www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy The Audible Anaphora

Even if secret prayer for God's benefit remains a contradiction (presumably because it is doubtful whether we can really "benefit" God), it remains true that the Gospel enjoins secret prayer upon us - though not necessarily in a liturgical context.

Fr. Serge

Father Bless!

Fr David you wrote:


I have a Western mentality. Please forgive me where I err in Eastern theology and in Western theology. Here is my thinking, correct me as needed.

Now I can surely agree to the fact that I cannot add to GOD�S glory in anything I think, say or do. To say �All divine action in synergy with us is �for us� and not �for GOD�..." is confusing to me. At Divine Liturgy, I thought we are not the doing, although we participate, Jesus is the one offering. I always thought Jesus, the GOD-man, is acting through the priest. The priest is an instrument and the offering is offered to the Father. If it is Jesus� action then it is �for GOD�, because the action is GOD. I cannot separate Jesus� sacrifice from �for GOD� because He is GOD and everything He does is for GOD, otherwise we would have a contradiction. The contradiction would be GOD doing something that doesn�t bring glory unto Himself. Jesus� action, not the priest nor mine, glorifies GOD. I can participate and unite my self to His will. Divine Liturgy is "for GOD" and "by GOD" to the glory of GOD. It is all HIM, and He invites me to share in the mystery.

So, I say it is �for us� and �for GOD�. The goal of "for us" is ultimately "for GOD" not "by us" but "by GOD". It's all Him, from beginning to end.


O Son of GOD, wondrous in Your Saints, save us.

Diak is absolutely correct. God has no need of our prayers. But still the prayers are �for God�. And Diak is also correct that the prayers of the Liturgy are not �all humanistic exercises in psychological self-pacification� (Ratzinger / Benedict XVI and others speak of the 1970s efforts in the Latin Church to move worship from being God-centered to man-centered, a mistake that the Latins are trying to correct but was copied in the 2007 Ruthenian RDL).

The worship that is given to God is for God not because He somehow needs it or that anyone can add to God (and I do not think anyone here has actually put forth the argument Father David is responding to, though Taft may have been speaking in that context).

If one states that liturgical prayer (esp. the Anaphora) is "for us" it must be in the context of "for us but not about us". It is "for us" in that it has the four main points of worship: praise, adoration, petition and thanksgiving. It is "for us and for God" in that it is our duty to worship God.

Our praise is to God.
Our adoration is to God.
Our petition is to God.
Our thanksgiving is to God.

It�s not about us. It�s not about our education. It�s about God.

Of course you are right, John. I am a bit surprised in the horizontality present in Fr. David's responses. I am concerned we are seeing a theological redirection before us with the emphasis not on God but on "us". I reject such a notion, all patronizing comments regarding my piety aside.

God may not need prayer (I would say to even speculate what God needs or doesn't need is approaching a very western determinism and not in keeping with apophatic theology) but He certainly wants us to pray to Him if we are to believe the corpus of Scripture as well as the examples of our Lord, the apostles and the saints, with the resulting prayer indeed "for God", for without God we cannot even have being.

As Fr. Basil Shereghy said in his 1961 commentary on the Divine Liturgy (which, interestingly enough, is based on the full Liturgy as indicated in the Ordo),

Father Deacon Randy,

Good quote from Father Basil Shereghy. To bolster it I am reposting Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). It is an excerpt of a speech in which he touched (lamentingly) on how the East maintained that the sole intent of the Divine Liturgy was to �be before God and for God�, and how the West lost this when it introduced a number of man-centered ideas. I quote Ratzinger repeatedly because he is speaking to the very mistakes made by the Latins that are now also made in the 2007 RDL.

