www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Aliturgical days in the Great Fast

Ah, a-liturgical days of the Great Fast. I wish someone would explain the concept to a certain "order" in the UGCC.

Σώσον, Κύριε, καί διαφύλαξον η�άς από τών Βασιλιάνικων τάξεων!

The Admin raises a salient point. It would make much more sense liturgically to return to a morning celebration of the Divine Liturgy on the Annunciation.

Since there is no post-festal period nor apodosis for the Annunciation, technically after Vespers it is no longer the feast.

It seems more sensible to celebrate DL in the morning, and then follow with Royal Hours and Vespers for Good Friday as usual. I don't remember which monastery anymore, but there is one on Mt. Athos which still has this order in its Typikon.

Then if anything is to be anticipated, perhaps that could be Strasti on Thursday night with the extra matinal Gospel for the Annunciation.

Professor,

Thank you for the correction, I was not aware these things were still in the books. Growing up Latin Catholic I don't think I ever remember the Reproaches or Trisagion being used.

Fr. Deacon Lance

In regard to evening Liturgies is the Byzantine Church:

Evening Liturgies were prescribed on:
1) the vigils of Pascha, Christmas, Theophany - for these were feasts of such great joy, that the celebration began with the Vespers of the Feast.
2) Holy Thursday, since the Mystical Supper took place in the evening.
3) during the Great Fast, from Monday to Friday, for the Feast of the Annunciation, because two principles are in play here - 1) the feast is always celebrated by a Divine Liturgy, and 2) the discipline of fasting is still maintained. Therefore, the Divine Liturgy of Annunciation is not celebrated in the morning to maintain the fasting discipline, but in the evening. This is also true for the polyeleos feasts of the 1st and 2nd Finding of the Heads of John the Baptist and the 40 Holy Martyrs of Sebaste, which are not celebrated by a Divine Liturgy, but their observance is in the evening, at a Presanctified Liturgy, not in the morning. This rule for the Annunciation, and these two lesser feasts is found in every typicon as far back as we have manuscripts (8th cent) and you will not find another practice.

Admittedly, we have problems twisting our ideas around this. Doesn�t the Byzantine Liturgical Day begin with Vespers on the eve of the feast? Yes - ordinarily, but there is another ancient practice underlying this. Particularly during the Great Fast, the typicon seems to respect the integrity of the fast. The Divine Liturgy (for feasts) during the week), therefore, is NOT anticipated. The Divine Liturgy was festive and could not be celebrated until a proper respect for the fast had been given. There was one priest I know of who used to celebrate the Divine Liturgy on Friday evening during the Great Fast, but this was wrong and this usage is not found in any Typicon, anywhere, anytime. Therefore, when the date of March 25 falls on Good Friday, the proper celebration of the Annunciation is the Divine Liturgy on the evening of the date, March 25, itself.

Fr. Dave

It indeed seems more sensible in the light of the above explanation of Fr. Dave that the "total" fast (as Schmemann distinguished between the "ascetic fast") because of the predominating Lenten or Holy Week theme would hold even on the overlapping of a feast such as the Annunciation on any weekday of Great Lent, especially on Great and Holy Friday.

I guess still have a bit of intuitive hesitation treating one of the 12 Great Feasts this way (like a lesser feast) but here I will have to defer to the Fathers who saw it fit to keep this order and resolve it in the light of the overriding liturgical pilgrimage of Lent, Passion Week and Pascha.

It is also interesting that most of the extant typikons I have seen also call for no Divine Liturgy on the eve of the Annunciation if it falls on Holy Saturday, and on Holy Saturday morning Matins with texts of both the plaschanitsya service and the Annunciation. No morning divine liturgy on Holy Saturday either, but rather Vespers and Liturgy of St. Basil on the evening of Holy Saturday itself.

It also makes sense that the more ancient extant typika would generally agree and preserve in unity that order, as the Lenten order is itself perhaps the least modified compared to the remainder of the liturgical year (Menaion, etc.). The keeping of the Presanctified, the three-ode canons etc, are also all living parts of that of older liturgical usage still kept in the Triodion.

