DOI:10.1111/nbfr.12418
Play and Liturgy Towards a Transcendental
Sense of the Experience of the Mystery
Ivica Zizic
Abstract
In The Spirit of Liturgy, Romano Guardini argued that liturgy is a
playful activity. But one may ask, can liturgy really be analysed in
light of the experience of play? This question opens up different theoretical problems, which range from a fundamental understanding of
play and its celebratory spirit to a consideration of liturgy as an event
of the divine Mystery. In this paper, I will therefore explore the nature of Christian ritual performance, drawing on a phenomenological
analysis of the connections between play and liturgy in the process,
before concluding that the liturgy – from a transcendental perspective – is in fact a playful activity. The argument will thus include a
study of the particularity and difference of the original ritual patterns
and the universe of play, thereby bringing into focus the interplay
between the sense of rite and the experience of play. In such a way,
I will show that play provides us with one of the possible ways of
approaching the essence of the Christian ritual celebration as a transcendental experience of Mystery, as well as shedding light on the
interrelation between homo ludens and homo liturgicus.
Keywords
Liturgy, Play, Mystery, Romano Guardini, homo ludens, homo
liturgicus
Introduction
In his famous book, The Spirit of Liturgy, Romano Guardini (18851968) argued that liturgy is a playful activity.1 The ongoing question
1
Romano Guardini, The Spirit of Liturgy (New York: A Herder & Herder Book, 1998).
On the key role played by the work The Spirit of Liturgy in the Liturgical Movement see:
Burkhard Neunheuser, ‘La liturgie dans la vision de Romano Guardini’ in Alessandro Pistoia, Achille M. Triacca, ed., La liturgie: son sens, son esprit, sa méthode, Conferences
St. Serge (Roma: CLV, 1981), pp. 179-189; Martin Marshall, In Warheit beten: Romano
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is to what extent can liturgy be analysed within the context of play
as he suggested about hundred years ago in 1918?2 This inquiry
often raises a number of theoretical problems which range from a
fundamental understanding of play and its celebratory spirit to a consideration of liturgy as an event of the divine Mystery. However, the
fundamental problem concerns the understanding of play. There is
an evident loss of the genuine sense of play. In the age of secular
modernity, play might not be capable of mediating the relationship
with the sacred and gratuity, which originally characterised the world
of play and had already disappeared under the effect of commercialisation and the society of spectacle. Blaise Pascal, moreover, claimed
that play seemed to be a futile amusement, distraction and diversion.3
Such “distractions” may involve behaviour and habits that are merely
wasteful and self-deceptive. There are many reasons to support the
thesis of Joseph Ratzinger who reflects on the possible risk of reducing Christian worship (Liturgy) to play. Such a consideration he
noted is quite dangerous since it lures the Church into celebrating
itself.4
The second series of consideration involves the significance of
liturgy. In fact, the focus here is on the form and category of activity
in which play and liturgy could be recognised. The epistemological
issue arising from here is the identity of Christian rite and its interactions with other forms of human activity. Thus, this concern brings
us to the following questions: Is it appropriate to deduce liturgy and
its theological essence from ludic experience? Does it risks losing the
truth of Christian liturgy? Finally, is it epistemologically acceptable
to explain sacred liturgy from the point of view of being and performance sub specie ludi? In the current moment of crisis and liturgical
renewal, the ludic experience does not seem to represent a source
of inspiration for liturgical praxis, in spite of the great theological
tradition of reflection upon play since the patristic age.5
Guardini – Denker liturgischer Erneuerung (Sankt Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 1986); Frédéric
Debuyst, Romano Guardini. Einfürung in sein liturgisches Denken (Regensburg: Friedrich
Pustet Verlag, 2009). On the concept of liturgical play in Guardini see: Silvano Maggiani,
‘Per una definizione del concetto di liturgia: le categorie di ‘gratuità’ e di ‘gioco’. La proposta di Romano Guardini’, in Ferdinando Dell’Oro, ed., Mysterion. Miscellanea liturgica
in occasione del 70 anni dell’abate Salvatore Marsili (Torino: Leumann, 1981) pp. 89-114.
2
The distinction the English language makes between play and game involves certain
difficulties. What the author like Guardini calls Spiel cannot be translated as either game
or play. However, in the English translation of Guardini’s Spirit of Liturgy the word Spiel
is translated as play.
3
Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings, translated by Honor Levi (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995), n. 169-171, pp. 48-49.
4
Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000)
pp. 13-15.
5
See Hugo Rahner Man at Play (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965). In addition,
within Western theology some scholars attempt to define God as a creative player. Play
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Nevertheless, play and rite are interconnected irrespective of their
phenomenal distinctions. In the course of the systematic theological
research on liturgy in the Liturgical Movement, play has been one of
the privileged themes. Romano Guardini and Odo Casel, for example,
applied this attractive anthropological figure to liturgy in order to
grasp the essence of Christian worship and explore the conditions
of an authentic liturgical experience.6 Such an impressive adaptation
of the concept of play was aimed at promoting the liturgy as a
celebration of divine mystery as well as a world for the subject
and their human experience. Instead of being an obstacle, due to its
ambivalences and profanity, play became a bond and the basis of
understanding being and rite together. In that way, the discovery of
homo ludens indirectly opened the way to understanding being as
homo liturgicus.
