self-identified as part of a righteous people; they observed them in the\u00a0<em>hope of developing<\/em>\u00a0into a righteous people. Their rituals were about the diligent, repetitive work of forming a new self. They were not static symbols so much as active exercises. Mahmood\u2019s women did these things in order to\u00a0<em>become<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Though focused on a cultural setting and a religious practice quite different from my own, Mahmood\u2019s research has helped me understand something powerful about the possibilities of our sacramental services.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a fascinating insight into the way that ritual can help us to shape our inner lives and become something more than we are today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another comparison that I&#8217;ve used in church meetings is that I personally have back problems and visit chiropractors on a regular basis to seek relief. I initially attended to address some major pain that came from handling heavy handbells an excessive amount in a previous bell choir. At that time the chiropractor took x-rays and after reviewing them, he asked if I&#8217;d recently been in a car accident (I hadn&#8217;t). Then he explained that it would take repeated visits to fix it because the muscles in the body had adjusted to holding things in their current place, so while each visit would put the skeleton back into proper place and loosen up some of the surrounding tissue, the muscles would try to gradually pull back to what they were used to. Follow up adjustments would gradually teach the full body the position it should be holding instead. Sacrament, in this metaphor, is the repeated adjustment that helps teach us the way to live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Holland explained the idea this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>No one perfectly lives the promises entailed in those prayers. Rather, I go to church and partake of the sacrament because I want to be more mindful, more righteous, and more courageous. I hope to remember, obey, and represent better. The sacrament is, in this sense, much less about who I am and much more about who I yearn to be. &#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to the sacrament\u2019s essential role as a communal act of connection, it is also an individual aspiration from a supplicant to a God who knows the petitioners are not yet everything promised through this ordinance but who is determined to help them become equal to that expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ordinances are therefore not the culmination of my righteousness; rather, they are a foundational exercise that allows me to develop righteousness. That reading of the ritual is underscored by Moroni\u2019s sequencing. The ordinances described in chapters 2 through 6 are a staging ground for the personal transformation to which his book builds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In rough calculation, a Latter-day Saint born into the Church and living to eighty will partake of the sacrament some four thousand times. This reliable punctuation to our weekly calendar\u2014a conscious effort to step repetitively into a state of remembrance toward Christ and into a covenantal conversation with our God\u2014has the potential to create a kind of spiritual muscle memory. It constitutes what Mahmoud, drawing from Aristotle calls a \u201chabitus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Its cumulative effect can rewire a soul.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a beautiful insight into a central ordinance in the lives of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>For more on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fromthedesk.org\/what-did-moroni-teach-about-the-sacrament\/\">Moroni and the sacrament<\/a>, head on over to the Latter-day Saint history blog <em>From the Desk<\/em> to read the full piece by David F. Holland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Sacrament of the Lord&#8217;s Supper is one the most common ritual and use of set ritual prayers in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Weekly observance is a high frequency compared to many Christian denominations&#8217; observance of similar rites and begs to question of why we observe it so frequently. David F. Holland discussed the ritual of the sacrament in a recent post at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, based on his work in Moroni: a brief theological introduction. What follows here is a co-post to the full discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2890,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-desk","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48447"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48451,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48447\/revisions\/48451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}