The Worship of God: a Commercial Enterprise?

There are those who may be offended by what follows. I fear that this is simply a hazard of saying what I believe to be right and true. Therefore, if you see your own custom criticised here and feel your back arch a little, I would ask you to take a step back from the initial reaction and ask yourself why you feel that way, and whether there might be something about your practice that could be reassessed.

Some of you have known me for a long time, whether as a personal friend of from my participation in a particular online Christian discussion forum, which has a real-life social element through which some of you have met me. Many of you will know that, in my Anglican days, I was a great fan of what is commonly called the English Use. This was the particular liturgical style that sought to restore Catholic elements to the worship of the Church of England, not by simply copying what modern or "traditional" Rome was doing but rather by restoring customs, music, and practices that had been part of the Catholic (and previously, Orthodox) tradition in Britain prior to the reformation, largely in the Use of Sarum and others similar to it. Among the benefits of these customs, were that, being part of the liturgical heritage of these isles, they were often found to be more palatable to the average Anglican than some of the more exotic continental customs which had come to be associated with Anglo-Papalism and other ecclesiologies that many found difficult, and had often continued in one form or another even during the most protestant phases of the Church of England. Also, they were free from associations with some of the sentimental devotional excesses of post-Counter-Reformation Roman Catholicism. Many of these early customs, of course, are once again to be found in the Orthodox Church in our Western Rite missions.

One of the most prominent proponents of the English Use was the Rev'd Dr Percy Dearmer, a rather eccentric Anglican clergyman in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, perhaps best known for his contribution to the production of The English Hymnal, (and authorship of some of its contents), and, even more so, The Parson's Handbook, which is just what the title suggests: a practical guide to the decent and orderly worship of God for ministers and those involved in the running of parishes. In it, he is highly opinionated and wonderfully forthright in the most amusing of ways, and demonstrates before his readers his own unique and refreshing brand of tact. Even those who disagree with his points, (and it is difficult to see how any right-thinking person could), must admit that his written style makes him an incredibly attractive author. I often wish he were alive today because I would love to read his blog, which I imagine would have a myriad of followers and receive regular comments, (unlike my own humble offering cough, hint, cough). In fact, my friends and I used to jest that, occasionally, it might be edifying to the people were we to occasionally forgo the Sunday Epistle and simply read an excerpt from The Parson's Handbook.

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Liturgical Oddities

I stumbled upon this website yesterday and was delighted to find an Orthodox parish broadcasting its services. I began watching the most recent broadcast yesterday, as I very much enjoy looking at these things. Only, I could only watch so far before I just had to shut the computer down. I watched the rest today. Imagine my surprise at some of the things that I saw:

A subdeacon giving a litany, a deacon reading half of the Anaphora instead of the priest, a lay server placing items on the Holy Table, the priest not dividing the Lamb with the spear as usual but grabbing it and carelessly ripping It apart with his bare hands with seemingly little care for prevention of dropping crumbs. The Royal Doors were wide open throughout the Liturgy, even at the point where they would be closed if a bishop were to serve. Very peculiar was the complete omission of the Litany of Fervent Supplication, the Litany for the Catechumens, both Litanies of the Faithful, and the Litany before the Lord's Prayer, not to mention other minor things, which, while not major causes of alarm, were unusual, such as kneeling for part of the Anaphora (on a Sunday), the deacons splitting the litanies between them, and so forth. I found watching it more of a distraction than a spiritually beneficial experience.

Is this sort of thing common in North American parishes under Antioch?

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Employment Agencies

Some of you who know me from outside the blogosphere will know of my difficult employment history. I left a permanent job a few years ago, largely because the business for which I worked was going through a transitional period and there were a number of elements in the new modus operandi that clashed with my conscience. Also, I had moved house since starting to work there so what had started as a 20-minute walk to work had become a 1 1/2-hour bus journey.