Playing and celebrating: towards the ritual play of liturgy
It is important to explore first the nature of Christian ritual performance, by making a phenomenological analysis of the connections
between play and liturgical celebration, before delving into the transcendental perspective which tends to consider liturgy as a playful
activity. The latter provides an experience of the divine Mystery celebrated in the liturgy of the Church. Moreover, the evaluation will be
made by considering both the theoretical perspectives and the specific
phenomenological aspects.
Phenomenologically, play and liturgy share certain common
transcendental features. The most outstanding is the the celebratory
spirit. It is obvious that celebration directly reveals the abundance of
play without losing its “sacred seriousness”.7 The celebratory spirit
of play therefore shows that play in its essence is a ritual performance
involving precise rules, patterns and gestures. Nevertheless, the
phenomenon of ritual play seeks a further clarification arising from
anthropological research for an adequate understanding of liturgy.
could then be thought as a theological phenomenon rather than a purely cultural and
anthropological issue. The theology of play having evolved in the 20th century has had a
considerable theoretical impact. See also Jürgen Moltman, Theology of Play (New York:
Harper and Row, 1972); Alan Watts, Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship (New York:
Pantheon, 1964). See more recent studies: Francesco Giacchetta, Gioco e trascendenza. Dal
divertimento alla relazione teologica (Assisi: Cittadella Editrice, 2005); Aldo N. Terrin,
Liturgia come gioco (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2014).
6
Francesco Nasini, ‘Il “gioco” liturgico in Romano Guardini e Odo Casel’, Rivista
liturgica 99 (2012), pp. 484-509.
7
Hans G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (London and New York: Continuum, 2006),
p. 102.
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The most influential theorist of play Johann Huizinga (1872–1945)
defines play as the primary formative element in human culture. According to Huizinga, play is a free activity, separate from “ordinary
life”, unproductive, regulated by an absolute and supreme order at
the same time possessing an imaginative function. All these characteristics, however, are profoundly linked with the celebratory spirit.8
Ritual celebration along with play are free activities. Following its
deictic function, rite defines the where, who and when of the celebration.9 Above all, rite should be separated in time and space; in
order to define the subjects of celebration. It should be noted that
rite appears as a useless activity, immersed in pure gratuitousness.
The ritual celebration is regulated by rules because it is only through
the observation of the rules of play that it is possible to reach the
celebratory spirit. Hence, rite is a fictional activity, directed by a different logic in the sense that the ritual celebration projects here and
now the world as it should be; and it constitutes a hypothetical way
of feeling and thinking. In this perspective, rite and play resemble
two sides of the same reality. As a matter of fact, the anthropological
theorists symbolize play as a sort of ritual. This is not due to the
analogous formal features but the celebratory spirit which embraces
the participants and gathers them into a unity. Finally, play is considered a holistic experience because it is made manifest through the
celebratory spirit.
Festive ethos
The celebratory spirit of ritual play realises itself properly in the
sphere of the feast. Such a celebrative function of play can be emphasised by what the anthropologists call “ethos”.10 This feature was
highlighted by the German theologian, and “the father of liturgical
theology”, Odo Casel (1886-1948) in his brief work Zur Idee der
liturgischen Festfeier.11
8
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens. A Study of the Play-Element in the Culture (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 21
9
Terrin, Liturgia come gioco, p. 53.
10
The concept of ethos here is understood in the anthropological sense, as it was
suggested by C. Geertz: “A people’s ethos is the tone, character, and quality of their life,
its moral and aesthetic style and mood; it is the underlying attitude toward themselves
and their world that life reflects. Their world view is their picture of the way things
in sheer actuality are, their concept of nature, of self, of society. It contains their most
comprehensive ideas of order.” Clifford Geertz, The interpretation of cultures (New York:
Basic Books, 1973), p. 127.
11
Odo Casel, ‘Zur Idee der Liturgischen Festfeier’, Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft
3 (1923), pp. 93-99.
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Casel links liturgical celebration to an anthropological universe of
play by emphasising that play is surrounded by a particular festive
mood – a celebratory spirit. He argues that a festive celebration is not
only a response to human necessity of recreation and entertainment
but reveals a much deeper need for the sense of activity as such.
Thus, feast “transfers” being from an ordinary life to a ritual one in
which he lives the effervescence of the celebration and within which
we perceive the epiphany of transcendence. In the feasts, the human
person is gladly dedicated to play without an utilitarian motive by
disclosing a high sense of being. The sense appears where human
action is not subjected to the functional logic of production, but to
the symbolic recognition of the sense reflected in it. The ritual action,
in its gratuitousness, is articulated precisely as a joyful event. This
is what creates a festivitas in which being experiences the profound
joyfulness of livelihood and affectionate adherence to the sense of
being.12 In this way, human activity reaches its fullness in a festive
ritual play at all times.
