On the History and Development of the School Ritual: Maria Lehrs-Röschl

On the memorial service

In the meeting that we religion teachers had with Rudolf Steiner on December 9, 1922, we also mentioned that Johanna Wohlrab, a student in the highest class at the time, had asked whether the students in the upper classes, after almost two years of participating in the Youth Festival, could not have a Sunday activity that would continue beyond the Youth Festival. I remember that we teachers considered this question to be premature, at least, and did not expect Rudolf Steiner to respond positively.

However, he took up this suggestion with particular thoughtfulness and described it as far-reaching in significance. He wanted to consider it further. He did not want to include a Mass in the activities connected with our religious instruction, “but we can do something similar to a Mass.”

On March 13, 1923, Rudolf Steiner handed the text of the sacrificial ceremony to Dr. Hahn, Dr. Schubert, and me in Stuttgart. We were to copy it out. On Palm Sunday, March 25, the three of us held this ceremony for the first time for the students of the 11th grade and the teachers.

Afterwards, colleagues approached us with the request to repeat the sacrificial ceremony for the teachers alone. We were unsure whether this ceremony, like those given so far, was only intended for the pupils, even if teachers and parents were also present. Yes, we were definitely inclined to this opinion. I was asked to put this question to Rudolf Steiner.

I asked him in a way that already showed that I thought it was not appropriate to hold the sacrifice ceremony differently than for students. But Rudolf Steiner looked at me with wide eyes (I knew this gesture as his expression of surprised, slightly disapproving astonishment) and said, "Why not? This ceremony can be held wherever there are people who want it."

So we held the sacrificial ceremony for the first time without students, just teachers, on Good Friday, March 30, 1923. In the following years, it was held repeatedly in this way, especially in memory of deceased colleagues and at the annual meetings of former students, initially only for those who had previously participated in the free religious instruction.

To understand this action, it is important to try to grasp Rudolf Steiner's statement “something like a Mass” in his sense. These words can be interpreted in different ways and understood to mean something that can be classified in the line of development of the Mass before or after it, something that ranks below or above the Mass. Here, subjective tendencies can easily come into play that contradict the objective development of this type of ritual. The expression “mass-like” means that, on the one hand, something similar to a mass is present, but on the other hand, there is no complete correspondence.

In early writings by Rudolf Steiner (e.g., March 17, 1905), we find the indication that the Catholic Mass has its origins in mysteries that came over from Persia and Egypt and took on a particularly popular form in these cultural currents.

The students of such secret schools were originally taught about the origin of the world and of human beings, their significance in the world, how the world spirit poured itself into every manifestation of the creation of the natural kingdoms, and how human beings are a confluence of all that has been created — the small world within the large. How man, who brought turbidity into this pure world through his passions and imperfections, could achieve catharsis through the sacrifice of his lower nature, thereby transforming his being and thus uniting with his divine origin, was demonstrated to the student at the next stage through actions.

The Mass emerged from such actions of those mysteries. And to this day, the Christian Mass unfolds in four parts: the Gospel (proclamation), the Offertory (sacrifice), the Consecration, and Communion. This is also the structure of the sacrificial celebration, and in this it resembles the Mass.

It is by no means the same as the Mass in terms of the substances of the sacrifice and the Consecration, but only similar. It would be incorrect to think that there are no substances in the sacrifice. They are there in the form of the body and blood of the human being who, in his consciousness, wants to be deeply imbued with the inner experience of Christ's sacrifice on Golgotha — in accordance with the words:

The devotion of our souls

Lead into this sacrificial space

The experience of Christ's sacrifice for humanity,

with which the part of the sacrificial celebration corresponding to the introductory “relay prayer” of the Mass concludes. Thus begins the similarity, that is, the dissimilarity with the Mass in the second part of the sacrificial celebration.

Rudolf Steiner clearly pointed out this change in the development of the Mass as early as 1909 and 1911, in his discussion of transubstantiation, first in the 14th lecture of the Kassel Gospel of John cycle. There he pointed out that we are only at the beginning of Christian development. The future of this development will consist in the full realization of the fact that Christ, through the mystery of Golgotha, created a new center of light in the earth, so that his words at the institution of the Lord's Supper express that he has made the earth his body. This is realized in the cultic form of the substances of bread and wine.

“And those people who are able to grasp the true meaning of these words of Christ form mental images that attract the body and blood of Christ to the bread and the grape juice, attracting the Christ Spirit within them. And they unite themselves with the Christ Spirit. Thus the symbol of the Last Supper becomes a reality.” Without the thought that connects to Christ in the human heart, no attraction can be developed to the Christ spirit during the Lord's Supper. But through these thought forms, such an attraction is developed. And so, for all those who need the external symbol to perform a spiritual act, namely union with Christ, the Lord's Supper will be the way, the way to the point where their inner strength is so strong, where they are so filled with Christ that they can unite with Christ without the external physical mediation. The preparatory stage for mystical union with Christ is the Lord's Supper — the preparatory stage. This is how we must understand these things. And just as everything develops from the physical to the spiritual under the influence of Christianity, so too must the things that were there first as a bridge develop under the influence of Christianity: the Lord's Supper must develop from the physical to the spiritual in order to lead to true union with Christ. One can only speak of these things in hints, for only when they are taken in their full sacred dignity are they understood in the right sense.