Somebody suggested to me that I ought to try finding work through an employment agency. For the benefit of those who have always simply gone and found a job themselves, an employment agency is a business providing services to two sorts of clients: there are the prospective employers who may not have, or may not wish to spend their own resources on finding and interviewing people to fill their vacancies and who prefer to outsource this task; then there are the prospective employees, who may see an advantage in registering with an agency that has a number of jobs on its books. Each person is assigned an agency representative, who is responsible for matching the individual to a job, based on the person's qualifications, abilities, and preferences, and the requirements of the prospective employer. While the individual jobseeker pays nothing for this, the employer pays the agency for the service, and the representative then earns commission on top of his regular salary for each employee satisfactorily placed. This is where the problem lies, for the desire to earn more money often means that care for the proper placing of people in jobs often falls by the wayside, and all manner of dishonesty is employed simply to get as many people in jobs as possible, regardless of the hurt caused.

So...

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Election Shambles - UPDATED

Is anybody as cross about this as I am?

For those not in the know, today was polling day for the UK General Election. The organisation of the voting has been absolutely shambolic. The polling stations were set to close at 10p.m. Since then, we have had the following reports:

• At a number of polling stations, a sufficient number of polling booths had not been made available to cater for the number of voters in the constituency, resulting in long queues of people who, when the doors were shut at 10 o' clock, were denied their legal right to vote.
• At other polling stations, an insufficient number of ballots was held, so that voters turned up and were unable to vote.
• In one constituency (so far), the electoral list had not been updated to reflect people who had moved to the area. They had registered to vote, been sent their polling cards directing them where to go to cast their vote, only to arrive at the polling station and be turned away because they did not appear on the list.

One contributory factor was that the results of an interesting but actually completely unnecessary preliminary exit poll were published shortly after 10 o' clock, which could have potentially influenced voters. The result of this is that some returning officers felt that they could not permit potential voters in after that time. One explicitly said in his apology that this is one course of action that could not be taken. He has been undone by the fact that this is precisely what was done at other polling stations in order to enable people to vote. As Lord Mandelson said, if influence by the result of the exit poll was indeed a concern, there is no good reason why the queueing masses could not have been taken into the station and the doors shut. (Update: 07/05/2010: It was later clarified by the Electoral Commission that the regulations themselves require a 10 o' clock closure).

There are a number of problems that arise from this. One is that results in certain constituencies may possibly be open to legal challenge because some people were not allowed to vote or because some people were allowed to vote after the publication of the exit poll results.

I have been watching the BBC coverage of the election and as those turned away have been interviewed, I have found myself sharing their indignation. It is absolutely disgusting that, in a democracy, people could be denied the right to vote for no good reason. I just don't understand and I really am quite cross.

I look forward to seeing how this works out in days to come.

Piety, Processions, and Puppetry

This post is really just a string of ideas rather than a planned construction of coherent thoughts and I claim no authority beyond being a servant of Christ's Church who often fails miserably at his calling to be even that. Yet a conversation I recently had with a priest, shortly after witnessing the services of Holy Week and Pascha, got me to thinking a little about the liturgy of the Church and how, through it, we enter into the worship of God.

I love the multi-layered symbolism of the corporate worship of the Church. When we begin to explore it, there is so much that gives us the firm grounding from which to elevate our hearts to God. It is doctrine expressed and acted out, often in the most accessible way possible. Processions, prostrations, crossings, the opening and closing of the doors - some of these things speak to us immediately and have an obvious meaning. Yet some of them have depths of meaning that only come to us with time and being steeped in the Church's worship. For instance, at the old Paschal Vigil which we serve on Holy Saturday afternoon in the form of the Vesperal Liturgy of St Basil, we hear the reading from Isaiah, (the same one that provides the inspiration for the oft-repeated hymn, Shine, shine, O New Jerusalem), in which we hear:

And thy gates shall be open continually: they shall not be shut day nor night.

- Isaiah 60:11

So the doors of the iconostas remain open through Bright Week, and are not closed until the beginning of the Ninth Hour on Saturday of that week, for this is the week of thr renewal, when we celebrate most fully the conqeuring of all that separates us from the fullness of union with God.

However, I wonder at the nature of some of the things that have crept into Orthodox practice and the degree to which they are in keeping with the Tradition of the Church. One of the most powerful symbols of Great and Holy Friday is at Matins. After the fifth Gospel, which ends with Christ taking up his Cross and being assisted by Simon of Cyrene, during the fifteenth antiphon, the priest solemnly carries the large icon of the Saviour on the Cross from the altar and sets it in the midst of the church for the edificaton of the people. This becomes their focus as they hear the remaining Passion Gospels, which tell of the final events in the Passion of the Saviour, including his death. After the service, the people may come forward and venerate the icon, kissing the feet of their Saviour on the Cross.