However, the ritual play is not a self-reflective action centred on
being itself. It is above all an opening and an encounter with the
other. From this point of view, Casel underlines a reciprocity between human and divine acts. The ritual act, because of its dramatic
character becomes an epiphany of the divine (Erscheinung) – a manifestation of a higher sense which cannot be produced through human
labour, but only received as a gift and participated in. The human
action in the ritual celebration is allowed, fulfilled and brought to
its fullest sense by the divine action. The liturgical action, therefore,
is not a product of particular effects of grace, but the actualisation
of the divine event which involves the human person who is being
provided with the opportunity to participate in the joyful celebration.
According to Casel, the ludic character of festive celebration does
not represent a pure superfluous fact. Asserting that liturgy is “sacred
play”, Casel is convinced that play, to the contrary, is the prerequisite for discovering the profundity of the liturgical act as gratuitous
epiphany of the divine Mystery. Play shows the liturgical nature of
participation and reveals the fact that the celebration is not governed
by a rigid causal system of effects, but an encounter between the
human liberty and the gift of God’s presence.
For Guardini it is also important to show how the sacred play
of liturgy is immersed in the gratuity of God’s presence. Liturgy
overcomes a causal logic and realises itself in the logic of gratuity.
It is based on what constitutes the essences of play and liturgy as a
feast, respectively. Rite constantly occupies the main moments of life.
It liberates them of productive oppression, of ordinary and profane
12
Ibid., p. 93.
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everyday life and opens human life towards sacred. In that way, rite
is shaped as a celebratory play that enables the realisation of human
freedom and its adherence to a higher sense. “The liturgy has no
purpose, or, at least, it cannot be considered from the standpoint
of purpose.” – declares Guardini.13 Gratuity is a requirement that
the liturgy occur as a celebration. Uselessness and overwhelming
gratuity are features transforming ritual play into a kind of “worldplay”.14 Such a symbol, as Eugen Fink defines play, is capable of
expressing the presence of the Absolute because it properly contains
the character in which the Absolute exists – an all-encompassing
gratuity, a complete self-determination. This is the mode of divine
existence which does not refer in causal way to the other and it is
not determined by something other than itself. Thus, ritual play acts
as a festive, epiphanic and gratuitous activity which suspends time,
overcomes the rational and utilitarian protocols and opens up towards
the protological and eschatological senses.
Protological and eschatological sense
Almost all the theorists of play emphazize the celebratory spirit of
play. They acknowledge the ritual nature of play, as well as the
playful nature of the ritual that characterize its festive dimension.15
But what does play celebrate? When we remove all superficial views
and prejudices, play from a transcendental perspective appears as a
return to the sources celebrating the anticipation of the end. Play
is affirmed as a celebration which comprises in the now both the
protological origin and eschatological fulfilment. Guardini thus offers two examples to illustrate how ludic activity can be filled with
celebratory sense in a protological and eschatological manner: the
movement of the cherubim and the play of children. Both are pure
expressive movements, they flow freely and they both stand for joy
and freedom. In fact, they celebrate being inserted into God’s life.
Liturgy as play is properly realised as a celebration of the divine
Mystery. In this light, the liturgy offers all created things to realize
themselves as they should be as a redeemed existence, immersed into
God’s eternal life.
However, except for the figures of child and angel, the essence
of playful rite is found in the fundamental Christological mediation.
According to Guardini, liturgy is the play of Wisdom (cf. Proverbs
13
Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 66.
Eugen Fink, ‘Play as Symbol of the World’, in Eugen Fink, Play as Symbol of the
World and Other Writings (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2016), pp. 160-178.
15
Paola de Sanctis Ricciardone, Antropologia e gioco (Napoli: Liguori editore, 1994),
pp. 57-107.
14
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30, 31) as is the play of the Son before the heavenly Father.16 Liturgical action has a participative nature; it is founded on the act in
which the Son glorifies the Father, but it actualises itself in analogy
with the celebratory spirit of the play of children and the angelic
movement. Thus, in the liturgical act, we celebrate the event through
which the Son redeemed the world and renewed the image of the
entire humanity. The Holy play, hence, reveals the celebration of the
new creation redeemed by Christ. It entails celebrating liturgy as a
renewed relationship with the sacred origin bearing in mind its eschatological thrust. In other words, it is a return to the childlike state
in anticipation of the angelic heavenly state. Nevertheless, the depth
of play as a protological and eschatological activity discloses the
depth of the liturgy as an actualisation of the Mystery of Christ. This
demonstrates that humanity is capable of participating in the sacred
beginning and anticipating in the final fulfilment.