The 2007 RDL, which has a number of rubrics that were first introduced in Parma in 1988 and Passaic in 1995, makes �the instructive element in the Liturgy, the effort to make it understandable even for outsiders, the primary criterion of the liturgical form.� People see that the emphasis has shifted away from the elements of praise, adoration, thanksgiving and petition to instruction (Father David, in a recent post, termed this that they are �for the whole community�). Father David�s horizontal choice of words noted by Diak is evidence of the anthropocentric error in the theology of the Revision. Worship is not �for the whole community� but �from the whole community�. Worship is not for us, per say, but is from us (it is our praise to God, our adoration of God, our thanksgiving to God and our petitions to God). The huge shift in liturgical emphasis (from being centered on being before God and participating in the Divine Light that descends to being an instrument �for the whole community�) is precisely what causes people to walk away (and we have seen exactly this with the earlier reforms). The faithful see that human aims have been introduced into the Liturgy and that it is no longer only about being before God and for God.

John

I have witnessed parts of the anaphora being said aloud in various Orthodox jurisdictions I've visited, such as the local Antiochian mission.

There is one way in which we �do something �for� God.� Our Lord put it in a �horizontal perspective� by telling the sheep at the Last Judgment, �Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.� (Matthew 25:40)
It is regrettable that my remarks are twisted to make me say that we should not be concerned with our �vertical� relationship with God. Is it not obvious that, as creatures, we do not enter into the �inner life� of God? Is it not obvious that the Liturgy is a manifestation of the mystery of the Incarnation, �Take, eat; this is my body which is broken FOR YOU for the remission of sins ... do this in memory of me?� Yes, we owe God pure praise and glorification; yes, we need to put aside our cares and turn to God; and yes, we need to care for one another and not selfishly care only for ourselves. In so doing, we can find God but this is God�s gift to us, for �God so loved the world that he sent his only-begotten Son .... � Can we possibly have enough humility to be aware that even in glorifying God, he is the one acting in us, and praying with us, and deifying us - for to praise God is somehow to become �God-like.� Yes, the Divine Liturgy is �for the whole community,� in it God acts �for� the community. To deny that is to empty the Liturgy of its meaning. And yet I am accused of being a party to �anthropocentric error.� Hardly, my friend.
Please do not accuse me of preaching - I admit it, I�m a priest and it�s what I do. As a priest, I also say prayers that are not designed to inform God of who he is and what he has done, but to proclaim to one another, in words of glorification, in an act of charity - for Christ himself said that his greatest work was that �the poor have the good news proclaimed to them,� (Matthew 11:5) - of the presence of God in our worship. The prayers are composed for our hearing, to uplift - �Let us lift up our hearts!� - ourselves to God - �to offer [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.� (Romans 12:1) Our very act of glorification is an act of charity to one another!
What, indeed, is wrong with hearing the words of the Anaphora? Are you, John, saying that whenever we hear informative words that this is instruction and not prayer? I have pointed out that when the catechumens had been dismissed, then the anaphora was proclaimed - because the unbaptized, the not �fully catechized� did not have the right to hear these words. You did not answer that question. I say it again - the faithful have a right to hear the words to which they say �Amen.� The Christian faith is not obscurantist.
Our petitions are certainly for "us" and "for one another." We do not ask for "stuff" "for" God, but from God as the loving God, who knows what we need even before we ask.

Reverend Father David, Bless.

Thank you for reminding us to listen to the Word of God.
And thank you for your own edifying words on this subject.

We should remember that in iconography the mouths depicted are slightly smaller than human perspective, and that the ears depicted are slightly larger than human perspective.

We are to listen to the Word of God more than we are to speak our own selves. It's that point of view of God over self that, although difficult, we are called to strive for.

Deacon El

Dear Father David,

What, indeed, is wrong with taking them quietly?

Nothing. Nothing is wrong with taking them quietly. To suggest that there is something wrong with the Liturgy if I don't hear the priest praying the anaphora out loud, is to doubt that the Holy Spirit was guiding the tradition of the Church and the evolution of our Liturgy over the last 1500 years.

I know the Holy Spirit was guiding the tradition of the Church's liturgy for the last 1500 years, and that grace has abounded and a magnificent Liturgy is our sacred treasure. Not only in its words, but in its sacred balance, movement, proportion and beauty.

I do not know that the Holy Spirit was guiding the work of the Liturgy committee, and the priests who have invented this change, and the bishops who have mandated it. I have serious doubts, because it is out of balance, the movement is halting, and the beauty is obscured. Was the Holy Spirit directing the committee? Time will tell....

