All of Creation Rejoices

On Liturgical Languages - part 2

I have been a fan of Innocent (Dr Clark) Carlton since my early days of life in the Orthodox Church. He is the author of The Truth: What Every Roman Catholic Should Know About the Orthodox Church. Having come from an Anglo-Cathlolic background, where much of what I had been taught and many of my assumptions had been moulded by the culture of drawing on flawed Latin understandings in order to combat protestantism within Anglicanism, this seemed to be written for me. It was a great help to me in understanding some of the core differences of doctrine and culture in more than a superficial way between that and the Orthodox Faith.

Imagine my delight, therefore, when, about eighteen months ago, I discovered his podcast on Ancient Faith Radio. He does a series called Faith and Philosophy, which provides much food for thought. I enjoy many of the episodes, (although his and my understanding of how best to apply our faith to the politics of our time may not exactly be in harmony). The most recent to date deals with the question of the form of English to be used in the Orthodox worship of God.

Temple Theology and the Christ

As I was travelling about a couple of weeks ago, while looking for something else, I came across a very promising podcast entitled Our Great High Priest: The Church is the New Temple, and began to listen to it. It was an address delivered by Dr Margaret Barker at St Vladimir's Seminary, about the Temple in Jerusalem and the Messianic fulfilment in the Person of the Saviour and lived in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church. Unfortunately, I was on the train and my phone's battery was low, so I stopped only a few minutes into the talk. I then proceeded to forget all about it until last night, when I listened to it in its entirety.

It can be heard here and a transcript may be read here.

I found this absolutely fascinating, both for some of the facts that had previously been unknown to me and also for the affirmation of the Christ as the fulfilment of th Law and the Prophets, and the actualisation of our faith in this in Orthodox worship.

I strongly recommend listening to or reading it. So much of what we see and do in church finds its meaning in what Dr Barker has discovered that her work certainly serves as a channel for us to deepen our understanding and appreciation of what we are as the people of God.

Has anybody else encountered Dr Barker's work? What of her books?

Book Review: A Practical Handbook for Divine Services

Last Spring, Holy Trinity Publications, (the publishing arm of the monastery in Jordanville), made available A Practical Handbook for Divine Services. This is really a compilation of detailed instructional notes for the priest and deacon (with a few notes for servers) at Vespers, Matins, and the Divine Liturgy in the Slav-Byzantine tradition, penned by the late Abbot Gregory (Woolfenden), a priest and liturgical scholar from the northwest of England. A number of the clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate's Diocese of Sourozh, to which Fr Gregory once belonged, remember these and other liturgical notes with gratitude, for Fr Gregory used to hand them out at diocesan clergy meetings, and many a new clergyman would have been lost without them.

I bought a copy of this book last summer and found it immensely helpful in understanding some of the actions of the priest and deacon at our divine services. It is particularly helpful to me as somebody who, while knowing the general roles, does not have much experience of services at which a deacon is present and serving. Despite the fact that our services rely heavily on the deacon and can seldom be offered fully without one, the reality is that most Orthodox people - clergy and laity alike - are unaccustomed to having a deacon present, and when one is fulfilling his duty, it shows: priests who are accustomed to doing everything themselves forget where the end of their role lies and where that of the deacon begins (or perhaps, due to having served only a short diaconate, they never learnt in the first place), choirs forget (or are possibly unaware of) the different responses and methods that are employed when the Liturgy is served with a deacon, and so forth.

Jesus Christ!

At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

- Philippians 2:1-11

Why do people use the name of the Saviour as an expletive? And why do they think it acceptable to do this, particularly in conversation with Christians?

The Saviour's name is held in such high regard among Christians that many terms used by us to refer to Him stem precisely from not wishing to utter the name of Jesus casually. So we say things like "the Lord", "Our Lord", "Christ", "the Saviour", and such like, all out of reverence for the Holy Name. Indeed, in the Western tradition, there is a holy day in the Church calendar set aside for honouring The Most Holy Name of Jesus, and indeed, the people bow their heads during services when it is uttered in prayers. So when we hear this holy name being cheapened, used commonly and sacrilegously, it is offensive in the extreme, and I wince every time I hear somebody exclaim 'Jesus!' as an expression of surprise, frustration, or anger.

Then there are the variants. "Jesus H. Christ" is bad enough a distortion but the first time I heard somebody say 'Jesus f***king Christ!', my mouth fell open in disbelief.

