C. S. Lewis’ view was that true worship should be like a good old shoe, so comfortable that you don't have to break it in: “The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.” That is a sensibility I have long admired in the Byzantine liturgies. While some speak of the High Mass of the Western Church as the “most beautiful thing this side of Heaven,” I know of nothing so formally transcendent and still so informally natural as the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
This contrast is something I noted back when I was first exposed to Byzantine-rite at St. Tikhon's Seminary, which was a contrast to what I had observed of the extraordinary form on a daily basis. The strict and exact ("rigorist"?) court ceremonial of the old rite seems severe and stiff in comparison with the naturalness of the ordained ministers and servers at a Byzantine-rite Divine Liturgy. This naturalness is probably present of the other liturgical rites of the Church as well. What would Adrian Fortescue make of the ars celebrandi and attitudes of contemporary traditionalists?
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