In this and the following explanation, Rudolf Steiner starts from a reference to the approaching atomic age. In 1911, in the cycle “From Jesus to Christ” (9th lecture), he discussed the exoteric path that can lead people to Christ through the Last Supper and the Gospels. He goes on to emphasize that through their striving on the inner path provided by spiritual science, people can mature within themselves,

"not merely live in worlds of thought, not merely in abstract worlds of feeling and sensation, but permeate themselves inwardly with the element of the spirit, thereby they will experience communion in the spirit. Through this, thoughts—as meditative thoughts—will be able to live in human beings, which will be exactly the same as the sign of the Last Supper—the consecrated bread—has been from the outside, only from within."

This path, he continues, will become an exoteric path for human beings in the future.

“But then all ceremonies will also change, and what used to happen through the attributes of bread and wine will happen in the future through a spiritual communion. However, the idea of communion will remain.”

These two passages from 1909 and 1911, taken together, make it clear where the sacrificial celebration is to be placed in the line of historical development: not before, but after the Mass with bread and wine. It is therefore not — because it apparently does not bring about a change in substance — a preliminary stage, a preparation for a Mass with bread and wine. For the bread received and the wine consumed are taken up in the human being by that power which, in the unconscious depths of his own body, works to transform matter, and from there can gradually bring about clarification and transformation in the consciousness. Whereas communion in the spirit, as experienced in the sacrifice ceremony, is an act of consciousness that can become ever clearer and have an effect on the physical being of the human being. The passages quoted clearly refer to the transformation and communion as described by Rudolf Steiner twelve years later in the sacrifice ceremony. Continuing the above quotation, he states as a prerequisite for such communion in the spirit:

"that certain inner thoughts, inner feelings, penetrate and spiritualize the inner being just as solemnly as, in the best sense of inner Christian development, the Lord's Supper has spiritualized and Christified the human soul. When that becomes possible – and it will become possible – then we will have advanced another stage in our development. And this will once again provide real proof that Christianity is greater than its outward form."

The form for these solemn thoughts, which penetrate and spiritualize the inner being, is given in the celebration of the sacrifice. One must simply free oneself from the prejudice that thoughts are always only something abstract. Their nature depends on the thinking subject. Thoughts can become an experience that has the power to shape the physical world. This can happen through the sacrificial ceremony, right down to the body and blood of people striving for Christ.

And so, in the wake of this experience — thanks to the picture of the world and the human being that spiritual science gives us — the words of the Offertory of the sacrificial ceremony, spoken with raised arms, and those spoken by the person standing on the right, can solemnly expand into the thought of the cosmic biography of the human being: Before us stands the description of the time when the sun emerged from the moon-bound earth. With the sun, the high being of the human ego, whom we now call Christ, also left the earth. The hierarchical archetypes of the human being left us, leaving behind mere images. This meant that the human being took upon himself the sacrifice of descending deeper into the darkness of the material world that was now forming—a moment of development before which high spiritual beings who did not want to follow the human being in this descent “veiled their faces.”

The idea can be traced back to an even earlier phase of development: when the pre-Saturnian spirit being of humanity, which could have undergone a very high development without being bound to matter (but without the development of the free ego), entered this world cycle in order to undergo precisely this path of physical lawfulness. (See “The Mystery of Michael,” Chapter XIV, also Cologne, April 27, 1905.)

It was this step that

initiated the sacrifice

of our human existence

of our soul-filled body

of our spiritualized blood

initiated that descent into the darkness of matter, from which we would not be able to gain the possibility of ascension again without the power of Christ. Beings of a future world can arise if, in the course of their development, human beings find the power to bring forth that “essence-creating love-fire” which can reign “from human being to God” and also “from human being to human being.”

Certainly not every participant in the sacrificial ceremony will be able or willing to take up this reference to distant cosmic phases of the human journey. Differences in the way experiences are perceived exist in every kind of ritual act.

The goal is what matters here, because it is what has an effect. And the goal of the sacrificial ceremony is to connect oneself with the human ego in body and blood, down to the physical level. Rudolf Steiner also emphasized in personal conversations that this goal is achievable in our present time, as Friedrich Rittelmeyer reports in his book “Meine Lebensbegegnung mit Rudolf Steiner” (My Encounter with Rudolf Steiner), in which he adds his own essential thoughts on the two types of communion.

Thus, the question and request of that student were of far-reaching significance and gave Rudolf Steiner the opportunity to give to humanity in ritual form what he had already hinted at in 1909 and 1911.

When asked how it was possible that this cult was performed by people without priestly ordination, Rudolf Steiner is said to have replied that he had gone as far as he could with the unordained. This answer is also of far-reaching significance: what arose again and again in the development of Christianity as a longing and striving for a lay priesthood – but was also persecuted again and again and finally brought to an end – has now been given new seeds by Rudolf Steiner, which can bear fruit depending on the destiny of the individual. This will be achieved when, through innermost striving in the encounter with the highest Self, the Christ, ordination is attained.

Eckwälden, Easter 1964