Nick

Apparently around 1950, the Holy Spirit began guiding the Church to say the Liturgy in the vernacular. I think He is now guiding it to say the Anaphora aloud.
Of course, we could say that putting the Liturgy into the vernacular was a mistake in the first place, which I think some would like to claim. This would render this whole section of the Forum rather a moot point.

Dear Father David,

The vernacular and saying the anaphora in the hearing of the congregation are not equivalent.

As far as I am aware, celebrating the Liturgy in the vernacular has always been a tradition of the Eastern Churches? Didn't the Romanians, Arabs, Hungarians, etc. etc. all take the Byzantine Liturgy into their own languages? The Holy Spirit didn't begin this work in the 1950s?

But all of them took this duty of translation very seriously, and preserved the rubrics, the prayers, and the shape of the Liturgy, providing accurate, careful, literal, faithful, and poetic translations of the inherited texts.

This is the first time that the translators have felt 'free' to redesign, remake, and recreate the liturgy according to agendas and trends of the culture and age. Why can't we have a Liturgy that faithfully translates into English, the Liturgy we inherited from our fathers?

Nick

All that comes to my simple mind is "Liturgy - the work of the PEOPLE" which could be interpreted as being created by the people and for the people! This controversial discussion will go on and on.

'Liturgy' does not mean 'work of the people'. It comes from a very specific Greek word meaning the 'work of one man, on behalf of and for the people'.

I thank Father David for his post.

I invite Father David to clarify his use of the quote from Matthew. Just how does the Lord�s call to care for the least of our brothers support Father David�s desire for a mandate to unilaterally change the Liturgy (apart from the rest of Byzantium) for the priest to pray the presbyteral prayers aloud?

There has been no twisting at all. Father David has not offered any sound theological justification for the mandates he has sought and won. But what he has offered has been all about reworking the Liturgy so that men might get more out of it (education, understanding, etc. � the essence of 1970s horizontalism that the Latin Church is now trying to correct with the 'reform of the reform' because it didn't work). The addition of horizontal elements necessarily affects the vertical (participation in the Divine Light). Father David ignores the evidence that parishes that celebrated the Liturgy according to the official Ruthenian recension have the fruit of vibrancy and growth while the parishes that celebrated the 1988 Parma reforms and the 1995 Passaic reforms lacked such positive fruit.

Father David seems to have not read anything I have posted on this subject. I have argued against a mandate and for liberty. I have never argued that a priest should be prohibited to pray these prayers aloud. Saying that there are didactic elements in the Divine Liturgy and seeking a mandate to revise the Liturgy to make it more didactic in accordance with a 1970's theological agenda popular in some circles of liturgists are two entirely different topics. Father David has yet to explain why he militates against liberty, and why he is so opposed to allowing the official and authentic Ruthenian Liturgy to be our standard (with the liberty for the Spirit to lead the Church in the possible evolution of rubrics). [This is an especially important question, since he is copying a rubric from the Latin Church (to pray the Anaphora aloud) which the Latin Church is now rethinking because it has not borne the fruit that was desired.]

Father David has been asked a number of questions that he refused to respond to. I hope he does eventually choose respond to them. I repost the primary one here:

Why, Father David, are you so implacably opposed to the idea that the official Ruthenian Recension of the Divine Liturgy should be used in liturgical practice?

The two posts - Number 248337 on �Implementing the New Liturgy,� (which I shall call �thread A�)and 248408, �Audible Anaphora� (which I shall call �thread B�) are interrelated, so I have chosen to respond here because I think the �audible anaphora� is such an important issue.

In thread A, John notes of Kellie�s and Rufinus� posts that �they respond as if the issue is one of personal attack against those who have prepared the revision,�

In thread B he says,

Father David �ignores the evidence that parishes that celebrated the Liturgy according to the official Ruthenian recension ... �
�Father David seems to have not read anything I have posted on this subject.�
�Father David has yet to explain why he militates against liberty.�
�Father David has been asked a number of questions that he refused to respond to.�
�[the translation] ... is full of mistakes and agendas.� (Mistakes anyone can make, but agenda implies insincerity)

I draw your attention to the debating techniques used.

