What do we bless and why?

On the question that gives this short paper its title, I have one thesis to advance, two theological premises that support the thesis, and three comments to make by way of elaborating it. The context of my thesis is liturgy-"primary" theology, as it is sometimes called. This I take to be a suitably Anglican way to proceed. And I shall start from a concrete question about a specific liturgical practice that has been under discussion in my own diocese.

The discussion concerns postulants and candidates for holy orders, more particularly those who aspire to ordained ministry as vocational or permanent deacons. There are four or five such persons in the diocesan program of training and instruction, which includes a year of field education in a parish church. The question that has come up is this: In addition to their other ministries in their respective parish settings, should deacons-in-training be allowed to do the things that deacons customarily do at the eucharist? Should they read the liturgical gospel, prepare the bread and wine at the altar, say the dismissal, and so on? Should they, in other words, act like deacons now, before the bishop has ordained them?

The question was discussed at a meeting of instructors and supervisors, one of whom insisted that the answer is yes. Deacons-in-training should not only be allowed to take the deacon's liturgical role, as though it were a concession or a special case; taking that role should be required as part of their formation. The argument that was presented went like this:

"The rite or ceremony of ordination is like the rite of matrimony. Everybody knows that when two people present themselves for marriage, they are already living together in physical intimacy. Clergy presume that wedding couples 'know' each other in the sexual sense. Couples presume that clergy will presume it. That is how things should be when it comes to ordaining a deacon. In the same way that the couple who take part in the rite of matrimony are already doing what married people do precisely as married people, so a candidate taking part in ordination to the diaconate should already be doing what deacons, precisely as deacons, do."

Such was the argument. It posits an analogy, and from it draws a practical implication. I am not entirely convinced the argument is sound. But let me make the best case I can for it, and then examine what I take to be its presuppositions and implications.

According to this argument, there would seem to be three components in marriage, which fit together in a certain way according to an inherent "logic." The same three components, ordered in the same way, are involved-or ought to be involved-in ordained ministry. Marriage and ordained ministry alike involve (1) a ceremonial event, (2) a social fact, and (3) an operative or constitutive action. The analogy that the argument posits thus falls nicely into a table with two columns and three rows.

The middle row of the table lines up marriage and diaconate as "states" or conditions that consist in certain relations between the persons who are "in" these states, and other persons. Below these, I have put the "constitutive acts," to show that (on the argument I am considering) they are the basis on which everything else in the table is built-the acts that most directly and decisively signify what diaconate, or marriage, is all about. In each case, the "constitutive act" focuses the meaning that makes the institution what it is, and performing the acts is what brings the institution into being. This is what married people do, as married, and what deacons do, as deacons. So, if a sacrament is an effective sign, the really sacramental component is the foundational, bottom row rather than the one at the top. The top-row components, the ceremonial events, may be more conspicuous, but (according to the argument) they presuppose the social facts in the middle row, and you have the middle row, to all intents and purposes, when you have the bottom row.

What the church does, then, when it conducts the wedding rite or the ordination rite is clear enough. It adds its endorsement to a reality that already exists. The ceremonial event acknowledges, celebrates, and gives thanks for a social fact, a set of particular relationships and activities that have begun to exist and occur. The institution or social fact is a fact apart from the celebration. We are what we do, and so the candidates are deacons; the bride and bridegroom are spouses. They come to the ordination or the wedding as persons who have already been enacting their respective roles, constituting their respective relations to others. That being so, the church now formally takes cognizance of what they have been doing, and thus of what they are. It recognizes a state of affairs. It declares that so-and-so is to be regarded and acted toward as such-and-such (wife, husband, deacon), because so-and-so is such-and-such.

As you will gather, the analogy between ordination and matrimony, drawn as this argument draws it, entails a whole theology of sacraments in the sense of ritual actions. That theology is what I find questionable. There is no need here to decide whether marriage and ordination are real and proper sacraments on a par with holy baptism and the holy eucharist. Anglicans do speak of holy matrimony and holy orders, and for present purposes it is enough to acknowledge that the two rites have a sacramental quality. That quality, however, can be understood in various ways. In this case I should say it is being understood more or less as follows. There is sacredness everywhere. From time to time, certain things or occasions become "transparent" and disclose an underlying holiness. We do not make this sacral character: we find it. It belongs to the being of creation, just as it is, as being, as created. That being so, sacred ceremonies might seem superfluous. Why, we might ask, do we need deliberate, formal, ritualized, "sacramental" occasions? If we do ask this, the reply might well be the one that Robert Farrer Capon often used. He answered with another question: Why kiss your spouse when you both know you love each other? The point, I surmise, is that states of being such as love and holiness have an intrinsic exigence for expression. They "need" to be manifested, communicated, brought to common awareness, even though none of that really adds anything to the fact that gets manifested. Applied to the topic at hand, this means it is meet and right that when persons have in fact become spouses or deacons, as the case may be, this state of affairs should be expressed in outward, public fashion, at a ceremony which can be thought of as sacramental in the sense-but only the sense-that it calls attention to something holy.