www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy "Being a Priest is Easy!"

Tonight (Great and Holy Tuesday) after Orthoros/Matins in anticipation of Great and Holy Wednesday, Father gave a short talk that has given me much to ponder. (Father was just assigned to his GOARCH Parish about six months ago)

Father said, "You may have noticed that we are doing things different than they have previously been done here. I have an easy job, Being a Priest is easy! In the Church we have two colors in our Liturgical Books. Black, for what we read, and Red for what we already knew. The Holy Fathers of the Church have laid the foundation for how things are to be done, they are called Rubrics, and we will follow them. As a lowly Priest I have an easy job, the Holy Church Fathers, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit have done all of the work for me. All I have to do is read the black print according to how the Holy Fathers have handed it down."

Alas, being a Priest is not all that easy! Good Liturgy requires knowledge and udnerstanding of the rubrics, but that is a somewhat arcane study. If the priest was referring to the Violakis Typicon, I would refer him right back to the Typicon of Saint Sabbas (Violakis was no Father of the Church).

In many parishes, the Priest must be prepared to give instructions to the chanters on what is to be done, and to take necessary decisions - this is especially true during Holy Week.

Today is Holy and Great Wednesday. You might ask your Priest - looking as sincere as possible - whether he is going to have the Holy Oil before the Liturgy of the Presanctified this evening, or after the Liturgy of the Presanctified, and what time the Orthros prescribed for the morning of Holy Thursday will be - and can he explain these decisions. Cruel of me.

Fr. Serge

And a question such as this for a priest on Holy Week no less, for shame Fr. Serge!!! While you are busy putting down our priests, keep in mind your own faults as we enter into the holiest week of our common liturgical calendar!

Steve

Yes, cruel is a good word for such thinking, rather than being forgiving.

Dear Steve,

Excuse me, but I wasn't putting down anybody. To the contrary, I was pointing out that the Holy Priesthood, while a source of infinite joy, is by no means an easy vocation, even on the specific point which the previous poster raised.

Come to think of it, I could be accused of "putting down" Violakis, but since he has been dead for abount a century, and we all hope that he has found salvation, he is unlikely to be disturbed by a simple remark - with which he would have cheerfully agreed, by the way - that his Typicon differs from that of Saint Sabbas.

So I fear that I fail to grasp why anyone now alive would regard the substance of my remark - which is that the priesthood is not a form of easy life - to be offensive to our priests.

Father Serge, your blessing!


The reaction may have been due to your apparent suggestion that the priest be put "on the spot" in a way which severely undermines his claim that all rubrics come from the Holy Fathers (unless Father Violakis is counted among their number) - and that you did this with the comment that you knew it was cruel.

Some of the changes Violakis made, such as moving the Gospel at Matins, look to me like the sort of "pastoral changes" which engender much argumentation here. On my part, I have always wondered if the position of the Gospel reading in our molebens (after Ode 6 of the Canon, instead of before the Canon) was influenced by Violakis, or whether it might have been a parallel change to make sure latecomers were "present for the Gospel."

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

Dear Jeff,
The Blessing of the Lord - and a joyful Pascha to you!

I once brought a friend a case of cold beer. He smiled broadly and aaid "you sure know how to hurt a man!". My friend and his wife, and a couple of guests, enjoyed the beer. My post used the phrase "cruel of me" in the same jocular way.

Violakis, incidentally, was never a priest (so far as I know, he was never a deacon either). He was Protopsaltis of the Great Church in Constantinople. Up until the Turkish riots in the mid nineteen-fifties, Constantinople always had the best chanters. Nowadays, of course, Athens does.

The original poster specified that the priest referred to was a priest of the Greek Archdiocese in the USA. There are a handful of Julian Calendar parishes in the Greek Archdiocese, but the overwhelming majority use the Greek-style New Calendar. That had not yet been invented when Violakis wrote his Typicon, so I was intending to offer a few choice comments on varying possibilities on what to do when Annunciation falls on Holy Saturday (as it will in a few days). The rubrics in the Church-Slavonic Menaion go on for pages and pages, and there are possible variations depending on preferences and decisions. Sometimes a local Bishop will simply make those decisions for his entire diocese and send out detailed directions to that effect; otherwise, the priest must do it for himself.

Again, my point is not a wish to call the priest an idiot or a fool, but to suggest that what the priest in question probably intended as a bit of irony is not the literal truth - the priest does not have an "easy life".

As to the Gospel at the Moleben, many things are possible, but I don't claim to know what actually happened (a Moleben, after all, is paraliturgical). After Pascha, if I remember, I'll ask some friends who are likelier than I am to know.

Back to Violakis - his innovations have certainly caused lots of arguments; to this day there are Greek clergy and chanters who decline to follow his Typicon, and liturgical books published in Greek that pay no attention to his Typicon. But that's how it goes.

Again, God grant you every Paschal joy.

Fr. Serge

It may be an easy job...but certainly not an easy vocation.

SPDundas
Deaf Byzantine

If a priest thinks His job is easy then perhaps He is not doing His job.

Any one who thinks being a priest is easy was not paying attention last week!

Fr. Serg