In particular, play illuminates the nature of the liturgical act, its
gratuitous profile; shows a “radical structure” of human activity that
is rooted in the principle of participation according to which sense
is given only through an effective participation in this fundamental
reality. Grace is not only applicable to liturgy; it is an integral part of
the practical disposition of symbolic action and experience emerging
from that activity. The relation, which is given in the liturgical
celebration, is a free, joyful and all-encompassing – childlike and
angelic – adherence to the God of salvation. It is in this way that
holy play is established as a form of the manifestation of the divine
in which human liberty participates and from which it takes strength
for its realisation.
Liturgy exists in the perspective of the actualisation of subject and
at the same time on the horizon of actualisation of the Mystery. The
experience of a ritual play between God and humanity in such sense
is paradigmatic: in this event, the human person finds itself in the
middle of an initiative which does not belong to it but precedes and
enables its activity. Play shows that the sense cannot be reduced to
the material nor to the productive aims, but that it emerges from the
abundance of transcendence which offers itself as the solemn and
sacred beginning and solemn and sacred end. In fact, in its festive
immersion into the sacred beginnings and glorious end, liturgy establishes itself in the festive ethos of “here and now” as an “experience
of totality”.
16
Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 67.
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The mystic meaning of Ritual Play
Ritual can be compared with play by highlighting only the formal
aspects. In phenomenology, nevertheless, the essence of ritual play
is incomprehensive if it considers a series of external (formal) features which distinguishes it from others. Otherwise, there is a risk
of equating play with fun and reducing liturgy to triviality. Their
analogies and differences can be identified only by going into the
depths for an adequate phenomenological analysis of “what appears”
(phainomenon). As a matter of fact, phenomenology does not deal
with the “objects” of play or religion rather it is aimed at exploring
how the objects are articulated in human perception and consciousness. Play – as we well know – is tied not only to the external objects
but to the internal states; it opens up towards the experience of consciousness, attention, precision, coordination, internal attitude, and
the experience of totality. In fact, it is a special way of approaching
the real, as it actually appears in consciousness and perception. Thus,
phenomenology is primarily concerned with phenomena (“what appears”). Phenomenology therefore captures the transcendental modes
of consciousness marking the indicators and acts by opening to a
specific experience. The real essence of play occurs in the innermost
depths, in the modes, experiences, and emotions of the player’s consciousness. That experience shows an extraordinary similarity with
the eidetic modalities of the religious experience. At this point, may
we note for instance the hypothetical manner of thinking that is
common to both play and ritual. They demonstrate the transcendental modality through which being approaches reality in play or ritual
and opens itself to the essence, which phenomenologists call the
vision of essence (Wesensschau).
The phenomenological approach to play inevitably attempts to examine the “lifeworld” experience of celebration and its capacity to
mediate the total experience which the French philosopher and anthropologist, Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1865-1939) calls the mystic meaning.17 Such form of knowledge existing in the “primitive mentalities”,
according to Levy-Bruhl, is participative and self-reflective in contrast to modern dualistic and logical mind. Such experience is open
to totality and becomes the transcendental meaning of totality.18 Furthermore, Gluckmann asserts that ritual is distinguished by ‘mystical
notions’19 In that way, ritualized play leads human thinking, feeling,
17
Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Primitive Mentality (London & New York: George Allen and
the Macmillan Company, 1923), p. 82.
18
Roberto Tagliaferri, La violazione del mondo. Ricerche di epistemologia liturgica
(Roma: Centro Liturgico Vicenziano, 1996), p. 213.
19
Max Gluckmann, Les rites de passage, in Max Gluckman, ed., Essays on the Ritual
of Social Relation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962), p. 22.
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and acting towards the mystical landscapes and shapes it in the form
of a mystic meaning. Finally, play is an attitude of mind, a perspective of life, together with the action that is involved, it creates, and
gains a particular experience of vision.
The vision (Wesensschau) of the ritual play
The impact of phenomenology is very crucial since it helps us to
understand the cognitive aspects of play in this context. Here, play
manifests itself as an opening towards being, or more precisely, it
illuminates the modes of access to an ontological experience. Play is
presented as a singular relational or intentional mode, a specific way
of mediating the sense for and in the consciousness while ritual play
situates the being in the centre of such an experience by opening it
to the vision of original sense. Ritual play thus becomes a symbol
of overcoming the world by immersing it into the heart of reality
as a total reflection: the meaning of totality and total experience of
being. Hence, experience becomes a particular way of reaching the
original play-element generating all kinds of binary oppositions. Rite
is an expressive action confronting “the mystical world”; it does not
follow any logic of instrumental action with the purpose to reach
some goal outside itself. Play and rite both belong to the order of
useless but meaningful actions which do not produce any practical
effects rather than to lead human consciousness beyond the ordinary
world by supplying a special power of thought and imagination that
allows being to touch the original sense. In fact, both inherently
imply the dialectics of forgetting the world and sticking to the heart
of reality, both imply mobilisation of the energy of imagery and a
specific way of sensing, that is very close to the experience of art as
well.20
It is from the point of view of theology that Casel and Guardini
recognise the necessity of a phenomenological clarification of liturgical experience of the Mystery in the light of play in order to point
out the mystagogical dynamism of liturgical celebration which brings
humans close to the truth of rite: The Mystery of Christ. In fact, both
deal with the modality of access to the Mystery. Such a transcendental precondition of liturgical experience manifests itself in the form
20
Guardini, besides play, cites art as well as the mode of total experience, because
art, along with play – useless but meaningful – shows its power to bring man close to the
heart of reality. Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 71.
Hans G. Gadamer founds his aesthetics upon the concept of play-festival-ritual. Discussing
the concept of play and festival, Gadamer also emphasises the phenomenon of art and,
in considering play in relation to the celebratory spirit of art, he recognises its place as
inherent to “the being of the work of art itself”. Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 87.
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of mystical meaning which leaves behind the causal logic and fulfils
itself as a participation and total reflection.
Mystical meaning, as emphasised by Levy-Bruhl in his anthropological studies, is a non-rational and non-logical reflection. As an
ecstatic holistic experience and a participation in divine presence, it
represents an original mode in which Mystery enacts the liturgical
mediation. For Guardini, play is nothing else but the original mode
of access to the Mystery. Play dissolves the subject-object relation
which dominates modern epistemology, and generates participation
as a source of approaching the Mystery. The true spirit of liturgy,
in fact, is given where individuals plays with the ritual form and
through play experiences beauty, harmony, totality in which grace
is incarnate. The liturgy as an event of grace should be lived in
this mystico-aesthetical mode which reveals the Mystery, resonating
through a particular experience of totality.
What is most remarkable in liturgy is this: a liturgical celebration
due to its playfulness has no purpose than that of “living and existing
in His sight”, claims Guardini.21 Such a gaze can be identified as a
Wesensschau – the vision of essence: liturgy creates a specific point
of view, a specific Weltanschauung in which being participates in the
gaze of God and contemplates the world and himself in the light of
God’s vision. Liturgy brings one to the depths of such a vision, in its
profundity and otherness; liturgy is thus a continual crossing of the
threshold and an invitation to the sacred vision. The convergence in
the synthesis of sacred vision becomes a sort of mystical meaning,
suggests Guardini:
“In the liturgy [being] is no longer concerned with himself; his
gaze is directed towards God. In it [being] is not so much intended
do edify himself as to contemplate God’s majesty. The liturgy means
that the soul exists in God’s presence, originates in Him, lives in a
world of divine realities, truths, mysteries and symbols, and really
lives its true, characteristic and fruitful life.”22
In the sacred liturgy, the divine is manifested in humans not
through the objectivistic interpretation and causal deduction, but
through the acting and perceiving, shaping, and contemplating, which
initiates the person into participation in the divine Mystery and reflection as an experience of self-integrity. The rite allows one to
recognise the difference and otherness of the Mystery, and simultaneously to reinforce the selfhood into the participation. Participation,
therefore, has both an intersubjective and a self-reflective character.
Since liturgy makes transparencies of the divine into human, homo
ludens discovers himself as homo liturgicus.
21
22
Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 71.
Ibid., The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 66.
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From ludic to liturgical experience
The phenomenological approach leads us to the fundamental interrogation: What is really evident in the experience of those who celebrate and who ‘ritually play’? Can the experience of play illuminate
liturgy and its experience of Mystery? The answer to these questions
could have been grasped in the previous reflection. The liturgical
celebration, as a specific mode of experiencing, points to the deep
perception, a sacred vision (Wesensschau) which is not just a rational speculation, but also imagination, not spirit but also body, not
fictions, but profound reality; liturgy is the lived experience of the
Mystery recognised as truth, salvation, and gift of life. However,
the way of approximating and experiencing the Mystery of Christian
worship follows a certain transcendental modality which enables the
recognition of a specific mode of reflecting, feeling, and experiencing characteristic for homo ludens. The aesthetic and the hypothetical modalities are the two points that can be emphasised within the
context.
Aesthetic modality
The focus here is on play as an aesthetic performance. The ritual
form that enacts a festive mood by which humans adhere to the content of ritual celebration is Mystery. Under such a light, individuals
discover their ‘ludic existential’ in the series of aesthetical syntheses related to body, imagination, and perception. Liturgy mediates the
Mystery through the form of holistic perception. This celebratory fervour which gathers everyone in unity and totality is achieved through
different aesthetic modalities. According to Guardini, liturgy “speaks
measuredly and melodiously; it employs formal, rhythmic gestures;
it is clothed in colours and garments foreign to everyday life; it is
carried out in places and at hours which have been co-ordinated and
systematised according to sublime laws than ours. It is in the highest
sense the life of a child, in which everything is picture, melody and
song.”23
From this point of view, it is evident that liturgy exists by playing
with the human senses, by enchanting and involving humanity totally in its event. The anthropological holistic experience of melody,
formal, gestures, clothes, colours, places and times is not just a presupposition but the form in which liturgy occurs as a human-divine
action. Therefore, liturgy intrinsically performs a kind of aesthetical
transformation of our world, liturgy “transfers” the ordinary things
23
Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 69.
