Here’s another passage, starting at Heb. 9:1: Even
(kai) the first tabernacle and covenant had ordinances of divine service and an earthly sanctuary.
Beware, some translations leave out the “even”. Others translate it as “also”, which makes it completely clear that we have them too, but obscures the fact that ours are better. Then the ch. goes on to summarize the 1st ordinances & describe the Tabernacle & its repeated sacrifices. Then it discusses how Christ made the greater sacrifice. This means we have greater ordinances (& a greater sanctuary).
I think Protestants like to gloss over that pt quickly to get to the pt about how Christ made only 1 sacrifice forever b/c they think we “sacrifice Christ over & over” (which is extra-nonsensical when they deny the Real Presence). I think that’s a big reason they think they hate rituals. But my priest said in the Theophany homily [we’re Byzantines] just today, “Our Lord is the Lord of time. For Him all time is the present.” I like to think of that principle like how we can look at a map & see the whole world (well, metaphorically) at once, even though to look at the actual globe is to see only pt. Something 3D can be looked at in 2D. Like in
Flatland. God is beyond 4D, beyond
xD (cf. Rm 16:26,
aioniou Theou, eternal God), so He can see/exp. everything that ever happened, is happening, & ever will happen, in however many dimensions exist in the universe, all at once, as if the sum of the exp. of the universe is sitting in front of Him like a map. And it’s like how an icon is
(Biblically—tell the Protestants this!)
“like a ‘high-definition’ projection [that] exactly reflects its source…‘(eikṓn) assumes a prototype, of which it not merely resembles, but from which it is drawn’…(eikṓn) then is more than a ‘shadow’; rather it is a replication”. And so, “the honour rendered to the image passes over to the prototype” (St John of Damascus). To venerate the icon is to venerate who is in it. And to see the icon of an event is to exp. the event. (Icons of heaven are beyond time.) Icon veneration is another big reason [Protestants hate ritual].
So the 1 Sacrifice happens in every Liturgy, by
amamnesis/zikaron, (cf. Lk 22:19, &
azkarah—from the same root as
zikaron—in Lv 2 about memorial grain offerings) “making present”. Most precisely, “replicate” (from the def. of
eikṓn) is not actually “to make again”, but “to fold back”
“Late Latin replicātus past participle of replicāre to fold back”. So when we witness an icon or participate in the Liturgy,
time is folded back. (Folding something 2D, a plane, makes something 3D, a solid. So folding a solid, a cube, makes something 4D, a hypercube. So folding something 4D, time, makes something 5D, hypertime.) A true ritual is not empty but unites us w/ the moment in time that it’s about.
I was just discussing this same thing elsewhere on Sunday! Replying to something about how Protestants are largely against “ritual”. I wrote this: