What is Liturgy?

Many people today are familiar with ritual, but are not familiar with liturgy. Ritual is a set of actions done in accordance with social custom or normal protocol. For instance, Westerners ritually shake each others hands upon meeting, and ask the ritual question "How are you?" Liturgy is a special subset of ritual, it is a ritual done not for secular purposes, but for theological purposes. Why is liturgy necessary? Liturgy is necessary, in part, because Scripture is hard to understand:

He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. ~2 Peter 3:16

Liturgy is a call-response prayer in which the prayer leader proclaims a passage from sacred Scripture and the rest of the prayer group responds by proclaiming a matching response from another place in sacred Scripture. Upon hearing the Word of God, the participants move in conformance with that Word, standing, kneeling, sitting or genuflecting, in order to better understand the Word’s impact on themselves and the world.  The Scripture passages in both the call and the response are pre-selected to match the liturgical calendar, that is, the Scripture passages used in liturgy are meant to match the day and season of the year, or to match the sacrament that is being conferred within the liturgy.

As a result, liturgy always includes three elements, all of which are universally available to the liturgical Christians of that denomination: 

1. Daily Scriptural prayers at set times of the day (Liturgy of the Hours)
2. Actions and commemorations keyed to each year's calendar (Liturgical seasons and liturgical calendar)
3. Liturgical services proper (e.g., Sacrifice of the Mass aka the Divine Liturgy) 

The purpose of liturgy is two-fold. First, by its unrelenting emphasis on Scripture, it is meant to assist both the celebrant and the congregants gain an understanding of how God’s mind works, and what God wants of us. Second, it is meant to “wash the world in the Word”, liturgy is intended to use the grace of the Scriptures and the sacraments that it wraps within its embrace, to sanctify the whole world.

Both magic and liturgy involve ritual, but the reasons for the two kinds of ritual are very different. Early man felt himself surrounded by unseen, powerful forces. Like a stranger using a handshake to prevent violence, early man used ritual magic in order to attempt to control the unseen forces around him so that he will not come to harm. Pagans used the ritual of magic to control, or at least placate, the gods.

Early Christians saw the world quite differently. They knew there was only one God. They knew God could not change or be changed. For liturgical Christians, the purpose of the specialized ritual they call liturgy was not meant to change God, it was meant to help man understand God's intentions. Early Christians used liturgy to help adapt man to God's purpose. Christians viewed man as fallen, so they the need to wrap many of the most important activities of life inside of liturgical actions, so that their own actions would be correctly oriented towards God.

Liturgy is the opposite of magic. Magic is meant to control the gods, to get the gods to do what men want them to do. Liturgy is meant to change man, it is meant to help man do what God wants us to do. 

Liturgy, then, is to live Scripture, employing the whole person, both mind and body, wherein the whole person, both mind and body, responds to grace. Just as the individual grains combine to form the bread, the individual grapes combine to form the wine, so the individual Christians combine to act as One Body.

Now, some object to liturgy because it seems contrived to pray a set, stylized prayer at specific times during the day. Liturgy doesn't stop you praying when and where you want, but it allows you to consistently pray with other Christians.

Say, for instance, you had a friend. You wanted to spend some time in prayer with that friend. You would schedule a time and place to do this, correct? Well, all baptized Christians are brothers and sisters in Christ, so liturgy is a way of scheduling time to pray with your brothers and sisters when you have never - and will never - meet them.  

When you and your friend pray together at your scheduled time, you share your prayers with each other, right? You might pray quietly, but you might also want to pray out loud, so that you two could hear each other's prayers and each make the other's prayer part of your own prayer. 

Same with liturgy. Except the brothers and sisters are speaking different languages, all over the world. So, by agreeing on what Scripture passages you will pray ahead of time, it allows everyone to "hear" each others' prayers, even if these prayers are spoken in a different language thousands of miles away, even if they are not spoken at all.

So, liturgy is a way to pray with all the friends in Christ, past, present and future, whom you have not yet met.