Today is hung upon a Tree He Who suspended the earth upon the waters.
Today is hung upon a Tree He Who suspended the earth upon the waters.
Today is hung upon a Tree He Who suspended the earth upon the waters.
He who is King of the Angels is arrayed in a crown of thorns.
He who wrapped the heaven in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery,
He who freed Adam in the Jordan receiveth a blow on the face.
The Bridegroom of the Church is transfixed with nails.
The Son of the Virgin is pierced with a lance.
We worship thy Passion, O Christ,
We worship thy Passion, O Christ,
We worship thy Passion, O Christ: show unto us also thy glorious Resurrection!

- The fifteenth antiphon of Great Friday Matins

Yet a custom has developed in some places of setting up a plain Cross in the midst of the Church before the service begins, and the icon that is carried out at the fifteenth antiphon is of the corpus only. This often has holes pre-drilled in the hands and feet, through which nails are inserted, and the priest hammers the icon to the Cross during the service.

I have never seen this done in full so I cannot comment on it experientially. However, it seems to run contrary to everything that I have been taught about the place of icons in the doctrine and praxis of the Orthodox Church. Icons serve to focus the mind and heart on the holy one represented in the image.

For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these should be given due salutation and honourable reverence (ἀσπασμὸν καὶ τιμητικὴν προσκύνησιν), not indeed that true worship of faith (λατρείαν) which pertains alone to the divine nature; but to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross and to the Book of the Gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented. For thus the teaching of our holy Fathers, that is the tradition of the Catholic Church, which from one end of the earth to the other hath received the Gospel, is strengthened. Thus we follow Paul, who spake in Christ, and the whole divine Apostolic company and the holy Fathers, holding fast the traditions which we have received. So we sing prophetically the triumphal hymns of the Church, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Rejoice and be glad with all thy heart. The Lord hath taken away from thee the oppression of thine adversaries; thou art redeemed from the hand of thine enemies. The Lord is a King in the midst of thee; thou shalt not see evil any more, and peace be unto thee for ever."

- from the decree of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

With that in mind, the traditional practice of placing the icon of the crucified Saviour in the midst of the people and their later veneration of it seems very fitting. However, I, personally, struggle with the idea of an icon being used as, if I may be forgiven, a theatre prop. I'm just not sure that this action of nailing an image of the Saviour to the Cross is in keeping with the Orthodox theology of the icon and I am not sure it is something that should be encouraged. If the honour paid to the icon is passed to the holy person represented therein, what are we doing when we hammer nails into an icon of the Saviour? In the quiet piety of Orthodox Christians, an icon, if accidentally knocked over, is often picked up quickly and kissed before being returned to its place of honour, because people understand what the image represents, even if the Saint is largely unknown. Yet we are speaking here about pounding nails into an icon of the Christ.

Even if we leave aside the matter of the nailing, I do not like the concept of the detachable corpus being placed on the Cross, and then taken down during the Vespers service and wrapped in a shroud to be taken into the altar, (which is the second half of this late practice). For the same reasons as the nailing, it seems not to sit well with the concept of the icon as an object of focus and veneration. My priestly interlocutor said to me that the Orthodox understanding of the icon does not extend to puppetry. It may seem a shocking statement to make at first but, having given it some thought, I find myself unable to disagree.

The Church's services have a drama of their own, in their shape and structure, in the way one element flows into another, which then overlaps with the next, in the readings, in the hymns, in the actions of the clergy and people - all of these things carry beautiful meaning and symbolism, and speak of the mystery of salvation into which we are to enter more fully through these services. If we think, for example, of the traditional Great Friday ceremonies, they are actually very restrained while being very rich. When we focus on the Passion of the Saviour at Matins, the Cross is set up in the midst of the people and censed. Before Vespers, the Cross is quietly removed because the focus of this service is not the Passion but rather the burial of the Saviour. There is no theatrical taking down of the icon of the Saviour's body from the Cross and wrapping it in a burial shroud. Where the Cross once stood, we now see the sepulchre of the Lord, on which is placed the plashchanitsa, which is an icon showing the body of the Saviour, often surrounded by his Mother and the Holy Myrrh-Bearers. It is carried out solemnly, and offered for veneration by the people. Offerings of flora and rose water are laid on it in honour of the Christ depicted. Then, during the Midnight Office of the Paschal Vigil, the plashchanitsa is removed from the midst of the people with the same solemnity with which it was placed there, and when the people go outside for the procession after the Midnight Office, the sepulchre is quietly removed, so that when the people re-enter the church, it is simply not there, having been replaced by an icon of the Resurrection.