When Annunciation falls on Great Friday, are any propers for the Feast done at the Vesperal Divine Liturgy on Great Thursday?

If I remember correctly (since I don't keep a Typikon in my dorm room ), when Annunciation falls on a Thursday, like last year, propers would be taken at the Presanctified on Wednesday and at the Vesperal Liturgy on Thursday. I am curious if this same pattern is followed during Holy Week.

Dave

Yes, the stichera at the Lamplighting Psalms in this case are taken from both Great and Holy Thursday, and the Annunciation. The stichera with music, as prepared by the Intereparchial Liturgy and Music Commissions for this year, can be found on the Metropolitan Cantor Institute website:
Great Thursday on March 24 [metropolitancantorinstitute.org]


Yours in Christ,

Jeff Mierzejewski

Another thing - Christmas and Theophany having a fasting day on the eve, and have the vigil with Great Compline. It's interesting that usually in the Typikon Great Compline is not taken if the Annunciation falls on Great Friday, or Holy Saturday, while other weeks of Lent Great Compline is taken if the Annunciation falls on Tuesday through Saturday. But I suppose that also is reflective of the ancient practice of having Small Compline, not Great, on Great Friday evening, and of course Holy Saturday would transition into the vigil of Pascha.

Dave, at least according to Fr. Isidore Dolnytsky, Fr. Petras, the Pecherska Lavra and a couple of other Russian typikons five stikhera are taken from the Triod and five from the Annunciation (first two repeated), three readings from the Triod followed by three for the feast.

Matins really gets tricky...

Another interesting thing - the 1838 Greek Typikon allows for the transferral of the Annunciation to the second day of Bright Week to avoid all of the intercalations, but was never accepted on Athos or in the Slavonic typikons.

Jeff, by the way, the eight stikhera in the MCI text at Psalm 140 is not consistent with the traditional ten prescribed in Slavonic typikons, as well as Fr. Petras' Typikon.

Yes, I know; it appears that a decision was made by the Commissions not to repeat the Annunciation stichera to make up the full ten. The stichera themselves, however, are all there - five from Great and Holy Thursday, and three from the Annunciation.

Note that the Holy Week booklet we have been using for years did not repeat any of the five Great Thursday stichera. I would certainly say we are moving in the direction of including more rather than less, as time goes on. (For example, the full texts are given for the Lamplighting Psalms, Hexapsalmos and Praises in the new Sunday Vespers and Matins books.)

Bishop John has made it quite clear he wants us to use Fr. Petras' Typikon, so that's what we'll do. Ten it is.

Jeff,

according to the MCI website: So, I would imagine it was the final decision of the Metropolitan (with the other hierarchs?) not to repeat the stichera?

I would say, rather, that it was the decision of the liturgical commission, which the hierarchs appointed, not to repeat the Annunciation stichera, and the decision of the Metropolitan to promulgate their work. I don't have any knowledge of how the commission works internally, or how the materials move back and forth for approval.

Actually, this is the first time in my memory that the metropolitan has actually, formally, promulgated a text with music for our use, at least in a LONG time. I think that, while I may disagree with one decision or another, the process seems to be working, and is FAR better than another 20 years of "For private use only" liturgical materials.

When it comes down to it, there is a continuum in our liturgical practice:

1. There are simplifications and abbreviations which we used to take, but have moved away from or are in the process of moving away from, to bring us in line with both our earlier practice, and common Orthodox usage:

We used to leave out LOTS of litanies.

We used to ONLY celebrate vespers and matins on a few feasts.

We used to omit all the verses of the Lamplighting Psalms.

We used to refrain from infant communion.

We used to sing the filioque.

Now we are celebrating vespers (and even matins!) in quite a number of places, and have books WITH music in the prostopinije tradition, supplemented by Galician melodies where the prostopinije is missing them (which is what our cantors always did in the Old World anyway). We certainly are doing more, and are able to do more, than ten years ago.

2. There are simplifications we still take, mostly as a matter of "parochial practice." Personally, I prefer the full form, but our hierarchs and priests may think that this is "too long for the people", or that the people do not understand them or value them - which may be true at times. Often our liturgical books follow the parochial practice.

We leave off verses of the antiphons.

We simplify or condense litanies.

We simplify the troparia and kontakia at the liturgy.

We omit theotokia.

We sing only initial verses, if any, of the communion psalm.

At Matins, we omit the Royal Office and the kathismata, and may sing only a single canon.


3. Finally, rhere are abbreviations we take in parishes which will probably never change - and even in most Orthodox parish practice, would probably not raise eyebrows.

We do not sing all of Psalm 118 at matins.

We do not (and probably never will) sing all fourteen troparia at each ode of the Canon.

Personally, as a cantor I need to know at least three traditions:

The major typikons of Orthodoxy, along with received Russian and Greek usage

The typikon of the Carpatho-Russian / Ruthenian
tradition, broadly represented by the Great Russian Ustav, as modified by Mikita / Dolnitsky, but accepting that even the latter may have latinizations to deal with

The adaptations to this Typikon made in my eparchy, and my parish

In the light of reviews of the sources (Father Taft's work on cathedral and monastic offices; the work of Oliver Strunk), the writings of, say, Fr. Schmemann ("A letter to my bishop" is a classic) AND Saint John Maximovitch on parochial practice - we're still feeling our way here.

My best recommendations are

- Love the liturgy. Learn the liturgy. Teach the liturgy.

- Whether priest, cantor or layperson, if you are taking an abbreviation and you'd LIKE to take the unabbreviated version of part of a service, gently mention this to the appropriate person. If our hierarches believe the people will object to an optional change, they're less likely to make it. Contrariwise, if the people ask for a service, they are more likely to attend it.

- If you see something you DON'T like in the MCI-published services, please let me know privately, and I will pass your comments on. If the material comes from the Commissions, I can let you know. But please, if you voice your concerns to our fathers and hierarchs, come up with a constructive recommendation - preferably one that enhances our liturgical life, and leads to the good of souls.

Yours in Christ,

Jeff Mierzejewski
Cantor
Ss. Peter and Paul Byzantine Catholic Church
Endicott, New York

Jeff,

thank you for your reply. I wholeheartedly agree with this portion of your reply:

It certainly causes confusion, when a cantor (no matter how "faithful" one is to proper liturgical practice) utilizes an unabbreviated form of a service which the people may not possess. The celebrant should always be consulted.

Jeff, those are certainly some good points for thought. As someone who has also cantored for a long time, I especially appreciate your points about being cognizant of local, particular, and then more global Greek Catholic, Greek, and Russian liturgical usage. It is absolutely necessary that cantors be liturgically trained. Know the services. One cannot love what one does not know. Then you can go from there.

Most of the best cantors I have known have had absolutely no professional music training, and would run the other way if told they had to audition for a course. But their knowledge of the services was/is impeccable, and they knew the music, the liturgical flow of the services, and that makes a great deal of difference in our corporate praising of God.

I would hope that a primary approach would be moving towards an agreement between the texts and our particular typikon. When you have one set of very well composed directions as Fr. Petras' Typikon, and a text reflecting yet another usage, the confusion begins right off the bat. This typikon, it would seem, is already our road map, is already supposed to be normative, and is quite complete.

You mention restoration of our practices with Orthodoxy, and I hope and pray that those involved in these endeavors will see the successes they have realized with some of their texts, music, and approaches, and not always feel the need to "reinvent the wheel".

Another thing you mention is quite deserving of more attention, and probably deserves its own thread. I think Schmemann's opinions on the restoration of the "Cathedral Vigil" for parochial use really, REALLY need to be looked at. Fr. Paul Meyendorff elaborated on these in his famous "Saturday Evening Worship: A Proposal" which I recommend all to read.

In this case calling a Cathedral Vigil or something like that may not be appropriate to call "abbreviated"; as Fr. Taft, Mateos, Arranz, and others have shown, Fr. Taft most vividly in his famous Liturgy of the Hours in East and West there certainly is an authentic cathedral usage which is quite different from the Sabbaitic-influenced vigil which is present today. The OCA has been doing some good work in this regard and we should definitely be paying attention to those working in this area.

The reality, which has been alluded to, is that the pastor is his own "patriarkh" inside the walls of his parish, and he ultimately will decide on a day to day basis what to do in terms of pastoral propriety.

I thank Father David for his informative post. I also thank him for taking time to participate in this discussion during such a busy time in our Church�s liturgical life.

I know I am covering old ground again, but here goes.

On the Vigils of Christmas and Theophany we have the received custom of 1) Vespers and the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil, 2) the Holy Supper (a Lenten supper) and 3) The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in the morning. In recent years there has been a tendency to move the Vespers and Divine Liturgy of St. Basil from the morning (the �received schedule�) to the evening. One problem with this rescheduling is that the Holy Supper is no longer a �mini-celebration after receiving the Eucharist while still fasting from meat and dairy� but instead it has become a preparatory supper before receiving the Eucharist. This is one of the problems I have with rearranging the received practices. When we move things to what is perceived to be a more logical time we cause problems with other traditions.

It is my opinion that those wishing to change the �received time� for the Vespers and Divine Liturgy of St. Basil for Christmas and Theophany should schedule them no later than 4 PM, so as not to cause problems with other traditions. [But my greater opinion is that there is absolutely no justification for mandating changes to our received traditions at all, save those which remove latinizations and return our practice to a truer Byzantine-Ruthenian one.]

Regarding the Feast of the Annunciation, I really don�t see any reason for moving the Divine Liturgy from the morning to the evening, when it is already March 26th according to the festal cycle. The Divine Liturgy should be on the day of the feast itself. Leaving the Divine Liturgy for the Annunciation in the morning fits quite nicely with both the �received time� and the �rescheduled time�. The Vespers and Divine Liturgy of St. Basil on Holy Thursday night provides a dual celebration this year � that of the Mystical Supper and the eve of the Annunciation. The morning Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom for the Feast of the Annunciation fits with the format used on December 25 and January 6. The advantages I see to retaining the morning celebration include 1) the Divine Liturgy is celebrated on March 25th (rather than March 26th if it were celebrated after dark) and 2) the fasting discipline is maintained. [If the feast of the Annunciation is to have equal precedence with Good Friday then it is appropriate to allow a Lenten meal after the Divine Liturgy on such a rare occasion.]

It seems to me that the argument for leaving the Divine Liturgy in the morning makes even more sense when we realize that it was the vespers that was anticipated by half a day and attached to the Divine Liturgy. Historically, the Divine Liturgy for Annunciation was not an evening Liturgy.

Now I am sure that Father David is entirely correct when he speaks of the Typicons that speak of the Vesper and Divine Liturgy service for the Annunciation. I would like to see documentation that the celebration of this service in the evening has been commonplace throughout Byzantine Orthodoxy since the 8th century. It is my understanding that this Vesper/Liturgy has been commonly celebrated in the morning and that that is the common custom throughout Byzantine Orthodoxy to this day (the people the Liturgical Instruction tells us to imitate).

Now, if I might repost something I wrote on page 3 of the thread �The Passion Week Services and the Current Reforms�, so as to give context to my comments (I recommend rereading the entire thread). In that post I was responding to some articles that Father Deacon Lance had posted.

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Thank you [Father Deacon Lance] for posting these links and articles. They offer much food for discussion and, I believe, support the perspective I have offered. To recap my position (which I made at some length much earlier in this thread), I am not adverse to a review of the Divine Services of Great and Holy Week and possible future adjustments to it. What I am adverse to is simply rearranging the services according to the personal preference of a few and, more importantly, without consideration and conformity of what the rest of Byzantine Orthodoxy is doing (no other Byzantine Church is making these radical changes to their Liturgy and Holy Week services). The Liturgical Instruction issued by the Vatican directs us to restore and, only after restoring, renew, and to renew along with Orthodoxy. None of the currently proposed revisions to our Liturgy (the Divine Liturgy or the moving around of the Holy Week services) conforms to the directive.

