The Ritual between Verbal and Non-Verbal - The Value of The Symbol in The Orthodox Divine Service
The Ritual between Verbal and Non-Verbal - The Value of The Symbol in The Orthodox Divine Service

Summary/Abstract: Religious symbols are some of the oldest, most used and best known symbols in the world. Symbols have always helped in the rediscovery or the identification of certain values, convictions, ideas or credos. Their first aim was to bring together all the people sharing the same religious or cultural convictions. The symbol is a sign figuring something or an object figuring something else than what it really is. The holy symbols and rites are expressions or exteriorizations and reinforcements of the divine cult, which becomes exteriorized by them. Symbols and gestures in the cult are absolutely necessary – completing the way of worship to God – by the fact that they involve not just our soul but also our body, giving the latter an active part to play in the divine cult: without them, the cult is not complete. And just as by themselves, without the active participation of the soul, they do not have too much value, similarly the spiritual cult, if we totally remove this part of the rites, of the symbols and of the liturgical gesture, is not complete and cannot be complete, just as a soul without a body or a body without a soul cannot be a complete human being.

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