The First & the Follow

I have only recently noticed that at mass where all parts are said, there is a part of the liturgy where a quiet, subtle, and very quick drama occurs.

It takes place in the 2 or so seconds between the part where the priest says “the peace of the Lord be with you always” and the “Agnus Dei”. In that space, a question is silently asked by celebrant and congregation alike: Who will say the first “Lamb of God”?

In those seconds, the tensions mount, and reach a crescendo up to the point when the silence is broken by someone (and it can be either the priest or someone in the congregation) says the first “Lamb of God”. At that moment, there is almost a sigh of relief when the other voices gradually join the first in saying the “Agnus Dei”. By the second repetition, just before we reach the “grant us peace”, the whole congregation would be saying it in almost perfect unison.

It was only over the weekend, after a few times of observing this, that I noticed how much easier it is to follow the first one than to be the first one.

Once my head articulated this in so many words, my mind went back to a passage in Rene Girard’s I See Satan Fall like Lightning (which I have written about in a previous post), that helped me understand what it was I was witnessing.

While some would dismiss this little drama as another instance of “easier to be the sheep than the shepherd”, on the grounds that people in general would rather not think for themselves (the thought here being “should I be the first”). Girard provides an alternative that, at first glance, might seem like the “easier to the the sheep…” explanation, but actually explains that ease by pointing to our mimetic desire.

For those less familiar with Girard’s work, his main thesis was that we do not desire things spontaneously. Rather, our desires are learned from others. The example that is often given is the way that kids do not simply “desire toys”, but desire the toys that other kids play. Girard goes onto argue that all our desires, from the simplest to the most esoteric, are borne out of learning from others. Put simply, we do not simply act out of spontaneous desires, but often as the result of some other’s desire (Girard calls this other person the “model”), whether we are aware of it or not.

Now, what does all this have to do with the “Agnus Dei”?

If we understand Girard’s theory of mimetic desire, we can get a sense of the flipside of mimesis, which is that it is very hard to be the first. This is largely because being the first, by definition, requires that we become a model of desire, rather than to follow the model; and by defintion, becoming the model means to be bereft of models.

Girard explains this in I See Satan… with reference to the Gospel narrative of the Woman caught in adultery. As mentioned in a previous post, Jesus prevents the stoning of the woman caught in adultery, not by facing down an angry mob, but by posing what Girard called “the problem of the first stone”, wherein Jesus invites the crowd with “let those among you who are without sin to cast the first stone” (John 8:7). In saying this, Girard notes that this is not a simple gibe at the sinfulness of the crowd. As he states in the book:

Jesus explicitly mentions the first stone. In fact, he emphasizes it as much as he can since he places it at the very end of his one sentence intervention, prolonging its echo as long as possible (55)

In doing so, Jesus amplifies the need to be the first stoner, and it is this magnification of the need to be the first actor that prevents the stoning. This is because he not only brings the need to be the first into laser focus, Jesus also magnifies “the responsibility they would assume in throwing [the first stone]”, which then also increases “the chance they will let their hands fall and drop the stone”. This magnification of the need to be first, Girard says, “prevents the violent contagion (the crowd engaging in stoning a single victim) from getting started” in the first place. Indeed, what it does start is the much easier act of dropping the stone, which sets off another pattern of imitation, dropping the stone and leaving the scene.

For better or for worse, there are many, less dramatic ways in our daily lives in which this amplification of the need to be first form a barrier against acting. I found a small example of that in the liturgy and, counterintuitively, it also brought home the importance of the liturgy. For the liturgy is not simply a bland repetitive pattern of rituals. It is a pattern of rituals where others, namely the Church, become models for our desire to live the Christian life.

One of the great gifts of the Church is that we do not have to be the first in pioneering a Christian life, for that is already done for us, first by Christ, then by others in the Church from the Presybter to the readers to the first member of the congregation to say “Lamb of God”. Indeed, the Church as the model for our desire for Christ transmits the faith in a way that is in keeping with our mimetic nature.

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