Please let me select a few points from the articles you posted for consideration and comment (it is a repeat of things I have already stated but I think it is worth restating):

From Father Schmemann�s article:

�The liturgical rules of the Orthodox Church prescribe that the Divine Liturgy is to be celebrated after Vespers on certain fast days. These days are: Thursday and Saturday of the Holy Week, the eves of Christmas and Theophany and the Feast of the Annunciation.

Since about the second century, the Divine Liturgy has been a morning service. Evening Divine Liturgies were prescribed only for the great feast days (as Schmemann notes above). I am not totally adverse to the possibility of evening Divine Liturgies, but we can see from our own history in the United States that the scheduling of Divine Liturgies anytime has been a major reason that the celebration of Vespers and Matins has fallen into disuse in most of our parishes. We have taught whole generations that unless the service is one in which we can receive the Eucharist, it is not worth attending.

Regarding the Feast of the Annunciation (to use the occasion of when Holy and Great Friday falls on the Feast of the Annunciation), it appears that the original form was more like Divine Liturgy in the morning and Vespers in the evening (the typicon prescribes the texts for Vespers for March 26th, not for March 25th). When the Lenten services began to be anticipated by one half day the Vespers was celebrated at the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy, then eventually appended before the Divine Liturgy. During lent, the Lenten day runs from midnight to midnight but the festal day still runs from sunset to sunset. So if we simply move the Vespers and Divine Liturgy from morning (which is the �received� timing) to later at nightfall, in an attempt to fix it, we wind up not celebrating the Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Annunciation itself, but on what is technically March 26th! No, if one were to consider a possible restoration of the timing of the Divine Services during Holy Week the answer is not to drag the Divine Liturgy from the day of feast until the evening (when it becomes the next day) but to either leave the Divine Liturgy in the morning (and to it attach Matins) or to anticipate it by celebrating it with Vespers the evening before. But this is where the discussion becomes complex so I will leave it and move on.

�We have thus a definite relationship between the time (�kairos) of the Eucharist and the fast, which is to precede it. This �eucharistic fast� must be lengthened or shortened depending on the nature of the day, on which the Liturgy is celebrated. The Typikon considers it self-evident that Divine Liturgy is always preceded by strict abstinence, therefore the general sense of all these instructions is that the greater the holiday, the earlier is the Liturgy celebrated and hence the shorter is the period of abstinence.�

The Holy Suppers we celebrate on the eves of Christmas and Theophany are not fasting meals in preparation for the Vespers and the Divine Liturgy for these feasts. They are festive meals that come after the reception of the Eucharist after the Vespers and Divine Liturgy on the eves of these feasts, with the Lenten aspects kept in tact because there is another Divine Liturgy in the morning on the feast itself at which the faithful would again receive the Eucharist. The recent custom of having a huge Holy Supper on Christmas Eve (12 foods, etc.) and then immediately heading off to Vespers and the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil is not in accordance with our fasting tradition. My personal recommendation here would be for those parishes which seek to have an Eucharistic evening service celebrate the Vespers and Basil Divine Liturgy at 4:00 PM so that the Holy Supper may follow and be seen as a celebration, but one that is still a preparatory one to the Divine Liturgy on the Feast itself (although given the small size of our parishes two Divine Liturgies for the feast is not always the best course of action). Our Church really needs to consider the whole concept of fasting and its Gospel origins. Schmemann offers much insight here. Fasting �precede[s] every Eucharistic celebration. Expectation must precede fulfillment.� Again, I am not suggesting a �rigid �rubricism�� but a true analysis and return to our tradition together with the rest of Orthodoxy.

