From the Archives: “The Rite of Sprinkling as An Invitation to Worship”

Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.

Why does gathering for worship matter? What makes it important in the lives of those who come? How best might the worship ritual invite people into the importance of baptism? Those are the kinds of questions Margaret Mary Kelleher, OSU, raises in this essay as she, then, describes the central purpose of worship: to continually renew the community’s identity. In our time (early twenty-first century) when baptism is increasingly misunderstood as an objectionable “requirement” for belonging to the Christian community and when, as Kelleher says, many people who were baptized as infants don’t remember the experience, her suggestion of beginning Sunday worship by sprinkling the assembly with water (also called aspergus) is worth considering. We hear the call from environmental protesters that “Water is Life.” So it is within the Christian community.

Selected Quotes from

“The Rite of Sprinkling as An Invitation to Worship”

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The members of a community share an identity, which is continually reinforced and reappropriated each time the group convenes to act together for the common good. The group that does not meet disintegrates; hence, the rituals surrounding births, deaths, and holidays are important occasions for recognizing and strengthening families, organizations, and other cultural groups. A document from the church of the third century reveals an awareness of the significance of gathering for the continued life of the group. It exhorts people to assemble faithfully lest the church be deprived and the Body scattered by their staying away (Didascalia, chap. 13).

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In our gatherings we call to mind Jesus’ own transformation from death to new life in the power of the spirit and we ourselves participate in that transformation. Thus we proclaim our hope for the complete transformation of ourselves and all creation. We come together to remember; that is our reason to hope and our mission as church. If we as a church lose our memory, we will also have lost our identity.

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One of the major functions of ritual is to keep memory alive by communicating the values and meanings that bind a group together. The symbolic actions or objects used within a ritual are carriers of value and meaning. Victor Turner calls these ritual symbols multivocal because they are capable of carrying a number of meanings. Some of the meanings carried by ritual symbols are sensory and evoke feelings; some are cognitive and express the ideas and norms of the group.

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The intensity of meaning builds when all of the elements in the rite of blessing and sprinkling are directed to the communication of one or another of the meanings of baptism. Instead of the purifying aspect of water we may wish to stress its life-giving aspect; it is the water of life, the living spring of which we all partake and which makes us one. The first of the blessings suggested in the rite communicates this idea, and the careful choice of an appropriate song will reinforce the meaning.

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If meaning is to be effectively communicated in a ritual, a dynamic interaction must occur between its sensory and cognitive components. The symbols used must engage persons affectively.

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Margaret Mary Kelleher OSU taught liturgy in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America.

Kelleher, M.M. “The Rite of Sprinkling as An Invitation to Worship.” Liturgy 1, no. 4 (1981): 28–33

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