Why do people do it?

I understand that most people who do this may not be Christians, but quite aside from the question of whether they believe in the Saviour and have a personal reverence for his holy name, there is the simple matter of basic good manners. Since when is it socially acceptable to take something that is sacred and revered in somebody else's religion and degrade it in conversation with that person? It simply shows contempt for the sensibilities of others. Surely well-bred people, even if they do not believe in God, have some respect for others.

Please tell me I haven't got that wrong as well.

New Western Rite Website

The British missions and study societies of ROCOR's Western Rite Vicariate, having placed themselves under the protection of the Mother of God in her title of Our Lady of Glastonbury, have a new website.

I like it. It is clean and attractive, informative but not overwhelming, and sets the tone just right to engage people without scaring them off. I hope and pray that it bears fruit. Certainly, my own parish has found that most of the people who have come to us recently learnt of us through our website so this sort of online presence is essential to Orthodox mission in our technological age.

Respectability and Conscience (or "A Good Kick up the Bum")

Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

- Matthew 7:13-14

As has been made clear from recent posts to my blog, I far prefer Google+ to Facebook. For a while I used both but found juggling two social networking websites to be tedious and distracting so now my online social networking focuses primarily on G+. Many of my FB "friends" (both real friends and online contacts who are categorised as such by FB) have not made the transition, and a number of them cite their establishment on Facebook as the main reason. They already have Google accounts which they use for Google services: Gmail, Blogger, and Youtube, among others. Yet Facebook is where their groups are, where they chat, where most of their friends are. They have an attachment because of that so will not transfer to Google+ even though some of them like it.

My intention here is not to speak about social networking websites. However, the aforementioned situation has got me to thinking about faith in God and our ecclesial affiliations. Of course, the two are not directly analogous - the salvation of one's soul is not comparable to preference of one form of electronic communication over another, particularly when the matter of electronic communicaton is really of little significance in the grand scheme of things - yet I do wonder how often our attitude of preferring comfort and familiarity over what we know to be better is transferred to matters of principle, conscience, and even our eternal salvation.

The Procession of the Cross

This coming Sunday (the 1st of August by the Church calendar) is the feast of the Procession of the Cross in the Byzantine Rite. It is one of the few occasions in the year when, at the Divine Liturgy, the Trisagion is replaced by the hymn:

Before thy Cross we bow down, O Master, and thy Holy Resurrection we glorify!

This feast has not fallen on a Sunday since I have been Orthodox, and, being part of a small mission parish with a working priest, I have never celebrated this feast in Church. Indeed, despite knowing of its existence in the calendar of the Church, I have never really known what it is about. So, in preparing this Sunday's Liturgy, I thought I would do a little exploration. Here is the explanation of the feast by one Fr S. Janos, taken from my Holy Trinity calendar iPhone app:

In the Greek Chasoslov (Orologion) of 1897 is explained thus the derivation of this feast: "By reason of the sicknesses, often everywhere occurring in August, from of old customarily it was done at Constantinople to carry out the Venerable Wood of the Cross along the roads and streets for the sanctifying of places and for the driving away of sicknesses. On the eve (31 July), carrying it out from the imperial treasury, they placed it upon the holy table of the Great Church (in honour of Saint Sophia – the Wisdom of God). From this feastday up to the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God, making litia throughout all the city, they then placed it forth for all the people to venerate. This also is the Issuing-forth of the Venerable Cross". In the Russian Church this feast is combined also with a remembrance of the Baptism of Rus', on 1 August 988. In the "Account about the making of services in the holy catholic and apostolic great church of the Uspenie-Dormition", compiled in 1627 by order of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Philaret, there is provided suchlike an explanation of the feast: "And on the day of the procession of the Venerable Cross there occurs a church-procession for the sanctification of water and for the enlightenment of the people, throughout all the towns and places". Knowledge of the day of the actual Baptism of Rus' was preserved in the Chronicles of the XVI Century: "The Baptism of Great-prince Vladimir of Kiev and all Rus' was on August 1". In the practice now of the Russian Church, the service of the Lesser Sanctification of Water on 1 August is done either before or after Liturgy. Together with the Blessing of Waters, there is made a Blessing of Honey (i.e. first-honey for the Saviour: "Saviour of the Water", "Saviour Moisture" [apparently in place of the vinegar and gall offered Him on the Cross?]). And from this day the newly harvested honey is blessed and tasted.