From Alkiviadis C. Calivas� article:

�Difficult as it may be, however, I believe that the Church is obliged to press the issue through careful study and find a way to restore the proper liturgical order. She can do no less, if she is to be true to her quest for and commitment to liturgical renewal and reform.�

I agree with the call for careful study. To it I add the need to preserve the traditional order until the entire Byzantine Orthodox Church makes a change. There are those in Orthodoxy who are looking at the structure of the Lenten services but no one has yet proposed a major reconstruction of them. We in the Ruthenian Church, who are only beginning to restore what we have lost, should not have the audacity to change what we are only beginning to understand. I believe that it would take one or more full generations of celebrating the received liturgical tradition before our Church, as a whole, can begin to speak to it.

One of the main problems with simply moving the timing of the Divine Services is that they did not stop developing at a fixed point in history (as Incognitus points out). If one simply moves them one only succeeds in creating new problems.

Let�s examine the texts of Pascha (Resurrection) Matins. The structure of this service did not take its present form until well after the Vespers and Divine Liturgy of St. Basil was moved from the evening of Pascha (Saturday night) until Saturday morning. But if one simply �fixes� the problem by moving Pascha Matins from Saturday evening (or midnight) to Sunday morning (so that one may celebrate Vespers and the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil on Saturday night), we wind up singing the following during the daylight hours: �This most splendid and saving night is sacred and all-worthy of solemnity. It heralds the bright day of resurrection on which the Eternal Light, in the flesh, has shown forth from the tomb to all� (from Ode 7). The hymns of Paschal Matins are symbolically geared to the Light of Resurrection conquering the darkness (symbolized by the darkness outside the church). We see the shroud with the image of the dead Christ disappearing in the darkness and the candles piercing the darkness, filling all things with Light (�Today all things are filled with light� from the 3rd Ode). We journey together with �The women with Mary, before the dawn� and, with them �[find] the stone rolled away from the tomb.� These journeys with candles lose their symbolism in the brightness of the day if this service is moved to Sunday morning.

Now one can argue (and possibly rightly so) that Pascha Matins should be celebrated �before the dawn� so that we see the Light overtaking the Darkness. But the service looses its symbolism when celebrated once it is already light. �Let Habakkuk, speaking in behalf of God, stand with us at the divine watch. (Ode 4)� � �Let us rise at early dawn and bring to our Master a hymn instead of myrrh; and we shall see Christ.� (Ode 5) �Bearing torches: let us meet the bridegroom, Christ, as He comes forth from His tomb. (Ode 5)� �Early in the morning before sunrise, as if it were already day, myrrh-bearing virgins were seeking the Sun, previously descended into the grave.� (Oikos) We stand with Habakkuk holding lighted torches (in the form of candles). We wait for early dawn to bring a hymn to the Master.

This is only a quick review of the symbolism of Pascha Matins. And I won�t touch the Ambon Prayer for the Chrysostom Liturgy which presumes that the Church is gathered together with lighted candles. Nor will I touch the music of the Vesper / Basil DL for Holy Saturday which is definitely not carried over from when it was a paschal Liturgy.

Now in some places (including my own parish) there has been a move to restore the Vespers and Divine Liturgy of St. Basil to Holy Saturday evening and to immediately follow it with Pascha Matins. But this doesn�t work and only succeeds in getting the people to choose another Liturgy or to stay at home. Plus it seems rather silly to sandwich the Eucharistic Liturgy between Vespers and Matins, as the Eucharist is always the high point of the Divine Services, not a step before starting another service. I�ve seen this model employed at the parish I belong to. In ten years we have gone from an 11:00 PM service (Matins + DL) with 350+ in attendance to an almost four hour marathon of services with less than a hundred people attending (Vespers + Basil DL + Procession + Matins + Basket Blessing). And no, the people are not flocking to the morning Liturgies. Other parishes report the same results. Rescheduling and forcing together services which did not develop together only succeeds in turning away the faithful.

I agree wholeheartedly with Incognitus� quote: �Meanwhile, at Holy Week and Pascha above all, we need to remember Lambert Beauduin's ever-valid dictum that where worship is concerned we may not change what we do not fully know and understand.�

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Stability. Stability. Stability. We should not change what is known to work across the rest of Byzantine Orthodoxy.

Admin