So it seems to me that the mystical drama into which we are to be caught up is inherent to the services themselves and is not to be found in extraneous re-enactments of Christ being crucified, taken down from the Cross, or wrapped in a shroud.

Another historical example of this is the procession of Palm Sunday. A very late development in parts of the west in Orthodox times, possibly originating in France, was the custom of including the Holy Things in the procession on Palm Sunday. This was different from the custom known among Roman Catholic people today, of carrying the sacrament in procession as a sign of devotion. As it came to develop in Britain by the late mediaeval period, an elaborate portable shrine was constructed, on which would be carried the Holy Things. As this approached, the choir would sing antiphons hailing the coming Christ, reminiscent of the Hebrews greeting the Saviour with shouts and hymns as He entered Jerusalem, which would continue through the procession. This was not simply a devotion to Christ in the Mystery of the Eucharist, (although the extra-eucharistic piety, including such processions, is perhaps intrinsically questionable anyway), but rather seems to have been a theatrical re-enactment over and above the natural drama of the Church's liturgy, using the sacrament in a very unusual way.

How did this sort of thing creep into Orthodox custom? These things do not appear in the rubrics of the services but are simply pious additions which are largely unknown outside of Greek practice, so I wonder whether these are latinisations, (in terms of the way of thinking about how we worship rather direct borrowings of practice), that permeated the Greek church under Ottoman rule. I recall once reading that a number of Greek clergy during this time were trained in Roman Catholic seminaries. Whatever the origins, is it something that is in keeping with the way that we understand worship, that we feel worship, that we do worship? Is it something that we ought to continue? I don't think so, personally, but my saying so comes largely from gut feeling based on what I have been taught and what I have absorbed, and how it has moulded me over the past few years and is not something that I can argue academically. However, given the centrality of worship to the Christian life and the importance that has in transmitting the Faith to the innermost parts of our beings, I do not feel that the degree to which the way we worship affects our understanding of our own place in relation to Christ and within the life of his Church can be thought of too lightly.

Anyway, there my thoughts are. I don't know what, if anything, others make of them.

Pet Peeves: Icons and Churches

Icons are not written. Icons are pictures. One does not write a picture. The Greek word graphia may encompass various types of image, including both pictorial representations and symbols representing spoken language, (and we see this in some words of Greek origin, such as photograph, graphic, calligraphy, cacography, and so forth), but the English language draws a distinction between writing and painting. If we do not refer to people painting an essay, then why should we speak of people "writing" an icon? Both are equally illogical. I know it's just a cute word play that people sometimes adopt because of the dual meaning of the original Greek, (which, I think, is preserved in the Slavonic). Some people self-consciously say, 'This icon was written by Iohannes Smithopoulos, who does some wonderful work'. They then pause for a while, as if waiting to be asked why they chose that particular word, so that they can make some point along the lines that, while an icon is an image, it speaks the theology of the Church just as a written text would. The motives seem good in theory but in practice it always seems like an affectation. It sounds forced because it is not standard English to refer to somebody writing a picture.

Then there's this business of referring to churches as 'temples', which seems prevalent in liturgical texts originating in North America (but not all), and which seems to have spread from there into conversation. Of this, I can be less certain than I am about icons, but I was taught that the word khram can be correctly translated into English as house, church, or temple. However, it is not normal in the English language to refer to a Christian place of worship as a temple. Checking the British texts to which I have access or of which I have experience, it seems that those used by the Antiochian, Russian (ROCOR and Sourozh), and Greek churches in the UK refer to the 'church' in the rubrics and in the chanted litanies refer to 'this holy house'. Is it usual in North America to call a Christian church a temple or is it just a bad translation? 'This holy temple' always sounds very odd to my English ears.

Anyway, now that I've got that off my chest, I can relax. :-)

Busy, Busy, Busy

I'm sorry things have been quiet here lately. I haven't really been following any of the blogs I usually like to visit and I haven't got round to putting any thought into some decent posts for my own. Even the recent book review isn't new but has been saved to drafts for a few weeks as I didn't want to post it until the current edition of Orthodox News had been posted out.

The simple truth is that I'm busy. Holy Week and Pascha are fast approaching and I have to prepare all of the services, including music and such like. Also, because this is the first year my parish is worshipping in an actual church rather than a private home, we are offering a fuller provision as far as the services go, so there is more to learn, and more to get ready. It's all very exciting and I very much appreciate having this sense of worthwhile purpose but it just keeps me busy. I also realise that, now that we are operating more publicly and people are beginning to come to us who were not part of the tight-knit group who met in the house, and who are perhaps new to Orthodoxy, service booklets would be very beneficial for some of our regular services in addition to these seasonal ones.

We have four weddings coming up as well, the first being on St Thomas Sunday, so straight after Pascha. I think it is wonderful that our church is being used in this way and that we can open our doors to people who are ready to take this important step in their lives. Weddings in the past have always been informal affairs for us, usually with the bride or bridegroom being a parishioner, with a few people in our house chapel. There haven't been a great many - perhaps one every couple of years - so we have never had service wedding booklets and we have always just found some music from somewhere as and when needed. Now that they seem to be happening more frequently, I have compiled, (and in part composed), a collection of music for weddings, and a choir book, and service booklets will be needed as well.

This past year has seen a series of "firsts" for us. I don't think any of us really anticipated just how much of an impact moving into a new church would have on us, how we worship, how we function, how others relate to us, or indeed how much work would be involved. We are learning, and slowly adapting.

Aside from parish life, I am in the middle of deadlines at the moment for a periodical, the editorial team of which I was recently invited to join. I have been assigned my first issue. This is all very new to me and I just hope I can meet people's expectations. I must admit to a certain amount of fumbling in the dark, but hopefully a conversation this weekend should help.

This weekend is the diocesan service of Holy Unction at the cathedral, which I first experienced last year. It was incredibly moving and reminded me of the excitement and awe that I felt when I first visitied an Orthodox church. It will be a full weekend, however. I plan to set off from home in the wee hours of Saturday morning to get to the Liturgy at the cathedral for 9 o' clock, (I'm sure it was 10 o' clock last year, which seems more reasonable). Then the Unction service will be at about 3 o' clock in the afternoon, followed closely by the vigil. I plan to stay in London overnight and go to the cathedral again on Sunday for the Liturgy, before setting off for home in the afternoon. Then I shall come home and sleep for a very long time.

I hope to be able to post more soon, perhaps with a little news next week.

St John DVD

Last summer, I posted to share the exciting news of the release of a DVD about the Life of St John of Shanghai and San Francisco, and included the details from the ROCOR website of how to purchase it.

However, anybody from outside of North America who tried to order a copy would have soon learnt, as I did, that no provision had been made for taking credit or debit card payments, and that there was not even a Paypal account set up so that people unable to send a cheque in US dollars could pay using that method instead. I investigated with my bank the possibility of doing a balance transfer, but because it would have been an international transfer, incurring a bank charge, a currency exchange fee, and a middle-man fee, the total cost that I was quoted amounted to more than twice the price of the DVD, and that's before the international postage charge. Unable to justify the expense, I disappointedly decided to leave it.

Anyway, I am pleased to announce my recent discovery that Orthodox Incense has acquired copies of the DVD and has a simple payment system through Paypal, which allows people to easily pay for orders from anywhere in the world. I have found them to be incredibly friendly and prompt, and have no qualms about recommending them.

God bless them and their service.

Mike?

Why?

Would somebody please explain to me why it is that there are people who walk this earth, who feel that it is acceptable to call me Mike? I have never introduced myself as Mike, and I refer to myself as Michael, for that is my name, and I really do not think it at all unreasonable to expect to be called by my name, instead of some ridiculous abbreviation, born out of sheer laziness and extreme rudeness.

Does anybody else have a similar problem?