While August may no longer be a time particularly associated with various ailments, there is no time that our souls and bodies are not in need of healing, and when due honour is not due to the Saviour and the precious and life-giving Cross on which He died, and now that the Cross has become for Christians a sign of life rather than death, I particularly love the offering of sweet honey as a replacement and even a reparation for the bitter gall.

So I have purchased my honey and I thoroughly look forward to this Sunday, urging as many of you as possible to join in this celebration.

Why choose Google+ over Facebook?

This is one of those occasional posts that have little to do with matters of faith. However, as most of the people I know through church circles do use Facebook, this seems as good a place as any. (Also, Blogger, part of the Google emporium, is hardy about to ban me for suggesting people leave Facebook for Google).

I joined Google+ last week and have, since then, found it to be far superior to Facebook. Currently, I run both accounts but I only plan to continue doing so until a reasonable proportion of my regular contacts set up Google+ accounts, at which point, Facebook will be used only for the parish group, and perhaps not even that.

In the meanwhile, here are the reasons why I prefer Google+:

On Liturgical Archaeology

There are many objections to the Orthodox Western Rite. Many are founded on ignorance and can simply be either disregarded or educated away according to mood or circumstance, (such as the lady who flat out refused to believe that anything but the Byzantine Rite was ever used in the Church and tried to convince me that the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom was commonly used in England prior to the Schism). Others do actually have some basis in reality and in genuine concern for the proper passing on and living of the Orthodox Faith and for the spiritual well-being of Orthodox people. These deserve more attention and ought to be taken on board to one degree or another. There are yet others which cannot be so easily categorised because their proponents see them as so self-evident that, in expressing them, they do not often go beyond a brief statement, expecting that this will be readily understood and agreed upon by all right-thinking people, (i.e. people like them). The truth is that this simply serves to further polarise already opposing viewpoints. Then listening stops as, due to human weakness, both sides become defensive and dig their heels in.

One example of this is the position that holds that the restoration of pre-schism western services for use in the Church is "liturgical archaeology". This sort of disparaging terminology may serve as a self-congratulatory mantra among those who already agree with each other but to those who remain to be convinced, it simply shows a lack of respect and a dismissive attitude. Reliance on such belittling expressions instead of actual reasoned and coherent thoughts also suggests a severe lack of confidence in a very weak argument. This may be an inaccurate assessment but it is precisely the picture painted by the way in which this is often presented.

So, let us examine the reasons why people perform this "liturgical archaeology".

New Guide for Altar Servers

Available here is a free download of a guide for altar servers at the Divine Liturgy in the Slav-Byzantine Rite.

It started life as a guide for servers at my parish, particularly now that, for the frst time since we moved into our church and found ourselves with the space and resources to perform the services more fully, we seem to have a modest but slowly growing number of servers. I was encouraged by a friend to produce something for more general guidance, that could be used in any parish. This seemed like a worthy project with potentially useful results, and I was flattered to be thought capable of such a venture, so I began to amend it accordingly.

However, after some efforts in that direction, it began to become apparent that, not only would the inclusion of all the myriad of possible variations be incredibly time-consuming and turn the guide into a study book for use at home rather than the handy, practical guide that it was intended to be, which could be quickly glanced at during the course of a Liturgy, but also such a venture would be beyond my knowledge and capabilities. Also, it meant that some of the directions that would be needful for my parish's servers due to the peculiarities of our building and circumstances would have to be omitted, thus reducing its usefulness to the very people for whom it was intended in the first place.

In the end, a little saddened that I could not go ahead with the bigger project, I decided to revert to the original plan. The result is a guide for the servers at my parish, based on what I understand to be standard Russian Orthodox custom but adapted to our local use. Please feel free to take as much or as little from it as you find helpful, even if that means none at all.

Western Rite Developments

Well, it all seems to be happening!

After decades of existing as a handful of scattered monastic communities and hermitages, it seems as though the Western Rite within the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad is well on its way to being much more firmly established.

First, we got the informal decision of the Synod of Bishops that all Western Rite communities in ROCOR would be given stavropegial status - itself a great blessing, for it freed bishops from having to look after communities whose rite and culture they did not understand and communities with unsympathetic bishops striving to survive against all odds, generally making things easier for everybody concerned and removing some of the barriers that the previous unhelpful situation placed before those who might otherwise explore Orthodoxy as a spiritual home. After all, who wants to join an isolated mission whose ecclesiastical status is volatile and whose stability is precarious at best?

