As a junior in high school, I had the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C. I visited many fascinating sites such as the U.S. Capital Building, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the White House (this was before 9/11), among many others.

One of the most memorable experiences, one that still impresses me almost 25 years later, is the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. This is truly something to behold.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier honors all missing or unidentified service members who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Since 1937, soldiers have kept guard at the tomb 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, no matter what the conditions.

The manner in which the sentinel on duty keeps watch is strictly regimented. The soldier paces back and forth before the tomb taking 21 steps in each direction before turning around at the end of each pass. All of this takes place in a highly formalized way, which in itself is impressive.

However, most impressive is the Changing of the Guard. This is more than a pragmatic activity. It is part of the honoring of the tomb and all that the tomb represents. Thus, this routine event takes place in a highly ritualized and choreographed manner that involves not only the relieving and retiring sentinels but also the relief commander who carries out a detailed white-glove inspection of the incoming sentinel’s rifle.

Attention! …to Detail

What makes this ceremony so moving and memorable is the ritual according to which it is carried out. This ritual is performed with great reverence, respect, and diligence. The three soldiers who are involved are impeccably outfitted in dress uniform, which they maintain in perfect condition. Every movement and action—walking, turning around, inspecting, and offering the rifle for inspection, stopping at and saluting the tomb as they pass before it—is carefully choreographed and executed with great care and precision. Nothing is casual or sloppy. Every element of the ritual comes together to form a whole that is dignified and impressive.

No words are spoken once the ceremony begins. Only a short introduction is given, mostly to call for silence on the part of the observers and to ask them to remain standing, both out of respect. This near absence of speaking means that no explanations of the elements of the ritual are offered. Therefore, unless observers are already familiar with the ceremony, or have done some research in advance, they will not know the exact meaning of the movements and gestures that make it up.

While it is likely the case that the vast majority of people who visit Arlington National Cemetery for the Changing of the Guard have at least some basic notion of what the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is and what this ceremony is about, it is also true that a great deal is communicated by the ritual itself even if not every detail is understood. At the very least, the fact that this ceremony honors the tomb and those buried there, or represented by it, for an important, even sacred, reason, cannot be lost on most observers.

Dignified and carefully executed ritual has this power to communicate even in the absence of explanations. In fact, ritual can speak on levels deeper than words. Through its union and coordination of only a few words, gestures, actions, and symbols, it has the power to engage more of the human person than words alone and to leave a deeper and more lasting impact. Think of other military rituals, for example, such as the folding of the American flag or military honors at the burials of veterans with the 21-gun salute and the playing of Taps on a bugle or trumpet. Without knowing what all of these rituals mean or the history behind them (which can always be researched and learned) they have the power to speak to us, and to command our respect.

While words and explanations have their place, if they are too many or improperly placed, they can greatly diminish the communicative power of a ritual while at the same time adding little, if any, of this power in comparison. As ritual, this also applies to the Church’s sacred liturgy. There is often a temptation in the Church to fill her rituals, her liturgy, with explanations so as to make these more “comprehensible” and “accessible” to the faithful. But this attitude neglects the reality that ritual communicates in its own manner on a deeper level and can have a more lasting impact on those who experience it than explanations or explicit teaching alone.

The deepest and most profound truths cannot be comprehended by the intellect alone and are best revealed through ritual, which also has the capacity to speak to the heart. As Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) explains, “Liturgy addresses the human being in all his depth, which goes far beyond our everyday awareness; there are things we only understand with our heart; the mind can gradually grow in understanding the more we allow our heart to illuminate it.”¹

Modern Man—Moving Target

Additionally, it is commonly believed that simplifying rituals or “updating” them to better fit the sensibilities of modern man is necessary for making them more comprehensible and relevant. Father Aidan Nichols explains that during and after the time of the Second Vatican Council, the reigning theories of ritual argued for the greater effectiveness of simpler rather than more complex rituals and, therefore, liturgies. However, Nichols explains that since that time there have been major shifts in attitudes towards ritual in the sociology and anthropology of religion. He explains that after the close of the Council, “new schools of thought began to emphasize meaning, not explanation, the nonrational as well as the rational, and ritual’s transformative power: all of which led to a new respect for the formal, ceremonious ordering of rite.…”² Nichols further describes: “To the sociologist, it is by no means self-evident that brief, clear rites have greater transformative potential than complex, abundant, lavish, rich, long rites, furnished with elaborate ceremonial.”³

What if the U.S. Army decided to simplify the ceremony of the Changing of the Guard and to do away with some of the “fussiness” in order to make it simpler and, therefore, more comprehensible and accessible? The sentinels could wear a more casual uniform to make them more comfortable and spend less time maintaining their dress uniform. They could relax the way the sentinels pace and turn around. They could simplify the inspection of the rifle or eliminate it altogether as something unnecessary to what is essentially a shift change. They could reduce the watch to more “reasonable” hours and allow the sentinels to pause and take shelter during inclement weather. They could add a commentator to give explanations of what would be left of the ritual after such “pruning” of it or have the sentinels themselves explain what they are doing.

