The ritual bell is a bell rung to mark a moment in worship, and though the object is simple its use is precise: it directs attention to the sacred at the instant it is present.
The moment of consecration
In the Catholic Mass the sanctus bell is rung at the consecration, at the raising of the host and the cup, to draw the attention of the congregation to the central moment of the rite, a practice that arose in the medieval church partly because the people could not see or hear clearly what the priest did at the altar. The bell thus serves as a signal that the most sacred point has come, gathering the eyes and the minds of the assembly to it. The larger tower bell that calls the community to worship belongs to the same logic on a greater scale.
A shared instrument
The bell rung in worship is not confined to Christianity: it is rung before the image in Hindu temple worship, sounded in Buddhist practice, and used at the Shinto shrine, where the worshipper rings a bell to greet the kami before praying, so the ritual bell is a widely shared object. In each case the sound marks a threshold, announcing the presence of the sacred or the beginning of an approach to it, and calling the attention of the worshipper from the ordinary to the holy. The object is humble and its action momentary, but that momentary sound is charged in each tradition with the task of marking when the sacred is at hand.