Then a number of parishes and missions started to apear: some of them newly founded, some of them developed from study societies, and some of them received from independent jurisdictions. The most signficant of these were perhaps the reception of the former HOCACA at the end of last year, and the encouraging news of the discussions with the Orthodox Church of France. This is all very encouraging, although it does raise some questions about the haste of things and the stability and formation both in the Faith and the priestly life of those being received.

Now, within the past fortnight, we have received news that the Council of Bishops has established a Western Rite Vicariate, giving much greater structure and stability to the Western Rite effort, and quite possibly addressing the matter raised in the previous paragraph, as now people are actually being received into something that is integrated and should now begin to operate as a unit. The recent meetings and proposed conferences, I am sure, will add to the stability, structure, and growth into a functional family.

Now, to top it all off, if anything makes a bold statement that the Western Rites of the Orthodox Church are as full and legitimate an expression of the Holy Orthodox Faith as any other, it is not that their forms of services are blessed for use, or that they come directly under the jurisdiction of the First-Hierarch himself, or even that those who belong to those rites are increasing in number, but rather the remarkable fact that ordinations are now being done at a western Pontifical High Mass, by an Orthodox bishop in western vestments, and using the Roman ordinal. I am almost sure that this combination is a first in modern Orthodox history and it speaks volumes, opening the way for people to trust the Church in its western expression with the salvation of their souls. May we soon begin to see Orthodox Saints whose lives have been formed in the Western Rite - the true test of its Orthodoxy.

I am truly delighted by this as an Orthodox Christian with western roots, who loves the western hymns, liturgies, and Saints, and I hope that this will also prove to have great missionary potential across the world but particularly in these isles where many of those Saints once sang those hymns and prayed those liturgies.

I thoroughly look forward to further developments and the video footage that we have been promised of this weekend's ordination. Please pray for Dom Joseph of Christ the Saviour Monastery as he is to be ordained to the diaconate.

I leave you with a photo-video collage from 2007, which brings back memories.

On Liturgical Languages

25th June, 2011: I realise that I have managed to cause offence with this post, and for that I offer sincere apologies. On consideration, I feel it best for the sake of honesty and integrity that it remain as it is, particularly as the opinions expressed herein have not changed since the time of posting. However, I realise that the tone is more ascerbic than is necessary for the point being made or than is characteristic of me. I ask readers' indulgence. This was written shortly after I received an e-mail in which my own parish had come under attack for being "more Russian than Orthodox", and I suppose the defensive spirit in which this was written is apparent.

I am an Orthodox Christian. This says certain things about my faith in God, my worship of God, the manner in which I try to order my life (however abysmally I may fail at times), and my understanding of the world and my place and purpose in and in relation to it.

Within that wider identity, I am Russian Orthodox. This says particular things about my expression of Orthodox Christianity: the hierarchy to which I owe obedience and under whose spiritual direction I fall, the manner in which I worship, the style of music through which I pray, and my adherence to the Church calendar and the traditional forms within the Byzantine Rite for which the Russian church is known. As a person of English birth, whose ancestry is a combination of French, Irish, and Afro-Caribbean, I have no problem whatsoever in identifying myself specifically as a Russian Orthodox Christian. By so doing, I am not claiming to be culturally Russian any more than my friends who identify themselves as Roman Catholic are thereby claimimg to be culturally Italian.

Paschal Greetings from Ghana

Inculturation at its finest!

Milan Synod - yet again

Is it true?

I have heard on the grapevine that the Holy Synod of Milan, as of yesterday, is part of the Moldovan Orthodox Church under the omophor of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, its bishops have been received as bishops, and it is now in full communion with the rest of the Orthodox Church.

However, I have so far been unable to find anything in any of the usual places online to confirm this. Does anybody have further news?

Many thanks.

Great and Holy Week

Here are a few photographs and video clips from my parish this Holy Week. We had two servers serving for the first time, along with a choir who did exceptionally well from memory given that the music for various things had been mislaid. This has been the most moving Holy Week that I have ever experienced and it has been in large part due to the dedication of my parish priest and fellow parishioners who, this year, seem to have made a special effort to assist with the various practical preparations for the services. There really has been something of a feel of communal effort and ownership of the liturgies that has been very encouraging.