Ignored??? I know of Columbus and Aliquippa. Columbus has followed the literal Ruthenian Recension (well, actually an English translation of it, but let us not quibble) for many years and is stable. Many parishes that follow the Parma text of 1987 are stable or growing also. Aliquippa grew dramatically, and it warms my heart that people will flock to church if a fuller liturgy is offered, but is it only the Liturgy - or is it in combination with the pastoral care and love the pastor gave after many years of neglect. Not that I fault Msgr. Simodejka, Fr. Elias� predecessor, he was old and infirm and could not offer the services that Fr. Elias was able to. I also know of other parishes, which I will not identify for charity�s sake, which have a fuller liturgy than the general norm but are not growing because of the poor pastoral skills of the pastor. Liturgy is certainly a factor - the better pastors will provide a better Liturgy- but for the people, the pastoral care and love shown by the pastor are just as, if not, more important than the Liturgy. When the bishops mandated infant Communion, those parishes where the pastor supported and explained the decision accepted it, where the pastor was hostile to the practice, there were problems.

�Not to have read .... � Indeed! I am not convinced by your argument for liberty and not mandate. You seem to think that the �experiment� of reading the anaphora aloud begins now, while it has actually been done for over forty years. I support the bishops, who have finally decided, after many priests voluntarily did it, that this is a good practice that should be implemented. It is not a latinization, proposals for the audible recitation of the anaphora were made in the Russian Church at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, and the Zoe movement in Greece did it for most of the twentieth century. The Greek Church recently (2004) officially recommended the practice. When priests in our church began to do it, they simultaneously rejected praying facing the people - because that was a latinization. So we are not �copying a custom from the Latin Church�. Of course, John, you argue for �liberty,� but your opposition is obvious - you say �they are rethinking because it has not borne the fruit that was desired.� I doubt very much this practice is going to be reversed soon. You seem to argue mostly from Cardinal Ratzinger�s viewpoint, but his proposal is not the same as the Byzantine Church. The Byzantine Church never had �silence,� The priest read the anaphora quietly while the people sang, probably because the words of the prayer were in a dead language. Ratzinger seems to argue for something quite different from the Byzantine experience (The Spirit of the Liturgy, 215-216), where the faithful are catechesized first on the meaning of the prayer, then the priest says the first few words aloud, and then the community together in silence prays the Canon. This brings up a number of problems - the anaphora is now really oriented to liturgical instruction, and the anaphora as the prayer said by the priest which the faithful appropriate by their �Amen� is obscured. In any case, Ratzinger�s proposal would be a true �latinzation� if we adopted it. Ratzinger, moreover, acknowledge the centrality of the eucharistic prayer (read The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 171-177, and again, p. 46, where he says, �The sacrifice is the �word�, the word of prayer, which goes up from man to God, embodying the whole of man�s existence and enabling him to become �word� (logos) in himself.� John, you complain that the prayers said aloud are �didactic� but you have yet to respond to my observation that in the early church the prayers were said aloud after the catechumens were dismissed, that only the baptized laity were present because the uninitiated should not hear these �mystical� words.

So - mandate or not? I invite the readers of the Forum to think within themselves about this:
in extension, should the following be mandated or not:
1. Infants who are baptized. Should priests be mandated to give them Communion if they request or not?
2. We have said the Creed for generations with the added words, �and the Son,� should the omission of these words be mandated or not?
3. Many parishes with a �Low Mass� still do not read an Epistle. Should an Epistle be mandated or not?
4. For that matter, should the literal �Ruthenian recension� be mandated or not?
5. Should the use of English be mandated or not?
6. Should variant Ambon Prayers be mandated or not?
7. Should the celebration of at least some part of the divine praises be mandated or not?
8. Should the prohibition of the celebration of the Divine Liturgy on weekdays of the Great Fast be mandated or not?
9. Should the prohibition of women in the altar be mandated or not?
10. Should the faithful stand during the Anaphora. Should this be mandated or not?
11. Should the faithful stand to receive Communion and not kneel.� Should this be mandated or not?
12. Should obedience to the bishops in liturgical matters be mandated or not?

