Religion & Rituals PDF

Religion Rit u al a nd #Throwback  RITUALS ❑ Provide a tangible way for believers to experience their faith. ❑ Beliefs are the province of your mind, but rituals get the rest of your body into the act. ❑ Through rituals, religions take physical form. These pr...

Religion Rit u al a nd #Throwback  RITUALS ❑ Provide a tangible way for believers to experience their faith. ❑ Beliefs are the province of your mind, but rituals get the rest of your body into the act. ❑ Through rituals, religions take physical form. These practices give texture and taste, form and function to a religion.  Religious Rituals » Establish the sacred calendar and its holy days. » Set the ways followers celebrate the passages in life. » Focus the mind in a spiritually disciplined way. Religious rituals are also often limited to the people who make up a particular religion. Many religions forbid those of other faiths from practicing their traditional rituals: ✔ When Judaism instructs Jews to light candles on Friday night, it’s a ritual meant especially for Jews. ✔ When some Christian groups, such as Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox, offer Holy Communion (known as the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist), only their members can receive it. ✔ The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the Haj j, is only for Muslims.  Prayer ❑ a communication to God. ❑ Many believe their prayers are answered and evidence of it is primarily reported in the Old and New Testament. ❑ Later miracles and graces have been reported by the Church and by common people. ❑ It is done by those who trust the power of word and thought.  PEOPLE PRAY… to express thankfulness for life’s while kneeling, while blessings, to repent for sins, and to standing, with eyes grant forgiveness to other people. downcast or lifted heavenward. to clear and focus their minds. alone or as a so that they can achieve calmness community. and wisdom. at proscribed times to express awe and wonder at the and in proscribed mystery of life and at the beauty of ways, or they pray the world around them. whenever the mood to find release from suffering. hits them. The Catholic Mass is a prayer service that includes the most important Christian ritual, the Eucharist, and defines the community that prays together. ❑ Jesus taught people to say the Lord's Prayer. ❑ The ACTS Method of Christian Prayer: » Many Buddhist and Hindu sects pray for many hours at a time. » They find solace and release from stress by looking inside themselves in order to experience the great void or emptiness. » This emptiness quiets them and frees them from the constraints of their own lives. » Five times a day, Muslims remember Allah and their relationship with him. » The content of their prayer includes praise, gratitude, and supplication. » The prayer’s purpose is to keep life—and their place in it (submissive to God)— in perspective. » Regular Jewish prayer must be said three times a day (although afternoon and evening prayers are often combined), with special prayers added for the Sabbath and holidays. » A formal Jewish prayer service requires a minyan, which is a group of ten Jewish male adults. » For more liberal Jews, a minyan consists of ten Jewish adults of any gender.  ACTIVITY 1: ESSAY Guide Questions: 1. State a ritual that you think should not be practiced by people. (It can be from your religion or other religions.) 2. Explain why it should not be practiced. Thank you & God bless! Do you have any questions?