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and puts them within a different context of the sacred by filling them
with the presence of the divine.24 This transition from one existential
domain to another is marked by the experience of emotional release,
well-being of joy, harmony, and integrity.
But at the centre of sacred play, liturgy transfigure individuals and
their perspectives of openness to the sacred. The one who celebrates
is absorbed by the celebration, he “loses himself” and “forgets himself”; becomes an instrument in God’s hands, fills himself with the
objective that comes from the depths of celebration, which involves
and surpasses him. Therefore, being is not at the centre of liturgical
play, as it might be assumed. On the contrary, liturgy takes primacy
and decentres the subject by placing the human person in a relative
position, in the relation to the objective reality of Mystery. “In the
liturgy [being] is no longer concerned with himself; his gaze is directed towards God” – claims Guardini.25 Yet in this intensity lies the
very essence, the primordial quality of ritual play and its transcendent
order.
Liturgy becomes sacred play by being supported by separation
from and suspension of the external world, time and initiation into
its own world. Thus, raising the boundaries becomes a requirement
for approaching the heart of reality. The construction of a “transitional space” allows the experience of alternative realities and orders.
By participating in the ritual celebration, the rational protocols are
abolished and a kind of playful stupor is established. Through the
embodiment of such an aesthetical consciousness, what is imagined
becomes real and reality is fulfilled by a kind of eternal continuance
and abundance. All this brings us to the conclusion that the ritual
and playful acts constitute a special form of intentional activity in the
sphere of aesthetical dimension. In play, the consciousness is initiated
into a new dimension of reality, vigilant owing to the margins and
deceleration of time, the emotional release of joy and vigour. The
affective tonality of joy is an immediate effect of this dynamism.
Hence, liturgy both leads to the transcendence of Mystery and selfrealization. It implies an overcoming and immersion into the new
reality that leads consciousness to a new perception characterised by
effervescence and wholeness.
The emphasis on the alogical intensity of play does not, however, entail that the aesthetics of ritual play is merely a reflection of perceptive synthesis. Both play and liturgy overcome the
descriptive-analytical modality of reflection, typical for the dualistic,
rational approach, and favours an aesthetical consciousness through
the liturgical act, space, time, art, speech etc. The one who plays and
24
25
Terrin, Liturgia come gioco, p. 57.
Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 66.
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celebrates does not see things from the outside, but is given the inner vision of essence. Play and liturgy as an act that involves the
human person totally and inserts him into the new order of existence
is therefore a diffused experience; a holistic modality through which
individual’s lives.
Seen in this light, liturgy occurs not only as an event of the Mystery, but also as an event of the human coram Deo. It is a work of an
incessant and symbolic construction of our identity. Liturgical play
is thus expressed as a factor opening, overcoming, and uplifting the
human person to a transcendent horizon. At the same time sacred
play is an act of intense faith, here understood as a total involvement
and adherence to the spirit of liturgy. Such an “act of faith” is evident
particularly in the second point: hypothetical modality.
Hypothetical modality
Gratia supponit naturam. It is precisely this “supernatural” dimension
of liturgy that reveals the “nature” of play as the principle of its
realisation. Gratia supponit homo ludens. Grace is enacted in the
symbolic arena of play. “All this is, of course, on the supernatural
plan, but at the same time it corresponds to the same degree to the
inner needs of [hu]man’s nature” – claims Guardini.26
As the previous description indicates, liturgy seems to lead not only
our body, our senses and thoughts; but it also plays with our imagination; it is constantly expanding into the sacred otherness which
does not belong to this order of reality, the reality of liturgy being
much deeper.
Recent anthropological researches deal with specific cognitive aspects of ritual activity related to hypothetical modality. J. Z. Smith
speaks of the “imaginary nature of the ritual”27 and A. B. Seligman
observes a “subjunctive” or “hypothetical” function of ritual that allows it to create a unique world of participants and gathers their
thoughts and feelings as well as their beliefs.28 Similarly, other anthropologists highlight the cognitive aspect of liturgical experience
as an interplay between the real and the imaginative.
With respect to the cognitive modality, the authors observe the
discovery of the subject’s self-reflection in the creation of the
26
Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 69.
Jonathan Z. Smith, ‘The Bare Facts of Ritual’, in Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining
Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982),
pp. 53-65.
28
Adam B. Selligman, ‘Ritual and the Subjunctive’, in Adam B. Selligman – Robert
P. Weller – Michael J. Puett – Bennett Simon, Ritual and Its Consequences. An Essay on
the Limits of Sincerity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 17-42.
27
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subjunctive – as if or could be universe – which demonstrates the
principle of the ritual play as well as the power of the rite to initiate
the human person in its event. In the rite, it is as if the divine becomes
present, whereby the human person is as if it lives in plenitude.