Think about what should be mandated or not. I�m sure the forum members will come up with a number of answers.

John writes: �Those who prepared the liturgical revision (rubrics, texts and music) are talented, worked hard and meant well.� But, John, you are wiser and you know �the reforms should be opposed because they are wrong.� I myself do not claim infallibility, but perhaps there are good reasons for what we have done and we should get more of a hearing than we have. We do not have brains the size of a walnut. You go on to say,�Rome was correct in instructing us to restore the Ruthenian Liturgy according to the official book.� But - Rome has approved the 2007 translation, how can you possibly say we are not following Rome�s instruction. If you claim that the 2001 Rome approval has no validity because the text was not released, then the 1964 translation is not valid either and, in strict legality, we would have to celebrate the Liturgy in Slavonic. [Here I apologize, for I am using a debate trick also - reductio ad absurdam - and I know most would not advocate going back - at least entirely - to Church Slavonic.] Rather than engage in polemics, I will state flatly - the 2007 translation is not full of �mistakes and agendas.�

You claim: �The first rounds of the reforms in 1988 in Parma and in 1995 in Passaic are responsible for people leaving, and this has been demonstrated.� Explain further - first of all, whenever a change is made, some people leave, that is human nature, and we cannot avoid it, we still must do what is best for the community as a whole. Some people probably left Aliquippa when the fuller Liturgy was introduced, but it was for the greater good of the parish. You have not �demonstrated� anything, you�ve only told a few anecdotes. In the anecdote of the Presanctified Liturgy in your own parish, you�ve even admitted that other factors may also have been in play, and I�ve looked into that matter. I don�t think it constitutes a �demonstration.� A really proper �demonstration� is probably not possible. I have tried to poll pastors before, and the answers received are often skewed. I suspect that the �evidence� offered by some posters is also skewed, though I refuse to accuse anyone of �falsifying.� As a subjective observation, I am totally and completely unimpressed by your �demonstration.�

Finally, you ask - in bold letters yet - a question that you claim I have not answered - you ask �Why, Father David, are you so implacably opposed to the idea that the official Ruthenian Recension of the Divine Liturgy should be used in liturgical practice?� I have actually answered this many times. I am not opposed at all to the Ruthenian Recension. I consider the 2007 translation to be a promulgation of the Ruthenian Recension - with certain pastoral adaptations, noted over the 66 years since its publication by Rome. It is you who insist that it must be promulgated only with literal exactitude - I consider it promulgated as to spirit. I am not a literalist. Nor is Liturgy as such simply a recension - it is also action and gesture, music and proclamation, a feast of the mind and soul and heart. I celebrated the �recension� in all its literal exactitude for seven years of my life when I was a student in the Russicum, and I am grateful to God for the spiritual benefit I received from this experience, and now I celebrate a new translation, and I�m grateful to God for this experience- releasing some more of the potential within the Byzantine Liturgy and opening up the prayer to the Father to the congregation, so that together we can �lift up our hearts.�

John, you have raised many questions that deserve an answer, but your uncompromising hostility to whatever the Inter-eparchial Liturgy Commission has done saddens me. However, Monmakh�s observation in thread A saddens me more:
He writes: �Another subject that hasn't been discussed on this board is that now that Pope Benedict has given permission for the Latin Mass, our best 'evangelization' tool is gone. The people who couldn't stand the Novus Ordo now have a place to go and those who were going to leave will now stay. So there's less people that will be coming over and a few Latins will probably return� (August 7, Post 248200)
I ask - is this Liturgy I�ve loved since my youth, baptized and chrismated in the Eastern Catholic Church on September 7, 1941, and which I�ve prayed for 66 years only a receptacle for Latins who want to escape the Novus Ordo.

Lest anyone stomp on me - I welcome Roman Catholics, and more than half of my very best and sincere friends are from the Roman Church, but, thanks be to God, most have come out of a love for the East and not just to escape. To try only to attract those who are unhappy in the West is, however, in no sense of the term �evangelization.