All of these are possibilities, but a great deal would be lost. Perhaps every element of the ceremony would be comprehended, but the meaning of the ritual—namely the profound significance and worth of the ultimate sacrifice offered by the soldiers represented by the monument—and the reverence invoked would be greatly diminished. Visitors to the tomb might be able to explain what the tomb and ceremony (if it could even be called that anymore) represent, but they would likely be little touched or moved by it. Probably, the number of visitors to the tomb would greatly decrease, the ceremony no longer being interesting enough for most visitors to the nation’s capital to go out of their way to witness it.

Clear and Present Meaning

In an article he recently wrote for this publication regarding the evangelistic power of the liturgy, Dr. James Pauley included a very enlightening quotation from Benedictine Father Aidan Kavanaugh about the way in which ritual, specifically liturgical ritual, communicates (or teaches, as stated in the quotation). Kavanaugh writes, “[A]lthough the liturgy does indeed ‘teach,’ it teaches as any other ritual does—experientially, nondiscursively, richly, ambiguously, elementally. In which case it is better left alone to go its repetitious, archaic way so long as the symbols that make up its vocabulary are respected and left to voice their own robust chords of color, food and drink, movement…touch and smell, life and death, sound and rhythmic repetition. Symbols such as these, and the ritual language they go to make up, are imprecise, communicating not by removing ambiguity but by flooding the senses with it. Much meaning is drawn together into foci that are so complex they do not permit exhaustive verbal definitions concerning what any one focal point means. What, for example, do gold rings on the hands of a couple married 50 years ‘mean’?”⁴

The meaning of ritual surpasses the sum of the explanation of its parts, which on their own often elude full explanation. And yet the fabric of their interaction forms a rich and meaningful whole.

This fabric that is ritual also has the power not only to communicate facts to the intellect, but also to communicate truth to and touch the whole person on every level: mind, will, and heart. Because of this, rituals can speak to a wider audience and have a greater impact. Pope Pius XI understood this when he published the encyclical letter Quas Primas by which he promulgated the Feast of Christ the King in response to the challenge to Christ’s kingship from atheistic and secularistic regimes. He wrote, “That these blessings may be abundant and lasting in Christian society, it is necessary that the kingship of our Savior should be as widely as possible recognized and understood, and to that end nothing would serve better than the institution of a special feast in honor of the Kingship of Christ. For people are instructed in the truths of faith and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year—in fact, forever. The Church’s teaching affects the mind primarily; her feasts affect both mind and heart and have a salutary effect upon the whole of man’s nature. Man is composed of body and soul, and he needs these external festivities so that the sacred rites, in all their beauty and variety, may stimulate him to drink more deeply of the fountain of God’s teaching, that he may make it a part of himself, and use it with profit for his spiritual life.”⁵

Ritual has the power to communicate, to teach, to form, to bring reassurance and peace, to heal, to touch, and to move deeply. Ritual respects and even flows from our nature as the composite of body and soul, as embodied souls. It affects mind, will, and emotions.

Honor the Rites

I have heard it stated more than once by people of various backgrounds that when they attended a Catholic funeral which included military honors at the burial following the Funeral Mass, the military honors were the part they found the most memorable and moving. There is something more than sentimentality in this: there is a perception of the deep reality of the honor due to one who served our country in the armed forces and the truth that our nation is something worth fighting and sacrificing one’s life for. All of this, at least on some level, is perceived without any words of explanation.

It might be interesting to ask why the funeral Mass itself is often not what has the most lasting impact. Perhaps it is because, unlike with military rituals such as the Changing of the Guard, we do not allow liturgical ritual to do its job and speak for itself.

1. Ratzinger, Joseph. The Feast of Faith. Trans. Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006, p. 151.
2. Aidan Nichols. Looking at the Liturgy: A Critical View of Its Contemporary Form (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), p. 57.
3. Nichols, p. 59.
4. Aidan Kavanaugh, OSB. “Teaching Through the Liturgy,” Notre Dame Journal of Education 5, no. 1 (Spring 1974), 40-41.
5. Pius XI, Quas Primas, 21.