Moreover, with the idea of ‘as if’, rite has no function of likeness, but
it is rather characterised by enactment. It is indeed the subjunctive
sense that makes it real and present. This interplay allows the access
to the real world of rite. What the rite makes real and accessible to
our consciousness is exactly the hypothetical modality ‘as if’. The
ritual act as well as the ritual language is permeated by a subjunctive
use of the invocatory language (desiderative, optative, modal verbs
which define the possible world of meaning) and the principle of
dramatic imitation (mimesis). The participants live the liturgical
event as if the original event were present here and now; they speak
the language which has a function of enacting. By repeating itself,
the ritual act “imitates” the primordial event and makes it present.
This is what is responsible for the transposition from the subjunctive
(as if the body of Christ) to the indicative (this is the body of Christ).
Furthermore, such a representative transcendental function of rite and
play proves that all activities are located in the sphere of the possible
and the desired, but deeply real and present. Rite however ushers us
into the world of possibility, even by performing a decisive transfer
from the deeply imagined to the truly real. The same phenomena
can be found, according to Guardini, in art: “That which formerly
existed in the world of unreality only, and was rendered in art as
the expression of mature human life, has here become reality. These
forms are the vital expression of real and frankly supernatural life.”29
Liturgy is generated from the future, in that which comes in our
present, from the whole and holy, the eternal enacting here and now;
liturgy does not remain at a hypothetical level, but transfers everything into life, body, and act. In addition, liturgy offers something
higher. Therefore, an individual, aided by grace, is given the opportunity to realise his fundamental essence, to truly become that
which according to his divine destiny he should be and longs to be,
a child of God. Within liturgy, he is to go “unto God, who giveth
joy to his youth”.30 Becoming that which he should be – that is the
transformation made by liturgical play.
Introibo ad altarem Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.
Liturgy does not just “step backwards” in returning the human person
to a childlike state, restoring him to juventutem meam and enacting
the state of homo ludens. Liturgy does something much higher and
29
30
Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 70.
Ibid., p. 69.
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“steps forwards” – “towards the altar”, not only by initiating the
individual into its divine destiny, but by assisting the person in living such a state and by transforming the human person into homo
liturgicus.
According to this perspective, the hypothetical as well as the aesthetical modality essentially influences the transformation of subject,
deeply reflected in his subjectivity, in the consciousness of what he
does and what he is. Within the holy play of celebration, the human
person not only interprets the rules, the signs or the actions, but, he
is put into the interpretation of himself in the light of rite. From
the first moment the rite illuminates human beings. Consequently,
it considers humans not only as a hypothetical ludens but as a real
liturgicus. With the images of a child and an angel – the identity of
the homo liturgicus will become clearer without opposing the human
ludic nature. Liturgy is the “sacred play” which opens up access to
the Mystery and at the same time realises the human being as it
leads him to the plenitude of existence. Yet homo liturgicus lives in
this new order of existence in which he feels the closeness of the
Kingdom becoming like a child (cf. Mt 18:3).
Such hypothetical and indicative modalities of being express, indeed, the essential characteristic of the relation between the person
and the rite (faith). Where there is play, there is also “faith”. Playing makes believing. In the sacred play, an individual acts not only
hypothetically by following the rules of the play but also by trusting
in them. Through the sacred reality of liturgy, human existence is
transformed in the “childlike confidence” with the sacred reality of
liturgy. Sacred play therefore brings humans into a confident mode
of existence and adherence to the truth.
For outsiders, emphasises Guardini, liturgy appears useless. “They
incline to regard it as being to a certain extent aimless, as superfluous pageantry of a needlessly complicated and artificial character”.31
Only those participating in the liturgical play and adhering to its
spirit can understand it in the fullness of its sense. Only those playing within liturgy can live a profound experience of truth. Here, the
truth does not refer to the external fact, rational and independent
of the human realm rather it is an illuminating emergence from the
origin, the free adherence to the epiphany of God’s presence, the
gratuitous communion and profound faith. Therefore, liturgy can be
understood as an epiphanic event of truth which transforms individuals and impress on them the image of what they should be. By
being associated with the category of play the transcendence of the
liturgy is not reduced, but its relationship of donated communion is
31
Ibid., p. 61.
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fully affirmed; liturgy is not reduced to the immanent desire, but is
recognised in the sense of the new, transfigured order of existence.
Conclusion
Play is an open category. Nevertheless, by using the concept of play,
full of potentialities, scholars usually end up equating play with an
ideal act carrying certain ritual, ontological experience or protological/eschatological sense. Gratuity, freedom, festive mood all appear
as attractive propositions, which are more ingenious than real. Could
it be that theologians are too optimistic and overlook the contradiction between real play and real worship of the Church? After all,
the reflection of play represents the heritage of Romanticism and
at least, the humanistic approach to the “ideal type” of play which
recalls a way of thinking typical of Romanticism. However, because
of its “unreality”, play appears as one of the original cultural frameworks within which Liturgy can be manifested as ritual openness to
transcendence. The phenomenological account of play, its celebratory spirit and ritual patterns as well as its analogies with the ritual
act direct this potential transcendental moment towards a categorical
level by showing that Christian liturgy is a celebration of gratuitous
epiphany of God and his Spirit in Jesus Christ, Our Lord.
