All in Good Faith

Author(s): Jean Potter, Marcus Braybrooke
Publisher: World Congress of Faiths

Page 69

Communal Acts of Worship
All in Good Faith
There is also another form of worship which involves a senior priest and an assistant performing a high service or yasna (which comes from the root of the word which means to worship) on behalf of the community which symbolically purifies and re-envigorates the priests. This is normally a long service performed in the early morning on a daily basis where there are priests to do so, but few people attend these.
Zoroastrians have many communal celebratory occasions integrated into the religious calendar, most of which involve worship followed by eating together. Therefore whether the occasion is for example one of the six annual gahambar (endowment memorial feasts) or a service for a rite of passage, a priest or a number of priests will perform rituals centred around a fire urn, with the congregation joining in to repeat the most frequently recited prayers, Asham Vohu and Yathha Ahu Vairyo. Afterwards there will be communal prayer known as the Hamazor during which the participants traditionally confirm their shared faith, and renew bonds of solidarity by holding hands and reciting the prayer together. Most 'religious' gatherings are followed by a communal meal or a distribution of food.
Prayers are composed in languages that span over 2,500 years and most are by now incomprehensible to those who say them (like Latin and Church Slavonic). It is the power of intention with which they are imbued as well as their mantric dimension which is important. In Zoroastrianism the idea of worship, contemplation and nature are closely interlinked issues, since it is through meditation upon the harmony and regularity of nature that people are drawn towards an awareness of God and give praise to Him. Part of the worship therefore involves meditation upon God's creations and for this reason most of the religious celebrations are thanksgiving occasions. The ritual preparations that accompany the religious celebration consequently symbolise God's various creations such as opened seed bearing fruit like a pomegranate and sprouting wheat or lentil shoots. Apart from the communal occasions which require the presence of a priest, there are also informal, communal, religious events to which guests may be invited but with no priest and which are sometimes called 'Little Tradition' occasions which may be held in a home or at a shrine. Here prayers will be said sometimes after the telling of a story and a special altar or sopra with the manifestations of God's bounteous creation will be displayed. All these occasions offer the opportunity to promote good over evil by celebrating and identifying with 'pure' or life enhancing matter rather than with negative or 'impure' energies.
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