Along these lines, the transcendental reflection on the experience
of play and liturgy is not aimed at imposing certain “significance”
to the liturgy, but at discovering how the human person approaches
particular categorical levels given in the celebration of faith with
regard to Mystery as the essence of Christian worship. The ultimate
measure is the event of Jesus Christ from which Christian worship
finds its source and essence. Worship is anamnesis of the absolute
event of salvation; it is the enactment of the event in which God in
Christ and the Spirit saved the world. Christian liturgy makes this
event present, not through human forces, but through God’s action.
Thus, liturgy remains the divine epiphany in which the Christological
event reaches its sacramental manifestation, representing gratuity in
its fullest sense in order to be accepted and participated within.
Consequently, in this account, play is not liturgy; nor can liturgy
be reduced to the phenomena of play. Although play remains play
and liturgy worship, the ludic element is present in liturgy and ritual
element remains the fundamental factor of play. The doxological
practice of liturgy brings this “ludic existential” to its final truth:
invoking and celebrating God’s presence.
Here it becomes evident that in the experience of divine Mystery,
there is always the human experience involved. Play can illuminate
the world of human experience in terms of discovering a deep sense
of worship propter nos without reducing the truth of the Mystery to
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human measure. From a transcendental perspective, liturgy emerges
as a playful activity and playfulness appears as a fundamental human existential. However, it is a sacred, serious and solemn activity
wherein we participate in the divine act experiencing the truly, redeemed, and consecrated Reality.
Although transcendental and categorical experiences can be distinguished, they cannot be separated. The transcendental experience of
play is not, however, just an accompaniment to categorical experience of liturgy, a sort of supplement. Play illuminates the rite and
the rite illuminates play. “Gradually the significance of a sacred act
permeates the playing. Ritual grafts itself upon it; but the primary
thing is and remains play.”32
Although the ritual, along with the playful experience, essentially
unfolds within a structured situation, the two phenomena are not
purely “subjective”. The celebratory, festive, aesthetical, and hypothetical world of play maintains a favourable condition enabling the
real categorical experience without which we would not be able to
have any real experience of liturgy. The lived quality of play is always
a shaping moment within the experience of the celebration of the divine Mystery: what is experienced in the liturgy is partly determined
by its influence upon the structured action and situation. The essential function of ritual play is the modulation of experience: through
the celebratory spirit and the festive mood, through the aesthetical
and the cognitive mode, and lastly through language and liturgical
form.
The absolute event of Jesus Christ does not eliminate the transcendental experience of ritual play. Christ commits his Mystery to the
rite. The truth of the Mystery can be preserved only if the ritual maintains its original features, among which the ludic experience ought
to be mentioned as well. In the light of the transcendental sense of
play, liturgy surmounts the rational, causal principle and establishes a
different type of rationality by immersing into pure gratuity, totality
and participation. Liturgy thus transfers being from ordinary life to
the world of the sacred in order to discover the real image of its
personhood (who it ought to be).
We would hereby wish to conclude this reflection by pointing out
two epistemological claims.
Play undoubtedly helps to reformulate the notion of liturgical experience by revealing the transcendental mode of human experience.
Such a reflection promotes the meaning of worship as an event of the
Mystery. In that way, two opposites – human and divine – should not
be thought separately, but together respecting their specificity. Play,
in its inclusiveness and openness, can serve as analytic term for the
32
Huizinga, Homo ludens, p. 18.
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purpose of discussion, helping to locate the focus of liturgy – the
encounter between the human and the divine in Jesus Christ.
However, liturgy could be epiphany of the Mystery insofar as it
remains a playful activity. The transcendental and categorical aspects
cannot be separated. This dialectical relationship is central and irreducible. In the liturgy the truth of play is revealed; just as in play
the mode of approaching the sacred is revealed. This dialectic resists
all logical reductions, wherein the tension between play and liturgy
is never erased.
Since liturgy is given and shaped as an action within the transcendental pragmatics, the rite assumes an epistemological value by
performing in its proper mode through its special mode of thinking,
sensing and believing, and considering imaginations and realities,
hypothetical and indicative, and lastly the past and the future. “The
ritual act is a theophany and, at the same time, an anthropology
( . . . ): the unity between subject and object, in the sequence of its
relation as praxis (dialectic) and experience (hermeneutics). Above
all, phenomenologically, the ritual act is enacted by having in view
the meeting and experienced union between God and man.”33 Play
ranks among the possible approaches to an understanding of that ultimate truth and essence of liturgy (what do we celebrate?), in which
a transcendental sense of the experience of the Mystery is provided
(how do we celebrate), and light is also shed onto the question of
who celebrates.
Ivica Zizic
izizic@kbf-st.hr
Ȃngelo M. Dos Santos Cardita, Liturgical Polarity and Symbolic Hermenutics, in
James G. Leachmann, ed., The Liturgical Subject. Subject, Subjectivity and the Human
Person in Contemporary Liturgical Discussion and Critique (London: SCM Press, 2008),
p. 33.
33
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